This one is personal. It's about one of the great joys of my life, and about a woman who saw something in me long before I could see it myself.
My mother's parents were unique to me, and my grandmother especially. She was one of the most loving people I've ever known. She saw the best in me, even when I wasn't showing her much of it.
She was the one person in my life who kept telling me I was going to serve a mission for our church. She even told me she had a savings account set aside for me as I grew up, so she could help me go.
Every time she said it, I'd nod. And every time, I said to myself inside: I'm not going on a mission.
I didn't know God or Jesus then, and my life showed it.
The last night
As I got into my late teens, she was still there for me. I think she knew I was on the wrong path. She never stopped caring for me anyway.
One night I went to her house to ask if I could borrow her car. I needed to pick up a friend from the airport, and my car had horribly bald tires. I was afraid to drive it that far, and if I remember right, it was raining.
She told me no. She didn't feel it was a good idea.
I told her it was fine, and I went and got my friend in my bald-tire car.
The next morning I woke up to my mom telling me Grandma hadn't woken up, and we needed to go to her house to see what was going on. She had died quietly in her sleep that night.
I was crushed. She was gone, and the last moment I had with her wasn't the one I would have chosen. That was almost 30 years ago, and I still miss her. Her influence has stayed with me my whole life.
What she saw that I couldn't
Here's the best part of the story. Miracles came after she passed, and I believe she may have played a role in them from the other side.
As I've written before, I came to see that the path I was on wasn't going to take me anywhere I truly wanted to go. I felt the strongest impression to change my life. A mission wasn't on my mind at all. Being religious wasn't even really my aim. I just wanted to change.
God had bigger plans. Over the next couple of years I became a new man.
My life was in a completely new place, and I didn't have many close friends around me. I wondered what this new life would bring. Then two missionaries serving in my area of Fallbrook, Elder Hewitt and Elder Dewitt, became my friends. They were my new buddies. I even went out with them and knocked on the doors of homes in Fallbrook where I used to party.
It was strange. I didn't care what anyone thought. I was on a new path.
And somewhere in that season, my heart opened up to a mission. I couldn't believe it was actually happening. The thing I was sure would never be part of my life became my life.
Grandma had seen it all along.
The two things I disliked most
I decided to serve the Lord for two years, and I got my call: New York, to learn Cantonese and preach of Christ to the Chinese people of Brooklyn.
At that point in my life, the two things I disliked most were big cities and Chinese food. I was allergic to shrimp and shellfish and had thrown up from it before.
Of course that's where I was sent. The Lord knows what we need to face.
It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and the most fruitful. I learned to love New York. I learned to love Chinese food (and later in life I even outgrew the allergy, which is pretty cool). Most of all, I learned to love a people I had known nothing about. I like to say I'm a quarter Chinese now.
What two hard years taught me
That mission taught me how to stick with something no matter how hard it gets.
Learning Cantonese felt impossible at times. For most of my time there I wondered why I'd been sent to teach people I could barely talk to. I faced rejection every single day. Ninety-nine percent of the time it felt like nothing I did meant anything to anyone.
But I stayed the course. I finished the work and did the best I could with what I had.
That lesson has flowed into every part of my life since: as a husband, as a father, as a businessman, and as a disciple of Christ. I never fully measure up to what I know I'm capable of. But I keep going, and I try to make the best of what I've been blessed with.
You never know who you're lifting
I share this story about my grandmother, and everything that happened after she died, to tell you one thing:
You never know the impact you can have when you lift someone up.
When you help someone see the bigger picture, even when they can't see it yet, there may come a day when they do. And when that day comes, the gratitude on both sides of the veil will be overwhelming.
My grandmother kept speaking a future over me that I was actively rejecting. She never got to see it happen. But it happened.
Life is beautiful. It's full of moments that seem small and turn out to be big: a savings account, a word of belief, a "no" to borrowing a car. I've learned to love and to give to others so they can see what's possible, just like she did for me.
We are so blessed to have these lives, to have a body our spirits get to borrow for a while. What a gift. What an opportunity to do good work and good deeds for others.
I'm grateful for the lessons, and for everything still ahead, because of people who believed in me and helped me see beyond the way I saw myself. I know there are great experiences and gifts still waiting for me and my family.
Who is the man in your life who can't see it yet? And what would it look like to keep believing in him anyway?
— Jeff