A 72-year-old grandmother crossed the stage to a standing ovation
Saturday, May 30, 2026
The Spokesman-Review · https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/may/24/shes-72-a-grandma-of-8-and-just-graduated-with-her/
Her grandchildren cheered loudest. The degree took years. The walk took seconds. Something held her up the whole way.
Nehemiah 8:10Then he said to them, "Go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Don't be grieved; for the joy of Yahweh is your strength."
On May 20, a grandmother of eight walked across a graduation stage in cap and gown. She is 72. The bachelor's degree had been sitting in the background of her life for years, behind jobs and grandchildren and the ordinary weight of holding a family together. When her name was called, the room stood up. Her grandchildren cheered the loudest.
The line the joy of Yahweh is your strength is usually quoted on its own, like a fridge magnet. In Nehemiah, it arrives to people who have just finished rebuilding a city wall and are standing in tears, listening to the law read aloud after years of exile. They think the weeping is the right response. Ezra tells them no. Joy is what carries you across the last stretch of something you thought you couldn't finish.
It is easy to picture joy as the prize waiting at the end of the stage. It is harder to see it as the thing that got her there. Eight grandchildren and decades of small evenings, and somewhere in all of that, an engine kept running. It was running again on Wednesday, under the gown.