Planning to Prepare Your Legacy: 7 Steps to Begin Sharing Your Legacy

by Elizabeth | Mar 11, 2024 | legacy, life and legacy coaching

Planning to Prepare Your Legacy: 7 Steps to Begin Sharing Your Legacy

If you’ve been around my blog for awhile, you know why I’m passionate about helping people prepare a practical and spiritual legacy: first, my father died in 2017, leaving very little guidance about his wishes despite the fact that he knew for two years of his terminal diagnosis; and second, my mother died unexpectedly in 2021, leaving clear guidelines and all of the information I needed as executor of her will. She also left a beautiful spiritual legacy of stories, values, and wisdom in a number of forms—grandmother’s journal for the kids as well as boxes of memorabilia she kept for them, cards I sent her, and stories about topics like her favorite memory of me.

In the past two years, though, I’ve discovered a new impetus for my desire to prepare my own legacy, especially my spiritual one—grandchildren. As I’ve enjoyed the privilege of rocking four precious newborns, I see their intense eyes gazing up at me, and I almost hear their questions: tell me about this world, Zizi, tell me about God, tell me about who I am, and tell me about who these other people are.

Despite my passion for legacies, though, I have procrastinated writing and recording the stories I want to tell them. So I am beginning the year with some planning and hope you will join me. Even if you don’t have children or grandchildren, you have people in your life who will be blessed by your legacy, both practical and spiritual. Why not make some specific goals for preparing these legacies as the year begins?

1. Pray about your goals.

As you do so, ask the Spirit to give you a vision for what you would like to have accomplished on this day in 2024. You might want to write your vision as a story of what you will have done and how you will feel about it. Consider these examples:

“I will have seen the lawyer to update my will. He will have helped me think through the hard decisions, and it is done. I feel such a sense of relief to have made the changes I needed to make.”

Mine says, “I will have created a 24-page book on Mixbook that weaves together my favorite stories of redemption with some stories and photos from my childhood. It won’t be comprehensive, because I know I can always do another one. I will feel excited to share these books with my children and grandchildren.”

2. Spend thirty minutes making appointments on your calendar to work on your legacy.

Consider setting regularly scheduled times for working on your goals. I find that if I schedule thirty minutes to an hour to work on something, I often spend more time doing it than I originally planned. I just need the event scheduled to get me going.

Add deadlines, false and real, to get things done. I might want to print the books as Christmas gifts for my family, so I would need to set a goal to work monthly on the book and to finish by late October.

3. Set mini-goals.

If I wrote, “I will finish the entire book by late October,” my plan would be doomed to fail because it would be too overwhelming, and I would quit.

Instead, I might set the goal, “Write one redemption story in January, February, and March. Gather lists of verses in April. Gather photos in May and June. Write prayers in July. Edit and put together in August and September.”

You might write, “Find a lawyer in January. Make an appointment in February. Spend March, April, and May doing any research needed and making final decisions. Revisit the lawyer in June. Receive final copy of new will in August.” (And you’d be done four months early, so you could spend the last four months recording some favorite stories.)

4. Expect resistance.

Whenever we make plans to enjoy and glorify God in specific ways, we can expect resistance. Author Steven Pressfield nails the heart of resistance:

“Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us.”

Pressfield’s definition of resistance reminds me of Peter’s description of the devil, who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Whenever we make plans to multiply God’s glory, the devil will seek to destroy our mission.

Armed with faith, the remembrance of how God has helped us in the past; hope, the vision of the joy we will experience when we share our legacy; and love, the blessing of others with the gift of our legacy, we can move forward.

5. Consider the obstacles.

Once we’ve recognized and named resistance, we can go on a seek and destroy mission with the obstacles. What’s keeping you from completing your goals? Make a list, trying to be very specific.

For example, one of the reasons I have not been recording my spiritual legacy is that until I wrote this article, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. I had a Grandmother’s Journal I didn’t like the look of, so I never wrote in it. Maybe you aren’t visiting the lawyer because you don’t know a good estate lawyer. Or maybe you don’t want to work on your binder of important information because it makes you sad to think about the day your loved ones might need it.

When we name our obstacles, we more easily find ways to overcome them. Writing this article helped me clarify a vision for a final product and to name that I will still want to create more books along the way. You might ask your friends at church or on social media for the name of a good lawyer. You might have coffee with a friend and talk about the sadness you feel as you try to prepare your legacy.

6. Get help.

God made us to be dependent on him, and he made us to grow in the context of the body of Christ. Reach out to family and friends to help you overcome your obstacles. Consider enrolling in the self-paced Organizing Your Life and Legacy workshop, or contact me to discuss life and legacy coaching. We all need cheerleaders to spur us on as we move toward our goals.

7. Be gracious with yourself.

You may have wonderful plans, and you may be making your way toward reaching them when you get a phone call that your mother has fallen and broken her hip. Suddenly, all of those Saturdays you had planned to work on your practical or spiritual legacy need to be spent helping your mom around her house. Recognize the divine interruption, and embrace the opportunity to serve your mom, trusting that the Spirit will provide another way and time for you to prepare your legacy.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. What’s your motivation for preparing your legacy? What goals do you have for the coming year? What obstacles are you facing? You can share in the comments or email me here.

Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage is a life and legacy coach, author, and speaker who helps you live, prepare, and share your practical and spiritual legacy. She recently published the book, Preparing for Glory: Biblical Answers to 40 Questions on Living and Dying in Hope of Heaven (affiliate link). Contact Elizabeth or find more resources at www.elizabethturnage.com

Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage

Elizabeth is a life and legacy coach who offers gospel-centered wisdom and equipping to help you live, prepare, and share your life and legacy.

Subscribe now to get free coaching tips from Elizabeth to help you with your aging, caregiving, legacy, and end-of-life.

Living like We’re Dying

by Elizabeth | Aug 31, 2023 | aging, dying, and death, legacy, life and legacy coaching

Living like We’re Dying

Hi Friends,

Coming to you today with a tough subject — how to prepare for death. And yet, one I believe many people want to know more about but are afraid to ask. If that’s you, I hope this gives some encouragement and guidance. (And I’d love to know…what are the questions you have about “Living like we’re dying”?)

Beyond the country song…

We’ve all heard the familiar encouragement to “Live like we’re dying,” perhaps even singing out the lyrics to Tim McGraw’s poignant country song. It’s all well and good to sing along to a country song, but to actually live as if we’re dying is much much harder, as the late Pastor Tim Keller discovered. He had already written a book on death and was writing a book on the resurrection when he was faced with the diagnosis of incurable pancreatic cancer. Asked about his terminal diagnosis, he said, “Basically, we all function as if we’re going to live forever…. We are in deep, deep denial about it. And the only way you know that is when you finally actually do get the kind of diagnosis that you may die within months or weeks that I did and you suddenly realize, ‘I didn’t really believe I was going to die. I really didn’t.’” 1.

As Pastor Keller faced the certainty of his imminent death, he discovered an unexpected spiritual blessing. When we realize our mortality, we recognize the power in the hope of resurrection. Furthermore, when we realize our mortality, we recognize the need to prepare for it. In preparing for our own inevitable death, we not only benefit spiritually but also find emotional comfort. Preparing for death also benefits our loved ones by giving them clarity and guidance in the midst of their grief. While the process of preparing for our own deaths is far more complex than a simple list can convey, we have to start somewhere. We can begin by focusing on four key areas: contemplating the hope of heaven, establishing our practical legacy, cultivating and sharing our spiritual legacy, and being intentional about our emotional legacy.

1. Prepare spiritually by contemplating the hope of heaven.

Many of us fear death, and that shouldn’t surprise us. Scripture tells us we’ve all been “held in slavery by [our] fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15). But Jesus came and died to “break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil…” (Hebrews 2:14). Therefore, we have hope. Jesus has defeated our last enemy, death, giving us the hope of heaven.

Sadly, too many of us are misinformed about heaven. Our imaginations have been stuffed with cartoons of St. Peter standing at the “pearly gates” with a clipboard; we have been sent greeting cards of people floating around on clouds with angel wings. It is little wonder that some people fear being bored in heaven and don’t really want to go there.

We don’t know many details about heaven, but we do know enough to make us long to be there. First, we will be welcomed with great joy by our Savior, Jesus. We will be so overcome by the glory of the Triune God we will fall down in worship (Rev. 7:10-12). We will recognize loved ones there (see Matt. 17:1-3; Luke 16:19-31), and our surroundings will be “Paradise” (see Luke 23:43). In heaven, we will find the perfect rest we crave, rest for our bodies and rest for our souls. One day, the intermediate state of heaven will give way to the grand finale, the ending that is our truest beginning, life in the new heavens and new earth. In the new heavens and new earth, “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain.” (Rev. 21:5). It was the anticipated joy of heaven that led Pastor Tim Keller to say to his family the evening before his death, “I’m ready to see Jesus. I can’t wait to see Jesus. Send me home.” 2

2. Prepare by establishing a practical legacy.

While some refer to it as “setting our affairs in order,” I prefer to call it a “practical legacy.” It involves organizing our end-of-life wishes, financial information, digital legacy, and essential documents, all of which serve as a practical gift to those who will handle the final details of our lives even as they grieve.

At the minimum, we should gather what I call the “first four”: our will, advance directive, durable power of attorney, and passwords. After gathering these four things, we can focus on getting other important documents and financial information together. Ideally, we will gather these things into one safe and secure place. Communicating with our loved ones about what we’ve gathered and where to find it is an important part of this process. When you gather these essentials now, you save your loved ones the heartache of having to ask you to do it when you are all in the turmoil of a significant health crisis.

For more information about gathering your practical legacy and/or for assistance in doing this, join the waiting list for our next Organizing Your Life and Legacy workshop here.

3. Prepare by cultivating and sharing your spiritual legacy.

In Psalm 78, Asaph called the Israelites to remember and tell the wonders God had done in the wilderness so future generations would grow in faith and hope and love. In short, he encouraged them to pass on their spiritual legacy. As we share our stories, lessons, wisdom, and experience, we have the opportunity to show God’s merciful and mighty redemptive work in our lives.

To share parts of her story, my mother used a booklet called the Obitkit, in which she answered simple questions about her life. Surprisingly, even the simplest of questions revealed new insights into my mother’s story. Asked about her best subject in school, my mother responded, “Almost every subject, except PE, which kept me from getting valedictorian.” While I had always known my mother was smart, I had never realized her lack of athletic prowess prevented her from getting valedictorian. As you think about sharing your spiritual legacy, remember that even seemingly simple stories can give new insights into how God has shaped you.

In addition to passing on stories, we can share skills, family history, and blessings. Consider your specific skills or expertise that will benefit others— how to make that famous Texas sheet cake, how to drive on ice, how to pack for a long vacation. Share family history, knowing that the next generation may not seem interested now but will likely become interested after you’re gone. Preserve your family’s heritage by passing on photographs and stories. In addition, write or speak blessings to others. Like Isaac blessing Jacob, affirm the unique qualities and gifts of family members, leaving them with words that honor their God-given identity.

4. Prepare by being intentional about your emotional legacy.

In his book The Four Things That Matter Most, Dr. Ira Byock, a palliative care physician, provides recommendations for fostering meaningful relationships at the end of life: “Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.” 3

In the final chapter of the book, Byock adds a fifth task, saying goodbye. By attending to these tasks before we approach the end of life, we can create an emotional legacy that brings comfort, peace, and hope to our loved ones.

Following the example of Jesus, who bid farewell to his disciples before his death in the Upper Room Discourse (John 13-17), we can express our love to family and friends and be intentional about saying good-bye. We can reassure our loved ones with our confidence that we are going to the place prepared for us by Christ. As forgiven individuals, we can ask for forgiveness from others and extend our own forgiveness, understanding that forgiveness does not minimize harm but releases our desire to make others pay. As people who have much to be grateful for, we can express gratitude to our loved ones through letters, calls, texts, or hugs.

Live like you’re dying

Martin Luther, 16th century pastor and theologian, spoke frequently about preparing for death. Though he didn’t use the words “Live like you’re dying,” he advised people to prepare to die while they were still healthy. Doing so, he said, would allow them to focus on their Savior when the end approached. While advances in medicine and practices around dying make death seem more remote from us, death remains non-negotiable. We will die; the only question is when. When we begin preparing for death now, we will find peace and hope in the gospel and we will leave a lasting legacy that comforts, guides, and inspires future generations.

Friends, I hope this article has encouraged you in hard places. I’d love to know about your struggles and successes in “living like you’re dying”…what hard things have you done or have you seen others do to prepare for death?

1. Tyler Huckabee, “Tim Keller on Facing Death (and Resurrection),” RELEVANT, March 2, 2021, https://relevantmagazine.com/magazine/tim-keller-on-facing-death-and-resurrection/.

2. Tim Keller, Quoted by his son, Michael Keller on Twitter, May 19, 2023.

3. Ira Byock, The Four Things That Matter Most – 10th Anniversary Edition: A Book About Living(New York: Free Press, 2004), 7.

The Aroma of Heaven: Leaving a Legacy that Spreads the Fragrance of Christ

by Elizabeth | Apr 1, 2023 | legacy, life and legacy coaching, Numbering Our Days

The Aroma of Heaven: Leaving a Legacy that Spreads the Fragrance of Christ

Dear Friends,

This month I’m thinking about the type of legacy I want to leave. As I do so, I think about the people in my life who have been an aroma of heaven to me. I’d love to hear from you: who are the people in your life who have left an aroma of heaven? You can leave a comment here.

My Grandmother

She smelled like Tollhouse cookies, Parker house rolls, and Lanvin dusting powder. That was my grandmother’s scent. But her aroma, the legacy she left me, was of a safe and secure place, a place of comfort and rest, a place of hospitality and feasting. It was the aroma of heaven.

Widowed in her early sixties, my grandmother continued teaching fifth grade after my grandfather’s death. When she retired, she became active in the Retired Teacher’s Association. She also served as the president of the Baptist Women’s Association. She cared for her mother, my great-grandmother Mama Mac, in her home until Mama Mac’s death at age ninety.

As a child, I never thought of my grandmother as a widow or as a working grandmother or as an association president or as a caregiver. To me she was just “Grandmom.” She baked tray after tray of Shake ’n Bake and served it up to her two hungry grandchildren with mounds of fresh corn and garden peas and dozens and dozens of her famous rolls. For dessert there were peach parfaits and chocolate cake, Tollhouse cookies and chess pie. She was Grandmom, who kept us for a month every summer and took us to church and Sunday school and VBS and the church library. She was Grandmom, who provided lined paper pads for me to practice my penmanship and all sorts of supplies to play my favorite game, school. She was Grandmom, who fed me, who taught me, who played with me, who created for me a home that smelled like heaven.

Later, when I became a Christian at age fifteen, I knew my grandmother as my kindred spirit, my ally, the one person in my family who read a Bible and went to church and prayed to God above and did “Christian” things. She was the one I could count on to be excited about my growing faith, the one who encouraged me by example, the one who lived as a fragrant offering to Christ.

Now that I am a grandmother, I wonder how my grandmother felt when her only son got divorced after eleven years of marriage. Now I wonder how she felt about her only two grandchildren growing up in a home where the only Bible sat collecting dust on a bookshelf.

My grandmother, grandfather, brother and me, circa 1966,

A Living Sacrifice

Though I don’t know how she felt, given my grandmother’s fierce determination, I can guess what she did. She lifted the incense of prayer to the heavens. She came home after a day of teaching fifth graders and prepared a feast for her grandchildren. She helped her mother wash up for the night and then, though she must have been exhausted herself, made sure her grandchildren got baths before bed. She said prayers over them before collapsing for the night. She became a living sacrifice, and in so doing, “spread the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Corinthians 2:14). This was my grandmother’s legacy.

I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of legacy I want to leave. In a world in which the focus of leaving a legacy is often on making a name for ourselves, I want to throw off the stench of self-centeredness so that I can spread the fragrant aroma of heaven. How do we become people who leave a legacy that is less about our small stories and more about the One who wrote our stories into his Big Story? We do so by becoming sacrificial offerings, pleasing aromas to God (Ephesians 5:1-2). We do so by living out our unique giftedness and passions in ways that draw others to inhale the fragrance of Christ. We do so by repenting when we sin and by living lives characterized by seeking and granting forgiveness. We do so by exhaling the pure, fresh air of our righteousness in Christ.

Living Our Legacy

We do so by asking God for the power to live the legacy we wish to leave, as each of the following women do.

I know a woman who prays aloud every time she passes a car accident, asking God to heal the broken, comfort the traumatized, and help the rescue workers. Her family and friends learn from her example that prayer is the first, not last, resort in times of crisis.

I know a woman who, at ninety-years-old, still makes it to Bible study most weeks. With trembling hands she turns the tattered pages of her worn leather Bible, finding today’s passage. The women in her group long to love God’s Word as much as she does.

I know a woman who at eighty-two-years-old used to hobble her way through a downtown Atlanta park to attend the monthly service for the homeless held there by her church. When she died, one of the homeless women who had known her for years sent her family a song she had written and performed, honoring this woman’s compassion for the downtrodden.*

I know a woman who still says a four-letter word that starts with s (almost) every time she runs her head into a cabinet or has to come to an abrupt stop in traffic. She blames her cussing on her childhood and neural wiring and prays the word won’t slip out in front of her grandchildren. But when it does, she frankly tells them that Zizi is a sinner and has used her tongue for much worse purposes. She asks their forgiveness and urges them to pray for her to use her tongue wisely and well. She hopes, by God’s grace, that her grandchildren will remember that their grandmother was a sinner, but a forgiven sinner, and that their grandmother’s story will give them hope for their own struggle with sin.

Each of these women is leaving a legacy that spreads the aroma of heaven.

In his book on growing “deeper” into the love of Christ, Pastor Dane Ortlund urges us to “oxygenate” with the Bible, breathing in the steadying and steadfast good news of the gospel. He urges us to “exhale” in prayer, “[speaking] back to God your wonder, your worry, and your waiting.” He encourages us with this hope, “As you do, you will grow. You won’t feel it day to day. But you’ll come to the end of your life a radiant, solid man or woman. And you will have left in your wake the aroma of heaven. You will have blessed the world. Your life will have mattered.”[i]

At my grandmother’s funeral, I delivered the eulogy. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that my grandmother’s life mattered, not because she won the Teacher of the Year award, not because she cooked delicious yeast rolls, and not even because she was a loving grandmother. My grandmother’s life mattered because she wore the fragrance of Christ, and she left behind the scent of good news. This is the legacy that makes life matter. This is the legacy I hope to leave. What about you?

Who in your life has left the aroma of heaven? How did they do so?

*This woman was my mother.

Note to all readers: In my Numbering Your Days column, I write monthly on a topic related to aging, caregiving, legacy, and end-of-life. Separately, I send out a free monthly newsletter sharing writing, speaking, and other resources related to aging, caregiving, legacy, and end-of-life. This month’s free newsletter goes out on Saturday, April 1. If you would like to receive it, along with my Holy Week devotional, be sure to subscribe by clicking this link: http://eepurl.com/b__teX.

Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage

Elizabeth is a life and legacy coach who offers gospel-centered wisdom and equipping to help you live, prepare, and share your life and legacy.

Subscribe now to get free coaching tips from Elizabeth to help you with your aging, caregiving, legacy, and end-of-life.

Planning to Prepare a Legacy in 2023: Seven Steps to Reaching Your Legacy Goals

by Elizabeth | Dec 30, 2022 | legacy, life and legacy coaching

Planning to Prepare a Legacy in 2023: Seven Steps to Reaching Your Legacy Goals

If you’ve been around this column for awhile, you know why I’m passionate about helping people prepare a practical and spiritual legacy: first, my father died in 2017, leaving very little guidance about his wishes despite the fact that he knew for 2 years that he had a terminal diagnosis, and second, my mother died unexpectedly in 2021, leaving clear guidelines and all of the information I needed to carry out her wishes as executor of her will. She also left a beautiful spiritual legacy of stories, values, and wisdom in a number of forms—grandmother’s journal for the kids as well as boxes of memorabilia she kept for them, cards I sent her, as well as stories of things like her favorite memory of me.

In the past seven months, though, I’ve discovered a new impetus for my desire to prepare my own legacy, especially my spiritual one—grandchildren. As I’ve enjoyed the privilege of rocking three precious newborns, I see their intense eyes gazing up at me, and I almost hear their questions: tell me about this world, Zizi, tell me about God, tell me about who I am and who these other people are.

Despite my passion for legacies, though, I have procrastinated writing and recording the stories I want to tell them. So I am beginning the year with some planning and hope you will join me. Whether you have children or grandchildren, you have people in your life who will be blessed by your legacy, both practical and spiritual. Why not make some specific goals for preparing these legacies as the year begins?

1. Pray about your goals.

As you do so, ask the Spirit to give you a vision for what you would like to have accomplished on this day in 2023. You might want to write your vision as a story of what you will have done and how you will feel about it. Consider these examples:

“I will have seen the lawyer to update my will. He will have helped me think through the hard decisions, and it is done. I feel such a sense of relief to have made the changes I needed to make.”

Mine says, “I will have created a 24-page book on Mixbook that weaves together my favorite stories of redemption with some stories and photos from my childhood. It won’t be comprehensive, because I know I can always do another one. I will feel excited to share these books with my children and grandchildren.”

2. Spend thirty minutes marking times to work on your calendar.

Consider setting regularly scheduled times to work on your goals. I find that if I schedule in thirty minutes to an hour to work on something, I often spend more time doing it than I originally planned. I just need the event scheduled to get me going.

Add deadlines, false and real, to get things done. I might want to print the books as Christmas gifts for my family, so I would need to set a goal to work monthly on the book and to finish by late October.

3. Set mini-goals.

If I wrote, “I will finish the entire book by late October” my plan would be doomed to fail because it would be too overwhelming, and I would quit.

Instead, I might set the goal, “Write one redemption story in January, February, and March. Gather lists of verses in April. Gather photos in May and June. Write prayers in July. Edit and put together in August and September.”

You might write, “Find a lawyer in January. Make an appointment in February. Spend March, April, and May doing any research needed and making final decisions. Revisit the lawyer in June. Receive final copy of new will in August.” (And you’d be done four months early, so you could spend the last four months recording some favorite stories.)

4. Expect resistance.

Whenever we make plans to enjoy and glorify God in specific ways, we can expect resistance. Author Steven Pressfield nails the heart of resistance:

“Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us.”

Pressfield’s definition of resistance reminds me of Peter’s description of the devil, who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Whenever we make plans to multiply God’s glory, the devil will seek to destroy our mission.

Armed with faith, the remembrance of how God has helped us in the past, hope, the vision of the joy we will experience when we share our legacy, and love, the blessing of others with the gift of our legacy, we can move forward.

5. Consider the obstacles.

Once we’ve recognized and named resistance, we can go on a seek and destroy mission with the obstacles. What’s keeping you from completing your goals? Make a list, trying to be very specific.

For example, one of the reasons I have not been recording my spiritual legacy is that until I wrote this article, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. I had a Grandmother’s Journal I didn’t like the look of, so I never wrote in it. Maybe you aren’t visiting the lawyer because you don’t know a good estate lawyer. Or maybe you don’t want to work on your binder of important information because it makes you sad to think about the day your loved ones might need it.

When we name our obstacles, we more easily find ways to overcome them. Writing this helped me clarify a vision for a final product and to name that I will still want to create more books along the way. You might ask your friends at church or on social media for the name of a good lawyer. You might have coffee with a friend and talk about the sadness you feel as you try to prepare your legacy.

6. Get help.

God made us to be dependent on him, and he made us to grow in the context of the body of Christ. Reach out to family and friends to help you overcome your obstacles. Consider enrolling in the next session of the Organizing Your Life and Legacy workshop, or contact me to discuss coaching. We all need cheerleaders to spur us on as we move toward our goals.

7. Be gracious with yourself.

You may have wonderful plans, and you may be making your way toward reaching them when you get a phone call that your mother has fallen and broken her hip. Suddenly, all of those Saturdays you had planned to work on your practical or spiritual legacy need to be spent helping your mom around her house. Recognize the divine interruption, and embrace the opportunity to serve your mom, trusting that the Spirit will provide another way and time for you to prepare your legacy.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. What’s your motivation for preparing your legacy? What goals do you have for the coming year? What obstacles are you facing? You can share in the comments or email me here.

Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage is an author, life and legacy coach, and speaker who helps you live, prepare, and share your practical and spiritual legacy. Contact Elizabeth or find more resources at

www.elizabethturnage.com

6 Types of Spiritual Legacies

by Elizabeth | Dec 20, 2022 | legacy, life and legacy coaching

6 Types of Spiritual Legacies

Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of men. Psalm 66:5

In addition to preparing well for death and blessing our loved ones by creating a practical legacy, we can also create a spiritual legacy. A spiritual legacy may include the stories, values, and wisdom of our lives that point to the “awesome deeds” of God (Psalm 145:6). Such a spiritual legacy is a gift our loved ones will cherish for years to come.

Our Lived Spiritual Legacy

In part, we create our spiritual legacy by the way we live our days. I will never forget my grandmother studying her well-worn Bible in preparation for teaching her Sunday school lesson. Maybe you remember finding your mother on her knees by her bed; another friend recalls a favorite uncle pointing out how marvelously God designed caterpillars and butterflies. When we take time out of our busy days to read children books, sing them songs, or listen to their stories, we demonstrate the goodness and kindness of a heavenly Father who delights in them. Every way we live out God’s story of grace in our lives becomes part of our spiritual legacy.

Our Recorded Spiritual Legacy

In addition to our lived spiritual legacy, we can pass on our God-given wisdom and gospel-grown gratitude in written form or in an audio or video recording. There are numerous types of legacies we night leave: stories, letters, blessings, albums, or lists. To create such a legacy will take time, intentionality, and prayer, but we can press forward, remembering that after we’re gone, our loved ones often become ready audiences to hear our deepest beliefs and best stories—about them, about life, about God. Let’s consider each type of spiritual legacy.

Six Types of Spiritual Legacy

Simple stories:

The stories we leave need not be complex or long. My mother used a tool called the ObitKit, which asked questions about her school, her work, and her early life. Reading her answers, which were only a few sentences long, I discovered she missed getting valedictorian because she got a bad grade in PE and that she had worked on the first Univac computer, which is now in the Smithsonian. As I read the answers she wrote, I saw how God had woven redemption into her life. To write your story, consider simple questions regarding school or work, or tell the story of how you came to trust the Lord or of a time when your faith was tested. If you’re stuck, check out Storycorps, which offers a vast repository of questions to get you started.

Letters:

You might also want to write a letter. You could begin a yearly practice of writing a letter to loved ones on their birthday or at Christmas. In that letter, you might observe ways you see God working in their lives, or you might share ways God has been working in your life. Because your loved one may not keep the letter, you may want to make a copy of it and store it to be given to them when you die.

Blessings:

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you…” Following the model of Numbers 6:23-26, write or record a simple blessing for your loved one. Daniel Taylor, in his book Creating a Spiritual Legacy: How to Share Your Stories, Values, and Wisdom, suggests either writing in the form of a prayer or in the form of “words that wish them well” (Taylor, 41). Before you write the blessing, consider prayerfully the ways this person reflects the image of God and shares the gospel story in their lives. Consider how you’d like to see them grow in years to come. A blessing should always be positive and full of hope and faith, but it may also contain humor. Taylor recommends beginning with the words, “May you….” or “I hope for you….” (Taylor, 41). Such blessings can become powerful sources of joy and hope for the recipient.

Albums:

An album might be a scrapbook, a digital album, or a journal that contains many memories from your life. Some people have been creating a spiritual legacy for years by scrapbooking. If you, like me, struggle to put scrapbooks together, you might try an online tool like Mixbook or Shutterfly, which allows you to upload photos and digital scans. For my husband’s sixtieth birthday, I gathered photos from across his lifespan along with scans of handwritten letters from our children and dear friends and created a book on Mixbook. StoryWorth is another legacy service which provides the opportunity to send a loved one a question each month and then takes the responses and creates a book for you. Such albums can provide a rich and vivid history.

Lists:

To express your values and wisdom, you can create lists: lists of favorite Bible verses and how they have encouraged you, lists of life lessons, lists of things you enjoy, lists of people who influenced you and how, lists of ways you want to be remembered, etc. Just write a number at the top of the page, the topic, and start writing: “Five Things I Learned through Trials,” “Five Things I Enjoy,” etc. Such lists can be simple to create and yet can reveal much about how God has shaped you.

Just Do It

No matter which form you choose, begin today by taking one small step. Schedule a time on your calendar to work on your spiritual legacy. Set a timer for twenty minutes and write down your ideas. Gather a group of friends to work together on your legacies. You’ll be amazed at the joy you will discover as you remember the wonders God has done in your life. You’ll be encouraged as you imagine the faith, hope, and love you will share with future generations.

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Elizabeth Reynolds Turnage

Elizabeth is a life and legacy coach who offers gospel-centered wisdom and equipping to help you live, prepare, and share your life and legacy.

6 Steps to Creating a Practical Legacy

by Elizabeth | Dec 20, 2022 | aging, dying, and death, legacy, life and legacy coaching

6 Steps to Creating a Practical Legacy

“I told my neighbor I was taking this workshop, and she said, ‘I’m not doing a thing. They can figure it all out after I’m gone.’”

A member of my Organizing Your Life and Legacy workshop shared this comment with our group, and we all shook our heads sadly. The comment doesn’t surprise us—death has become a taboo subject in our culture, less open for discussion than politics and sex.

Reasons abound for death’s denial and distancing, including fear of death, denial of death, and removal of death from the home to the hospital. And yet, like it or not, we’re all dying.

How Scripture Prepares Us for Death

Christians have an advantage as we prepare for death—we can look to Scripture, which helps us understand why people die and offers us hope for life after death. Death resulted from Adam and Eve’s sin for God had warned them that in the day they ate of the tree, they would “surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Jesus died on a cross for our sins: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). Because Jesus rose from the dead, those who trust in him for salvation need no longer fear death: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live…” (John 11:25). Armed with an understanding of death and the confidence of life everlasting, we can face our mortality and prepare for death.

Create a Practical Legacy

Psalm 90:12 exhorts us, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” One way to number our days is to plan for our death by gathering the essential information our loved ones will need if we are incapacitated or have died. To create what I call a “practical legacy,” divvy up the process into six actionable steps and then schedule times each week or each month to work on them.

Prepare an advance directive.

Also known as a “living will,” an advance directive helps to guide medical care decisions in the case of incapacitation. It allows you to appoint a health care proxy or surrogate and to indicate what kind of treatment you would wish for or decline in medical crisis. My husband and I have used Five Wishes to prepare ours, but you can also find simple directives on most state or hospital websites. Two books that offer helpful biblical counsel on preparing advance directives are Dr. Bill Davis’ Departing in Peace: Biblical Decision-Making at the End of Life and Dr. Kathryn Butler’s Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End of Life Medical Care. For more thoughts on medicalized dying, see this article. Considering our own incapacitation and imagining different scenarios at the end of life can be intimidating, but when we clarify and communicate our wishes, we bless our loved ones with an indispensable guide to making difficult decisions at a grievous time.

Give one trusted person access to your important passwords.

In a day in which phones and other devices hold valuable confidential information, it’s essential to keep them secure with a password and to share that password with one trusted person. Additionally, gather all your essential passwords. While my eighty-three-year-old mother recorded hers in a basic Word document, and that sufficed, most of us will need to use a password keeper like Lastpass or 1Password to contain all of this information more securely.

Appoint a Durable Power of Attorney.

Appoint someone who will have the legal power to act on your behalf if you are incapacitated or have died. My mother had appointed me as her power of attorney and put my name on her checking account before she died. Thanks to her foresight, paying her bills after her death did not involve jumping through legal hoops. It can help to make your durable power of attorney and health care surrogate the same person.

Make a will and appoint an executor.

Make a will and appoint someone to oversee handling your affairs after your death. An estate lawyer I spoke with suggests that we visit a lawyer to prepare our wills, noting that online documents do not usually suffice except in the case of very simple estates with few assets.

Gather essential information.

Not only will your family benefit if you gather all of the details of your life into one place, but you also benefit. Can you imagine the peace of knowing exactly where to locate details about your medical history, personal history, insurance information, titles and deeds, credit cards, bills, and methods of payment, etc.? Although it is not written by a Christian, the book Get It Together: Organize Your Records So Your Family Won’t Have To offers a comprehensive guide to help you in this process.

Make decisions about burial or cremation and end of life services.

Considering what will happen to our body after we die may be hard for us, but imagine the peace we can give to our loved ones by doing so. One of our workshop participants shared an inspiring story of her twenty-five-year-old niece: her father had died when she was twenty-two, and he had left a practical legacy. She was inspired to write out her own wishes for the end of her life. When she died three years later in a tragic accident, this legacy provided great comfort to her mother in her distress.

While it is daunting to consider the end of our lives, as Christians, we face death with hope, the hope of resurrection. Given that hope, we can enter hard decisions now to prepare a practical legacy that will guide and comfort our loved ones in their season of grief. Call a friend today and encourage and assist one another in the process of preparing a practical legacy. In addition to preparing our practical legacy, we will also want to leave a spiritual legacy, passing on the wisdom we have gained to the next generation. We’ll discuss how to create a spiritual legacy in part two of this series.

Check out my column on aging, caregiving, legacy, and end-of-life!