I knew God had purpose for my life because my heart still beat within me but so did the throbbing pain of hopelessness. The life I’d known had been dismantled and it felt that half of me died when my husband of thirty-three years drew his last breath.

    I married when I was nineteen and by age twenty-two we welcomed our first child, a beautiful baby boy. When I was twenty-seven, our second child was born, a precious little girl, Jan. Within days of her birth, Jan went into heart failure. Surgery was performed to save her life but unfortunately she went into shock during the operation. She stopped breathing for fifteen minutes.  In those fifteen minutes she suffered severe brain damage. 

      Day after day we fought to keep her alive. The brain damage left her with  no sucking reflex. I learned to feed her with a syringe by squirting small drops of formula into her mouth.  She slept very little day or night. Through the years, I learned to exist on whatever sleep I could grab, sleeping only when she slept.  She struggled with high fevers and her muscles gradually atrophied. 

    Years went by and caregiving became my norm. I was adept as wheel chairs, lifts on vehicles, feeding tubes, and medications but I also tried to keep our lives as normal as possible.  I cooked, hosted dinner parties, ran carpools, taught a Sunday School class, and did many creative things. Slowly the years took their toll and by the time I was forty three, Jan had to be placed into a pediatric care facility.  I was exhausted totally, body, soul and spirit.  I, of course, remained very active in her care.

    More years, more emotional trauma, and many trials later found me with my husband and daughter both on Hospice.  Jan was twenty-four and my husband only fifty-four.  I found it hard to believe that Jan might out live her daddy.  It wasn’t a scenario we’d ever fathomed but that’s what happened. 

    By 2006, in a span of six years, I’d lost my oldest brother, my only sister, my husband, and my daughter to death.  I was spent emotionally, physically, and mentally.  Life as I had known it was gone.  One lonely set of feet journeyed down an unknown path.  Come journey with me on my road to healing and new life.  For more of this story go here.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.  Psalm 34:18