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Here's the eulogy I delivered at my grandmother's funeral last week ahead of singing the modern hymn "Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me" by CityAlight:
It’s been one week of living in a world without Owa and even though she lived a long, beautiful life—96 years—and she’s with Jesus now, there is still that feeling of loss. Not a the sharp pain of tragedy. I think you get to an age when you know your grandparents won’t be around much longer. But a dull ache that follows you around quietly. I’ve lived my whole life with Owa in it and now I’ll live the rest of my life without her and that feels strange and unnameable.
She was like royalty to me—regal and vibrant and generous. She would always pull us grandkids aside and slip money into our hands—someone's gonna need to step up and take up that mantle now. She loved beautiful things—flowers, jewelry, the poetry of the Psalms and her favorite hymns, her family. She was so loving and loved her family fiercely, especially her great grandkids. David and I tell our kids all the time, what an incredible blessing and honor it is to have known their great grandmother. How rare that is. Owa was brave and independent and tenacious. And she was a prayer warrior. David I would joke that we better not want anything contrary to what she might want because her prayers would override ours. She prayed constantly and she loved the Psalms, copying them and memorizing them and when we’d see her she’d grab our wrists and go in on a Psalm and you knew you were there until the last verse. She was always sharing her faith. She attributed her long life to the Lord and she was right. God sustained her for nearly a century and He used her to bless this world, to bless our lives.
She may not have looked like the strongest person, but we all knew better. She was strong, but not in her own body or her own strength. It was Jesus in her. As we remember her, as we look back on her life and the legacy she left behind, everything we loved about her was us seeing Christ in her. As I think about honoring her legacy, I think about how I want to be brave like her, surround myself with flowers the way she did, how I will love my family as fiercely as she loved me and my husband and my kids.
This song reminds me of the end of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, where Paul is anticipating the end of his ministry and he writes, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” Owa longed to see Jesus, she lived her life faithfully and surrendered to the Lord. She fought the good fight and now she has finished the race. She was a queen on earth and now she will wear her crown in glory in the presence of Jesus, her Savior, forever.