Sometimes I think about my funeral, I think about who might be there, I think about those around me and who would be affected. It’s odd, because when I look around me from a perspective of death and look around me, I know there would be great tears shed at the loss of my physical body. There would be those who would ask hard questions of why, hopefully the answer will be because she lived a good long life.
I think about what I would want said at my funeral and the conclusion I come to is that i want people to know there is a hope, there is a future in Jesus and the only reason I could face each day is because Jesus lives and because Jesus lives, I could live each day. I also want them to know that while I have left my physical body, my soul, my spirit has just begun to live and to live the way God meant my soul to live. Free from shame, free from hurt and guilt, free from the shackles of the earthly world.
Another thing thinking of my death has done is thinking about what my legacy might look like. I can think of people such as Corey and Betsy Ten Boom and Billy Graham and I think how they have affected the world for Jesus. I think of how they have called a world to think about God and who he is, introducing Jesus saving grace, and a life of freedom in Christ. But, what I have realized is that God has used me, maybe not on a Billy Graham scale, but he has used me, he has used me to love others around me. I may not have affected the whole giant earth, but I have affected the place in which God has placed me. He has used me in the world in which God has put me. I matter to my kids, I matter to my church, I matter to my husband, and I matter to those around me.
Waking up every morning and while I am not successful at loving people well everyday, it is my goal, it is my desire and passion to love those around me to the best of my ability. Sometimes loving those around me requires me to ask forgiveness or reconcile when I have been less than my best and hurt those around me. Choosing to care about those around me, choosing to love my friends and family and those around me when it is not always convenient and sometimes requires me to go outside my comfort zone.
So, on the day God calls me home and my spirit leaves my physical body, I pray my funeral or memorial service is filled with how Jesus meets us right where we are, how he was my reason for breathing and living, that he was my all in all, and that he loved a wretched like me. I pray the tears that are shed are partly in missing me and partly because I am now free as I have never been before.
I want to leave this earth knowing I affected the world around me, the tiny portion God put around me, and that I was used for his glory.