my 97 year old reflection

my great aunt julia died on march 9th. we're burying her this weekend and i'm officiating. that sounds very official.

i'm not one for speaking in front of people. i'll take all the help i can get when asked to do things like this. so instead of writing a sermon, i asked my mom and her two sisters to pull together some information about julia: her life, what and who she loved, where and how she lived, the kind of person she was... i received it today. julia's life compressed into 8 pages of a word document.

8 pages.

sometimes i look at someone, read a story, or hear a song, and something inside of me stirs awake. like the tuning fork of my very being has been struck and everything in me resonates. as my eyes floated over the words of julia's 97 years of life, it was like looking in an old smudgy mirror, the kind that no matter how hard you scrub, you still can't quite make out the reflection. but you know it's you. rub your eyes. it has to be you. you're standing right there.

she loved to write. she loved to read. she was a water baby, and watched lake michigan every day, picking up on its every nuance. she stood up for the underdog and found it easy to love the people that others found easy to hate. she had aspirations, but ended up somewhere other than where she had planned. she loved, and fought. she had a tough shell with a tender underbelly. she was bundled contradictions. you couldn't peg her.

i have to keep blinking. the reflection is blurry. but it's me isn't it, somewhere in there...

on march 9th of this year, julia dale released her grip on earthly life, and launched out into the depths to kiss His Face. may the same grit, grace, and courage that ran in her veins race through mine.