One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother, great-grandmother and mother, sitting on the tan leather couch in the sun porch of the Willow Grove house where Anna grew up. We were sipping tea. It somehow seems fitting that my earliest memory would be of the women in my life who taught me who I was and who I am called to be. Anna Rhubart was one of those women. She was steadfast and never changing. I always knew what was important to my grandmother, and I can summarize her life’s focus in three threads: She loved the Lord, she loved her husband, and she loved us. Every activity that I remember about her life reflected these three main threads. Playing the piano, playing the organ in church, accompanying Charles, leading family hymn sings, knitting and crocheting, all reflected these three loves of her life.
Every morning found her reading her Bible, watching the birds, and praying for each of her children and grandchildren. As the years passed and she grew older, her mind never dimmed and she never lost the ability to relate to each one of us at whatever stage of life we were in. Somehow she remained a part of all of our lives, spanning the generations with effortless grace. Mom-mom was a realist who knew about life’s struggles, and as the difficulties of life went on around her, her faith never wavered. She remained our constant prayer warrior. She pressed through every circumstance and ended up on top.
She is on top today. She lived her life loving, worshipping and trusting her Savior. She is pain-free now and filled with Heaven’s incomprehensible joy. She left behind a legacy of a life well lived. Her Bible sits beside her chair as it always did, worn from years of use, and exactly where she left it the day before she died. Within its pages lie mementos of her life, a legacy for those she loved of a life walked hand-in-hand with Jesus.
A quote from C.S. Lewis expresses so poignantly what my grandmother knew for certain and describes the premise on which she so faithfully lived her life: “If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Indeed, she lived her life knowing that the temporal things of this world would never fulfill her, nor could they keep her from the eternal life she was meant to live. There is no greater blessing a mother and grandmother can leave her children than to pass on the wisdom that this world is temporary and that we are created for eternity. Day by day, and moment by moment, Anna Rhubart did just that.
