Purple Grandma

My life in a nutshell…

Welcome to my blog!  My name is Deborah and there are many titles which apply to me – Christian, woman, wife, mother, grandmother, pastor’s wife, friend, writer, teacher, and now, college president’s wife.  

My Christian walk began when I was six years old and my newly-saved mother lead me to the Lord. The message  in church that morning had been on the reality of hell, and while I did not understand all of the theological implications of salvation, I did understand that I was a sinner and could not meet the standards of a holy God.  To this kid who was already a thief and liar, the wonder of a perfect Savior taking my penalty for sin was amazing.

From that time on I had the privilege of attending a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church and attending Bible camp as a youth. During camp when I was 10, God spoke to my heart about being willing to serve Him – missionary, pastor’s wife, teacher, nurse – whatever He wanted – and after a struggle with my fear and selfishness, I said yes to God’s prompting

After graduating from a Christian college with a degree in education I met my husband who was preparing for the ministry.  We have been married for almost 35 years, and in full-time ministry for 25 of those years.  God has blessed us with five now-grown children and two grandchildren.

God has given me both a burden and an opportunity to counsel many ladies over the years. Lately I have been burdened to write about issues that women face.  Over the years I have made many mistakes – mistakes in my walk with God, mistakes in my marriage, mistakes in parenting, and mistakes in ministry.  God has allowed me to live through many seasons of life and I would dearly love to help other ladies avoid some of the painful difficulties that I encountered through my ignorance and willfulness.

Because of this burden I will primarily focus on addressing woman’s issues in spiritually-based posts (and the occasional fun post from family life.) Thanks for sticking with me!

Why Purple Grandma?

It started years ago when my high school age daughter and her friend were chatting with me around the dining room table.   We were discussing the use of grammatically correct speech and writing in society, or rather the lack of it.  The girls grew animated as one after another they pointed out egregious grammatical errors in signs, articles and conversations.  Finally my daughter blurted out, “Why can’t people just use proper grammar?”  Only what I heard was, “Why can’t people just use Purple Grandma?”

We laughed and joked that I was going deaf, and then my daughter commented that since I loved purple so much and would someday be a grandma, that I should call myself Purple Grandma.

Several years have passed since then and I am indeed a grandma.  We hosted a young family in our home for several weeks last year.  Their darling little daughter noticed that I had lots of purple in my life.  She had trouble saying my name but Purple Grandma rolled easily off her tongue…and so the name stuck.

Pretty simple, but now you know why I’m Purple Grandma!