Rewind #14: My Legacy

Original air date: 11Feb2010

Speaking of funerals .... it might be kinda weird, but I find myself thinking about my funeral from time to time. I really need to write down my “final wishes,” because the last thing I would want to happen is for the couple days after I pass away for Danny to have to be running around and trying to make decisions on things that I could *easily* have lined out ahead of time and saved him the trouble and the heartache. Frankly, I hope he does the same thing for me ... there are some decisions I would have no idea where to start! And we shouldn’t have to spend those first couple days worrying about simple things that could have been lined out ahead of time.

But what is eternally more important (quite literally) than what flowers I want at my memorial (I love calla lilies best but they are way too expensive, so just red carnations with those mini white daisies) and what songs I want played - what is FAR more important than all of that is what kind of legacy I will really be leaving.

I wanna leave a legacy
How will they remember me?
Did I choose to love?
Did I point to You enough to make a mark on things?
I wanna leave an offering, a child of mercy and grace
Who blessed Your name unapologetically
I wanna leave that kind of legacy ....

Not well-travelled, not well-read
Not well-to-do or well-bred
I just wanna hear instead,
“Well done, good and faithful one.”

("Legacy" - Nicole Nordeman)

It’s nice and all to pick a song to be played at your funeral that’s beautiful and brings a tear to everybody’s eye, a song that describes how I wanted my life to be ... but will it be an accurate description? Will people hear the words and think, “Wow, that fit Karyn to a ‘T!’” - or will it just be another case of ‘everyone’s-a-great-guy-at-their-funeral’?? I guess the benefit to me of listening to a song now that I want played then is that I can continue to strive for the things that she sings about so beautifully. I am OH-so-aware that I am constantly a work in progress (and Danny’s aware of it too! hahaha) It’s probably when we STOP being a work in progress that we get into trouble, right? It’s easy for me to be lenient with others when I can recognize that they are still growing in the areas that *I* am still growing in .... it becomes difficult when someone else is struggling in one of those few areas I’ve already grown in. It’s so easy to expect everyone to be growing at MY rate! It is easy to look at someone who’s been a Christian ten times longer than I have and wonder why they still don’t “get it” in something that was “simple” to me ... meanwhile they shake their head at me while I still grapple with things they overcame in their first year of Christ. But, I guess that in itself is an area of growth ... and constant fine-tuning. I am grateful for the loved ones I have that continue to be patient with me as I break out of my little cocoon and turn into the butterfly I want to be! And I constantly work on having a moldable heart, and being open and receptive when my loved ones come to me with feedback, instead of getting so defensive. I know that it is ONLY through God’s work that I am where I am ... if it were up to me I would still be back in the train wreck of a life I had created for myself -- and yet God had always been there, rooting me on and placing people and events in my life designed to draw me closer to Him (even long before I admitted that He even existed) - and *finally* I caught on! As the words in this song say, the one and only thing I desire to hear when everything is said and done is, “Well done, good and faithful one.”