A Talk With Grandma

I called to tell my grandmother happy mothers day, and some how the conversation got deep. She asked me how I was doing, and what have I been up to. I told her that I was okay, and that I was playing the waiting game with everything that I'm working on. Then she commenced to tell me about how some things takes time and that I need to be patient and that I should turn to God. She explained to me that everything that happens comes from God, that all that I have been through is cause God is trying to show me something. So I started to tell her how I felt about that. The way I feel sometimes is that I'm being punished, like every time I get to the top of the ladder, I slip fall, and land on my ass. Boy did that open up a can of worms.
That's when she decided to tell me that it isn't punishment, but a test, that he is all forgiving, and that the reason that I am falling isn't because I'm a bad person, but because I have been trying to get to the top of the ladder the wrong way, that's why I can't get to the top of it. She's right in away, she wants me to involve the lord in my life more often.
To give me strength in my predicament she told me a life story that I hadn't heard before. She told me how she had one of my aunts, and how she was 14 going on 15, and that she was alone. She had no siblings to help her or nothing. She lived in a furnished room in New York, and back in those times she said that they still used to put the milk and bread and cheese out by the street, so what she would do for both food and money was to go and take a few of the products and sell it to the people in the building. Early in the morning while my aunt slept she would head out to collect what she needed to survive, by doing that she was able to provide for my aunt, including diapers, and milk.
The things my grandmother went through and the story she told me, on how she used to get on her hands and knees and scrub tile, or carpet; how she had to clean furnished rooms for a few dollars a day. Most importantly on how she did it all as a single parent. Raised my aunt and eventually had more children who all turned out to be productive adults with children of their own.
The point being that mothers are strong, mothers will go through any length to take care of their children and make them into something. The sacrifices that they make are beyond anything imaginable. I whine about my situation, my grandmother hollered at me for it, telling me that I need to stop feeling sorry for myself, telling me that I need to stop beating myself up for all that has happened.
I totally get why she told me her story. I suppose I needed to hear it, it strengthened me on multiple levels. I mean I know what it is that I have to do, but sometimes it just seems too far. Guess you can say I was getting discouraged and starting to doubt myself. Cause when I think about it, there is a lot for me to do and worry about. I have so much to worry on when it comes to my son, child care, schooling, and what kind of job I'm going to have that is going to be understanding that I'm a single father with a child that I have to be home certain times and that most weekends I won't be able to work. Being that most of my well payed jobs are in Dallas, that means I won't have my sister to help me with babysitting that easily.
After talking to grandma, I feel a little better. I even feel more for the single mothers that are out there doing their thing, for their kids.