How to Start Being What You'd Like to Become

When I was a freshman at Seattle Pacific College (now University) in 1963-64, our dorm mother, Mrs. Marie Hollowell, often held meetings with us girls in her apartment. I'll never forget what she said at one such meeting:

"When are you going to start being 

what you'd like to become?"

The Cousart & Personeus Family in Pelican Parsonage
(I am front right of my brother & sister. My parents are on left.
Grandma & Grandpa in center.
Uncle Byron & Aunt Marjory Personeus on right.)

As I heard those words, I thought of my Grandma Personeus. She was my role model. My brother, sister, and I had spent nearly every summer of my grade school years with her and Grandpa in Pelican, a tiny fishing village on a large island in Southeast Alaska.

Pelican in 1953

Having young children night and day for three months is not easy when you are in your sixties, yet I could not recall Grandma ever speaking harshly or impatiently to any of us. She was always up and fixing breakfast when we got up in the morning and was the last one to go to sleep at night. After we were in bed, she wrote letters until the wee hours to keep up her correspondence with hundreds of people around the world in her beautiful schoolgirl handwriting. She was the sweetest person I knew, and she loved us and all the other children in town unconditionally.

The church in Pelican built by my family in 1948

I thought about all the older women I had known. Some were sweet, and some were crotchety. Oh, they were good people, but no one was as consistently loving and kind as Grandma. I decided I'd like to become a sweet little old lady like her. 

As I recalled the stories Grandma had told us about her childhood, I realized she had not had an easy life. Her father was demanding, strict, and harsh. 

One time, she was bitten by a beetle that took a small chunk out of her nose. As children will, she kept picking at the scab so that it was not healing. Her father scolded her and promised to spank her if she did it again. 

The next morning she awoke to discover that her rough-textured nightgown had scratched the scab off. At the breakfast table her father noticed and told her to go to her room and await the promised punishment.

A very sensitive child, she was so terrified of her father that when she tried to explain what  had  happened, she trembled so hard she couldn't speak coherently. Sobbing, all she could utter was, "My gruff gright grown scratched it off!"

Her mother had to intervene and explain what she was trying to say.

As children, we thought that story was funny, and that is how she told it, laughing at her twisted words. But thinking about it as an adult, I could see that it showed how much she feared  her father.

The eighth of eleven living children (two others had died in infancy), she was allowed to only complete the first eight grades, although she loved school and longed to go to high school. When her older brothers and sisters left home to be missionaries, Their father disowned and disinherited them for not doing what he wanted them to do. Grandma was forced to leave school and take over their chores of printing and distributing the newspaper her father wrote and published.

Grandma & Grandpa Personeus in 1959

When Grandma left home at the age of 21 to study for the missionfield, she too was disowned and disinherited. She was not allowed to return to the family home again. 

By the time I  went to college, she and Grandpa had spent nearly 50 years as missionaries in Southeast Alaska, living by faith under often less than favorable living conditions, but she never complained. She had survived many serious falls on ice and snow as well as several life-threatening illnesses, but she didn't let those hardships deter her from her mission, caring for the sick and taking in orphaned children, cleaning and washing clothes on a washboard.

As I  pondered what made her different from so many others, I realized that she had allowed the trials of her life to make her better not bitter. She loved the Lord, communing with Him daily and continually putting the needs of others ahead of her own. She unselfishly served people out of love. Children and young people enjoyed being with her, listening to her stories of their early days in Alaska.  She often told us,

"The way spell true J-O-Y is to put 

Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last."

My observations showed me that no one becomes like Grandma Personeus just by growing old. We become what we have practiced throughout our lives. Those who love and serve others in spite of their own difficulties grow sweeter, and people love to be around them. Those who think only of themselves grow even more selfish, and and people tend to avoid them.

As a freshman girl, I determined to become a sweet little old lady. That's been my life's goal. I've striven to that end. I'm old now, and I'm not completely there yet, but I'm still working on what I'd like to become--to be like Grandma, and to be like Jesus.

Are you becoming what you'd like to become? What do you need to change today?

To read more about the Personeuses, visit my website, www.annaleeconti.com, where you can order my book, Frontiers of Faith, the story of Charles C. and Florence Personeus, Pioneer Missionaries to Alaska, "The Last Frontier," 1917-1982, directly from the publisher.

The Personeuses are the inspiration for my Alaskan Waters Trilogy, a set of inspirational novels based on true stories they told. (The Penningtons in my fiction stories are based on the Personeuses.) They are also available from my website.