a prayer for a loved one

(from Saturday, March 12)
I had a difficult time of deciding who to pray for today, but in the end I decided to pray a prayer of thanksgiving for someone who is no longer with here on earth, but who I know is watching from above :)

Dear Lord,
Today I want to pray thanking you for Grand Ann, and I ask that you would pass on these words to her, so that she might know how much of a blessing she was to me in the first seventeen years of my life.
Lord, I thank you for the kind, beautiful woman who gave me so much more than a namesake. Thank you for her lessons in art and in life, for being my constant babysitter, and surrogate parent; for always doing and saying everything to me in love--whether compliment or reprimand.
Thank you for her gentle nature--for her love and care for Your creations; for the summers she spent cooking sugar water and filling hummingbird feeder after hummingbird feeder; for her soft melodies on the piano that still play on in my head; for her beautiful watercolours and oil paintings of Your birds, trees, and flowers. I thank you that her eyes for Your creation taught me to appreciate and care for it from such a young age.
Lord, I give you thanks for all the ways she honoured You in her life, as a teacher, mother, daughter, wife, sister, and grandmother; and I give you thanks that even now as I write this, I know that she is rejoicing with You in heaven this very moment.

In Christ's name,
Amen