Pastor Joanne has been my pastor at Heart & Soul Community Church for 4 1/2 years. There are many things I will remember about her. I will remember fun things like when we first moved into the renovated building on 1185 N. Clinton and she wanted to paint everything her favorite color green. I will remember her disdain of football and how she wouldn’t let Louis grow a full beard.
I will remember how much she loved us. My first son was born a few months after we started attending Heart and Soul. Both her and Louis were some of the few people that visited us at our house when we first got home. Although she could not stand football and Louis detests my favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles, they bought my son a little Eagles onesie.
Joanne adored my son and that meant a lot to my wife and I. When my second child arrived she loved her just as much. No one is able to make my seven-month old daughter, Thea, laugh quite like Joanne could. Joanne loved both of my kids so much. I am just heartbroken that neither of my children will be able to remember her.
She loved all of the kids of our church (which has much more kids than adults). Although Heart and Soul has gone through many months without being able to pay her and Louis, she wanted to make sure that we had “A” class VBS’s over the summers and the supplies needed to care for the kids each week for sunday school. Although the Church is currently going through some really hard times financially, she still wanted to fund a Christmas play this coming Christmas Eve. She wanted the best for the kids of our church and the kids of our neighborhood. She loved them so much.
I will also remember how strong she was. For six years, Pastor Janne suffered from chronic lyme disease that gave her immense headaches and sleepless nights for weeks and months at a time. I remember going to church many Sundays not knowing if she would be able to come. On the Sundays she could come she was in so much agony and looked so fragile. But she would never complain. She would always focus on you and how you were doing. She would focus on the paper cuts in your life over the unending discomfort of hers. Her sermons during those times were so powerful. Truth about living for God in the midst of suffering was shared with us by someone who was living it right in our midst.
And her pain transformed my prayer life. I remember praying for years that God would take away her pain. It seemed at the time that she would never be free of it. I got so mad at God. I couldn’t understand how someone so loving, so talented, and so willing to sacrifice so much for the him would have to go through so much pain. And then God showed up. Last winter she became pain free. God finally answered our prayers. He did not let the pain go on forever. He was her healer.
And now we are going through that process again. We prayed fervently that she would be healed. But this time God took her home. And we are all struggling with the conflicting emotions of what has happened. And I don’t understand why things have happened the way it has. It just doesn’t seem right. But I also know that her pain is now gone. She is with our healer.
A couple years ago in the midst of her struggle with Lyme disease she was telling us a story about her son Daniel being fascinated with Louis and her wedding video. In watching the video she saw herself smiling, laughing, and dancing. Looking back at that day, she was mesmerized by how happy she was before the pain and suffering of the disease. I imagine her now having the joy as she on her wedding day, but a hundredfold. She is now with the Lord dancing eternity away. Joanne will surely be missed, but we will see her again.
