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.

Signs and Service

Shawn McMullen has a December  birthday, and we celebrated today at Olive Garden. Good lunch. Big lunch. I was sleepy half the afternoon.

After work I went to visit Marge Miller at her residence at the Lodge, a retirement community/facility not far from work. Her daughter, Angie, posted on Facebook yesterday that they needed to move Marge to a nursing home; after tomorrow she'll be at a place close to where her son Steve serves in Indiana.
I worked with Marge for years before she retired from Standard Publishing. We traveled together on Ideashops, and I worked with her when she was head of the Christian Ministries Department. I dearly love her, and it's been too long since I've seen her.
I had thought I would take her picture; maybe we'd pose together. But she was resting in a hospital bed, connected to oxygen and accompanied by a companion/nurse. We weren't going to take a picture.
But we had a nice visit. "I'm getting weaker and weaker," she said, but her mind is sharp. She smiled and laughed with me, and we reminisced a bit about travels we shared.
"They talked with me about where I wanted to go," she told me, "and I said, 'Wherever it's the cheapest.' But they said, 'We'll go where it's the nicest.'"
We talked about how glad we are to have kids who love the Lord and love their spouses and are involved in good things. (Marge's three kids are remarkable, dynamic Christians. It's quite something to see three kids from the same family who are each so special. Her son Dale worked with us at Standard for 20+ years before the latest layoff there. He's the newest staff member at our church, Trevor DeVage's first new hire.)
"You just have to keep pressing on," she told me. I have a feeling that's a philosophy that has carried her through her 88 years and will until she's too weak to express it any longer.
I'm glad I got to see her. I'm sorry I haven't seen her more in the last few years.

After our visit, I grabbed a snack and went to church for worship team practice. I'm singing with the group at the 9:30 service Sunday.