Coming down from the mountain in January has been the absolute hardest. We left Rockbridge ready to move, but knowing we had 5-6 months to get things figured out. We met so many wonderful people that weekend and gained an incredible amount of confidence in our decision to move to West Virginia. So it was hard to come home. A ton has happened since then, but this post goes all the way back to those first two weeks back in Ohio. The truth is this post has been sitting in my drafts for a couple of months now, and it’s just been too hard to finalize. My words will never do it justice, but this is what I’ve got…

My grandmother was in the hospital at the time, and we knew it was bad. Visiting her in the hospital I was able to tell her our news with confidence: we were moving to her hometown in West Virginia, and I had applied for a job at the high school she graduated from. She told me two things:

1. I was crazy, I didn’t understand what I was doing, and the winters were worse than I could imagine.

2. I better not look up her grades.

We all laughed at that second one.

I know the winters will be hard, but I’m definitely not walking into the same situation that my grandmother left. She grew up in a one room shack with no running water and literally had to walk over a mile up a mountain just to get on the bus. Our situation will not be like that.

My grandma passed away about a week later. We had the chance to visit her a couple more times while she was in hospice. I asked her what her favorite part of West Virginia was, and she told me how beautiful it is. I agree grandma, I agree. One of the last things I witnessed from my grandma was her singing ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ with our son Maurice.

She was so ready and so excited to go be with Jesus. If I’m honest I thought I would feel more sad when she went, but the truth is that my excitement for her far outweighs any sadness. She ran the race of life well and I love knowing that she is face to face with Jesus.

Over the last year I have compiled a list of Christian women I know and look up to. Lately that list has been evolving, and I have been searching for women who can inspire me in this new phase of life. In making this move Morgan and I want to be very intentional about setting up our new life to share the gospel through relationships with our neighbors and community. I want to be able to have an open door policy and really do life with people. While I definitely have a few women on my list I have struggled to find many who really fully embody this idea of living a life with arms wide open.

And then I sat through my grandmothers visitation and funeral service and I was taken aback by the sheer volume of people who came from various stages of her life. Old neighbors from their house in Ross where my father and aunt had grown up and from their condo in West Chester. Tons and tons of people from her campground in Brookeville where she spent every summer since I was born. Nurses and neighbors from the facility she had been living in and various doctors offices she had been in and out of. I knew she was a well loved woman, but to see so many people travel far and wide to say goodbye absolutely astonished me.

And then the preacher got up… and as he talked of all of those relationships and how her porch was “the meeting grounds” in Brookeville it hit me like a ton of bricks. My grandmother was the role model I had been looking for. She KNEW and LOVED her neighbors from all the stages and places of her life and spoke about Jesus with many of them. She absolutely had an open door and always had more than enough food for all who would come to visit. My grandmother was exactly the role model I had been looking for, and I never realized it until she was gone.

My words will never do justice to all of the things I want to say about my grandma, so I’ll boil it down to this: I love her, I miss her, and I pray that I can be more like her when it comes to having an open door and open arms to love people for Jesus!