Ok.
So this one is bound to ruffle some feathers.
I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but this has GOT to come out.
This corner of the www is mine and you don't have to come back to read again if you don't want to.
I won't get my feelings hurt, promise.
About a month ago-ish I buried my grandmother. And I loved that woman, with all my heart. I loved all the things she did with her life. She was a champion fighter and she fought a long hard battle. She stayed a lot longer than I ever imagined she would and I feel like she got a whole life's worth. She was a strong lady and I admire her wit. She spent hours, days, weeks, and sometimes months in a hospital bed due to her illnesses. They were plenty and enough to knock all of us down sometimes, but she fought with grace and a little bit of sass until the end.
The funeral service was lovely. The memorial at the funeral home was lovely. I felt as though the funeral was a lie. The pastor rambled along about how she was a woman of God and how she showed His love and lived for Jesus. Well folks, if she did that, I never saw it. I never once saw His love or life in her. I never heard her speak His name. If we questioned her relationship with Jesus and her thoughts on heaven... it was a quick response of 'I'm a good person and I've never killed anyone, so I'm going to heaven.'
Quite frankly, that's not how it works. Now, I cannot speak of her salvation because I was never courageous enough to ask her about it. But I should have been. I did not and I'm ashamed of that.
But I'll tell you something I learned while sitting in that pew in that little white church in the middle of nowhere Alabama....
I learned that when a pastor gets up at my funeral I want him to ramble about all of those things I mentioned above and I don't want ANYONE in that audience to have a doubt about what he's saying. I want to shine so bright for the Lord that there is no question about how I feel about Him and how I display His love. I am trembling while typing this at my computer y'all. This is hard stuff. To sit at your grandmother's funeral and have your heart ripped apart because God is using that woman to teach you from beyond, it is powerful. Maybe she did know Him. Maybe she did believe in Him and trust Him with her life, but y'all. I never saw it. Not in my childhood, not in my adolescence, and not as an adult.
I love that woman so much. Her humor was perfect. She cussed like a sailor and she was a joy to be around. She embodied family and the glue that held it together. Her legacy is a million miles long and I am so grateful that she was here and able to meet all my babies. How fantastic is that? She had 12 great grands... I think. Forgive my math... It isn't the best.
The bottom line is that I do not want there to be a single doubt, not a tiny bit of hesitation about my life. My words, my deeds, my songs, my work, my actions, my choices, my habits, my books, my family; my whole entire life. I want it all to bring glory to Jesus. And when I die and people are at my funeral (sans body--no casket for this girl) I want the truth to be so evident that nobody even needs to talk about it. It just is.
