My friend Betty and her husband Tom are dealing with Tom’s sudden lung cancer. That’s hard anywhere but more so in Appalachia. Not much paid work here but lots of grueling labor just to survive – huge gardens, canning the crops grown, chopping wood to get through winter. That’s after working a job like Betty’s – home health aide to people not much older than her sixty-year-old self. Heavy physical work. Long hours. Her care often includes yard work and major house cleaning before she heads home to her own demanding chores.
Which, now that Tom has lost his strength, includes hauling in the wood to keep the fire going because they couldn’t afford heating oil before and they sure can’t now that Tom is out of work. Add extra expenses including daily travel to the hospital an hour away. Ever resourceful, they’re buying the needed gas by recycling aluminum cans collected from highway rest stops.
Last weekend Tom had an episode that landed him in Intensive Care. Now Betty leaves for the hospital at five a.m., visits with Tom from six to six-thirty, heads home to start the fire to keep her plumbing from freezing, takes care of her patients, then goes back to the hospital for the six to six-thirty evening visiting hours. She gets home around eight to a frigid, dark house.
I started wondering what she was eating. When would she even have time to cook? I decided to bring her some meals, then considered the neighbors, all the people she’d helped over the years. Maybe they’d already filled her refrigerator, given her so much her counters were over-flowing with food, so much so that more would be a burden rather than a service. I called to find out.
When she answered I asked, “Betty, do you have any meals?”
“No,” she said, “But I can make some. Who needs the help?”
.
How could Betty forget herself so completely, even in one of her greatest trials? I was soon to find out. (Click here to find out, too)
These articles are written by Margaret Agard author of the In His Foot Steps memoirs:
Overwhelmed with more to do than time to do it in, Margaret began giving her daily to-do list to God. That’s when her new life began.
“”I liked the spunk and matter of fact way the author describes her daily walk with God. I liked the bits and pieces of wisdom throughout. It was a breath of fresh air from what I’m used to reading. It has little to do with productivity and everything to do with being led by the Spirit and serving others by asking God what to do every day.“
Wow! Do I ever need to readjust my way of thinking.
Margaret – I love the way you “know” people. You are a stunner.