Last night (July 6, 2025) the earth lost a great saint of the church, and Heaven gained a resident who has been waiting to be there her whole life, who had stored up so many treasures there that it was already her home. My dear old friend, Shelba Williams, passed from this side of eternity to the other--the life (as C.S. Lewis put it in The Last Battle), which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
Shelba is important to so many people for so many reasons, but part of the reason she made a difference to me was that she facilitated the realization of my first dream coming true.
As Christians, we have to be careful about our dreams. We need to let the Holy Spirit guild our decisions, and fill our hearts with His desires. We need to be in the Word, and making sure we are in step with what God has said. When we are walking in the Spirit, following His leading, and delighting in Him, I believe the dreams in our hearts are often His will for us, placed there by Him. Psalm 37:4 says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Verse 23 in the same chapter says, The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delights in his way.
So what was my big dream? I was sixteen years old when it came to fruition, so you could guess what it might be. But you're probably wrong. I didn't dream of money, fame, popularity, or romance (okay, I did dream about romance, but that wasn't my biggest dream!).
When I was younger, I had been part of a wonderful church community, where everyone was close, and we were there many days a week. We also had a school, and all of us kids were together a lot, and started to grow up together. I didn't know insecurity back then. One of my favorite things about that whole time in my life had been attending AWANA on Wednesday nights. Not only was it a time of closeness with friends and teachers who loved us and invested in us, but it was a time and place of getting deep into God's word. I was with a lot of these people other days. of the week too, but AWANA was a deeper connection. I would venture to guess that more than half the verse I can recite today were learned in AWANA. The Lord really ministered to me in AWANA. I made resolves in my life, and built deep, real friendships that still exist today.
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| With my siblings in front of our church/school. I'm the tallest one, at left. We got there early to get this taken. It was on our 1991 Christmas cards. |
Right as I was going into junior high, that church family fell apart. There is a whole story behind that, which isn't important to this post. Suddenly, all the friends and teachers I had known were far away, and my family felt alone. We joined another church, and there were some good moments. God did a lot in my life then, actually, but there was also a lot of hurt that still affects me to this day.
When I was a Freshman in high school, we joined yet another church. I was emotionally hurting. I distrusted people, and it is understandable after some of what I had experienced. But my deepest heart's desire was to be in a church family that loved me, and to be a leader in AWANA, the way my leaders had loved and impacted me. That was my deepest dream. I wanted to make that kind of difference. I wanted to create that kind of impact that was made in my life--and maybe even get back what I had lost.
This new church we joined was actually a very old church, started in 1927. The pastor had just been there a few months. The church had been dying when he arrived, but God used his ministry to revive it quite a bit. That first Sunday we came, there must have been about 50 people. After we joined that church, others continued to join. People were coming in. It remained a relatively small church (maybe 120 at its height), but it was lively, and a very loving church family. The summer of 1997, as I was going into my sophomore year of high school, they celebrated 70 years with ice cream and lemonade after the evening service. It's hard to believe that church will be 100 in two years of this writing.
That church was a sweet place of healing for me. It was a great place to be in our youth group. In our youth group, we weekly sang songs like Do, Lord, Oh do, Lord, oh do Remember Me, or we would sing Amazing Grace to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song (Try it! It works!). In the youth group and the actual church services, the hymns and preaching form the King James Bible soothed my spirit in ways "cool" 90's contemporary worship never could have at the time. This is not to say I only approve of hymns or the King James Bible. On the contrary, I actually love lots of Christian music (including those 90's worship songs), and I primarily study from the New American Standard Bible and the English Standard Version (my major research paper in Bible college was about Bible translations, in which I concluded the NASB was the most accurate, and that was before the ESV came out). All the same, God always seems to meet me in those old-fashioned, simpler churches.
Even right now, our family is part of a little country church, complete with hymns, the King James Bible, and sweet, lively fellowship. Our ministry has partnered with this church for a few years, and it was just time to move our membership over there. It is a small but growing church, with love, friendship, and a lot of evangelism. We are there healing up from some hurts from a larger church we just left a few months ago. This church we're at right now is so similar to the church of my teenage years, and both are places of blessing and healing to me. Those old-fashioned things are my love language, I guess.
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| Our church had a pot luck this past Sunday, and these are the kids. Our son Tommy is at the far left. |
One member of my high school church was Shelba Williams. She was an outgoing woman. She was friendly, and got to know new people right away. Shortly after we joined, her husband passed away. I remember her peace and friendliness to others, even at his funeral. She had that assurance she would see him again. Nothing could steal her joy. She had an uncanny ability to know all the prayer requests of the church and pass them on without it being gossip. She just had a gift for loving others and meeting needs. She went through a short-lived cancer diagnosis, but she beat it. She never stopped doing ministry in that time, though she had fun experimenting with different wigs during the times when her hair fell out (but it grew back after she went into remission, of course).
Getting back to that fall of 1997, we had been at that church a year, and I was almost sixteen. Shelba announced that she was going to be starting an AWANA at our church. She was in charge of it, and she urged everyone to get involved. This was my dream! It was finally within my reach. I would have a chance to have an impact. I could make a difference.
For years, Shelba led our church's AWANA program. I worked in AWANA, teaching all ages at different times, exercising my spiritual gifts, sharing the gospel, and teaching children God's word--just as I was taught in those long ago days of innocence. I am so thankful for that opportunity, and for everyone who was ever part of it with me. My involvement with Shelba's AWANA club led me to be able to teach evangelism at our AWANA conferences for the Los Angeles area, something I loved and did throughout my 20's. That was another dream come true! This led to so many friendships and contacts.
When I was eighteen, I went on a mission trip to Zambia. That was one of the hardest experiences I ever had, and led to years of counseling, and even got me an official apology from the ministry's President--but I don't regret going on that trip. During that time, my church family supported me, prayed for me, and ministered to me when I came home. To this day, I have never seen a church family get behind someone the way that church got behind me.
The following summer, I went on a mission trip to Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and again, the church was behind me. Because I didn't leave the country, I was able to call Shelba during that summer and tell her about what we were doing, and the people who were coming to Christ! When I felt God calling me into full-time stateside mission work, it was Shelba who helped me set up Bible clubs all over our home area of Riverside, CA. At the end of the several weeks of these Bible clubs, I took Shelba out to steak, and we rejoiced about all God had done!
Eventually, God led people from our church family in different directions, and that's okay. God has different plans for each of us, and we have to follow His leading. It's hard when He leads us together for a season, and then leads us away. It reminds me of the church in Jerusalem. In Acts 2:44-45, and again in Acts 4:32-35 it talks about their closeness and unity. Yet in Acts 8, amidst persecution, we are told, And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. It is so hard to see this play out, and yet we know those believers took the gospel with them--as did our church family as the Lord moved everyone on. Shelba went on to a church she ended up really being blessed by (in fact, that pastor is one of my husband's favorite to listen to online).
My husband and I have been in full-time ministry, and Shelba was one of our supporters and prayer partners. It has been a joy to know her to the end of her life. I know she is with Jesus forevermore, and I will see her again. I believe we will relive old times at AWANA (like the time we had Bible costume night, and she dressed up as Queen Vashti and I dressed up as Queen Esther and pretended to have a rivalry going), and rejoice about those who are in Heaven because of how God used our AWANA club.
I have shed some tears today with this news, but I'm reminded of First Thessalonians 4:13-14, But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Shelba, as well as every Christian friend I have lost to death (and that number grows the longer I live) is gone from us, but with Him! They are happier than I could imagine. They are whole and joyful in what God has done. They are looking Jesus in the eye right now! Their faith is sight! And one day, that will be true of me! What am I doing today that will matter when I meet Jesus in Heaven? Am I cherishing those God has placed in my life? I often don't think I thanked Shelba and others enough at the time. Thank those God has used in your life right now!
Shelba can honestly say now, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (Second Timothy 4:7-8). For those of us left in what CS Lewis called The Shadowlands for the time being, we can try this one on for size: Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Thank you, Shelba. I hope that I make that same impact you did, and I thank Jesus for the way He used you in my life. In case I never said it enough, I pray He tells you for me now.
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