Blog 122 – 9.23.15

There is nothing to me quite as entertaining, thought provoking, and encouraging as a good story. And what makes a story work is someone heroically, surviving against all odds. It is a story we can all identify with as we are cheering for the hero or heroine to save the day.  Whether we shed a tear or shout, “Alright!” we love a story about overcoming adversity with a happy ending.

Some years ago I re-met a beautiful woman that I had briefly met in college many years ago. We saw one another again at a gathering of some former students of the Bible college we had both attended. After the little gathering which took place at a little church in the area near where the college had once been several of us went out to eat together. The pretty woman and I were both unattached and attracted to one another which are the ingredients of another good story.

I would like though to tell just a bit of her story. She was born into a farm family in South Carolina, the third child in a group that would eventually number eight children. Her birth mother died when she was young, a hard knock for any child. Her dad married again and the wonderful lady he married brought her son into the mix and together they had two red/headed children, a girl and a boy. Farmers needed farm hands and her dad grew his own. A poor farmer’s daughter, she learned all about working in the fields and helping take care of her younger siblings. She dreamed of a different life and right after high school flew a thousand miles away from home to attend a conservative Bible College in a city larger than any she had ever known up to that point in her life. She worked as a waitress to pay for the three year Christian Education Degree she earned.  After college she got an entry level job at a bank where she worked for many years rising to Branch Sales and Operations Manager.

A few months before I re-met her she had been diagnosed with cancer in her left breast and had undergone a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, The event I saw her at was the first time she had gone out after a very difficult and painful recovery from the reconstructive surgery. I just knew she looked gorgeous in that red dress. I had no idea that like superwoman with her red cape that she too was a super hero.

We are often unaware that we are each of us heroes walking with and in the company of other heroes. Heroes defy gravity, they re-write the odds, and constantly redefine what is possible. One by one, this brave young woman who had joined a support group and counseled many women going through what she had gone through, saw everyone in her support group died of recurring cancer except for one other lady and herself. She was and is a survivor in the truest sense. When people remark at all she has been through she just reminds them that the worse thing they have ever gone through is still the worse thing they have ever experienced. Heroic and wise, what a two punch combination and on top of that she is still a “knock out.”

She was told that the odds were she might not survive five years. She proved that estimate wrong more than five times over and still counting. She was told she could never have a child, she proved them wrong by bringing a strong, healthy baby boy into the world who graduated last year with a business degree and is working as an accountant and will soon have his CPA – a handsome and intelligent young man, his mother and father’s pride and joy.

In the beginning of this piece I told you that I briefly met this remarkable woman way back when. Back then she was wearing the disguise of a long haired beautiful coed but even though I might not have been the brightest young man I recognized the goddess and greatness in her even then. When I first saw this picture that I am attaching to this piece, I remember thinking, “Lucky tree and lucky me that in this life we both got to know such a beautiful, magnificent, and heroic being.” My hat is off to her and all of you other heroes and heroines out there.

Your friend and fellow traveler, part time hero and full time hero worshipper,
David White