Count Your Blessings, page 28
Grief was like an ocean tide. It flowed in and out. Its waves sometimes seemed gentle and at other times stormy. Soon Ted returned to work, and my children returned to school. I sat alone at home, wondering how I was supposed to face the future. There were times I thought I heard Kim cry, but her crib remained empty.
When Linda and Robbie came home from school they looked sad, and would go to their rooms. I realized that I needed to help my children grieve and move on.
I told them, “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to miss Kim.” By giving them permission to show their feelings I noticed that each day they seemed a little stronger, a little happier.
Before Kim had been born I’d run a daycare in my home. I had planned on starting that back up when she turned a year old. But after she died my grief had not allowed me to do this.
A year later, I decided to return to school. Not really knowing what I wanted to take, but needing something new to keep me busy, I signed up for a key punch course. At the end of my six-week course I received a certificate. I placed my certificate in a kitchen drawer and forgot about it. Then at the end of the week my sister called and said, “Karen, a position in our key punch department has opened up. Are you interested?”
“Yes, but first I need someone to watch Robbie and Linda for two hours after school.” I asked my neighbor, Ginny. She agreed, and I decided to go for an interview. To my surprise I was hired.
As it turned out, my skills as a key punch operator were lacking. Eventually, my supervisor moved me to accounts payable. I worked on the book accounts of Corrie ten Boom, an evangelist who had lost her whole family in concentration camps during World War II. Yet, after the war ended, Corrie, at the age of fifty-two, stepped out in faith and traveled the world sharing a message of hope and forgiveness.
Over the next year, I met many evangelists and heard their stories of courage. Stories of people living through tough circumstances, yet who pressed forward—even when it hurt.
Gradually, I realized that I, too, had been moving forward one step at a time.
I found happiness in watching my children grow: Robbie earning his Boy Scout badges. Linda out growing her Barbie’s, experimenting with make-up, becoming a beautiful young woman. Yes, life continued, with its good, bad, and sometimes outrageous moments.
Fifteen years later, I sat next to a hospital window and watched a sparrow pick a berry and fly away. My daughter, Linda smiled as her nurse walked in with a wee-bundle in her arms. She smiled and said, “An angel said this baby girl wants Grandma to hold her.”
As I held my granddaughter, Breanna, I savored the moment. Looking into her sparkling eyes, I smiled and said, “Linda, she’s so beautiful.”
Four years later, I welcomed Breanna’s sister, Staci. I am blessed. And my memories of Kim are like the sweet fragrance of a rose—often returning with a sense of joy.
~Karen Kosman
Five Open Hearts
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
May 22nd, 2009 is a day I won’t soon forget. “Leigh Anne … telephone, it’s your dad,” my husband called to me at the kitchen table. I jumped up from an “exciting” game of Go Fish with my two young daughters.
“Hi Dad, what’s up?” I asked happily, little knowing how, with his answer, my life would change. How my family’s life would change. How everything would change.
“Your mom is in the hospital,” my dad replied, his voice sounding distant and confused. “They are doing some tests on her heart.”
Her heart?
“We aren’t sure what is happening yet, but she had chest pains when we were hiking yesterday.”
Chest pains? My mind raced. How long had she been having chest pains?
My dad continued to talk. I cannot recall what he said. He was trying to appear calm and in control, but deep down I knew he was shaken. Numerous thoughts and questions immediately flooded my mind. What was happening to my mom? What would the tests show? What if the unthinkable occurred?
I felt numb. Absolute disbelief; like one of those moments you read about where time stops, you completely disconnect. Almost an out-of-body experience. You hear something but can’t absorb it. My dad had already told my younger sister and was about to call my twin sister, but I somehow I heard myself agreeing to do that.
To say we have a close family is an understatement. We always had dinner together as kids and still do when we get together for holidays or just regular weekend visits. We sang Gordon Lightfoot songs together on our weekend drives north to the cottage, and as teenagers we would even hang out with my parents on Friday nights playing board games or cards. Now that my sisters and I have our own families—lives away from Mom and Dad, we are still very connected and close. Not too many Fridays go by without our famous spaghetti and Caesar salad dinners, with whoever can make it. My parents are the center of those nights, high school sweethearts, still in love after all these years.
Mom has always been very healthy. She loves to walk the dog daily with my dad. They eat healthy food and she doesn’t indulge too much in her sweet tooth. A dedicated personal counselor, she has listened, supported and guided others with their inner struggles for years. Such a big heart, one that we never thought would need any help with anything.
It never entered any of our minds that she would be having open-heart surgery.
The operation was a terrifying experience for us all. Five and a half hours of waiting. Intense waiting and praying and hoping … then more waiting. We sat there in the Cardiac Family Waiting Area as the seconds ticked slowly by. Three other families waited for their loved ones too. Connected by similar experiences, we didn’t feel like strangers. I felt their worry and their hope. I waited with my family beside me. We were all there. My sisters, my dad and I, together, all supporting each other. We hugged each other and we prayed. The power of our desire for my mom’s wellness was enormous. We were counting our blessings for the times we had already had. I thought about her love for my kids and her commitment to caring for my elder daughter when I was doing my internship. Her mentoring me through my private practice and encouraging me in all the times I needed her. The sound of her laugh.
After hours of waiting, her surgeon walked into the waiting area.
All the waiting and emotion crystallized into that moment. I was holding my breath—we all were. As we gripped each other’s hands we heard the doctor say, “The surgery is over. She came through well, she’s still in intensive care, but you are able to see her in several hours.” Huge relief washed over us all. My dad reached out and shook the doctor’s hand vigorously and held his grip a long, long time, his eyes welling. My sisters and I could not stop smiling and clinging to each other—we were like one person, sharing the same, surreal experience.
It wasn’t long before my dad was on the phone to tell all of their friends and family that Wendy was “doing well.”
My mom is still recovering from her surgery, but her heart was opened in more ways than one. All five of us opened our hearts that day and forever. My younger sister describes it as, “feeling layers of love I never knew I was capable of.” My twin sister said that she hadn’t ever truly appreciated the closeness of our family before this happened. My dad doesn’t say much about it but he is softer, gentler and has a tenderness I hadn’t seen or felt before. My mom has been given a second chance. Her gratitude is immeasurable.
As for me, the magnitude of what happened that day has changed me. I am more accepting, more appreciative of little things. I have stopped “doing” so much and have started listening to my children and husband more. I am now choosing to experience love and appreciation for people and things moment by moment.
On May 22nd, although my mother was the patient, her surgery opened five hearts, forever.
~Leigh Anne Saxe
Having Faith
God will not permit any troubles to come upon us,
unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing
can come out of the difficulty.
~Peter Marshall
Give Thanks
Music’s the medicine of the mind.
~John A. Logan
The sounds of the helicopter blades were deafening, but all I could hear in my heart and soul was myself singing “Give thanks with a grateful heart.” Just hours before I had crawled away from a fiery inferno that once was our motor home. I had seen my skin melting off my arms and legs and felt excruciating pain from my back. The intense heat was literally melting me. The black billowing smoke blinded me as I looked for my husband and daughter. As I raced from the menacing flames I screamed, “Save my family! Save my family!”
Now, as I lingered in a fog, lying on a stretcher, all I could remember is the song that I was singing. I had been taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital to be stabilized. I was told that my family was alive. The nurses quickly cut the clothes off my charred body and the wedding ring off my swollen finger. I could hear my adult daughter screaming, “I want my mother” over and over from the room next to mine. I kept insisting that I needed to be with her, but three people working on me held me down. I had no idea how extreme my injuries were, and my heart was breaking with each one of her screams. They calmly kept telling me she was all right, and that they had taken my husband by helicopter to the burn center three hours away. That is when the song started playing in my head. My family is alive, and all I wanted to do was to praise God.
Now I was in the helicopter on my way to the burn center. “Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One, give thanks for what He has done for me.” As they lifted me off the helicopter, one of my good friends was there to greet me. I was trying to lift my hands as I sang, and she gently helped me as she joined in. I kept saying “God is good.” He kept us all alive.
That song kept me going through my darkest hours. Several days passed, and when I woke up in the burn unit, I recognized the enormity of the accident. Forty-eight percent of my body was burned and my back had been broken. Our daughter was thrown through the window away from the fire but broke many bones. My husband was lying in a coma two rooms from my own. He had fifteen fractures in his head and was sixty-eight percent burned with a nine percent chance of living.
I was trapped inside a severely burned body and the pain was ferocious. I had in fact become a prisoner within my uncontrollable shivering frame. Tears poured from my eyes, but my burned arms and hands could not reach to wipe them away.
My entire life had been full of challenges, and I knew my faith and music had always upheld me in the past. This time I would have to trust and allow them to carry me through this healing and restoring season. I had my son bring in a CD player and my praise worship music. The music played all through the day and gave me encouragement.
The song “Give Thanks” became my theme song for my bandage changes. Each day was full of extreme pain as I experienced two-hour bandage changes each morning and each night. I would ask my nurses to put my music on. As I tried to sing along, I would concentrate on each word, and the words would give me the hope I needed to get through. The nurses would sing along as they worked on me, and I found the music helped me with the pain management. Whenever I thought I could not go through another minute of the procedure, I would relocate into my music.
The melodies played on through the challenging and happy times of my life.
Thankfully, my husband and daughter survived. I now sing happy songs to my grandchildren and life can’t get much better. We’ve since made it our melody to share our success story with burn survivors and families all over the world, passing on the song of hope. I hope you too will find a song within the deep recesses of yourself to make it through life’s challenging moments, knowing whatever your trial may be there is a brighter note to be sung.
~Susan Lugli
A True Friend, a Godsend
Two are better than one …
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.
~Ecclesiastes
Not so long ago I was going through a real difficult time in my life that truly I could not have faced alone. Up until this point in life, I felt that I was finally getting a handle on things and was making some progress. My mindset was geared toward achieving success for the sake of my family. You see, I had all of my priorities wrong. I measured success in life based upon the amount of money I earned, the position I held, and the things I could afford for my family. I always thought that I was doing it for them. But then one day my wife walked out on me, taking our son with her. Two weeks later I lost my job; eventually I lost our home, car, and everything else I had worked so hard to attain. In desperation I called out to God, but it seemed I couldn’t get an answer.
For days, weeks, and months, I cried and prayed, asking God “Why are these things happening to me? Lord, I have been faithful in attending church, tithing, and living a Godly life to the best of my understanding. So why am I experiencing the trouble I suddenly find myself facing?”
I have never had many friends who I could call true, close friends. Most were just social friends who I would go to lunch with on Sundays after morning service. Some would occasionally stop by our place, but usually this was only if we had invited them over for supper. But we never had someone who would just stop in to say, “Hi, are you okay? Are things going well? Haven’t heard from you in a day or two and felt I needed to check on you.”
However, a couple of years before this crisis, while working as the manager of a local bookstore, I met a gentleman who was interested in selling his book on consignment. So after reviewing his book, we accepted it. Over the next couple of months, Sam came by on several occasions to check on his book. Since it was his first book to be published, he was eager to make a sale. Each time he stopped by, we would talk about his writing and I would do my best to give him my insight on different publishers. During these conversations a friendship was born. At one point we began having lunch together. And over a period of a couple of years, our friendship developed to the point that we would confide in each other about things that were happening in our personal lives.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but God was preparing me for what I was about to face later on. After my wife left, I was alone. I never had a strong relationship with my mother, brother, or sister. I love them, and we talked occasionally, but we did not have that close bond so that I could confide in them about my situation. But I had Sam. He would stop by on a regular basis just to check on me. At times he would bring food, or ask me to go to a restaurant with him. Of course, being unemployed I didn’t have the funds to eat out, but he insisted that I go with him and that he would pay for it. He told me many times, “Don’t worry about it. I enjoy the friendship and fellowship.” Being a prideful person, I sometimes found it difficult to say yes. I felt that if I couldn’t pay my own way, then I shouldn’t be going. But God was teaching me a lesson in humility.
On several occasions I would get the blues and start feeling lonely. Then in prayer I would question, “God, why am I faced with this trial? I feel so alone.” At times, I didn’t have a dollar to my name and no gas in the car to go searching for a job. I had been unemployed for a couple of months. But then Sam would drop by and before leaving he would reach into his pocket and say, “I just felt that I should give you this.” And he would stick money into my shirt pocket. In my stubborn prideful way, I wanted to say “No thanks!” But in reality, I truly needed it and was thankful.
What I didn’t understand for some time was that God was caring for me through Sam. Sam was more than just someone who stopped by now and then. There were nights that he would sit and patiently listen to my sob story, while I whined and complained. Then he would give me some words of encouragement and advice. There were times when I was so frustrated that I couldn’t focus on what I needed to do in order to find a job. He would sit down at my computer and spend two or three hours doing job searches online and submitting my résumé for me. I didn’t have the motivation to do it. I had hit rock bottom. I had just about given up.
One evening in prayer, as I began to meditate and listen to God, he reminded me of a scripture in the Bible found in 1 Kings 17 verses 1-6. It says that God sent the prophet Elijah to the brook Cherith to stay there for a while. He drank the water from the brook and God sent ravens to bring him bread and meat every morning and night. That is when I got a clearer revelation about what was happening in my life.
From the beginning I had questioned God as to whether I had done something, or failed to do something, that caused his judgment to be pronounced upon me. I felt that maybe this trial was a curse from God for some sin in my life that I had failed to repent of. But that was not the case at all! God was teaching me to trust him for whatever provisions I needed for each day. He was teaching me that I couldn’t stand alone as an Island, but that as a part of the body of Christ I need others to stand with me.
As for my daily sustenance, gas money, motivation, and encouragement, God sent my friend Sam on a regular basis. I thank Sam for being a true friend, and I thank God for the blessing of a true friend at a most crucial point in my life. It is my prayer that should I encounter someone who is in need of a friend, that I will be sensitive enough to recognize the need and humble enough to step up to the plate and fill that void in his or her life.
~Bob Arba
Blessed by More than Enough
All I have seen teaches me
to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The question was simple enough. “Do we have enough money to …?” My husband, Bob, asked that question each time he went to the store or filled up the truck with gas. It wasn’t his question that put a huge knot in the middle of my stomach, but the answer I might have to give him.
