Judy's Story---An Unforgettable Role Model

My friend Judy on Lifeboat2 shared this last week and I just had to pass it along.
♥ ferree

I'm 14 months out on my widow journey---just a baby myself. Sometimes it feels like last week and sometimes like a very long time ago. This journey isn't for the weak...we are women hear us roar!☺

I have a touching story...one day a week I volunteer as a chaplain assistant at an area hospital. I can go anywhere in the hospital so I never know what I'll encounter.
I pray before I leave my home, asking for God to take me along with Him...

Well, I entered the room of this darling, 85 yr. old woman and asked if I could sit down.

She said, "Of course," and then I commented on all her beautiful flowers. She had like 4 different arrangements so I knew she wasn't alone in her hospital stay...

She proceeded to tell me the flowers were from her kids and her sister, and she told me all about them. Then she told me she wasn't doing very good. She'd been admitted in the hospital for pneumonia but the fluid testing showed she had lung cancer. She had just 10 minutes ago found this out. And here I was, the first person she's telling. She had an MRI scheduled that afternoon to see if cancer had spread.

I asked about a husband and she said she was a widow of 29 years...she shed some tears, and proceeded with me about how to tell her children...how she thought they would handle it...

Anyway I was sitting there thinking oh boy--- as a widow---  talk about making difficult decisions on your own...

We talked for quite awhile and I shared I was a widow also...
Her phone rang. I got it for her and put my chair back to leave her room, when-- (this was precious) --in middle of all her own horrible stuff she pointed her finger at me. She said, "As a widow you'll make it---but you have a long way to go and a lot to learn."

I love people who tell it like it is...and I was very emotionally touched she took the time away from her health crises to encourage me. Amen!...I want to grow up and be like that!