Another tribute to Abby Jill Brauhn

Jim Poole, an excellent actor (at Steep Theater) and someone who worked at Park Community Church here in the city as Artistic Director for nearly 18 years (as well as doing a number of voices in the Veggie Tales video series), provides a guest commentary each Tuesday morning at 5:4o am and 8:4o am on Moody Radio. This week, he used his commentary to talk about those people in our lives who model what it is to give of themselves to help others without thinking twice and to tell us what can we learn from people like this. He used Abby-Jill Brauhn from Park as an example and here is what he said:

I walked up the steps to a place that was once a home to attend a memorial service. I counted this my fifth such service, as five unique women, all from our same church community, had died battling cancer. All were in their prime. And yet all seemed to live extraordinary lives – and I don’t say that lightly. Four of these services occurred in the past three years, this most recent one on the Saturday before Holy Week. The extraordinary life of Abby-Jill Brauhn was celebrated in grand fashion.

Over 300 people came – not that I counted, and not that a large number mattered unless she actually and significantly touched the lives of these people… which she did, in meaningful and practical ways. Abby-Jill served as the director of missions at Park Community Church, but she operated much more like a special concierge: connecting people, helping them network and land jobs, find apartments, get a deal on renting a truck, …helping you move in and stocking your pantry with groceries. If you were sick, her skill set from her nursing days kicked in, and she got you set up with the best medicine. It seemed like she had an inside track on everything from travel plans to fashion tips and she was generous with it all – she gave me my favorite fleece sweatshirt for no other reason than that’s how she rolled.

I suppose one of the most significant ways she made an impact on people was through the short-term mission trips she led, most often to an orphanage in Mexico. One friend who spoke at the memorial service described his experience this way: “Immediately, I was in the company of someone who could juggle and multi-task with excellence. But it was not only what she did, but how she treated other people. I was in a van riding for six hours and the word “non-judgmental” comes to mind. For her to break her way through my crusty exterior, she had to be that way. I mark our conversation in that van as very significant in opening me up for the rest of the trip and for the church community as a whole.”

Another woman who spoke said that “it was like one week I did not know the powerful force that was Abby-Jill, and then the next week I was calling her on the phone for a late night personal conversation as if we were friends, just like that – that’s just how she was.”

Afterwards, many remarked at how inspiring the memorial service was, and yet it seemed also to create a sense of longing, or yearning, for a life well lived, for a community of friendship like many of us had once called home, but has since scattered. C. S. Lewis has said that longing is a part of the human experience. It’s developed and comes from times when we hold a baby, or experience true fellowship during a dinner party conversation, and times when we glimpse peace. And I would add, times like the memorial service for Abby-Jill.

It’s these feelings of longing deep within us that point to things beyond our world. They point to what the resurrection of Jesus reveals: that His Kingdom is here now, but not yet fully realized. And so, it is a holy longing. And the timing of Abby-Jill’s service just before Holy Week couldn’t have been more fitting.