Donna Mae Sessanna

Donna Mae Sessanna, born in the middle of a war into a family of northern Italian ancestry, part of what was known as the “silent generation,” the generation born during the Depression and World War 2, a generation that knew something about hardship and the importance of frugality.  

Born in the last third of summer.  Her mother, Helen, carried her through the heat.  

Born in Parma, OH, a city known for… for… well, I couldn’t say…I couldn’t find anything remarkable.  Today, we’ll say that what makes Parma notable is what happened there on August 31, 1942.  

And Parma, you kept your streets paved and snow plowed for a girl who married the love of her life and kept her vows for the 49 years they were married.  Parma, good on you, you worthy city!  You’ve contributed to greatness!

And why not think this way, is Donna not a credit to Parma?  A mother of four daughters.  Six grandchildren.  Seven great grandchildren.  A lineage now spread beyond Parma, flung throughout the United States, generations from her doing good stuff, probably even important stuff. 

Behind all the endeavors of these daughters and their offspring is a woman who worked hard, lived cheerful, who was eager to please while also holding stubbornly to a few important principles, whose smile, from my remembrance and the photos I’ve seen, was confident and satisfied, who loved her God and trained herself to listen attentively to him.  

I knew her a little.  After she died, something I learned about her which I thought was significant was that she spoke to her sister, Nancy, every day.  That sisterly bond stood out to me because I knew how much Donna’s family by marriage meant to her.  And it’s a tendency that when one is so caught up in relationships with the married family, to easily drift away from the ancestral family, the family she grew up in.  That didn’t happen with Donna and Nancy.  The obituary called her the “treasured sister” of Nancy.  That’s lovely.  They talked the night before Donna died.

And all that got me thinking to the memorial service in Boulder, CO – I heard that people from Tri-City, Northern Ridge, and Calvary attended.  Folks from congregations that Donna had worshiped among during the past decades.  When for whatever reason Donna ceased weekly worship with a particular congregation, the relationships with her brothers and sisters in Christ remained.

Point being, Donna, far as I can tell, was a vow keeper, a bridge builder, a wound-setter, a perspective lender, a world-class peacemaker, a maintainer of cheer and composure, the kind of person who fastens together small and large societies, indeed, that civilizations depend on.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.  

But that gets me to the next part of this talk, when I press “pause” on the positivity.  I suspect that Donna wasn’t perfect, though I personally had no evidence of that.  But Donna was human and there’s a darkness that shoots through all of us.  So, before she was a peace-maker, she herself had to be reconciled to the Great Good, the Holy.  

Let me explain what I mean by giving some theological backstory.   There’s the earth and there’s the heavens; a world observable and named… and a dimension above that, a thicker, supernatural one.  When God created humans, they were intended to straddle the earth and the heavens, to meet God in the heavens and then reflect him on the earth – reflect his goodness, his justice, his wisdom – into our world.  

Let me repeat, reflect his “goodness.”  The God who is there is…and there’s no better word for it…GOOD.

But back to what I was saying: humans are reflectors, image bearers of God.  That’s what we are for.  

However, from the very beginning of our history, we’ve felt hemmed in by the fact that we – humans – are particularly made in the service of God…created for SOMEONE else.  Go back as far into human history as you want, and you’ll see a distrust – a growing distrust – between image bearers and their Creator.  You’ll see our discomfort with the arrangement of God’s creation, and a desire to set up our own arrangement.  I’ll do it my way, as another Italian crooned.  We’ll re-invent ourselves.  Come up with our own definitions.  Shoot, we’ll even fashion our own gods.

In this, we’ve fallen short of our reason for being, and it’s gotten pretty weird.  We’re a mirror, refusing to reflect.  We’re an effect having lost sight of its cause.  An echo out of reach with what gives it voice.  

So, of course, we’ve become profoundly confused about ourselves.  We’ve lost our grip on the heavens and in doing so lost our grip on the earth.  And so, what ended up is that nature is confused, we are lost, God and humans are strangers to each other.  

God – the Source, the Creator, Life Bearer, Life Begetter – is DISTANT, and in his absence, we are dry, hungry, confused, expiring.  

The dry and hungry race, the very one Donna was born into.

2000 years ago, into this spiritual wasteland that would have eventually turned everything gray enters…God!  But not God as condemner, as an axe wielder ready to cut down this thing called image-bearers gone rogue.  God comes from the heavens and enters the earth as a fellow HUMAN.  His human name?  JESUS.  

And why has Jesus arrived in our flesh and bones?  To take onto his body our guilt, our lostness, the penalty of our suspicion against the Creator… and carry all those uglies with him into the grave.  Jesus arrives into humanity to die for our falling short.  A SAVIOR!

Yes, the old witnesses report that the perfect Man, nothing less than a 2^nd Adam, was violently executed by an organized community of humans, ironically taking their…and everyone else’s…our… guilt into the grave of graves, hell itself.  

Let me say that again: God arrives as a representative Human to die for our sins.

Let me say that again: After years, decades, centuries, millennia of humans weakly and defiantly and clumsily failing at being human, God arrives as a new kind of human and carefully, deliberately arranges for all their guilt to be placed on him, then buried buried buried into the deepest dimension there is.  Guilt, gone… never to be heard from again.  Sin, paid for by the God-man.

Then, the story goes on, the human story goes on.  God called that Perfect Man back from the grave.  So, after paying for sins, this Representative Human walks out of his tomb.  Do you see what that means?  When God summons Jesus the Representative Human from the grave, he is calling us forth. 

Jesus’ resurrection is the pledge – the living breathing guarantee – that humans have been reconciled to God and will enter whatever age comes next as restored image bearers.  

So, the big story of God and man, which, after all, is the Lede sentence of the entire history of the earth – is that of RECONCILIATION.  The story that God has written, the one He has even entered into, is of friendly relationships being restored between the Creator and his creaturely sons and daughters.

Donna – yes, back to Donna! – at some point in her life heard that story of reconciliation and it became her story!  Donna realized: I’m the woman, I’m the humanity reconciled to God through Jesus’ death and resurrection.  

Donna came Home to her heavenly Father through Jesus.  In hearing the story of Jesus.

Here’s the thing…here’s the Bible truth: the story you tell yourself you’re living in makes all the difference to the actual story you’re living in.  

If you’re living in a story where you are still far away from God…perhaps to the point he makes no difference to you; a story in which you’re muttering to yourself about how confusing or hopeless it’s all gotten– well, then, you’re still in that dry and weary and hungry state that is set to expire. 

If, on the other hand, like Donna, you’ve believed the big story that God has participated in, you’ve gone all in on the true, good news of RECONCILIATION, well, then, the life of God now flickers in you…

…and because he is a God like he is, GOOD, his gene of peacemaking and friendship now informs how you relate to family and friends and strangers…and even enemies.  

So, finally, here’s my Bible-informed overview of the career of Donna Mae Sessanna – 

• she was born into a race of fallen-shorters
• at some point she heard the true story of the reconciling God-man and believed
• now charged with God’s life she became – to degrees she never could with just her natural personality – a reconciler, which involved the Spirit of Jesus forming her to see people for who they really are – not better than, not worse than…warts and all and also glorious… and liking those people…enjoying them…loving them wisely
• On January 30, 2026, angels of God majestically entered Safeway, found in the adjoining Starbucks the one they were sent for: Donna, sealed with Christ’s Spirit, and brought Donna’sspirit into the presence of her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 
• Donna now, with Christ, rests from her labors…and awaits the final resurrection, in which her spirit will be reunited to her body, her body which will have been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ to be like unto HIS glorious body
• Equipped with the wisdom of Christ and a body that is glorious, honorable, permanent, Spiritual – – Donna will then be a queen of the heavens and earth, a mediator between the Creator and the non-human creation, a reconciler in full. 
• Thanks be to God for that which Jesus Christ has saved Donna and all who believe God’s story!