I got a call two days ago from a number I didn’t recognize.  A gal, whose name was not familiar, was on the other end asking if I had a minute to talk.  Of course I said yes.  She said that she had heard a talk I had given 18 months ago about being authentic and real where i had shared my history of struggling with horrible anxiety and its affect on my life.  She is a young mom who had approached me at the time (it was all coming clear now) and said that she was in the middle of that fight herself.   Tears filled her eyes and the memory of the pain from clinical anxiety came rushing back.  She was in the middle of deep hurt.  We talked at length that night and I gave her my number.

Fast forward 18 months to two days ago.  As soon as she asked if I had a minute to talk, she began crying.  She was in the middle of a panic attack and was anxiously waiting for her husband to come home from work to help her. Panic attacks are a strange animal and can come on with little or no warning.  Stress and lack of sleep can be strong triggers, however.  Both of which she was experiencing.  We talked until her husband got home.  She called me again yesterday to let me know she was doing better and to follow up on my offer to go to coffee next week.  God taking a painful situation and bringing people together through it.  Just amazes me.

The yucky stuff that we go through in our lives is not without purpose.  It prepares us for someone down the road that needs to know that they are not alone and that they are going to make it.  God reveals Himself through us when we are able to use our past experiences and struggles to help someone else cope and even triumph.  I’ve seen it a million times over.  It is our pain, our weaknesses, our failures that God seems to use in such great ways.  His specialty – taking the broken and making something beautiful and vauable out of it.

Be available to someone today.  You never know the impact it can have down the road…