A Letter To Every Grandmother

My Lawyer Asked What Else I Wanted To Leave My Grandchildren. My Answer Fit In A Glass Jar.

I'm 71. I've spent months deciding who gets the house, the savings and my mother's ring. It took me far too long to realize none of it is what they actually need from me.

Last spring I sat across a desk from a very patient young lawyer and divided up my whole life.

The house goes to my 2 children. The savings split 6 ways, one share for each grandchild. My mother's wedding ring to Emma, because she's the oldest girl. My late husband's pocket watch to James.

When we were done, the lawyer closed the folder and asked me the question he probably asks everyone.

"Is there anything else you'd like to leave them, Margaret?"

I almost said no. I had my coat half on.

And then I sat back down, because something in my chest went very tight. I thought about what actually carried me through 71 years. It wasn't the house. It wasn't the savings. It was not my mother's ring.

It was God's Word. The verses I held onto the night my husband died. The ones I whispered in a hospital hallway when my daughter was born too early. The ones that got me out of bed the winter after the funeral.

And there is no line in a will for that. You can't sign faith over to someone. You can't leave it in a bank account.

The part nobody likes to say out loud

I have 6 grandchildren, from 6 years old to 17. Only 2 of them go to church.

My daughter stopped taking her kids about 4 years ago. Soccer on Sundays, work, life. I understand it. I really do. My son never started. His wife isn't a believer, and she's a good mother, and it isn't my place.

So I did what grandmothers do. I bit my tongue. I prayed. Every single night I pray over each of them by name. Emma. James. Michael. Jake. Lily. Sophie.

But if I'm honest with you, and I think at our age we've earned the right to be honest, prayer had started to feel like whispering into the dark. Emma is 15 and has never once asked me a question about God. Michael is 11 and I'm not sure he could tell you who Jesus is. Lily once told me church is "a thing old people do."

I tried talking to them about it. They were polite and they tuned me out. I tried talking to my daughter about it. That ended with both of us upset and a very quiet drive home.

I stopped trying. And every Christmas, I'd look around the living room and do the math I know you do too. How many more of these do I get?

What I found when I finally went looking

My granddaughter set me up with a tablet a while back, and one night I couldn't sleep, so I started reading. I wanted to know if it was too late. If there was still anything a grandmother could actually do.

What I found surprised me.

Researchers from Harvard, Baylor and Gallup ran the largest study ever done on where adult faith comes from. 202,898 people in 22 countries. They went back and looked at what each person's life was like around age 12.

The thing that predicted whether someone was still reading scripture as a grown adult wasn't money or health or even family structure. It was whether faith was a regular, weekly part of their childhood. Those children were 2.56 times more likely to still be reading God's Word as adults.

Then I read that 63% of Christians say they came to faith between the ages of 4 and 14.

I sat up in bed. Every one of my grandchildren except James is inside that window right now.

And there was one more thing, from the brain scientists at Harvard's Center on the Developing Child. A child's brain builds far more connections than it keeps. Through childhood it clears out the ones that don't get used. They actually call it "use it or lose it." What a child meets over and over gets built in. What never shows up gets cleared away.

A separate Lifeway Research study found the strongest predictor of a healthy faith in young adults was reading the Bible regularly while growing up. Only 29% of those kids ever did.

I put the tablet down and cried a little, I'll admit it. Because I finally understood. It wasn't that my grandchildren didn't care. It's that nothing in their lives was putting God's Word in front of them on a normal Tuesday.

I couldn't change their parents. I couldn't drive them to church. But maybe I didn't have to.

A small glass jar

A woman in my Bible study had one on her kitchen windowsill. A glass jar with a cork lid, full of little paper strips in different colors. Each strip has a Bible verse on it, and the colors are sorted by feelings.

• Yellow for when you're happy
• Coral for when you're thankful
• Magenta for when you're angry
• Green for when you're anxious
• Light blue for when you're lonely
• Blue for when you're sad

You don't need to know where Philippians is. You just need to know how you feel. You reach in, pull a color, and read what God says about it.

90 verses, King James. Handmade by a Christian family business, and it comes in a gift box.

The first thing I thought was, my grandkids would roll their eyes at this.

The second thing I thought was, I'm 71. I don't know how many Christmases I have left. When I'm gone, do I want them to remember that I was worried about seeming cool? Or that I gave them God's Word?

I ordered 6. One for each of them.

Christmas morning

I gave them out after breakfast, before the big presents. I had practiced a little speech and forgot all of it. What came out instead was this:

"I'm getting old. I don't know how many more of these mornings we'll have together. But when I'm not here anymore, I want you to know that God's Word speaks to whatever you're going through. And I want you to have that from me."

My voice cracked. James, who is 17 and hasn't been inside a church since he was 10, got up and hugged me so hard my glasses went crooked. He said, "Thanks, Grandma. I'll use it."

I didn't believe him. I was wrong.

What happened next

Lily, 8, opened hers at Sunday dinner and asked why the papers were different colors. I explained, and she reached in and pulled magenta immediately. "I'm mad at my brother." We read Ephesians 4:26 together, "Be ye angry, and sin not." She asked what it meant. We talked for maybe 3 minutes about how being angry isn't wrong, but what we do with it matters.

3 minutes. It was the first real conversation about God I'd had with that child in a year.

Jake, 13, took his home without much of a word. 3 days later my daughter called me. "Mom, Jake pulled one of those verses before his math test. He said it helped him not be so nervous." A 13 year old boy who never opens a Bible, reading Isaiah before a math test. That is not nothing.

Sophie, 6, FaceTimed me the next week holding a coral strip. "Grandma, I pulled thankful, because I got a puppy." Then she read me Psalm 100, sounding out every word. A 6 year old who has never been to church, reading me a Psalm.

And Emma, 15. Emma barely said thank you on Christmas morning. I tried not to take it personally.

3 months later, my phone buzzed.

I read that message probably 40 times. My daughter told me later Emma keeps the jar on her nightstand and pulls a green one before school most mornings.

Something else happened that I didn't expect. My daughter started calling me with questions. "Mom, what's that verse about anxiety? Emma pulled it and I want to remember it." I heard something in her voice I hadn't heard in years. I think she was remembering her own childhood. The jar is doing what I never could. It's bringing God's Word into that house without a single argument.

To the other grandmothers reading this

I know you. You're the one who prays over every name at night. You've watched your grandkids grow up in a world that doesn't care much about God, and you've wondered if your prayers are landing anywhere at all.

I want to tell you what I've come to believe. Sometimes God answers our prayers by asking us to do something. Let your prayers have hands and feet this year.

You can't make their parents take them to church. You can't force a teenager to believe. But you can put God's Word in their hands in a way they will actually receive. Not preachy. Not forced. Just, here's something for when you're anxious, when you're angry, when you're grateful.

And one day, years from now, when life knocks one of them flat and you're not there to call, they'll reach into that jar. And they'll hear your voice.

If you've read this far, I think you already know whether this is for your family. Christmas is coming faster than it ever used to. Don't wait until you're writing it into a will. Give them their real inheritance now, while you're here to hand it to them yourself and tell them why.

With love,
Margaret

Christmas Offer · Limited Time

The 90 Day Bible Verses Jar

Up to 60% off + free shipping, plus a free Christian ebook set.

• 90 King James verses, sorted by feelings
• Handmade by a Christian family business
• Arrives in a gift box, ready to wrap
• 30 day money back guarantee
• Already in over 500,000 homes, with 1 tree planted per order

Get One For Each Grandchild →

Popular before Christmas. Order early so they arrive in time to wrap.