This morning in church, the pastor addressed a question one hears often: How will you be remembered when you're gone? It wasn't in those exact words, but that was the gist of it. Or perhaps, that question has been weighing on my own mind, so therefore it was the most dominating theme of the sermon to me.

The other night as I was surfing, I ran across a blog (of course I don't remember where it was now) where the mother was saying she wants to be careful to balance correction/direction with praise. It really hit me squarely between the eyes.

As a working mother, I feel completely tapped at the end of the day. I feel like I spend a good share of my time "failing" all those I care most about by settling for "good enough." And there are certainly times that I feel like I spend more time correcting the kids than telling them just how awesome I think that they are and how much I love them. I'm thankful that kids are resilient and that my kiddos love me despite these faults. However, the combination of that blog post and this morning's sermon really impacted me.

So what will I do different? I'm not sure yet. At this point, I'm not sure just how I'll be remembered -- my family will miss me, as will my friends (I hope!), but beyond that, I've really not reached out to make an impact outside of my little world. While I do realize that my biggest legacy will be left in my children, and in my goal to raise them in to Godly people who love and serve God with all their hearts, I also know that there is more that I can and should be doing to serve those in the community around me.

One of Jon's biggest pet peeves has always been that the church (generally speaking) seems to be more focused on global missions (which are absolutely necessary, worthy, etc., -- we're not knocking missions in the least) instead of local outreach. It's typically much harder to raise funds to do an inner city mission than it is to go to China. Yet are these people in the inner cities of the US any less deserving of the message of the gift of Jesus Christ?

Jon's comment this morning is that many church's idea of reaching out to the local community includes hosting an event with universal appeal and sharing the gospel at the event. Sure, these events are great, often people are led to Christ, but the outreach requires that "they" come to "us" -- we need to meet them where they are. Live and work and toil alongside them, get to know them, respect them. Our opinion is that only at that point, will those who don't know Christ or don't see themselves as worthy, be willing to listen to us. If our actions and words don't jive, our words won't amount to a hill of beans in their minds.

So I guess that's one thing that I want to be remembered for -- that my actions are the prelude to my testimony. But I know that I've got a long ways to go in that, too, because actions alone will only make me "a good person" -- they must join my words to point to Christ.

I don't know... there's still a lot of thinking that must come out of all of this. But when two such common themes join like they have in the last couple days, my ears perk up, because I know God is talking to me. And I pray that He finds me obedient to His call.