I am sometimes overwhelmed by the needs in the lives of the people I want to help.  Many times there is nothing you can do but be there.  Last week, one of the members in my Sunday School class had a sweet daughter-in-law who was walking her dog and was hit by a car going full speed.  The driver, of course, had lost his license and had no insurance.

She had both legs broken, both arms broken, both ankles fractured, a broken pelvis, and a broken eye socket--not counting torn skin and surface wounds.  Nobody knows how she lived--but she is still alive.  She will be hospitalized for months and months, and it will take multiple surgeries to put her back together.  And of course, putting her back together will never restore her.  She is broken into pieces.  Things like that make us so sad.  We don't know what to do.  We just pray that she can manage to endure as God heals her wounds.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Pat came by the house awhile ago with her horse Reagan--loaded in the horse trailer.  He is a rescue animal that she took in--somewhere between 25-26 years old.  He was was pitiful when she got him--you could see his bones.  He had been starved.  So she fed him, loved him and restored him to health.  But at that age, we all knew that he didn't have much life left.  However, this last year was so much better than the years that had gone before.  He was happy.  He gained close to 250 pounds.  Food makes a difference.  Love does too.  Food and love are sometimes all we have to give.

Pat was on her way to the vet.  Reagan couldn't stay on his feet this morning.  He kept falling.  He was worn out.  "It's time," Pat said.  "I knew this day would come and I want to do the right thing for him."  She always talks to her animals so I asked her what she told him before he went to sleep.  "I said for him to tell Jesus that I apologize that he came to heaven without getting a bath."

She had a stallion once that she had poured her heart and soul into that got cancer and died at the age of four.  He was a beautiful, beautiful horse.  It broke Pat's heart.  She never raised another after that, because loosing him was so painful.  "What did you say to Faroh before he died," I asked her.  She said, "Well, he was pretty hard to deal with.  I told him not to bite Jesus."  That's Pat.  To the point.