Joyce Lenning

Joyce Ann Lenning was born on February 20, 1933, and went to be with the Lord on January 12, 2024. Neither she nor her husband, Robert Joe Lenning, who passed before her on the same day of the same month years before, had the luxury of a high school education. However, they worked hard and educated themselves in order that their children could have the opportunities they never had. Michael became an anesthetist and Sheila a college professor, past police officer and retired federal special agent. Joey worked for UPS, was well-respected by his colleagues and rose in the ranks over 40 plus years, ending up driving feeder trucks until his passing.

Her daughter remembers being read to, taken to the library, and getting stacks of books at birthdays and Christmas. Education was very important to Joyce who made sure that her children appreciated its importance. One year, the Encyclopedia Britannica salesman made a killing off Mom when she purchased the entire collection as well as the Child Craft Series. She was serious about learning! There were always books at her house and in her hand. As a result, her children learned the love of reading and learning.

Joyce grew up with her children. A very young mother, she learned as she grew. Her daughter remembers her mother playing outside and doing activities with the neighborhood children. Joyce’s house was open to them. When the family moved to CenterPoint Alabama, Sheila, on numerous occasions, answered the door to children asking for her mother to come out and play! Of course, that was before she began working at Sears. When Mike attended a specialized high school, his friends were welcomed at home. Two of them spent every holiday and off time with the family. People who lived in their neighborhood, upon discovering Joyce’s passing, called her their neighborhood mom.

Joyce retired from Sears where she sold large appliances. In her later life, she attended the Sears employees’ monthly reunions with her neighbor Harold Kelly. She enjoyed being around people. After Sears, she became a Nanny, and with the glee of a grandmother, worked with a series of young children. She received Christmas cards and life event notifications from the families of these children until the time of her passing. She enjoyed sitting with her long-awaited, beloved, grandchild, Stephanie Lenning Bethea, teaching her songs and recording her daily activities. She also welcomed Stephanie’s best friend anytime her mother wanted to bring her for a play date.

Tragically, Joyce was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The form this dreaded disease took was slowly progressive, spanning many years. What is notable about her condition, however, is that she did not exhibit the extreme anger, verbal/physical aggression and out of control behavior that often accompanies this horrible disease. Until the end, she remained a favorite of the nurses who cared for her, and a special favorite of the hospice nurse who helped ease her last days. And, she never completely left us. In a moment of clarity, she told her daughter that she knew the realistic baby doll her sisters gave her wasn’t real, but she liked holding it. Other patients expressed seeing these kinds of dolls as real babies.

Joyce is preceded in passing by her mother and father, Ruth and Trudy Fulmer, her brother Glenn Fulmer, her sister Margie Ball, and beloved son Joey, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins with whom she was very close. She spoke, in happy remembrance, of younger years spent on her grandmother’s farm, and in her later years, of her brother and sisters whom she loved dearly. She stayed close to her sisters.

She is survived by her son and daughter, Sheila L Stephens and Michael Lenning and their spouses, Guillermo Fernandez Roman (Will) and Dana Lenning; her sisters Gail Cornelius and Cathy Lankford and their spouses, Kenneth Cornelius and Ronald Lankford; her nieces and nephews, Kim Lankford Thrasher and husband Ray Thrasher, Debra Cornelius, David Cornelius, Michelle Ball, Robert Ball and wife Becky Godwin Ball; and all their children and grandchildren.

Joyce was a woman who didn’t finish high school, who never invented anything, nor wrote great books, but her life and influence is too far reaching to include in a treatise such as this. People have contacted her daughter with expressions of love and great fondness for Joyce, some have even said that she had a positive influence on them at a time when they needed one.

One question her daughter has been asked recently; is why does a loving God allow the kind of slow progressive descent into dark destruction of body and mind in those He loves? The only answer that makes any sense to her is that only He knows why, but God is good and is good all the time.

The Bible says that we live in a fallen world and the rain falls on the just and the unjust. In her daughter’s mind, when God intervenes in the lives of men, we call it a miracle. When He doesn’t, and He allows the fallen nature of the world or the people in it to cause pain to someone, we call it life…but He provides redemption, comfort, and relief for that pain (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Life on earth will be a struggle for those whose home is Heaven. There is always a reason for pain because He never neglects His children. He counts every hair on our heads (Matthew 10:20 and Luke 12:7), He cares for every detail of our lives and has written our names on the palm of His hand (Isaiah 49:16 – “I have engraved your name on the palms of my hands…”). His ways and His mind are above ours, as much as the human mind looking down at a muscle at the bottom of the sea is above the mind and understanding of that creature, wrote C.S. Lewis, an agnostic who found God and wrote copiously about Him.

Our comfort is that Joyce is now with her Lord and Savior, far removed from any pain or struggle. She now knows the answers to all the questions of life and is experiencing the love of a God who sent His only son to save us and provide a home with Him forever. All we have to do, and all Joyce did to receive this gift, is to believe in Him who sent the Christ to die, and to accept His death as payment for our sins…thus closing the separation from our God that was caused by the Fall of the original man and woman.