How can you measure the impact of a life?

My sweet Grandma passed away on Saturday. The question above came to my mind as I thought of her passing.

Is there a way to measure the influence someone has on your life? Can you count up the times they talk with you and create a mathematical equation revealing just how deeply God used them to impact your desires, thoughts, and will? I haven’t discovered an equation like that. But this afternoon, I took time to write down three ways my Grandma impacted my life:

Grandma was always the one to initiate love.
She showed love by baking sugar and anise cookies, decorating her home for Christmas with Swedish tomtes and carefully labeled ornaments, cooking ham and potato casserole, remembering every birthday, reading Dr. Seuss books aloud, making elaborate cross-stitch art for every new birth, and always keeping Oreos in the pig cookie jar.

She taught me how to cross-stitch, encouraged me to finish the sewing project when I desperately wanted to quit, and helped me make my first—and last—fruitcake. (I remember thinking that with all those delicious ingredients going in one pan, surely the result would be delicious, but I was wrong.)

Grandma wasn’t afraid of hard conversations.
One summer when I was a teenager, I spent a week with Grandma. While I was swimming in her pool, she leaned her face close to mine and brushed her eyebrows back and forth with her finger. “See my eyebrows? I’ve never tweezed them. Why do you tweeze yours so much?”

She took me for lunch at Friendly’s and talked to me about counting calories for her weight watchers group as I shoveled down a hamburger, fries, and milkshake. I remember thinking it was hilarious that I consumed more calories in one meal than she ate in one day. Looking back at that incident now, I remember that was a period when I was overweight. Although I thought it was a hilarious conversation, Grandma brought it up because she was rightly concerned about my health.

Grandma was always ready to listen.
She wanted to know the nitty-gritty details of how we were doing. I remember calling Grandma and PopPop after I broke up with Jonathan. Although they were kind and encouraging, they expressed doubt about my decision, saying, “But he’s such a nice guy!” Of course, they were right.

When I was pregnant with Anna Grace, Grandma had a stroke. She never fully recovered. Several years ago, my aunt sent me a cross-stitch Grandma had begun to make in honor of Anna Grace’s birth. It was beautiful, elaborate, and unfinished due to her stroke. But that’s just who Grandma was. She planned ahead and worked tirelessly to make those plans happen.

How can you measure the impact of a life?

You really can’t.

But I’m thankful for the countless ways my sweet Grandma impacted me. God knew I would need a Grandma who would love and teach me like she did.
She served constantly, listened closely, loved deeply…
And I’m a better woman today because of her impact on my life.