I want to live to be 111, since on 01/01/01 I’ll be eleventy-one. I want to die full of grace, old and full of years. I want my husband to be there with me to the end; being part of me as much as my bones. I want people to sing hymns of praise to God at my funeral and to have held my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and have helped to raise them up to love God and sing to Him and serve Him and abide in Him. I want to be a thick, strong branch in a tree rooted in God and watered with life, blessed with a boring testimony. I want to surrender my legacy to my creator. I can’t think of anything more I have to give. I feel the potential in my belly for influence spanning on through history, my progeny infiltrating the Earth, each claiming some small corner for Christ.
Likewise, I look down and see the branches that support me – in places clean, smooth bark forking into innumerable branches, elsewhere sadly withered, ripe for the axe. and elsewhere still, a glorious patchwork of grafted branches bearing fruit and branching out still further until our canopy forms a banner proclaiming Christ and His truth and His love, His mercy and grace, inviting, beckoning, and soothing the scorched and battle-scarred Earth with His healing shade.
