Heritage Park

Life is short.
In the end it is only the impact you have made on others and the tangible heirlooms you managed to create, that will remain long after you are gone. This morning my Dad pulled out this beautiful quilt that his grandmother had quilted: she's been gone for over forty years. She stopped quilting twenty years prior to her death...I never knew my great-grandma, but sitting here, writing this and thinking of her quilt, I realize that only scraps of memory exist of her full life. Her memory is carried in the minds and hearts of her aging children, all now over the age of eighty, and tangible to her grandchildren only in the squares and patterns of her quilts. She raised twelve children (gave birth to fourteen) on a farm in Arkansas, during the depression. My grandmother is the youngest of her children, now 84 years old. Throughout her life, she has made a quilt for each grandchild, newlywed couple, and great grandchild that came into her family. Some day my children will ask, where the old quilts in the closet came from, and I will tell them of the remarkable woman, who was their great-grandmother. A woman who loved her family, and raised four children in Covina. An ordained minister of the Four Square Church: who performed countless weddings (including a few of her own grandchildren's), dedicated her great-grandchildren to the Lord, and walked the halls of the local hospitals sharing the name, and love of Jesus Christ with twenty years worth of patients, in desperate need of a savior. And the impact and legacy of my grandmother's life will continue...
Just like her mother before her.


I have learned a lot about life in the last month. Messages, books, movies, and people: all serving to remind me of the brevity of one's life. Each stage, and day of my life is a gift. I want my life, and the things I do on this Earth to matter, to count for something other than a short span of time that was taken up by meaningless effort to find fulfillment. I want to spread the name of Jesus Christ with my actions, and words.I know that there will be more people in heaven because of the dedication and diligence my grandmother has shown, in effort to share the amazing love of our savior with those patients. I want to be remembered in the same way that she will be. This life will eventually end for me, and the only thing that will remain will be the impact that I make on the lives of others.