KNOWING ME KNOWING YOU “Knowing Me, Knowing You…” is a way of sharing with each other and finding out more about our church family. Mike Cosser is our interviewer/researcher and editor, and this time he has searched out and probed into Connie Lombard's life..... It was great to meet up with Connie and Fred at their bungalow on a very cold afternoon in early December. Connie was born in Holbrooks, when it was just a group of houses up a long country lane where Lockhurst Lane meets Foleshill Road. Houses were then of three storeys, and the top one was a workshop, which was very draughty and dusty. After a complicated forty eight hour birth, Connie arrived, but two weeks later she had pneumonia, and that disease with bronchitis, pleurisy, influenza, coughs and lung problems generally have dogged her life. Connie’s mum said prayers with her every night, before Connie went to sleep for most of her life that she lived with her. At seven years old, Connie asked for and got a picture Bible. Connie went to Sunday School, but not regularly, but she did find out about Jesus and God in her early years. When Connie was eight or nine, it was suggested that she learn to swim to try to enlarge her lung capacity. Having learnt to swim, Connie joined a Monday night swimming club and consequently her health got a lot better, but she was still ill in the winters. Connie met up with Fred at Foleshill Congregational Church when she was fourteen, and from then on they went out with one another. During the war, Connie worked in a grocery shop, and at the Daimler, where tanks and cars were manufactured. Fred was in a reserve occupation, being a draughtsman at Herbert’s in Foleshill. He was also in the Home Guard. Connie’s family were bombed out of their home, and four potential homes they were preparing to move into were also destroyed just before they were due to move in, but they eventually settled in Wyley Road. The couple married in 1945, and moved to live in Delhi Avenue, Foleshill, (where they stayed until 1968) and by that time Connie was drawn to prayer, and was regularly talking to God. After they had been married for ten years they adopted a three month old son called Stephen. He was followed three and a half years later by a sister called Sally Anne, then two months old. Ten months later Connie got pregnant, giving birth in October 1956 to a daughter called Jenny. Following the birth, Connie felt weak and went to St Lawrence’s Church, Foleshill to have a cleansing with the vicar after the birth. She experienced something akin to a window opening above her, and a lovely golden light filled her with a great peace and calm. Following that experience, she had no problem in the energy needed to manage her various tasks in the household. Stephen was diagnosed with a hole in his heart when he was five and at that time there was no medication for that condition. When Stephen reached ten, and they were offered an experimental medication for him, they felt it best to refuse and to pray to God for healing instead. Consequently, by September Stephen was very much better, not completely cured, but a lot better than he had been three years previously. Connie was still walking with the Lord and reading her Bible, and occasionally attending at Durbar Avenue Methodist Church. They began to attend Church more regularly when their oldest child began to attend Sunday School. They became involved very quickly in the life of the Church which the Lord had prepared them for. They moved to a bigger house with a garden in Halford Lane whilst the children were growing up, but were still attending Durbar Avenue Methodist Church. Connie found that God was drawing her to working with the Girl’s Brigade and she had an extra involvement there. In 1982 when the family grew up and got married or moved away, Connie and Fred moved to Crecy Road, and began to attend Quinton Park Baptist Church, where they both felt at home. Connie attended the Ladies Fellowship, and was a regular speaker on a variety of topics which the Lord had put on her heart at a variety of other Fellowships. She also joined the prayer fellowship with Margaret Hughes, the choir for a short time and a Bible Study Group. They were both members of the Senior Friend’s Fellowship under Stanley and Dorothy Bushell. Connie knew that she was doing what God wanted her to do, nothing was a chore or difficult as she was living in harmony with Him. At this time, Connie was the Commissioner of the Girls Brigade for some five years. However, she left to take care of her beloved cousin Joy, a teacher, when she contracted Hodgkin’s disease, which she died from some nine months later. There were lots of difficulties with the children, but somehow they have known the strength of the Lord to enable them to do the right thing. However, Connie began to re- experience the weakness with her chest during these trying times. Connie and Fred’s daughter Sally has a daughter Nicola (28) and a son, Timothy (30). Timothy has suffered with muscular dystrophy from the age of nine. Nicola has two children, Chloe (7) and Owen (2) and they are their first great grandchildren. Jenny, now fifty three, has two daughters aged twenty four and twenty one. Stephen is fifty nine, and has had no recent contact with them, sadly. Connie told me that she has been kept alive these past fifteen years by the advances in the drug regimes that are available. During this time Connie has experienced God’s grace and mercy and His assurance that she is in the right place at the right time. Connie praises the Lord for her and Fred’s enduring relationship, their marriage has now lasted some sixty five years. They both feel that their cup runs over with this blessing and despite life being not easy at times, they both praise the Lord with one another. Connie can only come to Church as and when the balance of her health allows her now, but we thank the Lord for her wisdom and the joy of knowing her. Well done Connie and Fred, we love you and treasure you very dearly, and so does our Lord.