Jean Griswold, witness to Christ

Jean: It's sad to this day...but the Lord has given me so much....When I think about this, I cry and it's sad. It's part of me...the Lord had not kept my husband with me, and I still don't have the answers to that, really....I hope girls learn how to trust God for whatever comes. Life's not a bowl of cherries all the time. Maybe every once in a while. And you have to learn how to hold steady through the down times... 

me: How did you learn that? What did you learn about trusting God in the down times? 

Jean: Well sometimes I didn't. If there was not a deep sense in me that I had been born again, that God had met me, and Christ had come into my life, there was forgiveness, and there's cleansing in the blood, and we must keep knowing that....It was just lovely...but I got so hurt by the way he acted towards me. I don't know; I still don't know....I didn't always manage well. 

Doug: Sounds to me that your relationship with Jesus was the steel in the structure that kept this house from crashing down.

Jean: ...from me going down underneath it all, yes.

Doug: Losing a child, having a divorce some years later, and the awful things in between, it really comes down to a woman's walk and relationship with Jesus.
...
Jean: Just put first things first in your life. Have that which is important in God for you. Let the pressures of life fall away. I don't think we need to be struggling, Christian young women, if they know that their hope is in Christ.

me: And even after all you've been through, you can say that.

Jean: That's right. And that's what matters. You can get old like me and that's still what matters. Nothing else is as important as Jesus Christ.

This is a segment from an interview with Jean Griswold, an 85 year old lady in my church. My pastor Doug and I visited her one afternoon and captured such rich sweetness from a woman who's lived grounded in Christ in the reality of a broken world. I came away deeply affected and marveling at the paradox of a life of faith. Jean's faced a life full of many of my fears, feeling their reality deeply so that they are part of her even today and still bring sorrow and tears decades later. And yet they have not overcome her. God has proven true to his word in her life, and she perseveres for the realization of the rest of his promises. She is a radiantly beautiful daughter of God who studies and treasures his word and sings his praises in her life. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.  (Hebrews 12:1-3)

I'm thankful for the saints who have gone before me. And how blessed am I to be surrounded by so many of them! Both my parents have memories of times with Jean as single young adults in Community of Believers, or maybe it was called Lancaster Covenant Church by then (now going by the name of Crossway Church!)


You can listen to parts of our conversation with Jean on our church blog here. 

photo: August 13, 2011; last family vacation 

at the hunting cabin in Tioga county