Monday, June 1, 2015

Going Home

Brenda Langlie 

March 8, 1970 – April 5, 2015

Brenda Marie Langlie went home to Jesus April 5, 2015, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

In September 2012, Brenda would accept a call to serve in her "dream job" as the Children's Ministry Director at her church to coordinate all those children's programs that she had actively served in. Just four months in service, she would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Following that diagnosis, she would begin a journey looking for and finding God's grace and provision in the hardest and ugliest of times of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Brenda would spend the following months until February 2015, joyfully serving in ministry at home and church, while accepting her growing cancer as God's story for her life. All those who came in contact with Brenda, would be forever touched by her inviting, joyful personality, and her love for and trust in Jesus. It would be her kindness to all, faithfulness in ministry, and smiling face that would attract people to her and to Christ. She never hesitated in trust and faith in the author of her life's story.

As the cancer spread, Brenda courageously embraced it, with the goal of "not wasting it." It was in her trusting that she found grace. She believed in the sovereignty of God and that suffering was not an absence of grace, but an opportunity to go deeper into a relationship with the Lord and the family of God. While doing treatment and continuing to serve full time in ministry at Skyline, Brenda would receive an additional call to serve in the women's ministry. A handful of women would accept an invitation to become a part of the dreaded 6:30 a.m. study group. To their surprise, their study group would connect them through the study of sound doctrine of suffering bathed in the sovereignty of almighty God. The group became the highlight of her week and theirs. She didn't waste her cancer in solitude, but instead invested in deeper relationships, and living her journey in public to honor Christ. Brenda believed that her cancer was designed by and a gift from God. Cherishing and witnessing to the truth and glory of Christ was more important than beating the cancer.