Barb

She gave me a backpack. 

It was a strange gift. We were sitting in her living room and she said she had something to give me, then told me it was her backpack. Could I use it? 

Sure, I'd said, shaking a bit of confusion from my face. I had graduated college a few years ago and was in definite limbo. I didn't know what came next for me, but I certainly didn't think I would ever be going back to school. 

It wasn't for school, she said. It was for adventure. 

This was the backpack she said she had taken on many journeys of her own. This was the backpack that was sewn with the threads of her mission work. This was a backpack, I quickly understood, that had stories to tell. And for some reason, she wanted me to have it. She thought it could help tell my stories, whatever they were to come. 

Barb thought I had adventures ahead of me. No, she knew that I did. She saw something in me that I didn't see in myself at the time, and she wanted, I guess, for me to be able to draw on the strength of someone who had gone before me - a trailblazer in the world of women's ministry in a historically unaffirming denomination. 

We had a few chats in that living room about adventures. About a life well lived. About service to God, mission work, and, yes, ministry. She invited me to many more. I forfeited many of my opportunities to attend. I let my own insecurities get in the way of what I understand only in hindsight was truly an open invitation. 

That backpack went on to take me to seminary. To chaplaincy. To hospice work. To hundreds of sacred moments in holy spaces. When I entered a new season of my life after many years of carrying that backpack, it was somehow still in great shape - like the clothing of the Israelites wandering in the Exodus, whose garments never wore out. I modified it for my next season, taking out a few hems here and there to open up some spaces, and it saw me through another journey. 

There were times, on hard days, when I looked at that backpack and thought of the stories it could tell - many of which, I still did not know - and the stories I was adding to it. And most of all, the story of love and encouragement that had put it on my shoulders to begin with. I would look at that backpack when I was struggling and remember that someone believed in me...before there was anything to believe in. Someone saw a future I couldn't have dreamed of. Someone wanted to prepare me for the journey ahead, that I didn't even know I was taking. 

Someone saw these hard moments coming and gave me a token of love to remember that hard days are not all that there are. There are greater things than this. 

Today, we lay Barb to rest after a full life that had more than its fair share of hard days. But you never would have known it. Barb was, without hesitation, an encourager. A hope-filled, future-thinking, eyes that can see encourager. I would venture to say that there are not many who ever met her who don't have a story like mine of something she said, something she did, some invitation she extended, some gift she gave that took them into a season they never could have imagined. She just had that way about her. 

And yet, I don't know that any of us mourn today. Not really. We grieve our loss, but every single one of us knows that there is no one who has ever been happier than Barb is now. She loved Jesus. She talked fondly of the day when she would finally meet Him. And she finally has. 

I want to leave a legacy one day like Barb's - full of adventures that some know about, full of stories that many maybe don't know, full of gifts left behind and words of encouragement. I want others to one day know that there was a point in their life at which someone loved them and saw something ahead for them that they couldn't have imagined. I want to be an encourager.

As for all of those invitations I passed on, the ones it seems these days that I'm never getting back, I mourn only lightly. I know I will have a whole eternity of them. 

In fact, I'm certain Barb is already getting her new couch ready for guests. 

I still have the backpack - almost 20 years later, it hasn't worn out yet.