Dateline recently showed the poignant story of teacher Karen Longoria. Karen gave birth to triplets 3 months early. A year later she was divorced. Two of the children developed spinal muscular atrophy, a progressively crippling disease. Two months after they were diagnosed Karen was diagnosed with cancer. She had moved her family back to her home town of Grafting, Wisconsin where unemployment had doubled. People were depressed and discouraged.
Karen had rented a small house that didn’t accommodate the children’s wheel chairs. The town people formed a group “A Circle of Friends”. They found the family a place to live for a month. Hundreds of people gutted and rebuilt the house making it wheelchair friendly. Seventy workers a day worked to finish in a month. All material was donated. It miraculously changed the town’s depression to hope and faith. Many new relationships began.
A volunteer interior decorator who had lost her little boy 19 years earlier said, “It was the first time in 19 years that I didn’t feel pain. I felt joy.” That is what love can do.
