Remembering a Legacy

Gò0dNews on Commemoration

Remembering a Legacy

by Bill Fortenberry

Florene Johnson was, by every Protestant measure, a saint.

We said goodbye to her in July. She was ninetyfive. As a member of our church for more than seventy years, she was the picture of grace, the demonstration of encouragement, the portrait of humility and the heart, hands and feet of love.

The last years of her life were difficult. She and her husband, Walter, never had any children, and she had been a widow for the past twenty-five years. She often spoke of her husband, their love, his integrity and how she missed him. When arthritis swelled and bent her joints, she never once complained. When she suffered multiple broken bones from falls, she used every opportunity to tell a nurse, doctor, EMT or caregiver about her Jesus.

She survived Covid-19, and she battled cancer for years, but she never talked about the pain or the difficulty. Instead, she would shrug her shoulders and shake her head, in the exact same way I am sure she did when she was a little girl and say, “God must not be through with me yet. I’m just gonna keep on serving Him until He’s ready to take me home.”

And serve Him she did. Her service came in the form of encouragement, of living in the moment, of walking by faith and in sharing that faith in a way that was never offensive, never condescending and never judgmental. If anyone ever lived out the Golden Rule, it was Mrs. Florene.

She never talked about herself or others, only about the people directly in front of her. She mastered the art of being in the moment. If you were in the room with her, no one else in the world mattered. Her conversation was always about the goodness of God, and she never failed to ask how good He was to you.

She walked with Christian maturity while maintaining a child-like faith in Christ. That same innocent, trusting approach applied to people and life itself. When friends brought her a giant inflatable snow globe for her front yard one Christmas, she insisted that we see it, and her eyes lit up when the Styrofoam “snow” created a blizzard inside the plastic orb. She kept the Christmas cards we sent her on her refrigerator—along with tons of others that she received— and proudly showed them to us when we visited. If you sang, played the piano or brought an instrument with you, you could not leave without singing a hymn or worship song with her.

Every visit with her ended with a closing prayer, and she liked to hold your hand while you talked to Jesus with her. One of the proudest moments in my life was when we visited Mrs. Florene in the hospital not long ago. We FaceTimed my son, who lives in Nashville. Knowing how important a closing prayer was to her, he asked if he could do the praying. This young man, seventy years younger than Mrs. Florene, knew the heart of the woman he had come to love like a grandmother, and influenced by her legacy of honoring Jesus, he honored her.

About The Author

Bill Fortenberry worked 17 years as a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist, and has worked in healthcare communications since 2001. Bill serves as the chairman of the board of managers of Haven Health Clinic for Women and is a men’s ministry leader and small group facilitator at his church, HBC Rome. He and his wife, Lisa, have two children, Ethan and Autumn. A storyteller at heart, Bill writes an occasional blog at kudzudad.blogspot.com.