Home in Heaven :-)

This week heaven got a new occupant, the lovely lady pictured here. I saw her the night before she died, hooked up to tubes, struggling to breathe and know that death was a release from that pain into the arms of Jesus whom she loved, but I can't help feeling sad that Earth is now a little emptier without her.

I owe a lot to Lynn, she played a big part in my journey with God. I grew up in quite a traditional Baptist Church (which I loved, it was like a family), but for me it was pretty much just doing church, there was no passion for God, no intimacy with God and my whole view of God was very boxed in. Watching someone lifting their hands in worship felt like freaky land and I had never heard of any inner healing ministry or prayer where you sat and listened for God's voice. Yet not long after we started going to the church where Lynn was the pastor's wife and a worship leader my life started to change. It was very gradual at first and I resisted it! Lynn and my mother went to an inner healing conference in New Zealand  and came back literally like new people. My mother was dancing around in worship and praying in tongues and I thought she was possessed, but I couldn't argue with the fruit in the lives of these women as they embraced the cross not just for salvation, but for healing and life and it unleashed a freedom and passion in them that became infectious!!

I remember the very first pilot group we did for an inner healing course called 'The River' and Lynn was leading worship, she put on a song called 'undignified' about David dancing before God, 'I will dance, I will sing, to be mad for my king, nothing Lord is hindering this passion in my soul'..... and I remember her utter frustration out at our inability to find any passion and stop caring about what each other thought to just let go and worship God. And yet she was patient and gentle as she tried to help us break free of having God in a box.

In order to get out of that box I needed lots of healing, and Lynn was the first person who I ever had prayer ministry with. I had no idea what to expect and was a bit wary of it all but that very first time I saw God at work. I was struggling to hear God past my own voice and Lynn said she was hearing something but wasn't sure it was right and she decided to be brave and tell me anyway and risk being wrong. She said she kept hearing Elvis singing 'let me be your teddy bear' and I laughed, because my teddy bear has been my most treasured possession in the world. I've had it since I was a baby and I slept with it every night right up until I got married, it was my comfort, but Lynn didn't know that or how relevant it was to me for God to ask me to let Him be my teddy bear, to run to Him as my comfort. That day I saw that God really could speak to me, that He knew me really well and that intimacy with Him was possible, all because Lynn was brave enough to share something she thought might be from God but sounded silly.

A few years down the track things changed at church, her marriage fell apart and she came to live with our family while she got back on her feet. I was also living back at home at that point with Jaden as I had been going through a hard time as a single mum and needed some extra help for a while. There were a lot of us squished into that house and at times we all got on each other's nerves, but there were also lots of times of laughing, crying and just being there for each other as Lynn walked through a very difficult time in her life. Then Lynn went to Indonesia and found a new place to call home. She came alive again by embracing others who needed to know they were loved.

A group of us from church visited her there (the mission trip I mentioned a couple of posts back where my best friend met her husband) and it was an amazing time in her world. We did craft with young orphans in an orphange, we worshipped in a graveyard with young people who all crammed into a tiny shack as their home, we visited places where the organisation she was working for were ministering to all sorts of people, and we learnt to be very flexible as things never ever went to plan. It was great to spend that time with her and see her love and passion for God helping even more people in another country to find the heart of God that she helped me and others to find here.

Then sickness struck and Lynn came home. It has been hard to watch her health decline and see her so frustrated with a body that could no longer do the things she wanted to. We have prayed and prayed for healing and nothing happened, and then this week things got bad, quickly, and she was gone. I have to admit I have questioned God many times as to why someone so willing to give up everything to serve Him would be sidelined like that, and I don't have any answers, but I know that God knows more than I do and that even though Lynn struggled with those questions too she still clung to God as her hope because she knew there's no real life or hope anywhere else! And now she is home, dancing freely in worship on the golden streets of heaven. I look forward to joining her dancing there one day, uninhibited, and undignified, just like she tried to help me do here.

Thanks lovely lady, you will be missed!