A Tribute to Flora Young
Today I want to share the story of an incredible woman who sadly passed away in April this year.
Many of you will have met Flora Young if you have been coming to Activate events for several years. If you didn’t know Flora, you may have met Sheila Bridge, her daughter, who has spoken at our events and supported Activate for many years.
I’ve taken this tribute from Sheila’s blog, with her permission. Flora’s life story made me smile in amazement! I hope it encourages and inspires you.
Flora lived a full and extraordinary life, and her warm, caring nature enriched the lives of all she knew. Her cheerfulness and thankfulness for every little joy and kindness she experienced stayed with her right to the end.
She was born in the small village of Dalry in Ayrshire, Scotland, the youngest of three girls. Her voracious reading fuelled her love of travel and adventure, and at 24 she left Scotland to work as a telephonist in Salisbury Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) She met and married Cedric Davies within a year, and Paul and Ruth were born in Salisbury before they moved to Indonesia where Sheila was born.
Political upheavals necessitated an evacuation from there, and the family was repatriated to Scotland before going on to live and work in Lagos, Nigeria. The family travelled extensively during this time, and she saw most of the world. Returning to the UK, she lived briefly in Cheltenham and Chester before settling in Sevenoaks, Kent for 40 years. Flora worked at Amhurst Medical Centre as a receptionist and was deeply involved in the life of the Vine Evangelical Church running various groups, being a friend to many and generally being the life and soul of that community. Widowed by Cedric’s sudden death in 1987, she travelled to India as a volunteer in an orphanage.
In 1992 she met and married Dr Bill Young and moved to his home in Underriver. They continued to travel extensively in the UK and New Zealand and East Africa. Following Bill’s death in 2013, she moved to Rugby to be nearer her children. She was a faithful member of St Georges, Hillmorton, and made many new friends, attending a different church lunch almost every day of the week. In January 2017 she moved to Dewar Close residential home where she settled very well and received loving care. For a while she attended Bilton Evangelical Church. She coped with the difficulties of advancing age with grace and humour, always delighting in the simplest things and appreciating those who cared for her. Her lifelong faith in God shone through her life and demeanour and gave her strength and courage to the end.
Flora died after a short illness on 15th April aged 90. She will be greatly missed by her children Paul, Ruth and Sheila. Grandchildren Rachael, Sarah, Alex, Chris, Paul, Emma and Matthew and seven Great Grandchildren, as well as other family and friends.
Flora and Cedric were very active members of the Gideons for many years, and Flora has requested that any donations made in her memory be given to the Gideons.
You can find a link to donate or simply make a comment on a memorial page here:
https://florayoung.muchloved.com/
If this story has inspired you to continue thinking about what it means to live life to the full, take a look at Sheila’s latest post:
Living well when you are feeling wobbly
So how do you live well when you are living in a precarious reality or you have an internal jumble of wobbly feelings or both those things going on at the same time?
The answer is that you need to live in a story- a true story is the best kind of story to live in – this story needs to frame your perspective on how the world is and who you are in that world. In another video I will talk about how you might choose that story, but for the sake of brevity on this subject let’s assume that you are already choosing to live in the framework of belief that is the Christian story.
When you live in this story then you have three tools to help you live well when you are feeling wobbly.
The first tool you have is your anchor and the name of your anchor is hope.
Continue reading here.