Her name was Jane.

I had the good fortune to work with her on the staff of a Houston church for seven sweet years. When I began the job, I was 30 – and she was 84. She was born in 1906, just a few months before the San Francisco earthquake, in a little Texas coastal town called Palacios. She joked once that she was so mean it took baptizing in the salt water of the bay to clean her up.

But she wasn’t mean. She was spunky, and opinionated, and full of life. She loved Jesus, and she loved him long and well.

“Miss Jane” tried to retire once. But our pastor told her he’d just keep sending her a check if she did, and she wasn’t going to take the church’s money without putting in her time. So each day, she drove herself to work, and spent her days loving others the way she loved God. I never passed her in the hallway that she did not smile and stop to kiss my cheek.

My memory is full of lessons, one liners, and bits of wisdom from Jane:

Since she’d taught the Bible for over 70 years, I asked her once if she had a “lesson file” of all that work, and if she still used it. She said, “Oh, no Leigh – I don’t ever keep those notes. Because you don’t teach lessons, you teach people.”

She never married, but she said she’d had a sweetheart or two. She also said that when she died she wanted female pall bearers, because if the men hadn’t taken her out when she was living, they weren’t going to carry her out when she was dead!

She said getting old wasn’t for sissies, and that you had to be tough to keep living.

She also said that heaven got sweeter when it became populated with people you’d known and loved. I can attest to the truth of this now; I wasn’t so sure then.

When she was 90 I begged our pastor to let me interview her on tape, so that we would have her voice, and her memories of our church’s history when she was gone. Those afternoons Jane and I spent in a sound studio were priceless. We went through boxes of photographs and old church newsletters and bulletins, and she shared anecdotes as we did. “This man,” she said, tapping one photograph, “and two or three others, put their houses up during the depression so we wouldn’t lose our church property.” Then, looking at the photograph of one former pastor, she said “He was smart, but he stayed two years too long.” I blinked at her frankness, then we both laughed. She called it like she saw it.

Once, on a staff retreat, we were roommates for three days. She made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt every night. And whether or not my light was out, each night she went to bed, turned over on her side, and was asleep in a matter of seconds.

I wrote of her once, “She was the most alive, most vibrant, most winsome woman – and although she was born in an era when a woman’s life was defined by her marital status, Jane’s was not. She kept growing until the day she died – and she encouraged others to do the same. I used to look at Jane and think, Oh, God, don’t let me become like her. Now I remember her and implore him to do just that: to make me a beautiful, loving woman who’s stretched out in pursuit of the life He’s planned just for me.”

Today is her birthday. She would have been 103. A few days before she died at 91, I asked one of the pastors who’d been to see her how she looked. “Like a girl getting ready for her first date,”  he told me. And I remembered hearing her singing in her fluttering voice: “The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows; the more that I love Him, more love He bestows; Each day is like heaven, my heart overflows; the longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.”

Happy birthday, Jane. I’m glad you’re home.

The spacious, free life is from God, it’s also protected and safe. God-strengthened, we’re delivered from evil – when we run to Him, he saves us.” (Psalm 37:39-40, The Message)