JUDY and ME

by Danna Shirley

            I first met Judy on the back pew, left side at Vancleave Assembly of God Church. She was visiting with a friend she had been dating, Jerry Goodin, who ran the sound booth which was right behind the last pew. He couldn’t sit with Judy because of his duties but she wasn’t far away. Judy also had a young lady with her named Jessica, who was in her charge. Jessica was a ward of the court and mentally challenged.             

            After the service our pastor did something completely different than his normal altar call. He told us if we had any prayer needs, each pew should gather together and pray for one another. There was only Judy, Jessica, and me in our pew. My first conversation with Judy was to ask her to pray for my sons, Russell and Aaron. God so joined us that night, spirit to spirit, that we’ve been best friends ever since. Judy and Jerry married within a few months. She was no longer sporadic but became a regular on the back pew with me. 

            Judy was a former Baptist and I was a former Methodist. She had her masters in education and I was a high school graduate. She was retired and I was still working. Our lives probably couldn’t have been more different but we loved the Lord and when God puts two people together, He knows what He’s doing.

            Judy and Jerry had only been married about three years when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Judy assumed they had caught it in time; however, she soon learned that Jerry had been suffering with severe symptoms for quite some time. When the prognosis came back, he was already in stage four of the disease.  They had just returned from Ochsner’s Clinic in New Orleans when my husband, Ron, passed away unexpectedly. 

            A few months later, I asked Judy to get out of the house and have dinner with me. She had been with Jerry every minute and his health was weighing heavily on both of them. We went shopping and then out to dinner at Chili’s in Gulfport, MS where we did some real heart to heart talking.

Judy shared her fears with me. “I don’t know what I’ll do if Jerry doesn’t make it,” she said. “I’ll have to sell everything we own to pay the bills and then where will I go?”

            “I know where you’ll go!” I said. “You’ll come home and live with me!” I had been living alone for four months as a widow and knew what she would be facing. Two months later, June 1, 2003, Jerry passed away. Judy’s mother came down from Batesville, MS to be with her and help take care of all the associated business. I reiterated my offer for her to live with me. After all was said and done Judy didn’t want to move to Batesville and she didn’t want to live with her daughter in Lucedale so she moved in with me in August 2003. I had a large three bedroom house, my dream home, and I had been living in my bed since Ron had died.

            God brought us together when we needed each other the most. My bedroom and bath was at one end of the house and she took a bedroom and used the guest bath at the other end of the house. Our arrangement was that I went to work every day and she would cook dinner for us at night. She loved to cook and I loved to eat! She bought the groceries and paid the power bill in excess of $100. I loved working on the computer and she loved getting out in the yard. I killed plants and she nursed them back to health. Every night we would retire to my office; me sitting at my computer in one corner and she sitting at her desk in the other. After an hour or so we would turn and prop our feet up and talk or just pray for people we knew. There was never a cross word spoken or a hurt feeling between us. We were so compatible it was scary J!

            What helped us both was that I gave her a place to live and she gave me a reason to come out of my bedroom. Judy lived with me eight months until God put her feet on a different path. I stayed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast another four months and then God moved me to Bartlett, TN to be closer to my daughter.

            A friend asked me once, “Would you have moved if Judy was still living with you?” I have to believe that God’s timing was perfect—for my life and for hers. The only certainty we have is that nothing remains the same. The sooner we grasp that realization the happier we’ll be in our destiny.