Remembering Grandma

We celebrated the life of my grandma this past weekend. There were a lot of tears, but even more smiles. She was so loved and there will always be an empty place in all of our hearts for her, but we couldn't be more grateful for the time that we had with her. She was an amazing woman who was full of love, strength, and joy. I am so thankful for the family that we have and for the strength that grandma passed on to us.

Here is a copy of the letter that I wrote for grandma that was read at the celebration:

Romans 5:2-5 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

To My Sweet Grandma,

I am writing this letter to you after you have already found your forever home with Jesus, but we all know that you would never, ever miss a family function, so I know that you are here....and are listening.

Grandma. You are everything to our family. You are kind, courageous, loving, selfless, and loyal. There are plenty of positive adjectives that I could use to describe you, but I want to keep this short as possible. I can't thank you enough for everything that you have done for me in your lifetime. You were at every important event in my life. You missed nothing, because family means everything to you. You even made it to my boy's parties and I'm pretty darn sure that you would have been at Trey's soccer games this fall if you were still here.

You know what life is about. It's about family and I'm pretty sure that we have one of the best ones around. You raised your kids to put their family first, which has now passed on to their kids, and now we are passing that on to our kids. Our family is strong, because of you. We are brave, because of you. We are humble, because of you. You, sweet grandma made life full and I'm not really sure what we are going to do without you.

I am going to miss your smile. I'm going to miss you at the Jamboree. I am going to miss you every single holiday and goodness I'm going to miss your apple pie. I'm going to miss taking the boys up to visit you. Their excitement when we drove down your driveway. The way that you packed Trey's pockets full of star-bursts on the way out the door. You will be so missed grandma, but like my sweet Aunt Coreen once told me, “We are survivors.” You have made us strong and we will carry on your legacy forever.

There is so much to be thankful for when I think about how full your life is. I pray that I can say the same one day. I can't thank Jesus enough for giving you enough time on this earth for me to call you up and tell you that we are having a little girl and that her name will be Ruthie...a moment that I prayed for as soon as I found out that I was pregnant.

I know that our whole family is feeling the same thing. We are sad that your earthly body is no longer with us, but so grateful that we had you as our family leader. We are thankful for every single good moment that we had with you. When we think of you we will always smile, because that is what you would have wanted. You didn't like to cry....as you told me this just a month ago...I'm pretty sure that's because you were always too busy smiling and loving life. You will always be with us, sweet grandma and we will see you soon!

Love,

Kara