Mom's Eulogy for Grandma Mary

So far, I haven't had a "guest blogger" on here. But I decided to post Mom's eulogy for Grandma Mary here for anyone who wasn't there Friday. It was a beautiful service and I don't think any daughter-in-law has ever spoken so lovingly about a mother-in-law :).

I love you Grandma Mary!


Eulogy for Mary S. Gregory
Given at Newport News, Virginia
By Sharon G. Gregory
Friday, August 12, 2011


A number of weeks ago, I received a call from Mary, very early one morning. She was very short of breath, and she said she didn’t have much time because she was about to have a rather dangerous procedure on her heart. She went on to say that this was something she had to do, no matter how risky, because she could not live so short of breath. She said, “I’ve called for you to promise to do a couple of things for me.” She said, “If I don’t survive this, I want Aaron to sing at my funeral and I want you to speak.” I said, “O Mary, let’s please don’t talk about this today. Let’s agree that God is greater than 86-year-old arteries.” She said, “I’m not asking you to stop praying for me. I just want to have everything in order, and this is what I want. You will know what to say.” I promised that, someday, I would do what she asked. But I went on to tell her, “You know, Mary, I’ve never believed it’s a good idea to go to these places. You could well have to speak at mine instead.” She followed with, “I would if you asked me to.” I guess we settled it in that moment.

Now I am not oblivious to the fact that many of you are wondering why she would ask me to speak. And that’s a good question. There are many of you who have spent more time with her than I, many of you would be considered to be closer to her than I, you would perhaps be able to speak with far more intimacy of her than I. All of this being said (and true), Mary did not ask me to come to speak of her today. I think it is really far more accurate to say Mary asked me to speak for her today.

There is no question, I could well fill this time with many wonderful things about her. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, and friend. She was always a gentle, soft-spoken, true Southern lady at all times. She could cook a meal for fifty people without turning her kitchen into the Abyss. In this family, she was the true and original Paula Deen, always cooking up something new and delicious with a ka-bazillion calories. I don’t think her house has ever been introduced to dust, and she actually played with her grandchildren when they visited.

In forty years, I only hear one curse word cross her lips. The word was “damn” and it was followed by “cigarettes.” I’m pretty sure that’s how God refers to them too.

She was wonderfully talented and creative and meticulous in all endeavors. I recall Andrew coming back after spending the day with her with his very own Virginia license, complete with picture. She had remastered her old one. I remember hoping she wouldn’t redo it when he turned 16. As I said, she was very talented, a stickler for detail.

She had the heart of a teacher, always happy to share her knowledge and ability with great patience with anyone who asked. She blessed many with her beautiful cakes and crafts and many babies and children born at Riverside with her stuffed animals. There was always a great deal of love and care in whatever she put her hand to. In her work, she strived for excellence and hit the mark every time.

I could go on and on. But if I did, it would not be what she asked me to do. Mary did not ask me to speak today to exalt her in any way. She asked me to speak today to lift and exalt her Savior, Jesus Christ.

Seven years ago, this June, I lost my mother. Her death was unexpected: a seemingly perfectly healthy person falling over dead right before your eyes. We went out for Chinese and to look at a car. Instead, I came home without her forever, with her car, her purse, and a paper bag with clothes that had been cut from her body. I remember so well driving back across the bridge that night and saying to her, “O God, Mother, what have you done? What the hell were you thinking? You have died and—O God—I can’t fix this.” That was an incredible understatement. That night began a journey for me that I would never have believed. As I told Wayne the night Mary passed, “This won’t kill you. But, for a time, you will wish it would.” In serious times of trouble, a person can only choose to go two ways. She can run to God, or run from him. I will always thank God that, for once in my hard-headed life, I chose correctly.

I had always believed in God, and I confessed Christ as my Savior from a young age. By this time, I was a regular church-goer, no longer a Chr-Easter (an “Easter and Christmas” Christian). I was rather active in the Church, and in looking back, I realize I was doing so because I knew it was the right thing to do, but not because of the right reason: love and devotion to a Savior who loved me so very much.

Over the course of the next two years, I began a journey that would allow my God to show me who he truly is and what kind of relationship he wants to have with all his children. It was as if he moved into my house, in an almost physical sense, for literally two years. In that time, he revealed to me things about him I could never have imagined. And he also revealed to me things about myself which were beyond heartbreaking, but always followed by love and comfort so undeserved. At times I felt like George Burns, in the role of God, had moved into my house. He was so real. He was loving and kind and comforting, but painfully truthful, honest, and uncompromising in his leadings. At the same time, my cousin Muncie, who is an absolutely awesome Bible teacher, came to work for me at my daycare. Not by chance, for sure, but certainly by design. Muncie was the first to tell me of John 1:1-5, and 10-14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus Christ is the Word, so when we pick up our Bibles, we pick up Christ. As described in this Scripture, if we are not in our Bibles, it is like living in your house without turning on the lights, trying to muddle through living by what you think you can see. The Bible is our guide for good living, given to us by God, not as a taskmaster, but as a loving Father who wants his children to know how to negotiate the potholes on this road known as life in a fallen world.

In the Word is the knowledge of all things Christ accomplished on the cross for us: salvation and eternal life, for certain, but O so much more for the here and now.

God tells us, in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.” It is totally impossible to be in fear and in faith at the same time. They cannot coexist on any level.

Romans 10:17 tells us how we acquire faith. Paul says, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Mary and I spent these last years speaking of all these truths. She was like a sponge when we would talk about it. When she was recovering from her knee surgery, I had what has become a most precious blessing of spending two evenings with her, when we talked until way past midnight about God and life and death and so many things. She said that night, “I just love when you come and talk to me about these things. They mean so much to me. They make me feel so close to the Lord.” She blessed me equally as much by her enthusiasm and her encouragement, never rejecting and skeptical, but always welcoming and validating.

The last time Mary and I spoke, I said, “You’re down in the dumps, aren’t you?” She said, “Yes, I am.” I said, “It’s because you aren’t going home, isn’t it?” She replied, “It is.” She went on to say, “If I cannot fully recover, I want you to let me go.” I told her I would. It took right up until her death for my heart to truly come into agreement. In spite of all I have lived and learned, letting go is another frontier yet to be conquered. Many hours before Mary passed away, she began to make the motion of writing across her chest, as if writing a letter. She seemed to write several pages, followed by putting her hands in a praying position under her chin. We asked if she was writing, and she confirmed that she was. We were fairly certain she was writing to God. She just stayed at that task for hours and hours. Her nurse, Shannon, said Mary had spent the entire night writing as well.

As I began to prepare for today, God revealed to me, through his word, that Mary was not writing her thoughts, but rather taking dictation from the Great Comforter. She was covering her heart with the promises of God. No wonder it was so very long. 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 says,

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us and put his Spirit into our hearts as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come.

2 Corinthians 3:1-6 says,

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by everybody; you show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  

Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves, but our confidence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

and verse 12 of the same chapter again, “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.” And verses 17 and 18,

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Proverbs 7 says, “Guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.” This describes beautifully what Mary was doing.

Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Isaiah 41:10 tells us, “So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.” 1 Corinthians 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” Mary went to meet God without any apparent fear whatsoever, with boldness and confidence, totally outside the normal realm of being human.

Psalm 23 does say, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” Mary allowed God to cover her with his promises, and then walked boldly into her new life and future. It was a peace that did pass all understanding. I feel honored to have been there.

Mary’s last words, or more properly her last songs, were “A man and woman will never part as long as they have a happy heart. The Lord loves my heart. H-E-A-R-T! Amen and amen!”

It is with your mother’s great love for all of you that I bring to you her final hope (and yes, prayer) for you, her children. It was her heart’s desire for each of you to begin to serve the Lord. She knew you were all believers. That was not a concern. But she wants more, much more, for each of you. A mother dreads to approach her children with these desires for fear of rejection. However, she knew I would have no such fear. This is the real reason she chose me to speak today. Your mother wants her death to create in you the burning desire to run into the arms of God, to fall passionately in love with him, and all he has provided on your behalf. This is what she has fervently prayed for these past few years. There is no greater loving request any mother could leave her children than this: she wants you to have God’s best, fully covered in the same precious promises he covered her with in her final hours, one of which, I’m certain, was Isaiah 54:13: “All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace.” And perhaps Isaiah 59:21:

‘As for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the Lord. ‘My Spirit, who is on you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will not depart from your mouth or from the mouths of your children or from the mouths of their descendants from this time on and forever,’ says the Lord.

Or perhaps Isaiah 44:3 and 4: “I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.”

In speaking on Mary’s behalf, I have told you everything God gave me to say, and everything she shared with me as well. I give you this with my love, and I hope you will receive it in that way. I would just add, in closing, your mother found each of you perfect in every way. Her prayer was not to change you, but to leave you the greatest inheritance you will ever know. The last time we spoke, she said, “I’ve always loved you, Sharon.” I replied, “I wish I had been more loveable.” I would like to say the same to you, my brothers and sisters. May God greatly bless and comfort you.

God shows up in an ordinary chore...

I don't know whether green is my favorite color because it is the color of Ordinary Time or Ordinary Time is my favorite season because its color is green.  In fact, I'm not even sure when green became my favorite color.  I feel like it was before I came to William & Mary, but I can't be sure exactly when.  Regardless, since we're in Ordinary Time now and my years as a W&M student and a Wesley House resident have come to a close, it seems especially appropriate to reflect on a few things.

I will continue to serve on the Wesley Board of Directors, and I look forward to that continued relationship with the organization.  But I moved out of the Wesley House for the last time on June 30, 2011.  I lived there for four school years: sophomore, junior, senior, and my M.A. year.  I had a single room for the first three years and a double for the fourth.  Living there was one of the most special experiences of my life.  Residents met as a group with the campus minister for theological discussion once a week, acted as a welcome party to Wesleyites and anyone else who came in the door, and did weekly chores.  The chores, particularly my last chore before moving out, led me to write this reflection.

Every resident has his favorite (or most tolerable) chore.  Lock-up is probably the universal first choice.  This chore entails locking the doors every night, putting the recycling out on Tuesday night, and putting the trash out on Thursday night.  On Monday night, when everyone else is scrambling and scrubbing, the lock-up person just locks the doors and has the rest of the night free to do work (or not, as the case may be).  The living room chore involves vacuuming the living room, the hallways, the stairs, and the campus minister's office.  You also have to dust some furniture and give the fireplace floor a light scrubbing.  The kitchen chore is just that: cleaning the kitchen (floor, counters, sinks, etc.) and also sweeping the back deck.  The basement chore was just as straightforward: vacuum and dust in the basement.  The bathroom chore only involved the public bathrooms (in the Fellowship Hall and in the hallway by the campus minister's office), cleaning the floors, sinks, and toilets.  Finally there was the fellowship hall chore.  This involved vacuuming or sweeping the floor, mopping the floor with a bit of water, and wiping the tables down.

I saved the fellowship hall for last on my list because it was my least favorite.  The basement was as big an area as the fellowship hall, but at least you were done after you vacuumed.  With the fellowship hall, finishing vacuuming meant you weren't even half-done!  Bathrooms and kitchen involved a lot of individual tasks, but at least they were compressed spatially.  The fellowship hall chore was a lot of tasks spread over a lot of space.

Now, Wesley House residents recognize that these chores are a small bother compared to what many people go through.  There are plenty of people in this world who wish water were such a mediocre commodity that they could slosh some all over their floor with a mop, and that such work was the most difficult of their week. At our best, this thought makes us a little sheepish at the griping we share about our chores or the little effort we sometimes put into them.  But still, in my microcosmic universe as a Wesley House resident, I dreaded cleaning the fellowship hall.  I would actually trade chores to avoid it.

When I prepared to do my last-ever chore before moving out of Wesley for the last time, I wondered what it would be.  Murphy's Law, I thought, would surely have me mopping that fellowship hall.  It wouldn't have been unbearable.  Finishing my resident years with the fellowship hall chore actually would have had some symmetry to it.  That was the room in which I had experienced so many amazing worship services, programs, meals, and of course the Holy Eucharist celebrated every week.  My most poignant "God moments" had happened in that room (sometimes even when a mop was involved).  Spending my last moments as a Wesley House resident cleaning this space would have seemed an appropriate conclusion.  But God had other plans.  I had to clean the living room, office, hallways, and stairs.  Not my favorite chore, but far from my least favorite.  How anti-climactic, I thought.

My chief memories of these spaces were not memories of spiritual ecstasy, nor were they memories of humbling defeats.  They were general, everyday moments, like resting on a couch, poking my head into the office to say "Hey!" to David or Max, or walking up the stairs every day for four years just to go to my room.  Rather mundane memories came to me.  I wanted something a little more momentous to mark my exit from the Wesley House.  I almost wanted to clean the fellowship hall.  But our God is bigger than my conception of "momentous."

As memories of the mundane flooded my soul, I realized how precious these memories were.  The living room was where we played Wii Golf, ate Domino's pizza, watched Real Genius, and even studied on occasion.  It was where we met in the mornings before going to the Rec to play basketball, in the evenings before going to the Sunken Garden to play frisbee, and on Sundays before going to church.  In short, it was a gateway to most of the amazing experiences which made up my years at Wesley.

The office was a warm place to study in the cold months (we never knew why that room got so much warmer than the rest of the house).  In that room, surrounded by theological and pastoral classics, I passed several evenings with my laptop, paper notes, and a diet coke (and, sometimes, a box of wheat thins).  On days when David was there or Max was there, I could never "just poke my head in," a conversation would ensue without fail, sometimes without end :).  But I always left that office blessed by my time in it.

The hallways and stairways were everyday passages to my room.  My mom always called the stairs "Methodist stairs" because they were really small and really steep like the ones you find in old churches.  But after a few years, I could run up and down them with a full laundry basket on my hands and my eyes closed.  The back stairway, leading up to the double I shared with Ben this past year, was a little safer, but still had its quirks.  While the other stairs were carpeted, the back stairs were finished wood, so they had mats bolted to them to make them less slippery.  The fourth stair had a terrible creak and the second-to-last one's mat was loose and, if you weren't careful, you might pull it up and trip as you ran up the steps.  I couldn't tell you how many times I ran up and down each of those staircases, but it was at least hundreds.  Hardly memorable stuff-- in fact, I walked those hallways and stairs on autopilot so many times, it's hard to call up an actual memory of walking up the stairs or through the hallways.  These spaces of everyday blessing were where I spent my final moments as a Wesley House resident.

It didn't take too long for the significance to hit this calendar-conscious Christian, but I insisted on waiting until my thesis was finished to write this reflection.  It's Ordinary Time, the longest season of the Church calendar.  The term "Ordinary" in "Ordinary Time" refers not to the fact that it's an unexciting time, but to the fact that the weeks are "ordered" or numbered (think "ordinal numbers").  But our usual association of the word with the everyday or the mundane has a truth about it as well.  It's not a time of deep reflection or fasting like Advent or Lent.  It's not a season of unbridled joy like Christmas or Easter.  The paraments in our churches aren't black or deep purple, but they're not bright white and gold either.  They're green.  This is a picture of our lives.  The majority of our times are not mournful, not joyful, but ordinary.

Ordinary Time falls in two chunks.  The shorter chunk falls between Epiphany and the beginning of Lent.  This shows us that, even within the bounds of Christ's earthly life, there was a significant chunk of Ordinary Time.  From the time of his revelation to the Magi to the 40-day fast and his journey to the Cross, the in-between years were not exclusively ones of joy or sorrow, though they certainly included some of both.  They were, by and large, ordinary times.  Times of growth and learning, times of work, times of the everyday.

The larger chunk falls between Pentecost and Christ the King, the day we celebrate our anticipation of the Second Coming.  This shows us that our entire lives (so far) are encompassed in this season.  The Holy Spirit has come, and we have work to do, but we also wait anxiously for Christ to come again.  We commemorate Christ's suffering and his Resurrection every week, but the majority of our days are ordinary days.  The majority of our times are ordinary times.

An ordinary living room, an ordinary office, ordinary stairs and hallways, ordinary chores reminded me that we live in a cosmic Ordinary Time.  But if it's one thing the Church teaches, it is that there is a holiness in the ordinary.  Ordinary bread and ordinary wine become the very presence and body and blood of Christ.  Ordinary water, composed partially of hydrogen, the commonest and most ordinary element in the universe, becomes a vehicle of saving grace in Baptism.  We have moments of inexpressible ecstasy.  We have times of unspeakable sorrow.  But together these form a small portion of our time here.  The better part of our time here (both in quantity and, I would argue, in quality) is Ordinary Time, the seasons when God shows us what he can do with people, spaces, things, and actions we have written off as "ordinary."  That is the message of the season of Ordinary Time.

As I took my leave of Wesley, I didn't have the coveted lock-up chore, which would have been a source of some joy.  I didn't have my least favorite chore, the fellowship hall, which would have been less than enjoyable.  At least in the fellowship hall, God had been so easy to find.  But I spent my last hour as a house resident cleaning the living room, office, hallways, and stairs: ordinary spaces where I spent ordinary times.  And as I vacuumed, I saw how present God had been even in those times and spaces.

If you're looking for a constant stream of limitless joy, Ordinary Time is not the time nor Earth the place to find it.  If you're a sadist and are looking for endless sorrow and suffering, the same holds true.  Most of our lives are spent in ordinary places and ordinary times, somewhere between the two extremes.  And in those seasons, perhaps especially in those seasons, God is with us.  I tend to think of God most in times of joy or sorrow, more often the latter, you know, when I actually feel like I need him.  But cleaning such ordinary spaces in my last moments as a resident at this extraordinary place reminded me how extraordinary the ordinary can be.  We need only to stop and recognize that God himself lived through years and years of ordinary time.  He knows that the mundane and the commonplace dominate our lives.  He knows that those are the times when we will be least inclined to think of him.  He knows that those are the times in which he must reach deep to remind us of his loving presence.  And he does just that.  He had me clean a living room and reminded me of the fellowship, the laughter, the holy conferencing that happened on those couches.  And I knew without a doubt that he was always there, even in the times when I was hardly thinking of him at all.  Thanks be to God!

Thank you, Father, for the years you allowed me to spend in this incredible place.  Thank you for the blessing of your presence and your smile, in times of joy, times of sorrow, and in the vast Ordinary Time.  Thank you for the blessing of years with housemates who love to laugh, watch movies, eat pizza, and more importantly, love each other.  Bless all those who call this wonderful, ordinary, extraordinary place "home."  Let them see you in their seasons of joy (when they have lock-up), in their seasons of sorrow (when they have the fellowship hall chore), and in the ordinary times (when they have the living room chore).  Let them know that you are with them always, and that a great cloud of saints, witnesses, and past house residents is surrounding them with love and prayer.


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.