Brown and Pink Polka Dots : The day I saw how the chuch's love touches people

Yesterday was Brent's grandma's funeral. I was a HARD day on us all, but also a day of celebrating what an awesome person grandma Jill was.
We told stories of the funny things, and the kind things grandma did.
One thing that was felt in that room was love. Grandma had that way about her, even if you were mad at someone she had a way into talking you into being less mad, and by the end of the conversation you wondered why you ever let yourself get so upset with the other person.
It was good to see people I have never met, and people that I have not seen in years all come together to celebrate grandma Jill.

At the end of the day, one of the feelings I left with was pride, and that pride was for our church.

See, grandma and grandpa moved to Florida a few years ago. Just before they moved grandma started coming to church with us each week, and then when they would come up to visit grandma and grandpa would always come to church with us.
A few weeks before grandma died she had called me all excited that they were going to go try out a church of some friends they met in Florida, and she was hoping that it would be her church home in Florida that she had been searching for. She wanted it like the church Brent and I attend here, she said she always just felt at home and welcome at our church, like it was not a show, that people cared.
Grandma and my last conversation was about church and God and showing other people God's love. I feel so blessed that was the topic the last time we talked. We talked about telling other people about Jesus and how all of Jillian's stuff has effected so many people and their walk with God, I have seen Him use Jillian's story over and over and over to lead people back to Him, it is rather amazing and humbling. Our last conversation was about someone that I had no idea about their faith and how God was using our story in their life. I was blessed to be able to have open and honest faith conversations with grandma.
So when she died it was only fitting to Brent, grandpa and I that the service should take place at our church since it was a place she so deeply cared about and felt welcome.
I have gone to this church all of my life, my mom has gone there all of her's, my grandparents go there and my great-grandparents went there, it has been home to my family for a long time. I grew up very involved, was in church musicals, taught Sunday school to three year olds, and served on the multi-media team. When Brent and I started dating he started attending with me and was baptized there. We were married at our church.
But when you are a part of something for a long time some of the different aspects become normal, the way they have always been and should be. At our church we love people, not always perfectly, we are human, but for me I have always had people at church who love and care about me.
But what I watched yesterday was seeing my church love others, others who had no connection to the church other then it being the location of a funeral they were attending. I can't tell you how many people I heard commenting about how amazed they were that the church would allow us to have grandma's service there, and amazed that one of our minsters would do the service.
We had a lunch after the service. Members of the church got there early in the morning and cooked all of the food, and other families from the church donated the dessert. Multiple people stopped me shocked that a church would cook food for them after a funeral. To me, this is what our church does, but it was interesting to me seeing it with different eyes yesterday. I had never planned a funeral before so this was a different experience for me, I had always attended and the way our church does things to me is normal.

This weekend I got to see how much some simple acts mean to people.

I love my church and call it home...

But this weekend I was so PROUD of our church and how they showed love to our family in such a hard time.

On of the picture boards I made, thank you to some of grandma's friends and family for sending me pictures to include, that means a lot to us!

Even under these circumstances, it was still nice to see people and catch up. Saturday night a bunch of us all went out for pizza together. It was a good time to be together as family. It is what grandma would have wanted, for people to be together (she it not a person who liked a big fuss being made about her, but she loved seeing people she cared about together).
Jilli had a rough day. We had to wean her off of one medication this week because it was having some very undesirable side effects and we needed to get her off of it now, but had to step down off of it slowly, so her body it dealing with coming off of the med, and she is a very intuitive little girl. She knows when something is not right. Friday night she had a hard time while we set everything up. Saturday during the funeral she was not her normal bubbly self and by the night she was melting down, which is not like her (she is also becoming more and more sensitive to heat and loud noises and the pizza place was both hot and loud and she ended up having to go outside for a while). Today she is a little more like herself but still not "right" yet. She and grandma were close, in fact when Jilli and I were talking Friday night I asked her what she liked about grandma Jill and she said that she liked that she played toys with her, which is true, the last time grandma was at our house she got down on the floor and played toys with Jilli, and that has really stuck with Jillian.
Jilli had a hard weekend with her reflux. I woke up at 5:30am Saturday morning to the sound of liquid going up and down her throat and her almost puking. She had not gone to sleep until close to 11pm Friday night at was up by 6am Saturday because of her reflux. During church today she held my hands over hear ears during the message and rocked, Brent took her out for a while, and then she came back in to sing, she sure loves singing at church (and today she loved sticking her tongue out at people during the singing!) Today after lunch we pulled into my parent's driveway and my dad went to get her out of the car and she said "I puke" so we grabbed a blanket as her coughed and dry heaved a few times and then was ok, thankfully no puke.
Today grandpa went to church with us and then we went to one of grandma's favorite restaurants, Cracker Barrel. They are clearancing out most of their wooden doll furniture at really good prices right now, and that was something Jilli and grandma would always go look at and play with while we were there. In fact when grandma and grandpa left here in May they stopped and multiple Cracker Barrel's looking for the wooden doll blender because the Kenosha store only had the demo and Jillian fell in love with it because that is the only kitchen tool we use to make her formula, so to her it was so cool that they had a blender for baby dolls. Grandma was then on a mission to find her one and told us she would stop at every Cracker Barrel on the way from Wisconsin to Florida to find one and man was grandma excited when she found one! Today Jilli got a doll bed and doll rocking chair, and I will always remember how she and grandma use to look at them.
Grandma touched each of our lives in so many ways. She helped me to become the person I am today and she helped shape the man I married. She was a huge influence in his life and as he said during her funeral, one of his best friends. She is deeply missed, but we were blessed to know her and have the privileged to pass on the lessons that she taught us.