He Keeps Me Singing

In the 1920s and '30s, a certain little girl was growing up with severe physical deformities that would mark her for life. 

Her whole right side was paralyzed.  She could not extend her right arm, which had a permanent bend, and the fingers on her right hand looked like long chicken's feet matted together.  Her right leg was twisted, and her deformed right foot turned inward.  Even her lips were a little twisted on one side. 

As this little girl was growing up, her mother was so angry about her child's condition that she would often attempt to straighten out the deformed hand and foot by vigorously turning and twisting them, but without success.  When those efforts didn't work, her mother would beat her and put her in a closet out of her sight.

The little girl's father was more compassionate and understanding.  He loved his daughter.  All her life he tried to teach her the ways of God, to shelter her from harm, to comfort her when people made fun of her, to hold her when she was sad, to encourage her in her school work, and to sweetly discipline her when she needed it.

One day, after their deformed daughter had grown into a teenager, the parents were devastated and appalled to learn that she was pregnant.

It was too much for the girl's mother to take.  She said she was already taking care of a crippled daughter, and she was not about to take care of her baby, too.  The girl's father, however, wanted her to stay in the safety of their home after the baby came, in spite of the embarrassment and sadness of this situation.  But the mother was insistent.  Her daughter and the baby would have to get out of her house and make it on their own. 

So when the child was born – a little girl – this unwed teenage mother found work as a maid cleaning "the big house" while living with her baby daughter in servants' quarters.  She toiled away with her one good hand and foot.

A Surprising Change

Two years later, both she and her baby became critically ill.  Her mother was contacted and asked to nurse the baby back to health, but she still refused to bring her daughter's baby into her home. 

The young woman's father, however, contacted his own sixty-year-old mother to ask if she would care for the sick baby.  He promised to provide financial help and to do all he could to assist her with this child.

This woman, who was a true woman of God, eagerly accepted this responsibility of caring for her great-granddaughter.  With all the love in her heart, she was determined that this child should live.

So the little girl was brought to her and her husband, and the crippled young mother was told that her baby would be returned to her when they both were well.

By the time the baby recovered, the two great-grandparents had become deeply attached to this child, and it was hard for them to imagine giving her up.  But they had made a covenant with the mother to return the baby to her – and they were people of their word, no matter how difficult it was to part from their little great-granddaughter.