Grandma’s Lutheranism seems to have run throughout her life, even to the hymnbook she kept. Gustava’s genuine faith was evidenced in her love for reading from the “Daily Bread” devotional. Her response to my testimony of coming to faith in Jesus Christ was met by her smile and a twinkle in her eye: “That was the Holy Spirit!”

Being married to a Roman Catholic must have involved some adjustments or compromises. Besides her accompanying Gramps and our family to the Ely Catholic church on Sundays during our yearly visit, I am unaware of her and Grandpa’s church preference or attendance. In those days, mixed-denominational marriages were frowned upon, and the Catholic church required the non-Catholic spouse to commit to raising the children Catholic. Again, some things are shrouded in the obscure dustiness of family history.

Grandma’s Lutheranism may have come with her parents from the old country of Finland. But there was another influence in the Gianotti household, which came through her husband, Jack, Sr., whose mother’s people hailed from Scotland by way of Ireland. Theirs was Protestantism with a Calvinist flavor. Jack, Jr. (my father) talked about being Presbyterian before converting to Catholicism to marry my mother. He was somewhat conversant in (or at least aware of) some of Presbyterian theology, particularly the part about predestination and election, with which he couldn’t agree. At any rate, while in the army during World War II, he met a Catholic chaplain, who, in Dad’s words, made a lot of sense. So, he remained Catholic from the time he married through to the end of his life, at least outwardly.

Interestingly, as I write elsewhere, when I came to genuine, personal faith in Jesus Christ, my dad, Jack, Jr., was not too favorable toward me, to put it mildly. His anger escalated when I enrolled to study at Dallas Theological Seminary, which in his mind was not only a rejection of his faith but propagation of a wrong faith. Years later, though, at the counsel of a Catholic priest, he began to soften his stance toward me, and this led to a few discussions between us about God and spiritual things, albeit meager ones. Maybe he started to see in me the kind of faith his mother, Gustava, had—a simple childlike faith as it was. Though it must have become clear that I had not joined a cult and become a weird fanatic, discussions about faith still made him uncomfortable and he always quickly changed the subject.

Just before Dad died on December 27, 1989, at the age of 71, when my sister Beth was going through several major crises, he asked me to talk to her about God. He said, “Chuck, I know we differ on some things, but we both believe in the same God. Please talk to Beth about God.” And I did at that time. And about one year later, I had the privilege of showing Beth how to come in simple childlike faith to Christ, believing that Jesus died on the cross in her place. She had the kind of conversion experience I did. For me, it was in 1972, just after college; for her, 1991. The light came on and life flooded in. She finally found the forgiveness she desperately needed from God. So, in this, I was able to honor my father’s request to “talk to her about God.” And now, she too had the same kind of faith as Gustava, our grandmother of Lutheran background.