Lolly Woodward Dunlap 1/2/1922-9/8/2009 - Dreaming Beneath the Spires

My thoughts have been full of Lolly Dunlap who left this life on the 8th of September. We met weekly almost exactly 8 years ago during a difficult season of my life. We met to pray, study Scripture, and talk–i.e. me soaking in her wisdom and loving spirit.

She was one of the most generous people I have ever met–like Heidi Baker in Mozambique, she sought nothing from anyone, not help, or affirmation, appreciation, approval or attention, all of which were richly deserved. Her thought in all her relationships was how she could bless people. When I think of God’s promise to Abraham, “I will bless you, and you will be a blessing,” I think of Lolly who was a blessing because of her gentle, humble, loving spirit and her immersion in God’s word, a blessing simply because of who she was, over and above what she did. I do not use superlatives lightly, but she was one of the few true saints I have met in my life ( which can also be said of her brother Dick Woodward and his wife, Ginnie).

I have the sweetest memories of walking into her sunny bedroom, and of her looking up from Ephesians, or whatever she was studying, and telling me of her insights, then of looking up the verse in other translations. She rambled a bit, and I smiled to myself, for I am 40 years younger, ramble too, and that’s okay. Each sentence of my spiritual rambles with her was interesting and enriching, and the dots connected into a rich pattern.

There is life and enrichment and joy in God alone, in Scripture alone. One can have a rich inner life when there is little happening in one’s outer life, when material things do not abound. I learnt this from Lolly. She knew, to use one of her favourite Scriptures, “the river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.”

She was one of those rare Christian women who acknowledged her lack of interest in cooking, and house-keeping (something I have in common with her, alas!) “I just kept a trail clear when the boys were young, and we had guests in and out of the house all the time,” she said. So saints can adopt that approach to house-keeping?! What joy and liberation!

I ask for a double portion of her spirit.

She was utterly humble, had long left self and its boastfulness behind, so what I heard of her exploits with her husband John Dunlap I mostly heard from others: establishing a mega-church in Norfolk, the spiritual mothering of many, including Dick Woodward, Bill Warrick, and her own children (Dick described her son Don, in print, as “the most sinless human being I have ever known.” (with such a mother, I am not surprised!), the establishing of Norfolk Christian School, of the Triple R Ranch, work with Billy Graham Crusades, a successful radio programme, programmes for those with learning disabilities. Did these come up in our conversations? Only slightly. Her focus was on the present, on her Lord, on the conflicted young woman who sought to absorb her wisdom and her spirit.

She knew Christ, and told me of instances when she saw him almost tangibly, when he, so to say, tapped her on her shoulder and spoke to her in the succinct one-liners He specialises in. ” The more I think of the Lord, I realise how good-natured he was. Those disciples must have tried his patience!” she said, when I grumbled on about someone getting on my friable nerves. The good-natured Christ! Lolly had a gift of making the esoteric practical :How can we love like Christ, for heaven’s sake, and what exactly is love?.

I loved her Lollyisms, ” I am all right, because He is all right.” or ” The Lord knows.”

I am rambling on in the way that inwardly amused me when Lolly did it! She often told me that she had no fear of death, and so wanted to see Jesus.

I want to, too, every day, though I am quite content to see Him in this wild, weird, wonderful, God-made, God-blessed earth for four or five decades more. But heaven will be wilder, weirder, more wonderful still, and I look forward to seeking out Lolly again!

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