Just two months after making the discovery, I lost my Grandma Mildred, on my birthday. Mildred Schaeg was a champion for Christ her entire life. Born in 1914, she was the mother of two sons and the grandmother of five.

She didn’t stand out in the world any more than most from her generation. She lived simply and humbly. She married my grandfather, lost him before I was born, then remarried, and outlived her second husband as well. Through it all, her life was marked by a quiet, consistent devotion to God and a deep love for the people around her.
 

She worried a lot, especially about others, but also about the way the world seemed to be changing in her later years. She was old-fashioned, no doubt. And I, ever the brash young man, took every chance to challenge her worldview. We teased each other constantly, the generational gap giving us plenty of ammunition.

But sometimes, I crossed the line—mocking her repeated efforts to introduce me to Jesus. I thought I was too smart for her kind of faith. I considered myself educated and enlightened, while she clung to a dusty old Bible. Looking back, I see how patient she was with me. She never pushed, never argued. But she never stopped trying either.
 

In early March of 2002, I visited her in the nursing home. She’d been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease the year before, and in that final week, her condition had declined rapidly. She couldn’t speak clearly anymore and had to communicate by writing. Even in that state, in pain and barely able to control her body, her thoughts were on others. She asked how my wife was doing with a crochet pattern she had taught her just a few weeks earlier. I was stunned by that—how, even then, she still cared more about those around her than herself.
 

Though I had already come to believe in Jesus by then, I hadn’t told her yet. But that Sunday, March 10, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked up the paper she’d been writing on and scratched out a simple message: "I found Jesus." Her eyes lit up instantly. She leaned back in her wheelchair, arms stretched wide, and managed to say—through broken, joyful speech—something like “I’m so glad!” It was a moment I’ll never forget. One last time, through the pain, she radiated love.
 

Within a few days, she slipped into a coma, and then passed later that week. I didn’t cry when I got the news. I felt peace, even gratitude, that her suffering had ended. But her funeral turned out to be another story entirely.
 

A day or two before the funeral, the pastor borrowed her Bible from my father. He wanted to understand her faith better before delivering her eulogy. What he found was staggering. Nearly every chapter in her Bible was marked with underlined, highlighted, and circled verses—and filled with notes. Every single book bore evidence of her study, except one: the book of Esther—the only book in the Bible that doesn’t mention God directly.
 

As he described her love for the Word and how she used it as her anchor, the tears finally came. I had only just begun to believe in what she had believed all along, and I suddenly saw the weight of her quiet, unwavering faith. I felt foolish—ashamed of the mockery, the arguments, the jokes at her expense.
 

Then the pastor shared something I didn’t know: among the few keepsakes my grandmother had stored in her Bible, one was a newspaper clipping—an article about my success in a U.S. Army journalism competition back in 1990. That was the moment I broke. The tears turned to sobs. She had treasured me, even through my rejection of her faith. She’d tucked my story beside the words she lived by every day.
 

Her funeral humbled me deeply. In her life, and even in her passing, Grandma Mildred showed me the kind of love Christ speaks of—steadfast, forgiving, patient, and true. I had spent years foolishly thinking I was too clever for all of it. But in the end, I was just catching up to a truth she had carried with grace her whole life.