hard footsteps to follow...

7.28.2007 7:04 PM 11 2009 Melanie 9 comments
My Grandpa has gone home. I've been thinking about him a lot. Trying to process a world that exists here without him, and how strange and sad that all seems. More than that, I've been thinking about what makes saying goodbye so hard.
C.S Lewis once talked about death as the one thing that we were never meant to deal with. God didn't create us with the ability to handle it on our own, because it wasn't something we were ever meant to face. He's giving us grace to handle the unthinkable, but it will always seem...wrong somehow. Because it is. It's not what he wanted for us. That makes me feel better. Knowing that I don't really have to cope, because it's never going to feel okay. It's not supposed to, not on this side of eternity. We are eternal, after all. Trapped in a finite world, in finite bodies, but infinite in spirit. This thought also gives me comfort, because when I realize this, when I live like it, then maybe I'm closer to my Grandpa than I've ever been before.
And therein lies the struggle. I said on Becky's blog, and thus in my tribute to Grandpa, that to not follow in his and Grandma's footsteps would be to live life less. I believe that with my whole heart. Every single one of us is currently living the legacy we are leaving behind to those who knew us best. What if I died tomorrow? What would be said in front of my casket, what would be said to comfort those who would be left behind to grieve? We called Grandpa many things: strong, loving, faithful, honest, hard-working, and in love with his Savior and his wife. Every one of these things was true. More than true, there were just not English words that described it properly. Everything fell short somehow. What a life he lived...
But to live life in Grandpa (and Grandma's) footsteps, is even harder than saying goodbye to him. It's living in a way that honors his memory...but no, he wouldn't want that would he? It's living in a way that honors God. Really, that is what his life was all about. It was his love for God that made his love for his wife something truly incredible. It was his love for God that made every one of his grandchildren feel like his favorite. Because we all were. It wasn't Grandpa loving us that made us feel that special, though we know he did love us all desperately. It was his stunning obedience to his Lord that allowed God to love us through him. That's why his love felt so special, so different. Because it was different. It was Jesus, and that's amazing to me. And he did it by simply being this one thing: obedient. He worried about nothing other than what his Lord thought of him, and what God wanted of him.
Again I wonder what would be said at my funeral? Not in a morbid way, but in a way that challenges me to think, "What legacy am I leaving behind?" We're all leaving one, after all. This is making me ask myself some very hard questions. I know what Peter would say at my funeral, or how he would feel. I know what a pastor or my mother would say. They'd talk about the good things I did. Most of these would likely center around YWAM, sadly enough. Two years in twenty-five. But what would my co-workers say? What would the people I talk to at the bank say? Or my non-Christian friends? Would there be only Christians in that church, because I hadn't befriended anyone who wasn't like me? What would people at work say if they knew exactly what I believed and why? Would they be surprised? I dearly hope not, but I suspect so, at least a little bit. Maybe they'd say, "I knew she believed in God, but she was a missionary? I heard her swearing after work once when she'd had a bad day...I didn't think Christians did that." Ouch. They'd be right. Do I really model the love of God not just to those I'm comfortable being a Christian around, but to everyone who meets me? Do I share my faith, or look for opportunities to be Christ to someone else? Do I love my family, or my spouse in a way that makes others notice my relationships and, gasp, inquire as to why my life is different? Has anyone ever asked me "the reason for the hope that I have"? You didn't meet Grandpa without meeting Jesus, you can meet me and not see Jesus at all, it just depends when you catch me. How hard I've been working, how financially or emotionally stressed I am, whether or not I've had a bad day at work, can all affect who you meet when you meet me. Sometimes it's not Jesus. Sometimes it's just Melanie.
I don't think Grandpa would want us to idolize him in his death, though he was loving and strong and wonderful. It would be easy to do. But if I did that, made him into something perfect, his life wouldn't be anything but an amazing story to me. It wouldn't be a challenge to the way I'm living now, and I think that it needs to be. I think God has always used Grandpa in a way that made everyone he met want to be like him. In order to do that we need to realize that he was still just a man. A great man, but just a man. He wasn't perfect. He was human. I'm human. Finally we have a starting point. I can be like Grandpa. If I just try to be like Jesus. Then my life, and my legacy, will resemble that of my Grandfather. I think that's what he'd want more. Not just to remember how wonderful he was, but to question what it was that made him like this. Because then we'd find Jesus, and that was all he ever wanted for all of us. To know that we would follow Christ with all our hearts.
Grandpa did. Everyday, Grandpa did this. On the last morning he woke up on this earth he asked God what He wanted of him. I want to be like Grandpa and Grandma. The hard thing is this: it will cost me. It will mean forgiving when someone doesn't deserve it. It will mean devotion to prayer and to God in a way that I haven't yet experienced. It means loving my spouse more than I value my individuality. More than I value myself. It will mean loving my enemies. It will mean not compromising in not only what I feel is right or wrong, but what I know God says is right or wrong. It means not living for money, or power, or for honor in the eyes of anyone but Jesus. It means a value system that the world will notice instantly, is very different. It will mean a change in the way I'm living now. I will mean sacrifice. It will mean dying knowing that I lived my life in a way that would honor the one I will spend eternity with. It will mean laying down that last time ready to see my Saviour with nothing but tears in my eyes for the gratitude that "Jesus died for me. He died for me."

I just can't

7.14.2007 9:53 AM 11 2009 Melanie 8 comments
I am usually a pretty self aware person, and I tend to be fairly honest about my shortcomings (though there may be a slightly masochistic reason for that). I know myself very well, and though I don't often like what I see inside my head and heart, I'm not usually surprised by myself, if that makes any sense. I don't know that I've ever dealt with grief before, however, and this is entirely new territory for me. I don't like it here, not at all.
My Grandpa doesn't want to live anymore. He's so sick and he's longing to go home to Jesus. I can't deal with that. My brain just will not do it. I get that he's nearing the end, and that it may be time. I don't want him to be sick anymore. I want him to be happy. I cannot say goodbye. I just can't.
When Peter's Grandma died, we were all so happy for her. That sounds strange, but she'd been away from her husband for 20 years and she was ready. The day she went, all I thought about was her and the love of her earthly life, meeting in a place where there are no tears, where goodbye doesn't exist any longer. I was happy for her.
This is different. They are together here. My Grandma and Grandpa have a love story that should be in a book. When Grandma met him, she was seven years old. It was love at first sight. She prayed every day, the one phrase that has taught me more about love than any other earthly example, "Jesus, make me into the kind of woman he will love." She prayed that for years and her and Grandpa have a love that is so strong that it amazes me sometimes to watch them together. These people know what love is. They live it together and they live it with their family.
When I'm with Grandpa, I never age. I stopped somewhere around four years old and even though he's met my husband, I still have always felt like a little girl around him. Peter once asked me about my parents divorce, and about not having a dad for all those years and he was so upset about the pain we went through then. I told him it was okay, it really was. God sent me other dads. I've never been without a strong male figure in my life. That's what my grandfather is to me. He's like my dad. He apologized to me a while back for something that happened when I was just a little, little girl. My mom had bought me a new dress that day and my grandparents were over for coffee. He was having coffee in the living room with my father and I rushed into my room, put on my new dress and ran into the room to show them how pretty I looked. I must have been less than five years old. I twirled around and then my father shouted at me to go away, and take off my dress, the adults were visiting, and I was to make myself scarce. My grandfather says that he never forgot the look on my face. And twenty years later her told me how sorry he was for not telling my father to shut up or "punching him in the face". I do not remember this day. I'm not sad about it, it's not an issue. It was to my Grandpa. But when he told me that story, sitting at my mom's table, shaking with Parkinson's disease, nearly blind and looking very old, he was ten feet tall to me. That hasn't changed. My heart sees him that way, even when my eyes see his health decline. Even when my ears hear stories about him that say strange things like "he's in the hospital, do you want to go say goodbye?" That's not true, it just can't be. This is the man that rides to the rescue of little girls in pink dresses, the man that loves his wife and his Saviour with a strength that seems super human. He's not actually sick. Not really.
People deal with grief differently they say. When his time comes, whether it's tomorrow or in five years Robyn will be at the funeral. She says she has to go. I can't do it. I can't see him like that. I can't go see him in the hospital. He's ten feet tall, for crying out loud - what hospital bed would hold such a big strong man? My heart has to believe that none of it is true, until it actually is. Until he's in Heaven and he looks to Jesus and the angels the way I've always seen him in my heart. I think that maybe then the peace will come.

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