You don’t get to pick your hard.
We moved to Lebanon when I was three. Before that, my family was living in Saudi Arabia. My dad was a chemical engineer for a company that built oil refineries and manufacturing facilities all over the world.
My mom didn’t want to give birth overseas, so she flew back to Illinois, to her parents, with my sister Sara, who was almost four, and my sister Carol, who had just turned one. My dad came in at the last minute. I was born on a Monday. We were discharged from the hospital the next day and we all flew back to Saudi Arabia.
Eventually my dad decided to hang it up. He was driving from his last job in Houston to Illinois, where my mom’s parents were, and he stopped in Hartville. He loved it so much he decided to buy some land with a trailer on it and bring us all back here when he retired.
At some point before we moved here, the trailer in Hartville burned. Thankfully no one was living there.
So there we were, a family with three little kids, and no home to go to. Lebanon was close to Hartville, so they decided to buy a house in Lebanon.
Ordained by the Lord.
Dad started working with a financial planner in Springfield first. Then he got involved with the city. He started as the City Engineer. Then they created a new position and made him the city’s first City Administrator. Eventually he became the city’s first Public Works Director too. Twenty years in, he retired from the city.
My mom had grown up a military brat. High school in Germany, a stretch in Bermuda. My dad’s from Iowa. Neither of them had any reason to end up in Lebanon, Missouri. We’re migrants who landed on an accident and stayed.
I grew up here from three years old on. I went to Lebanon schools the whole way through. I graduated in 2002.
Jason graduated the same year. We started dating our senior year. We went to prom together. We were both nominated for the Magnet and we both lost. We still joke about it.
I went to Mizzou and got a degree in physical therapy. Jason majored in business there.
We lived at the lake for a little while after graduating college.
Then we came back to Lebanon in 2012.
I’m a physical therapist. I work for Integrity Home Care. I see people in their homes, typically Medicare age, people too sick to make it into a clinic. So I go to them.
My patients are always happy to see me.
Stepping into someone’s home is a very personal thing, a private thing. You learn a lot about a person when you walk into their home.
I see the social side of aging. I see the financial side. I see people who are no longer capable of understanding what’s happening to them or of managing their own health.
I often ask myself what it will be like as I age. Am I making the most of my life? Am I taking care of myself?
Getting old sucks. I know that.
Being in home health helps you stay grounded.
My parents had a heart for service. They were always serving in the church, serving the community.
When they retired, they bought a camper and joined a group called the Nomads. A volunteer organization. They’d go rebuild houses and churches after natural disasters.
They lived in the camper in campgrounds, or church parking lots, wherever. My dad hated the winter, so they’d head south for it and work on service projects, then come back in the spring to see the kids and the grandkids.
We lost my mom and dad a year apart.
Dad had been sick with his heart for years. Mom relied on him so much, she couldn’t have been here without him. Then she got kidney cancer. Within weeks of being diagnosed, she was gone.
You don’t get to pick your hard. The Lord just says, here’s your hard, and I’ll equip you to deal with it.
Dad found another year. But he didn’t want to be here without her. He couldn’t be. I think it was a gift, that He took them so close together. I can’t imagine Mom here without Dad. I can’t imagine Dad here any longer without Mom.
It’s beautiful. It’s hard. Grief is so hard. But God paints a beautiful picture.
I heard this concept from Corrie ten Boom, that all we can see of our life is like the backside of a tapestry. Messy. Ragged. Uneven. It looks chaotic from where we’re sitting. Then someday we get to see the front of the rug, and the Lord says, look what I wove out of what looked like chaos and grief and sadness. It’s breathtaking.
I believe this whole life of ours is being orchestrated by God, someone with more insight than I have, more love than I have, someone who can see things I can’t. We encounter things we’d never choose for ourselves, and we trust it’s part of a tapestry He’s weaving that we can’t appreciate yet, not from our seat.
You can’t compare your hard to somebody else’s. Either you get prideful because yours looks easier, or you get jealous because yours seems harder, and either way you stop being grateful.
Losing your parents throws you back on your heels. You start thinking about how short life is. My sister started a Sleep in Heavenly Peace chapter here. She grew up here too. She knew the need, knew how many kids don’t have what they need. She jumped right in.
I heard about Live 2 Give Hope when I ran into Laura one day. We graduated high school together and she was telling me how she was advocating for a family in another county, helping the bio parents, I don’t even remember all of it. But she knew her stuff. She was in the weeds. She was a fierce advocate. It resonated with me.
We started donating when the Fostering Hope Closet was still in the back of a retail shop. My boys were little. Clothes, toys, whatever we had. I’d bring her a load.
Laura asked me to join the board. I said yes.
I learned from my parents that what you’re given, a voice, a talent, money, you use to help others. Jason and I want our boys to realize there’s more to life than themselves. We’ve been given so much. We need to figure out how to share it.
Mary Russell
Live 2 Give Hope Board of Directors
Voices of Hope
Every person in this community carries a story worth telling. Voices of Hope features the real people of the Missouri Ozarks who show up for children and families, foster parents, caseworkers, volunteers, survivors, and neighbors who simply refused to look away.
Read more Voices of Hope stories →
