In a world where bad news seems that which is most likely to be repeated, we need the arts.

We need to visit the events and places that remind us of our history, our culture, and our creative instinct.

During World War II, Blessed Pope John Paul II worked with an underground theatre group to preserve and share Polish culture and theatre. He recognized that the best offense we often have in fighting evil is to share our stories so we preserve the memories of who and what the best of us are.

Museums have always been places of refuge for me. They probably matter more to me than most because I have seen the worst of humanity and lived in the face of evil. With that knowledge, I know just how important it is for us to always work to preserve beauty.

We must keep the best of our arts and culture present in our thoughts and minds to remind ourselves to aim higher, to tell our stories, to sing our songs, and to always seek ways to enrich the lives of others.

Every museum, concert, and cultural event is an opportunity for us to be inspired by others so we can aspire to be better ourselves.

The key that they share is a reminder of hope, as oases for the soul. Our hope in ourselves, in each other, and for the future.

Six years ago, I came up with one of the scariest phrases my own family ever hears, “I have this vision.”

It all happened because I wanted to create some new opportunities for my kids. My son had joined a robotics team and had competed in some local contests. When I learned that 4-H programs in other areas had robotics contests, I wanted to try it locally. Part of my reasoning was that a robotics contest can take from 15 to 40 hours of preparation time. If our county approved a robotics project, then my son’s achievement record, in his robotics project, could note the hours he spent in other robotics competitions.

Other areas had formed 4-H clubs that focused entirely around robotics. I considered organizing one, but thought that didn’t fit what I thought our county needed. One morning, I “saw the light.” Thomas Edison may have developed the light bulb, but he invented a lot more than that. He always worked to find ways to improve technology. We could start a 4-H club that focused its programming around technology and many science areas: computers, electricity, aerospace, robotics, and more.

One problem: I don’t have a science background. All I was was a mom with a vision and a desire to create new opportunities for her children. As I talked to our extension office and 4-H friends about my vision, I knew I would need a lot of help. But I felt in my heart that this was a vocation, a calling, and something I was supposed to do for reasons that would fit into a picture bigger than mine. I also needed to find another club leader in order to charter a new club.

A friend of mine introduced me to Josh, a young web designer. At our first meeting, I shared my vision and told him my science limitations. But I assured him, “If we can find people to help with the science part, I can organize our way out of a paper bag.” He agreed to help and began the process to become a 4-H leader. Once he was approved, we began to organize our club.

The members put their own stamp on the club. I had planned to call it the Technology Club, but when our bylaws were adopted, the members voted to call it the Tech Club instead. Little did I realize at that first meeting the great things that can happen when dedicated people work together.  At the second meeting, members asked if they could tear apart computers and put them back together. So that’s what we did at our club’s third meeting.

Six years later, our club has about 25 members per meeting. Some of our parents are or have become 4-H leaders – Dana, Brooksie, and Karen. Sometimes families have been key to the club and have had to move away – they are missed but still made an indelible mark on the club’s spirit, especially Mark and his family. They share their expertise to help improve the club. The kids and the families work hard to make things work well. After surgery two years ago and since my recent heart attack, they stepped up to keep the club going during my illness and recovery.

Four weeks ago, we were offered our largest honor and challenge to date. We were invited to give a presentation at the Indiana 4-H Foundation’s annual meeting in Indianapolis, one of 4 clubs throughout the state chosen to participate in a science showcase. Members of the club will give a computer hardware demonstration, describing how we have done computer tear-down workshops at meetings.

When we were invited, I was still in cardiac rehab and knew the only way this would work was if our team worked together. In those 4 weeks, incredible things happened:

• Members rehearsed and prepared their presentation, which they will repeat to 4 different groups at the meeting.
• My son, the one who originally inspired the robotics project and the club, has worked with the other club officers and shared what he has learned about computer hardware for the presentation.
• Corporate and individual sponsors lined up to sponsor Tech Club to not only cover the trip’s transportation costs but also t-shirts for club members and model rocket purchases for the club for next year.
• Members, parents, and leaders put the club’s needs ahead of their own desires and needs to help. They have shared their talents.

I don’t know how the final presentations will go. I do know that this team of remarkable players – leaders, members, and parents – have worked together in ways I never dreamed possible six years ago. As they rise to the challenges of this opportunity, I know that the Tech Club is bigger than one mother’s dream and will continue beyond my time.

And for that, all I can do is say thanks.

Last week, during the next-to-last class, we went through each student (8 of them), and their classmates shared what strengths they saw in each other. I told them after the exercise that in those moments when they might doubt their public speaking, to draw upon those affirmations and to build upon their strengths.

This week, after we worked on personal storytelling and leadership stories, we closed the class for the year. First, I explained that public speaking isn’t just something you take as a class and then stop doing. It’s a process of continuous improvement. We constantly analyze and work with what we say and how we said it to improve our next public speaking activity.

So I asked each of them how they wanted to improve their public speaking in the next 6 months and had them write it down. Then, they shared them.

Then I had them all envision it’s 5 years in the future and asked what they will do in their lives that will use the public speaking skills they have developed. They each pondered before writing down a 5 year goal. When they shared these goals, I could see a part of their hearts awakening. I explained to them that if they set a goal, write it down, and share it with others, it’s more likely to happen.

To finish the class, I told them they had what it took to reach those goals. All they needed to do now was to start the process – what strategies can them employ to reach their goals. And I challenged them to find people in their lives that can help them reach that goal, recruit them as accountability partners, and learn from those people.

The steps I worked them through can apply to us all:

1. Encourage others.
2. Believe in yourself and your abilities.
3. Think how you can improve your talents.
4. Set a goal.
5. Decide what you need to do to make it happen.

So what’s your goal for 5 years from now? What will you do to make it happen?

Those who go into cardiac rehab can face a variety of challenges in addition to heart disease – maybe needing a walker, fighting partial paralysis, battling diabetes, or struggling to get healthier while breathing with a single lung. In today’s class, there was a lady with a walker, who worked her hardest to complete her exercises. When she finished the last one, I heard her comment across the room that she was thirsty.

Tired from her exercise, she pushed her walker towards the water cooler, where I was already standing. That’s whenGod decided to speak to me.

“Give her a glass of water. Take it to her.”

“Are you sure? Did you really say that?” I asked Him.

“Get her a glass of water NOW.”

As I gave her the water, I realized this is the most important lesson cardiac rehab taught me. It wasn’t how to change my lifestyle to eat better. It wasn’t how to gauge my exercise so I push myself, but not too hard. He told me what I had just realized.

“Living and breathing. And loving. That’s what matters.”

As I’ve worked through rehab, I’ve seen people get sick in the middle of exercise. Their blood sugar has dropped, or their blood pressure has spiked. They’ve needed immediate care and have gotten it. It’s hammered home how precious our gift of life is.

We need to better treasure our gift of life and appreciate even what a gift it is to breathe. Those breaths sustain us.

Many times, we get so distracted with the details of our lives that we forget to appreciate living and breathing.

The lady took her water and proceeded to class.

I immediately flashed with another image – of the woman at the well. Jesus Christ offered her the gift of water, and I never realized until that moment what a profound gift it was.

He not only reached out to her with water but with love. Love is the greatest of our gifts.  It is not an abstract concept. It is a deliberate choice in how we approach the other people in our lives.

We can do everything in the world right, but if we do everything without love, it’s all wrong.

On the flip side, we can screw up lots of details and make terrible mistakes, but if we truly reach out with love to those around us, it will work.

As I’ve faced my own mortality – and witnessed it in others – I’ve resolved to spend as much time as possible savoring the gifts of living and breathing – and of loving those around us.

Always remember these important gifts…

Living, breathing, and loving.

That was  a key step in my decision to become an independent consultant with Mary Kay 10 weeks after my heart attack. Experts say not to make major decisions for six months after a life crisis. Yet another rule I’m breaking…but I see many steps God put in my path that led me here.

• I used Mary Kay in high school and liked the skin care line. But over time, I opted for other skin care choices.
• Most major decisions in my life happen after I feel God’s prompting me to do them. A year ago, God told me I had spent a lifetime promoting other people and causes, and the time was coming when I would sell a product. So for the past year, I’ve looked at different products. I asked God to show me what he wanted me to sell and when.
• Last summer, I met Ami, and I knew we would become friends the first time we laughed together. As she talked about taking care of her family and reaching out to others, I felt a kindred spirit I wanted to know better.
• Last fall, a friend sent me a thank you gift from Ami….a gift bag of Mary Kay skin care products. The moment I used them, I realized they were much better quality than the bargain basement products I bought – sometimes….after taking care of everything and every one else.
• Then, in December, Ami invited me to a skin care class. It was my first Mary Kay event I had attended in 30 years. The products had updated, and I had forgotten just how good they made my skin feel. When I got home that night, I told Richard I thought I had found the product I wanted to sell.

Then, the next evening I got sick with a kidney stone. Five days after that, I survived my heart attack and emergency surgery.

Upon my release from the hospital, my family began completely changing our lifestyle. With the help of a dietitian friend and my daughter who was home on spring break, we reinvented our diet.

That gift of skin care came into play with my recovery, as well as that lipstick. As a wife and mom and volunteer, for decades, I’ve put other people and projects ahead of taking care of myself. It’s no one else’s fault…I made the choices to eat more and exercise less.  Leaving the hospital with a fist full of prescriptions and a folder full of dietary recommendations to help me lower my cholesterol, lower my blood pressure, and lose just over 50 pounds is a daunting prospect.

What I didn’t expect was the role that good skin care products would play in my recovery. I’ve had decades to develop a mental habit of putting myself so far to the back of the line that it was neglect.

I have since learned that taking care of myself not only feels good but is imperative to recovery. I can choose to make these lifestyle changes a form of suffering and a drudge, from which I’m likely to fall of the wagon.

Or I can choose to make taking care of myself something fun, that I can enjoy. The more weight I lose (almost at 20 pounds now!), and the more I get used to exercise, the more energy I have. And with that renewed energy and brighter outlook, I can be a better, more loving wife, mother, and friend.

Each morning, my reminder to stay on the fitness bandwagon begins with that lipstick that Ami gave me in the hospital. Except now I’ll not just wear it but share my story with others.

It is possible to change a lifetime of habits and make better choices to take care of yourself. In my case, that starts with lipstick and just keeps going.

A master was going on a trip and met with 3 servants. He told them he was giving them something and would return later to see how they used it.

He gave his first servant a single problem. That servant buried the problem, did nothing about it, and tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

He gave the second servant three problems. That servant worked a little with the problems and found ways to not only partially overcome the problems but help a few people along the way.

He gave the final servant five huge, almost unbearable problems. That servant took on the problems, found ways to overcome them and in the process not only inspired others but found tremendous ways to help them.

When the master returned, he asked each servant the outcome of the problem.

The first servant said, “Master, I didn’t want the problem to get worse. So I buried it and left it alone. It’s still lying there buried.”

The second servant said, “Master, I took the problem, found some ways to make it better, and have helped some other people.”

The third servant said, “Master, the problems you gave me were huge. At first, I didn’t know what to do with them. But I prayed for guidance, worked with them, and in the working with them the most incredible things happened. I found out other people had the same problems, and as I worked to resolve mine, I found ways to help them as well. We discovered together how we could make a positive impact. I’m astounded at the good things that have come from what once seemed impossible to overcome.”

And here is where the challenge lies for you and me. What do we do with the problems we are given?

In 2011, I wrote a book, He Uses It For Good. In the book, I described how the most horrible parts of my childhood were taken by God and used for good purpose.

Now, I’ve been given a new test for that premise. How can God use my heart attack for good purpose? Here are a few things I’ve seen:

• Our family is working harder to enjoy our time together.
• I discovered how hard my kids would work to help us when we needed it the most.
• I was reminded once again of our steadfast friends who encouraged and helped us in quiet, unseen ways.
• I finally started exercising, am fixing healthier meals for my family, and have started losing weight. This year, I hope to lose enough to match what I weighed on my wedding day, 22 years ago.
• I’m reinventing my lifetime of recipes, tweaking them, and may possibly write a cookbook of them after I finish.
• As a New Year’s Resolution in my honor, a friend decided to begin exercising and lose weight, adopting healthier lifestyle choices.
• My biggest client has embraced Go Red for Women to raise awareness for heart disease this year.
• Another couple, a husband and wife, have started exercising together. They decided if I could be impacted by heart disease at my age, it was time for them to get healthier together.

Having heart disease is passive.

Living with heart disease embraces change and celebrates life. Some causes of heart disease are related to genetics or biology, and those are the cards we are dealt at birth. My other risk factors increased because of my choices: my diet, weight gain, and lack of exercise.

It became a song that repeated itself, a verse each year, same song, different year, could be better but it got a lot worse. And finally, that song erupted like peanut butter, jelly, and a baseball bat. Except it was weight gain, lack of exercise, and a heart attack.

To choose to continue to sing that song would be having heart disease and continuing to make the mistakes that got me here.

Choosing to live with heart disease is to change those mistakes and resolve to do better. For me, those changes include:

• Eating a lower fat, lower salt diet.
• Drinking water instead of southern sweetened iced tea and coffee. I inhaled iced tea. And I probably drank half a pot of coffee a day. Now, I’m down to a cup of coffee a day. And each day begins with a pint of water.
• Scheduling my diet to include fruits and vegetables. I always ate them before, but now it’s imperative. The more fruits and vegetables I eat, the less room my diet has for cheese, fried chicken, and Cheetos.
• Logging my diet. Today is Day 26 of logging My Fitness Pal to track what I eat and measure the portions.
• Exercising today. I can’t procrastinate till tomorrow, which I had done for years. Now it has to happen, and logging it into My Fitness Pal gives accountability for me to make sure it happens.

Those are just the steps in choosing to live with heart disease. When I follow those steps, I’m really venturing on the real path, which is is celebrating life and making the most of the time I have with family and friends.  If I stray from these steps, each step I take in the wrong direction leads me to not simply having heart disease but choosing to let heart disease have me and take me sooner.

I’ve heard that some addiction recovery programs say you have to choose to end the addiction for yourself. For me, the most powerful motivation for me to make and continue lifestyle changes is different. I want them to have more time with my husband and kids, so we can build memories together.

Then comes my challenge to you. If you don’t have heart disease, choose to live without heart disease!

Make healthier choices, starting today, RIGHT NOW, and make sure that your path never has to follow my new journey.

During the recovery, as we worked through packout, and then demolition, and finally rebuilding, at times we would discover another piece of broken glass in our back yard from those windows that blew into shards across our lawn.

By “coincidence,” the first time we discovered it, Richard and I both happened to find tiny pieces of broken glass in our back yard on the same day.  And when we found the pieces, we were both overwhelmed with the same message:

“The fire was terrible. But that fire prevented something far worse and more tragic from taking place.”

Since we both heard the same message independently, we took it as a message of comfort from our guardian angels. It was a little easier to work through the disaster after that. For months after the fire, when we went into our back yard, we would happen on another piece of broken glass. Each time, we took it as a reminder of what we were told.

We don’t know what the worse would have been and don’t need to know.

This week, as I worked through inconveniences, I again remembered the broken glass. It gave me hope that we can work through this year’s problems and overcome them with God’s help. He can take our present circumstances and make something new.

Broken glass isn’t a reminder of past destruction. It’s a reminder of divine protection and better things to come.

Confession: I am a snow shoveling Nazi who insists on a spotlessly shoveled driveway and walks. What made me that way?

During the terrible winters of 1977 and 1978, I was in middle school and had a paper route. My route was one on foot, and I appreciated those who shoveled their walks so much that I resolved to have well shoveled walks the rest of my life. For those who have to make deliveries in the snow, those shoveled walks give them respite. We live in an urban neighborhood that still has sidewalks – though more people seem to saunter down the middle of the street than use a real sidewalk.

So I embraced the perfectly shoveled walk with the zeal of Martha Stewart and grace of Clark Griswold. My children have grown up with the obsessively snow-shoveling mama who was adept at the fine art and science of a well-cleaned walk. The only winters I didn’t shovel were when I was pregnant and one year post op after surgery.

When I shoveled snow, I felt like Momzilla Versus the Snow Mound. And I always won at the end of the movie.

Until now. What makes a driveway well shoveled?

1. Shovel early and often. If you shovel snow throughout a storm, there is less to shovel at one time. It can be easier to manage when it’s not in huge drifts. There have been times in my life I’ve been known to shovel at midnight, at 3 a.m., and again at 5 a.m. Part of it was to not only make the shoveling easier but also to make sure we always had the cleanest walks shoveled first in the neighborhood.
2. A good shovel is worth its weight. I pushed snow more than I threw it. This reduced the effort but worked effectively.
3. Shovel to the ground. Don’t leave a little at the base. Get it to the sidewwalk or concrete. If you do this, your walks will also melt faster as soon as the temperature gets close to 32 degrees.
4. Shovel the walk, the whole walk, and nothing but the walk. When you shovel your walk, if you make the effort to do the whole walk instead of a shovel wide path, you decrease the likelihood of drifting.
5. Clear cars completely. Make sure not only cars are cleared but the paths to get to them are as well. What’s the point in shoveling a driveway if people have to climb over snow to get into the car?
6. Dress warmly and stay dry. Nuff said – let common sense prevail. Layers are a very good thing.
7. Two can shovel faster than one. As soon as my kids could walk, they had toddler sized shovels to “help.” Granted, their early help was more play than work – but it built a habit I hope continues.
8. Finish with hot chocolate. Make sure you have marshmallows too.

So now I’m recovering from a heart attack and have been told there is no longer a snow shovel in my future. Under 50, and I’m already a has been shoveler.

With this storm, my kids shoveled for me. I gritted my teeth and said nothing as they chose to sleep in. No shoveling before dawn. But they did go out and do it. They shoveled the whole walk and did a good job. Perhaps something that I taught them will steak.

Part of me suspects a snow blower may one day be in my future. When I told a friend of mine this, he commented if I bought one it might now snow for 10 years. To which I observed that it would then be an excellent preventative investment.

What I will miss most of my snow shoveling was savoring the silence of a snowstorm, as the flakes muffled sound and for a few moments, I felt like the world was at my footsteps, waiting for me to rush at it with my shovel.

Tonight, as we sang “Turn to Me,” I had one of those moments when we are called by name, after which nothing is the same.

Turn to me, oh, turn and be saved,’ says the Lord, ‘for I am God.’
‘There is no other, none beside Me. I call your name.’

As we sang, I flashed to my heart attack two weeks ago, when I lay on the operating table about to have an emergency cath, which begins in an artery in the leg. When I flinched, I was told,

“If you move your leg like that again you could die. Stay still.”

For the next hour, as the cardiologist worked, I stayed still. From my experiences with PUBS 16 years earlier, I knew how not to flinch during a surgical procedure.

Tonight’s hymn continued, and my attention returned to the song:

‘I am He that comforts you. Who are you to be afraid?’
‘Flesh that fades is made like the grass of the field, soon to wither.’

Then I flashed back to the operating room. Something wasn’t going well. Someone told me to cough. After I did, the tension decreased. “Why did you want me to cough?” I asked them. They told me my heart rate had slowed, but after the coughing it was doing ok. During my later recovery, I learned that my heart rate had slowed to 20.

I continued thinking while singing – on that operating room table, I didn’t know if I would ever sing in church again. What if this were my last Sunday on earth and the last time I would ever have a chance to sing to the Lord in worship?

So I began to sing with gusto…savoring today’s song and giving every note I could sing my heart and soul. I was called by name to sing tonight – not as a cantor, not as a leader, but as the quiet lady sitting in the pew who was neither standing nor kneeling but sitting, to preserve energy during my recovery.

And the song concluded,

Lift up your eyes to the heavens,  and look at the earth down below.
The heavens will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment.

If we open our eyes, every single day, we are each called to sing a song, where we are, with everything we have at that moment. Make the most of that moment and the others that follow.