Prophetic painting by a Nana...

     Do you know how something can be right in front of your eyes, day after day, and yet you just don't see it? There is a picture hanging on the wall downstairs in our house. It is in a darkened hallway that goes from our family room into a bedroom. It's been there since my husband brought it home from his Nana's house in Cleburne, Texas five years ago. It hangs in the hall right outside our office and I must have passed it hundreds of times as I've gone from here to there, and yet...I never really saw it.
     It was painted by Paul's Nana in Oklahoma City in 1976 (the year we were married) and is inscribed to him on the back, "Love Nana."  It recieved a "Runner Up" ribbon in the local fair in 1980 and she kept it with her until Paul brought it to our home in California five years ago.
     After a terrible tragedy, Paul's Nana gave up her life and walked without hesitation into the shattered world of two teenage boys, one adolescent boy, and a five year-old baby girl. She prayed, she trusted God, and she walked in faith.
     Nana died in December at age 98.
     Paul and I were laughing and telling stories about Nana for weeks after her funeral, then one night when we got into bed, Paul said to me, "I've been thinking about that painting Nana made for me. I think it was Prophetic."
     "Which one?" I asked him thinking about the rose painting in the upstairs bedroom and the "Rare Bird" album cover painting that Nana had done for Charles. I had recently put that one in a closet and suddenly felt bad about it. "The one I brought home from her house and hung in the hall. The one of the Road."
     "There's a painting of Nana's in the hall of a road?" I asked.
     "Yes. Over the King chair, outside the office."
     Was he crazy? I wondered. Was I?
      I got out of bed and rushed down the stairs and there it was in front of me. Paul said Nana had painted it the year we got married.
     It looked so much like a picture I had taken just a few months before, that tears filled my eyes. It's our "Glory Road." How could I have missed this?
   
     The last picture on this blog post is my photograph. I show it to you because I don't want you to miss what was right in front of me and what might be right in front of you.

     I'll think I'll paint it, frame it just like Nana's, and hang them side by side.
     I know that Nana and Jesus are smiling right now. It took me awhile Nana, but I see it.  I see it and I love you. Thank you for this.