Remembering and Missing a "Best Friend"

Excerpts from Ruth 1:
8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back, each of you, to your mother's home. May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. 9 May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband." Then she kissed them and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, "We will go back with you to your people."

16 But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It is near to my heart because I too had a mother in law that I loved and longed to be near. I wrote about her in the book “Women of Mercer Coutny.” Here is a little excerpt from that book:

   “She taught me so many things in the 39 years that I knew her. She taught me how to work hard because I would be embarrassed that my mother-in-law could out-work me. She encouraged and taught me to get the most from my money by canning and freezing in the summer and sewing and decorating my own house. She is the only person that I ever knew to say they “loved to strip tobacco.” (That was one love of hers that I never developed.)

   She lived her life for others and her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren cherish the memories of this hard working woman of faith. And, I think that we will all be better people because of the influence she was on our lives! Katherine Caton, a “quiet” worker and one of my best friends, was a real role model for me!”

We buried her 4 years ago this month and I still miss her. Sometimes I just want so badly to sit down beside her and listen to her wonderful stories of the “good old days.” I feel so blessed to have been given such a wonderful mother-in-law and can only pray that I learned enough from her to leave good memories for my daughter-in-laws!

Granny Caton could never get her arms full enough of her little ones.
Here she is loving on little Alex and Gracie.