This week is a bittersweet one for me. Bitter because I lost a family member. Sweet because she entered heaven. Addie Edmondson Leslie is my aunt, my mother’s youngest sister. I lived the first six/seven years of my life in the house with my mother’s family. My grand parents, their three daughters, two sons (the third son was away fighting in WWII), my mom, my dad, and I lived in a five room house with one bath. Talk about close fellowship – we had it.
I was the baby in this family, and these aunts and uncles were more like my older brothers and sisters.

Especially Addie who was eight years older than me. We played “dress up,” which means I was her living baby doll.
The walls of the bedroom where the aunts slept were papered with pictures of movie stars torn out of movie magazines, and I would lay on the bed with Addie and the other aunts naming the movie stars lining the walls and ceiling of that room.
Addie and I grew up, and our lives went in separate directions. Life does that with families, but Addie and I came together again in our young married years. Addie and her husband were baptized with the Holy Spirit about the same time as Gene and I. We all attended the same church. Her three sons and my two sons grew up together and are still close today.
Addie became critically ill in the middle years of her life and was dying. The doctors gave no hope to the family, but God had different plans for Addie. By one of His great miracles Addie was raised up to life in that hospital. I was blessed to be in the hospital that night and to have witnessed this as God answered prayers which all of us had prayed for Addie. “If you ask anything in my name I will do it,” the words of Jesus written in the Bible. We asked, and He did a miracle. Some of you reading this have heard me testify about this in meetings I have done. Addie was given years of life by that miracle, and she wasted none of those years. She served God, her family, her church, and all who know her have been touched by Addie. About forty something years ago God raised Addie back to life as she was dying in the hospital room, and this morning He raised her to the highest life, the best life, eternity with Him.
So join me today in honoring the life of Addie, one of God’s saints. You may have never met her, but she is part of the family of God, your sister in the Lord if you are Christian. Pray for her husband, her children, and grandchildren. We will miss Addie, but I know heaven is rejoicing, She is probably already working on the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. If you don’t know her you do not understand this. But those of us who knew her know she could spread a feast. Good to know one day I will eat that supper with her.
June Capps Evans is a speaker and pastoral advisor to Women of the Word. You can follow her on Facebook too and read her Notes on Life at #writtenwisdomfrommamajune.