Reality check

Every once in a while, I have found, that God sends me a reality check. It is easy to feel sorry for yourself till you get a dose of someone else's life. The economy is bad, people are out of work, businesses are closing, and houses are getting foreclosed. These are tough times it's true. But I was just reminded that it could be worse.

I have a friend who is in her late 60's named Jackie. She is the most precious little lady you could ever meet. She would give you anything she could spare and share the rest. She is smart and just a sweetheart. She grew up in a home where her father would get drunk and beat the crap out of her and her mom and two brothers. He would not even remember he would be so drunk. He even sexually abused her brother Pat. When she was sixteen she moved out and took the two boys with her and raised them.
After many years she managed to not only forgive her father, but become close friends with him. This alone amazes me. Two years ago, after suffering abuse from his second wife, and battling cancer. He passed away. A few months later, her brother Mike died. He had been riddled with pain and disabled for several years from a condition from a job he used to have. Jackie took care of him until he passed away from complications from diabetes. He did not get disability. He'd been denied. While all this is going on the older brother Pat, was a drug addict. He had become a drug addict after becoming disabled himself. He could not get disability either. He lived in a trailer at her house and she supported him as well. He was stealing her stuff and pawning it. She would have to go buy it back when she could. He ran up thousands of dollars on her credit cards (over seven thousand to be specific.) She supported both of them while spending a few months at a time in the hospital due to heart attacks. The minute they would let her out of the hospital she would go back to working, what else could she do?

About a year ago she fell and broke her hip. She was placed in a nursing home. They abused her and refused to feed her. She still couldn't walk, but when she got down to 84 pounds her sister managed to get her out of the nursing home. When she got home she found out that her brother Pat had been murdered in her home and that the same people had robbed her of everything that she had.

After she was out of the nursing home she couldn't walk and she couldn't stand up straight and she was in constant pain. The Doctors told her that she had the worst case of osteoporosis they had ever seen and she had 4 fused vertebrae. ( she has since lost the use of several more) The Doctors told her that there was nothing they could do.

Within a couple of months she had to go in and have an angioplasty done. She has been trying to get disability for three years or more, all the while working as much as she can under the table to pay the bills for herself, and her brothers. She was just recently granted $1100 dollars a month disability. Which sounds like a lot until you find out that her little bitty two bedroom house that she owns costs her 850 a month. She saved for years and was not able to buy that house, her first house, until she was almost sixty.

I called her a couple of days ago to check on her. I met her when I was in South Florida and she meant so much to me then. She asked me what was going on in my life. I told her that things have really picked up for me of late. I am in school and etc. She was so thrilled. I finally got her to tell me everything that I just told you. Or most of it. I was there for some of it. This has all happened to her in the last two years. She says to me, "It's been so hard, so hard." Understatement of the century. The part that gets me is this. She then says, "But I am so lucky, I am alive and I just keep on." She then won't talk about her any more. She wants to hear about me, and how happy she is for me. And so glad I called. I could have wept.

If I had gone through a fraction of this, I would have just called it a day and slit my wrists. This woman is so precious. I can't even fathom it.

So I will ask this... Please Pray for Jackie.