Through the hurt, there is hope…

You just never know when you might be used by God…

I was at a patient’s home today, in an area that was relatively low income homes. As I was leaving her house, her neighbor was at the door coming in. I said ‘hi’ and proceeded to my car to head to the next house. As I pulled out of the driveway, I saw the neighbor walking back to her house. I started driving past & she flagged me down.

“Can I ask you a favor?” was what she asked. I tentatively asked her what she needed, aware that I only had a few minutes to spare so I would not be late to my next patient. She proceeded to ask me if I could help her move a speaker from her house into her car. “I’m pregnant & shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy & don’t have anyone here to help me. I’ll be glad to give you $10.”

I answered with “sure, but you’re not paying me anything”, honestly hoping it wouldn’t be a huge task that would take too long. I entered her home & saw the living conditions which ‘weren’t the best’. I saw the speaker she needed moved & beside it was a 2 foot tall white wooden cross with writing ‘in memory of…’ on it. As I moved the cross gently she told me that the cross was for her baby who died.

We carried the speaker out & kept chatting. She asked if I was a nurse (I wear scrubs) & as I told her I was a physical therapist, she then told me she had a lot of PT after her car accident, when she was 9 months pregnant, which was how her baby died. She then told me she had some medical problems & has lost other babies during pregnancy, so she was very nervous about being pregnant again. We stood by my car & I felt a ‘nudge’ to ask her name, when her baby was due & if I could pray for her. I’m not usually one to say that to ‘strangers’ but knew it felt right. She said “yes, I would like that” and bowed her head.

OK, I didn’t really mean right there, right now…well, I sort of did but I didn’t think she would respond like that. So I prayed. When I finished, she said “Can I pray too?” and of course I said yes. That’s when she prayed this:

“God, I can’t believe how good you are. Thank you for this lady who helped me move the speaker. I can’t believe a complete stranger would help me like that. Thank you for this home so I’m not homeless anymore. Please help my homeless friends too & let them have hope. Thank you for the car that I now have. You’ve showed me that you really will take care of me….”

Through the hurt, there is hope…

Life happens…let’s make it good!

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”-Abraham Lincoln

Sometimes life forces us to think about…life…and death…and how we’re living today.

Every day I work with people who have had some type of health crisis. I work with those who are healthy one day & in surgeries the next, those who are planning their retirement then fighting for their lives and those who are worried about what’s for dinner tonight then wondering how many dinners they’ll have left with their families.

It doesn’t even have to be a life or death situation. Friends move, marriages fall apart or kids go off to college. Sometimes life forces us to stop and ‘take inventory’.

I recently had another ‘cancer scare’. It was the second one in less than a year. Everything is fine and after a ‘major’ surgery & ‘minor’ procedures, I’ve received a clean bill of health. But, that’s no guarantee. Life can suddenly change for any of us. Accidents happen, diagnoses are heard and none of us know when it might happen today or tomorrow. It’s what we do with right now that counts.

I want to live today! I want to be the mom my kids are proud of & love to be around. I want to be the ‘friend a friend would like to have’. I want to risk trusting God’s plan for me. I want to climb mountains, enjoy sunsets and savor s’mores around a campfire. I want to be the one to make a difference in someone’s life, to encourage someone to do things they never thought possible, and to show people that they are worth it & there is hope!

Life is short. Make every moment count. Start today. All cliches we hear often, but do we take them seriously? How about you–are you ready to jump in and make it happen right now? Come on–are you in? I’m ready–let’s go!

Wanting it all to stop

Disclaimer: This is part of ‘my story’. It’s honest & real and it’s told because there are other people out there who continue to struggle with their past. My prayer is that God will use my experiences to connect with these people. If you are one of these people, hang in there. Healing & forgiving really can happen…

Do you know any 9 year olds? Nine year olds are growing, yet still ‘little kids. They’re innocent, play with toys & are just beginning to step out…but not too far.

I was 9 years old when I first thought about killing myself.

I felt hated. I felt unwanted. I was told I was worthless & “would never amount to anything”. I had been sexually abused for years and emotionally & physically abused forever. It’s not that I wanted to die. I just wanted it all to stop.

It was ‘one of those days’, a day like so many. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had already been taking alcohol out of the kitchen cupboard & I had already learned that would numb everything. I knew where all the medicines were. That day I had been yelled at, hit multiple times & told ‘why can’t you be like…’ again. I opened the cupboard & took out a mini shot-sized bottle of whiskey then walked to the drawer that held the medicines. After grabbing a bottle of aspirin (I don’t know why I reached for that but I thought it would work), I swallowed a handful, drank the whiskey, locked myself in my bedroom…and waited to die. In my 9 year old head, that was going to happen.

Not much happened. I didn’t die. In fact, to this day, I’ve never told this story because no one ever found out. Instead of stopping it all, life went on. A little time passed, my mother called out for me to do something and when I didn’t respond, she came to my bedroom door. I knew it was too late to try any more then. I had failed. Finding the door locked, I was in trouble again, hit again, put down again…the cycle continued.

I remember thinking that I had screwed up one more time. I couldn’t even kill myself. My parents words echoed in my head, “such a loser”, “can’t do anything right”, “no one will ever love you”.

In my 9 year old brain, those words were true. Those words were all I knew.

Scrub off the junk

When I bought my house, the stainless steel sink in the kitchen was very stained. I thought I would have to live with it until I could get a new one. But I started cleaning it, and it looked better. I could have stopped there, it was ‘good enough’. I’m guessing that is exactly what the previous owners had done.

How often do we do that in our lives? We have ‘junk’ that keeps piling on, we clean it off a bit, but we always stop when it’s ‘good enough’? Real change happens when we take an honest look at ourselves & ‘scrub off the junk’. Like cleaning that sink, real change is hard work. Even as we think we have it all cleaned out, we may see spots we’ve missed.

It doesn’t stop there. For that sink, and our lives, to ‘stay clean’, we can’t slip back into letting things go. Justifying that ‘it’s not that bad’ or ‘it’s good enough’ will slowly allow all the junk we’ve cleaned out to creep back in.

I use bleach & an SOS pad periodically to clean the sink. It really shines when I do. It’s harsh, it’s work & it’s not something everyone would do.

Neither is changing a life…

Taking action–tornado relief

Every time there is a natural disaster, I want to help. There have been a few times when I’ve really felt called to action. When the tornadoes hit the southern states on April 27th, it was one of those times. Then I saw this tweet by my friend Casey Graham on twitter:

“It all sounds good about “helping” tornado victims but the people who help take action.”

It was time to take action. It was one week ago, on Saturday morning, when I heard about the goal Casey and another great guy, Pastor Dave Anderson of Crosspoint Community Church in Decatur Alabama, had set. They wanted to raise $10,000 in 24 hours for tornado relief. At that time, they had about $100.

Fast forward just over 24 hours later and well over $100,000 had been raised!! Yes, you read that right—10 times more than what the goal had been. More importantly, this money wasn’t just sitting somewhere. It was going to people on the ground in the form of gift cards for basic necessities, such as diapers, toothbrushes, food and all the things that we take for granted every day. Here’s what has happened in one week:

• The team on the ground have been working with multiple churches, both in the area and ones who have sent teams in to help
• Churches from all over the country, including Georgia, Kentucky, Utah, Texas, Missouri & Ohio (and more!) have sent money or have jumped in on the ‘Tornado Tithe Challenge’
• We’ve distributed $1000′s of gift cards for immediate assistance
• We’ve contacted mobile home dealers to negotiate discounts for purchasing new mobile homes for families with total losses 
• We’re partnering with Diversified Services, a utility company that replaces utility lines for Alabama power, Georgia power & local utilities
• We have forged a significant relationship with Epic Church in Decatur and they have provided refurbished FEMA trailers for approximately 20 people through their team and fund raising efforts.  We contributed to this fund.
• We are sending churches, supplies, and now working to send teams to help them as they have secured funding for 20 more trailers
• Every day we are partnering with more churches & organizations and reaching more people who have suffered & lost so much

What am I doing? Even though I’m 6+ hours from the destruction, I’m helping serve on the tornado relief team and my major role is communications with all donors, including updates from those on the ground. I’m also hoping to get a team together from Cincinnati to go and help. I’ve met so many awesome people and am overwhelmed at how people have come together to help so many. This is how the church is supposed to be!

What can you do? Please help. Please take action.

• Donate!! It’s easy (and tax deductible) Just go here: Immediate Relief Fund
• Talk to your pastors & join the Tornado Tithe Challenge
• Follow some of the updates here: Tornado Relief updates
• Watch these videos from the teams on the ground of real people, like you & me, with their lives torn apart in one day:

I wasn’t looking to be ‘special’

He’s an 85 year old World War II veteran or as he describes it, he was ‘in Patton’s army’. When I met him a few weeks ago, he couldn’t speak much, couldn’t stand on his own and was unsure of me helping him. I was told he didn’t understand a lot of what was being said.

I continued to work with him and always spoke directly to him. It didn’t take long to realize he really did understand what was being said, he simply couldn’t express that he could. One day I looked right at him and said, “I know you can understand. I know you’re just having trouble saying what you want.” With that, he smiled his huge smile and nodded his head enthusiastically while muttering, “Yes”, as a tear fell from his eye.

We’ve continued to work together and share his progress. Last week I began asking him more about his time spent in World War II and though I couldn’t understand all he was saying, I was able to decipher and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. A few times he teared up as he told me about D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge and more. I asked him if he considered himself a hero and I told him I did. Again, a few tears and a big smile when I acknowledged and recognized all he had done.

Here was a man who had once been a strong warrior who fought in multiple battles. Here was a man who was now trapped inside a body that wouldn’t cooperate. I didn’t treat him any differently than I treat anyone else. He deserved respect for who he was and who is still is today. Unfortunately, what I’ve learned is he didn’t always get it and too often neither do many others.

As I was getting ready to leave at the end of the session, he said something that I didn’t quite understand. I looked at him with a puzzled look and he repeated it again. Still unable to understand what he was insistent on saying, I told him, “I’m not quite understanding.” His reply, with every ounce of energy he had to say it just right was, “You’re special.”

With that, my own eyes began to tear and with my smile, he knew this time I understood. One little phrase that I wasn’t looking for and definitely wasn’t expecting, had absolutely made my day. At that moment diverse emotions hit me, sadness that something as simple as respect was considered ‘special’ and joy that I was able to gvve him a little bit of it.

There are some moments that will always stick with you and continue to influence you, long after they’ve occurred. I know this was one of those moments.