I was doing a final set-up of my room Thursday night at Westminster for what amounts to a back-to-school night, with many other things on my mind, when an email came through on my phone. It was from a lady in a church in Illinois where I preach about twice a month.
"Mom passed. Arrangements to follow."
Dorothy Linders was now with her Savior. Race finished, run very well.
When I was a student at Covenant Seminary in the mid-nineties, an opportunity came up to occasionally preach at Baldwin Community Presbyterian Church in Baldwin, Illinois. Now Baldwin is a tiny town...probably might not show up in the index of some Rand McNally atlases. But it has become a place I've returned to time and again, and the primary reason for that is the humble decency and kindness of Dorothy Linders.
Dorothy took care of the bulletin details down through the years, prepping the worship so that I and others could focus just on the preaching. It is a small but loving church that--when I first preached there, on the story of Shamgar in Judges 3:31, no less--had 25 worshipping souls. Now it's about a quarter of that, but Dorothy diligently kept the doors open for many years.
She taught children's Sunday School for a number of years, also, and there are few more labor-intensive activities on Sunday mornings. All she did in her life, at church or on the farm, exhibited evidence of a sweet spirit. Every year she rented the American Legion building in town so the entire extended family could gather for a huge Thanksgiving dinner.
Finally, the day came where she was slowly shifting to the eternal kingdom beyond this life. Since the end of 2016, Dorothy had been at a nursing home in Red Bud, IL, due to her diagnosis for dementia. So that brought about an opportunity for me--on my way to Baldwin when I preached--to stop by and see Dorothy for a few minutes on Sunday mornings. Times to chat with her about how she was feeling, sleeping, etc. Times to listen to her as her stories were colorful and went far and wide in their expanse.
With the crunch of ongoing time, her mind slipped more and more. Stories became sentences, sentences became words, and even words gradually became nods and small acknowledgments. But it still gave me happiness to walk into her room and see her snuggling with her "kids", meaning her variety of stuffed animals, whom she insisted had to come with her for every meal in the dining room. She was quite a hoot for some time!
In the end, on the evening of August 30th, Dorothy closed her eyes in sleep to open them no more. And now I will have no more visits to the nursing home in Red Bud to see her. But through that time, I've changed. We pastor/minister types think that by visiting the sick, that we are doing them well. I've come to believe the benefit flows in the other direction quite powerfully.
In Dorothy, I've seen a bit of myself. Her forgetfulness of events and people was due to dementia, but it reminded me I have a forgetfulness of another kind, one in which I have my eyes more on what I believe to be more pressing needs that the God who loves and directs me. How I need to be shown that time and again, that--like the hymn says--I am "prone to wander, Lord I feel it...prone to leave the God I love."
And the greatest lesson Dorothy taught me? That even when you are entering an inevitable journey, even when all you can do is sit there, you can fight on. You can show determination even if you don't realize that's what you're doing. Dying well can be a legacy, also. When I told my parents about Dorothy's passing, my dad made a remark in the midst of much admiration and sadness: "There is something consoling about a saint who walks all the way home, even if, in one sense, the Lord had to carry her the last number of steps."
Well, Dorothy has crossed that threshold in the arms of Christ. Some tend to think many great legacies are lived out in Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley, or Wall Street. In truth, many of the greatest stories are told through the lives of people who live upon the soil of places like Baldwin, Illinois.
