Ok, so I lied when I said my next blog would have some design work in it. So sorry. This one has a bit more "ponderings" but you'll understand why. I just couldn't go to bed without sitting down to blog a bit more. Some of my girlfriends and I from our moms group at church attended a benefit tonight in honor of Angela Hospice in Livonia. They're an amazing facility and if any family in or Livonia is ever faced with the difficult decision of needing hospice care for a loved one...there are true angels working tirelessly at this place. http: (www.angelahospice.org)
This was our first time attending but we were there for a very specific reason. One of the young mother's at our church passed away last month from a very long battle with cancer and we were there in her honor. Lisa was only 33 years old with a loving husband and two young children when her life was cut too short. When Chris and I first moved to Novi and started attending St. James it was pretty difficult not to notice Lisa with her beautiful bandanas on her head and then various wigs that she then wore as she battled the raging cancer. This went on for two years. She was consistently on the prayer list during mass when all the names of those who are ill were called off and the entire parish got to know her fight. As she was one of the founding members of our group, we knew her history and her struggle for her husband. At the end it was tough for him just to get help to pick up the kids from school and have their days be as normal as possible as they brought her home from Angela Hospice during her last days. We reached out to them hoping we could do anything possible. Cooking meals, one of our nursery instructors said she would even pick up the kids for him...anything to pitch in.
One of my last days actually seeing Lisa in church happened to be sitting in the pew right in front of them. She had changed so much and I actually didn't recognize her except when I saw her husband and kids so I realized who it was. She was walking with a cane and was no longer able to stand during mass and when she went up to communion (I can't get this picture out of my head)...she walked behind her husband with her head resting in the middle of his back for support while one hand held onto his shirt and the other grasped her cane. She seemed so weak. When she got back to her seat, I could hear her whisper to her husband and her children...asking that they all say a prayer together. I never saw her again.
The day we were in church and her name switched from the "...and please pray for the ill of our parish..." list to the "....and please pray for the deceased of our parish" list....it hit me and so many others very hard. I remember letting out this little gasp when they read her name. She had effected so many of us in our parish, whether we knew her or not, and it was horrible finally knowing that this 33 year old mother of a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 7, was now gone.
When we were at the wonderful benefit for the Angela Hospice tonight, we had some donations to give to them in Lisa's name from our moms group. The women we gave the donations to had remembered her name so it was a perfect ending to a perfect evening in honor of such a brave young woman. For all those who have lost a loved one to cancer or for all those battling cancer right now, I send many prayers your way. You're never in this alone.
The great C.S. Lewis (seen above) once wrote: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
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