What is your Legacy?

I'm not sure why today felt like a good day to start a blog.  In March I moved to a home with a very slow recharge well and last week we drilled a new well!  It has been therapeutic for my husband to be able to water our garden(food) and to keep some greenscape around our home.  Last week also had a few ups and downs.  I had a very sick kitten, a sick child, and a very loud drilling machine parked outside my door.  Today was a little different because I have two sick children and I had to put my 18year old cat to sleep.  I've had to put four cats to sleep in my lifetime and this one was, by far, the worst.  She kept moving even after her heart stopped beating and I wanted to stop the whole procedure.  Realistically, she can't eat, walk or use the litter box.  Her single kidney has gone in to failure and so euthanasia is the only solution.

Speaking of euthanasia, my mother wants me to do that for her when she is ready.  What?  Yes, you read correctly.  I'm not sure why she thinks I might have access to such powers, but such is the state of my mom!  It would be nice if we all just went to sleep to exit this world instead of some of the horrors that follow our lives.  Some die of cancer and others succumb to years of intense scrutiny and end their lives sadly and suddenly.

All this talk of death reminds me of a very recent adventure that included my husband burying both of his parents within eleven days.  As sad as the story sounds, it was an intense love story.  Two people married for nearly fifty years and facing death together.  My father in law was suffering from late stages of Parkinson's while my mother in law was losing her battle to her 20+ year fight with cancer.  Their beds were side by side so they could hold hands and exchange glances.  They prayed for the people who walked in their doors to pray for them and they never begged God to spare them the suffering, publicly.  I wonder if in their innermost thoughts they pleaded with God to take them sooner rather than later.

Following the burial of my father in law, the second to ride the chariot home, we drove by a man sitting in the cemetery.  The dirt was fresh at his feet and his lawn chair was carefully placed at the very edge of the disturbed earth.  The sun was high in the sky and he was not sheltered from its rays.  The site he was visiting fell just beyond the cover of an ash tree, but he did not seem the least bit bothered by the heat.  His eyes were fixed on the place where his love was recently laid to rest.  As we drove past him, I couldn't help but wonder what his love story entailed.  What would he tell his kids and grandkids and great grandkids about the woman whose lifeless body found solace in the earth.  Did she make great pickled beets?  Did she tell a good story?  Did she follow Christ?

The stories I tell my children about the two people known as Grandma and Grandpa are about their legacy.  They left a legacy of excellence in their work, in their giving and loving of others, in their commitment to Christ, and in their love of learning.  Whenever I seek clarification of Biblical theology I often reach for the phone to call Grandma or even just to share a funny family story.  They are gone from this earth, but never from our hearts. I am not certain what my legacy will be, but I hope and pray it can be even a fraction of what Grandma and Grandpa left behind.  Plan now and start to plant the seeds for a fruitful and abundant legacy for those who follow.

Today is a great day to start a blog!

xo, mimi