I apologize for being late with my Wednesday message. I have been in Tallahassee since Monday for work and am looking forward to returning home tomorrow. I planned to send out my message yesterday but events on Tuesday made it quite difficult and have left me a little downtrodden.
I was with a colleague who suffered a medical event and had to be rushed to the hospital. She is 63 and in perfect health. As I was with her, I thought maybe she was having a stroke. 911 was called and as I sat with her, she went downhill very quickly. She had my hand in her hand and all I could do was pray with her. She is a woman of strong faith, and I knew that would give her great comfort. Finally, the ambulance arrived and my colleague Carolyn, who is very much like me and doesn’t deal with situations like this very well, went to the hospital with her. We received word later that evening that she had a brain bleed, the part of the brain that regulates breathing had been affected and she was put on life support. Her daughter is now with her and I believe she is waiting until her husband gets here to make the very difficult decision to remove the ventilator. They are a very private family, so I don’t know when we will hear anything. Because of how private they are, we did not share with our board members the extent of the injury, so everyone is asking questions.
Our office staff has been leading a conference all week and we have had to not only deal with our grief, but have had to be professional and just keep on going. It has been exhausting. Tuesday night we hosted a reception for our new school board members at out our office. During that reception, with an office full of board members, was when we found out the seriousness of her injury. At one point, I went into Patricia’s office and sat down at her desk. My heart was heavy, my sadness overwhelming. I had to smile though at what I saw on her desk. The first thing I saw was the “Jesus Calling” devotion book that I had given her. The second, and one that gave me chills was a group of post-it notes she had on the bottom of her computer monitor. I have the picture below. God spoke to me right then. Is my heart still heavy? Am I still sad? You bet! But I am going to follow Patricia’s advice. I’m not going to whine, I’m going to shine, shine, shine! And also notice the post-it note about Joy. I guess God knows how stubborn I am and had to make sure I got His message.
Please keep Patricia’s family in your prayers as they go through this gut wrenching time. Carolyn, Leslie, Aimee, Danielle, and Andrea (my colleagues) also need your prayers.
Shine, Shine, Shine!
Tina