Life’s crazy. But I have to take a minute to tell you about Mrs. Shirley Nolen. She’s bedfast now, but her spirit soars. I was privileged forty-plus years ago to be in a traveling singing group with her daughter, Shannon, while we attended Freed Hardeman College. And now, all these decades later, after Shannon has been gone to glory for a long time, I am even more privileged to know Shannon’s mother, Mrs Shirley. I’ve now known her for 22 years. Where does the time go when you love fiercely?!
SO many fond memories of her sweet, giving self, including many hours of time and talent and materials sacrificed in making beautiful (I mean 
gorgeous…the prettiest I have ever seen) pew markers for Hannah’s wedding years ago. (There were a lot of pews and every one had a bouquet in a linen napkin that Hannah got to keep!) I cannot even start to tell you what Mrs. Shirley’s done for Hannah’s childrens’ hearts during the last three years. This year, she had their little Christmas presents bought and given to their mom way back in the summer, because she was afraid she wouldn’t be with us, on this side of eternity, when the holiday came. Thankfully, she was blessed with health that kept improving and she knows they did open and love those gifts on Christmas morning!
Sunday, I was privileged to go and “assemble” with her for livestream worship, so that her amazing care-givers, the Waddells, could go and worship with the church. To watch Mrs. Shirley, following the losses of her children and her husband, sitting up and intently taking notes from the sermon and then the Bible class…to close my eyes for a minute and listen to her sweet voice singing praises about the Lily of the Valley, who has brought her joy, even through so much pain, was healing to my weary soul.
Here are the top ten ways (in no certain order) that I was blessed by being in that little bedroom with a near nonagenarian for worship on Sunday:
- To worship is always the honor and blessing of any week!
- Mrs. Shirley could not straighten out her body to sit up, without being pretty crooked in that bed. She sat up anyway, and she said “Oh, I’m fine. This doesn’t hurt at all.” I thought about those people I know who complain about the uncomfortable, though padded, seats at whatever buildings in which they worship. They sometimes do this when they, just last night, sat on bleachers at the ball field, in the rain and loved it.
- I looked around at her wonderful place to be and marveled. This family, Carey and Lisa Waddell, who have taken her in (and it has been four-ish years at this point) are not physically related to her. They are blood-kin through Christ and they love their spiritual family. She kept saying “I am just so blessed.”
- She had just finished a breakfast that Mr. Carey comes to fix for her every morning. I asked her what he fixes and she said “Whatever I want.”
- She got out her notebook and took meticulous notes during both the sermon and the class. She had a pink book light clipped to the top of her Bible.
- Mrs. Shirley said a bunch of things she was thankful for during the break between the worship and the class. She said “I am most thankful for the sisters who come to worship with me.”
- She is reading her Bible all the way through as she has done many times. “This time,” she said, “I am reading it through with my friend, Peggy Coulter, and we talk each week about what we have found that we didn’t know before and we compare notes. I’m learning a lot.” She’s 87 and she has read the Bible over and over, but she is learning “just so much.” Does that tell you anything about the sword you wield against the devil?
- Over lunch, Mrs. Shirley talked with me about her grandson who is teaching the Bible in Ukraine and about another grandson, who preaches in Missouri and about her sweet Shannon, lost (to us) to cancer years ago, but who has a living legacy.
- She talked with fervor, to me about a friend who was once a faithful Christian, but who has walked away from the Lord. “She has to know she can’t be here too much longer. I would be so afraid.” She is not politically correct, but she is so right.
- Mrs. Shirley, bedfast and so very limited, remembered with fondness, our dear friend Fannie Phillips, now in glory, who whispered loudly to her after my husband Glenn came to preach at West Huntsville the first time, back in 1984. Mrs. Fannie said “They’ll never hire him. He has red hair.” They didn’t. She was right. But God’s timing is so, so good. Twenty years later, we came back again. This time, they did hire Glenn (It was probably because some of the “red fire” had been tempered and some was gone completely!). We’ve worked with this good church for 22 years. And now his hair is not red at all! (Mrs. Shirley remarked “You never had to wonder about where you stood with Fannie. Right again, but I sure miss Mrs. Fanny!)
