About Grandma

Being with. With. It’s an irreplaceable reality.

Being with means you are experiencing the same things, and filtering those experiences together. It’s hearing and seeing multiple angles on an experience, because you are being with. To be with.

My grandma Haney passed away this week and it was hard, as I’m sure any death is – but it is also incredibly awe-inspiring and joyful because we know exactly where she went immediately from here. And it will be impossible to forget her – she had too distinctive a “joyful noise” in church, too unbelievably consistent letter-writing habits, too great a grin and laugh, too incredulous a breathless “Well!” or “Oh my!” exclamation in the face of technology.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to visit with family and grandma the week before she passed into glory. Knowing that at any moment she might meet our Lord in air – to know in that week that we shared with Jesus such a tangible connection!

But for all that, I am still so very sad, and I think it’s because I was unable to BE WITH family for the very end, the burial and the memorial service.

Through the miracle of Skype and FaceTime and the terrible frustration of technology, I was able to virtually attend the memorial service AND figure out that our Internet speed is currently operating at half its capacity, but this just convinced me that technology cannot take away our human need to BE WITH. I just need to BE WITH them all.

But I’m sure if grandma could come back down here a second, she’d tell me that this desire, this need for such an irreplaceable reality of BEING WITH, is a picture of how I should desire heaven (although she would have no clue what I’m talking about with “Skype and FaceTime” (OH MY!). I come to tears thinking of her joy in seeing my grandpa again, in seeing her parents again, in BEING WITH JESUS. That is now her irreplaceable reality. I am so thankful. The family that I on earth long to BE WITH in the way she is now with her Savior I see in a new light: as a gift from our Father to “hold us over”, to comfort us until the day we can all BE WITH JESUS and the saints in glory. Come quickly Lord Jesus!