Good and Faithful Servant

I can't begin to do her justice with my words.

You would've had to have known her. She was born in 1916 and was one of four children. She survived the Depression and had plenty of stories to share about it. She liked to tell of how little money she and my grandfather had the day they got married. For their honeymoon they went to the movies. They moved to Florida and started a family. My grandfather worked at the Palm Beach Post. Grams worked for Jordan Marsh as a shoe salesgirl. She spent too many years bent over, slipping shoes onto others' feet. She knew more about the value of a dollar than anyone else I've ever known.

She was a servant in the name of Jesus. She served tirelessly during Wednesday night supper. She counted the offering on Monday afternoons. She counselled. She told the Good News.

She wasn't typical. Huge Understatement. And she wasn't like anyone else's grandma. She didn't spoil us or think we could do no wrong. I felt the sting of the sole of her slipper on the back of my thigh on more than one occasion. One morning when I refused to get out of the sleeper sofa at her home, she folded me up in it. When my father bought me my first car in 1986, she told me I didn't deserve it. I was hurt by that remark, but I've since come to see its wisdom. I didn't. That's what made it such a great gift.

When something was really funny, she would laugh until she cried. Really cried. When she disagreed, she told you flat out. When you needed it, she quoted scripture. When you didn't ask for her opinion, she gave it.

There was a magnet on her refrigerator that stated, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." The middle line bothered her. She told me that it didn't really matter if we believed it or not. If God said it, it was settled.

The year my marriage went sour, she called me every day. The list of people like that was a short one. I remember my mom once telling me that she had called her crying after one of our conversations, telling my mom it was so difficult to handle my pain. I've never once seen or heard her cry out of sadness. To know that I had merited such a response... humbling. She loved me. I miss her.

She was our matriarch, the one who drew a line in the sand and declared ours to be a heritage of faith. The week before she died, my cousin Karen and I were standing on either side of her bed. She looked from one of us to the other and said, "Such beautiful granddaughters I have... all three of them...and every one of you a Christian." This was her legacy to claim.

To quote Karen, she had finished the race strong. When told others were praying for her, she would remark, "They need to pray for themselves." She knew she was soon for Heaven, and there was no fear, only peace. It was truly her Homecoming.

There will never be another like her, leprechaun in size, mighty in spirit. In us she lives on and it's her story we also tell. We claim, "Jesus is King. He is Messiah", and in that, her lineage, that ripples behind her, will span into countless tributaries and outnumber the stars.