Life with Aunt Ginna ...

My Aunt Ginna was a complex woman.

She could be tough as nails.

When I pick through the cobwebs of my mind, there is this family story of Ginna sitting at a stoplight in downtown Richmond in her blue and white Oldsmobile. The light turns green, and Ginna’s a bit impatient to get moving, but there’s this woman walking slowly in front her. The woman stops, turns her head, glares at Ginna and says, “You wouldn’t DARE hit me!”

Ginna guns the engine and shouts, “You wanna BET?!”

It was probably the hard-scrabble life of the 13 Harris children that toughened their young hides. When Ginna was 14, both of her parents were gone … and there were three children younger in the brood: Nora, Clifford and Bobby.

Tough circumstances can put a hard edge on your shell, but they can also create a place for grace -- and compassion. Because it is no longer, “There but for the grace of God go I,” rather it is, “I have been in your place …”

It is not the grace and compassion of sympathy; it is an incarnational grace of empathy.

That was Ginna: tough as nails one minute; full of grace and compassion the next.

Even though her toughness is legendary, it is the grace and compassion of Ginna and my late Uncle Russell – the grace and compassion of those two Christians — that sticks with me … and my mother … and my sister, Sheree.

And there’s good reason for that: We three who were sometimes vagabonds were great recipients of that grace, and compassion.

The three Harris siblings who lived in Richmond as adults – Ginna, my Uncle Willard, and my mother – sort of looked out for one another, even as adults.

I have commonplace familial memories of holiday jaunts from Horsepen Road to the Miffleton house in Lakeside, as well as Uncle Willard's residence.

But the … uh … uniqueness, if you will, of my family situation led to some likewise unique opportunities for grace and compassion on the part of Aunt Ginna and Uncle Russell – and I would be remiss if I did not offer thanksgiving for those acts.

In the summer of 1969, my mom was in the throes of a horrific marriage, to say the least, and she brought my sister Sheree and I to stay in Richmond while she sorted things out in Florida.

Sheree stayed with the Miffletons, and I went back and forth between my paternal grandparents’ house and the Miffleton household. I sort of had the best of both worlds for a 13-year-old boy. I’d go shooting with my grandpa, and travel with him and my grandmother. He was a professional baseball scout, and what red-blooded American boy wouldn’t love to spend a summer shooting and traveling around watching baseball games.

Ginna and Russell were gracious enough to not only let my sister live with them for the summer, but were also patient enough to allow an adolescent boy to pop in and out as he felt the need … or, perhaps, as the grandparents felt they had experienced all of the shenanigans they could take for a while.

As Linda will so often remind us, that was the summer of the infamous Virginia Beach vacation … where I sincerely drove Ginna and Russell nuts. No one knew what ADD was in 1969, I am certain, but I bounced around the two of them like so many beach balls.

“Where’ we eatin’ breakfast Uncle Russell? Can we go to the pancake house again? How about the water slide? Can we do that again?”

Five of us crammed in The Emperess hotel room for a week; me harassing Linda every single chance I could get; and Linda and Sheree doing their best to lose me on the beach.

That was the same week the men walked on the moon.

It was a beautiful thing for Ginna and Russell to invite Sheree and I along, and it was a a beautiful thing for them to open their home and hearts to a niece and nephew.

A truly memorable summer.

But it was at summer’s end where we truly experienced the sacrificial Christian love that Ginna, and Russell, had for their family … maybe even a unique love for her sister Nora and her children.

Sometime late that summer, my mother exits the truly horrible marriage and makes her way back to Richmond.

Broke … and broken.

A single mom in 1969, with two teenage children.

No job.

No money.

No place to live.

Ginna and Russell are there, putting hands and feet to their faith, the teachings of which maintain that pure religion is to care for the widows and orphans.

Sheree and I were spiritual orphans.

My mother was a spiritual widow.

And in familial and Christian love, Ginna and Russell help her pick up the pieces and move on.

They help us find an apartment -- one that’s close by, I would note -- and Uncle Russell takes care of the rent, deposit, you name it, to enable us to move in.

He and Ginna then take us to Kenneth Lord Furniture, the business he had worked his way up to own on Cary Street, and we spend the evening picking out furniture for the apartment.

Even as my grandparents took me shopping for school clothes as the summer of 69 drew to a close, Ginna and Russell bought my sister Sheree’s clothes that year.

Afterward, Ginna would stop by our apartment while my mother was at work and put groceries in an empty refrigerator.

There are many other acts of grace and compassion on the part of Ginna, and Russell, that I could tell you about, but I’m going to close with something that is most important to me … and by osmosis, if you will, to my family.

Ginna and Russell were heavily involved in Hatcher Memorial Baptist Church as an extension of their faith. Uncle Russell was a deacon, and in the fall of 1969 I was strongly urged to begin attending.

I really didn’t fit in that well; after all, the closest I likely came to a church while in Florida was when I rode my bicycle past one.

But I hung in there for a while. Even sang in the youth choir.

And was baptized sometime within the next year.

My life being what it was, I went through my own struggles, and Ginna and Russell helped me pick up the pieces on at least one occasion.

And when God finally got a good grip on me at the age of 29, and I truly gave my life to Christ, I made sure Aunt Ginna and Uncle Russell knew, because God, through His Holy Spirit, was reaching down to me through these Christian actions.

I spoke with Aunt Ginna sometime after I committed my life to Christ on Easter Sunday, 1985, and wanted her to let my Uncle Russell know – particularly how grateful I was for his having led me to be baptized.

In her words, he said, “Well, I guess it took.”

We who live on this side of eternity can not know the exact nature of the experience of on the other side, but I can imagine Uncle Russell greeting Ginna in this way: “Dahlin, I didn’t mind waitin’ …”

And Ginna perhaps responding, “Russell, you’re not gonna believe what’s been goin’ on since you’ve been gone.”

Thanks be to God for the Christians in our life.

Grace ... and peace.