June 2005

I was on the Care Team at Westridge Church. That’s a team that sends cards to people when there is a need, takes food to families and visits people in the hospital. I was on the card team but one day I got a call at work at The Emory Clinic asking me if I would go visit a young woman who was a patient at Emory Hospital just across the street or through the tunnel. How could I say no, she was just diagnosed with leukemia and was scared of the unknown disease that had taken over her body and wanted someone to pray with her.

I was so nervous as I walked through that tunnel, wondering what I would say to her, if she would even respond to me or want me to pray for her. I was a stranger walking into her hospital room invading her world of fear.

I lightly tapped on her door and heard a tender “come in”. My eyes fell upon this beautiful young woman whose eyes were full of the unknown. Even though I was a bundle of nerves, I approached her with confidence, introduced myself and how I came as a stranger to walk into her hospital room. I knew, we both knew in a matter of minutes that this was a total “God thing”. We immediately took to each other, talked about her illness and her fears and questions and we prayed together. I left her room that afternoon with a promise of returning soon. As I walked back through the tunnel to my job I burst into tears of a plethera of emotions. How could this happen to a beautiful vibrant young woman, how God had put me, a stranger, in her life and what was to become of this fierce disease that had attacked and taken over her body.

In the weeks to follow, I would go to her room after work and spend time with her. I took my favorite chic flick DVD’s and we watched some movies together. I was leading a Beth Moore Bible study at church and bought her a workbook to follow along with our group. I even took pictures of her and put one in a frame and set it out each week at our Bible study and she became our honorary member. We prayed for her every week.

Over time she started chemo treatments and lost her hair and her gorgeous eyelashes. My husband came to the hospital a couple of times after work and we would order pizza and hang out with her and her boyfriend. It had truly developed into a very special friendship. Two strangers brought together by God’s awesome plan.

She finished her chemo treatments eventually and was not in the hospital so much. She lived on the opposite side of town from me so we did not see each other very much but we tried to keep in touch over time with phone calls and sometimes she would stop by and see me when she came to the cancer clinic for out patient appointments. Time and space had drifted us apart  but God had done something to both our hearts and we developed an admiration and friendship of love for one another that would be with us always no matter the time that passed between any contact from each other.

Melissa is in remission today and God has done a mighty work in her life. Her hair has grown back out and her eyelashes even more beautiful, I’m so envious! She is married to her boyfriend ( I was at the wedding) and now they have moved back to this side of town and they are  back at Westridge Church. My husband and I had left there 2 years ago to follow a church plant from Westridge down the road from our house but are back at Westridge as of a  few months ago.

Melissa and I just started meeting with another friend to pray and study the Bible together. Yesterday, Sunday morning we sat together at church and listened to Brian, our pastor give a message on doing life together. Not just coming to church on Sunday morning and looking at the back of people’s heads but looking at people face to face. How church is not about attendance but it’s about relationship, to be connected to other believers so we can spur each other on and encourage each other. He told us that this is how God created us to live, He designed us to do life together, not alone.

January 2009

Melissa and I are “doing life together”. A full circle, a friendship renewed. God is so amazingly awesome!