Celebrating a Hero

This may have been one of the best-planned, most memorable funerals I've ever attended. And possibly that's because the deceased person honored had planned the service herself! Kristen Reeves, Marjorie Reeves Miller's daughter-in-law told me, "We knew this box existed and inside it was the funeral she had planned. But we had never seen it. What an experience to see, in her handwriting, step by step what was to happen at her funeral service."
Dale had told me his mother's funeral would be a celebration of her life and that God would be glorified, and certainly both were true.
I had known her and worked with her and come to love her long after she had made the move to Cincinnati as a young widow with three young children to start a new life in a new place with no car but a great deal of conviction. It was good to hear how she made life work for her and her kids and how she gave herself to rearing them even while working full-time at Standard Publishing. It was good to hear each of her three children offer their testimonies, with Scriptures and theme headings she had set down in that plan inside that box. It was refreshing to see the beautiful program, to read the fun anecdotes from her grandkids, to enjoy the balloons instead of flowers (her directive), and to anticipate a bright day ahead of us "when we all get to Heaven" (the song she had chosen for us to sing).
It was good to spend a moment of silence pondering our own commitment to the Lord she loved so much and to know that her final wish was for everyone in her funeral audience to love Him as much as she did. It was remarkable to hear that her wish for memorial gifts was that they be given somewhere to tell little children about Jesus, preferably children who wouldn't know about him without the gifts.
We're better people for having known Marjorie Reeves. And we're better people for having remembered her at her funeral. I'm so glad I was there.