When I was 16 my mom was involved in a car accident that took her Home.
When she stepped off the curb, she never saw that bus coming! (Kidding)
I know it's weird to joke about something like that....but she actually used the same line when people asked how
her mom passed away in order to spare the sad and unnecessary details.
I can only tease about something like this, because God has been so gracious to me and has really brought me to a place in life that I feel very healed and at peace with my situation.
This wasn't the case 10 years ago...man...I don't even want to get in to how insanely horrible and shattered my world felt back then.
God has allowed me to forget a good part of what overwhelmed and almost broke me, and has graciously allowed me to remember how he drew close to me and provided "normalcy" in a time of need.
I say "normalcy" because it didn't stay that way for long.
Jamie was my Student Government Leader and also taught at my highschool. She had her whole desk covered in Young Life paraphernalia and, because I have 15,000 questions for everything, I started asking about what is was. One thing led to another, and I started going to YL club in Ft. Myers, Fl where I met a bunch of really sweet girls who I had a lot in common with.
Coincidentally, TWO other girls had come from homes where their mother had died and their fathers were pastors who had also left the church. It was great to have support and friendship...so I kept going.
During this time, my home life was struggling and Jamie took notice. She invited me over for dinner after Young Life and I started volunteering to babysit for her.
I realized that she really cared about me when she wasn't actually leaving during the times that she had asked me to babysit. (Oh man....a bunch of water just leaked into my eyes....keep it together...)
She just wanted to spend time with me and she knew that I needed a motherly figure at my young and fragile age.
We ate popcorn, shared laughs, hugs, and tears, and she pretty much adopted me into her family for the next two years of high school until I graduated.
She fed me A LOT , patiently waited for me to mature, and seriously, SERIOUSLY spoiled me with Rib City's Cheesy Waffle fries.
It was no longer her and her husband...they
generously took me everywhere and never, ever made me feel like "it wasn't a good time".
(Can I just say... I've tried recreating this feeling for others, and it's really friggin hard. I'm so dang selfish, for real, for real. I have no clue how they did it for so long.)
When her husband, Aaron, started a Wyld Life program at a middle school near my house, I volunteered to be a leader. I was able to pour into little puberty-stricken, confused middle schoolers and tell them God loved them just the way they were. It was awesome. And a little awkward at times.
After I went to camp as a high-school student, I went the following summer as a leader.
Loved it.
Volunteered for two more summers at two different YL camps.
Poured my life into kids that came from the bottom of the barrel. Saw some of them come to Christ. Saw some of them not, but loved them anyway.
Started a Bible Study/morning group with the high-school girls I had taken to camp that summer.
Woke up early to give them breakfast and the Word. Best mornings ever.
By this time, I was in my first and second years of college.
I was living in St. Augustine, and Jamie and Aaron were living about an hour away. I visited them when I could, and loved having "family" so close.
It was around that time that their son, Parker, had been seen by several different doctors for sickness, which turned out to be Leukemia.
I rushed to the hospital that held him, and pretty much stayed there for the next 9 months. I scraped by that college semester, but I didn't care. I lived at the Ronald McDonald House next to the Arnold Palmer Hospital. We took shifts so that Aaron could still work (his drive was about an hour, each way).
We watched Disney movies on loop, pulled a red wagon around the only floor of the hospital we could go on. His IV followed closely behind.
His body swelled, and when the needles pricked him, he would tell the nurses, "Tank you."
We got to spend our last days with him at Disney World and Animal Kingdom.
We got to wake up at Animal Kingdom Resort and show him the giraffes outside his window.
These were very personal, very intimate times that the family could have asked to have and share all by themselves.
Instead, I was there. Crying. Confused. Trying to enjoy our last moments with sweet Parker.
This was a family who truly loved me and treated me like one of there own, often times more than my own family could at that point in our lives.
It has been years since this all took place, and God is still working in both of our families lives. We still keep in touch and send each other sweet encouragements.
Jamie has become a dear friend, a person who has seriously seen the worse parts of me, and has shown me grace, compassion, and friendship even still.
I guess the reason I wanted to write this down tonight is because it's a very important piece of my life that so few people know about. There are so many more details that I'd love to share, but I would be writing for forever if I did.
I also wrote this down, because there's a child that I heard about that is involved in a very bad family situation right now. My immediate reaction was to offer our home, but it wouldn't be allowed here for so many reasons.
All of this to say...I think there is probably at least one person in your life who has impacted you greatly. Maybe just write down how they did...Share your story! How cool is it that God used Jamie and her family to ultimately glorify Him? They poured in to me, I poured in to others, and the cycle continues.
