"You can be President one day."

Years ago when I was single and my daughter was in second grade, I decided I wanted to live on a horse farm and run it myself. Actually, the only thing I brought to the job was a love for horses and the outdoors. Beyond that I had nothing.

So we moved to a horse farm and did it anyway. Farmers up and down the road grumbled about how I didn't know what I was doing. This was the topic of local gossip, usually around the table at the nearby market. "She doesn't know the first thing about bush hogging or getting up hay!" And they were so right.

But then there was my dad. He told me from the time I was little that I could do anything I put my mind to - even be president one day. (It wasn't until I was in my thirties that it occurred to me this was probably not going to happen.) Did he point out to me that I knew nothing about taking on a horse farm? Did he remind me that I had a fine arts degree and no idea how to drive a tractor?

No. You know what he did? He gave me this pocketknife. He believed in me and knew I would need it for the tremendous challenge I had taken on. This little knife lived in my pocket every single day for the next four years. It cut twine off thousands of bales of hay - the ones I tossed up on the trailer behind the John Deere tractor I learned to drive.

From the day I was born I had someone teaching me, encouraging me, and believing in me. My dad taught me how to catch a softball, how to use a sewing machine (which he learned in the Navy), and how to hit the bullseye with a pistol - as if nothing was impossible for me. But many of the women who come to Blue Monarch never had that. In fact, they quite possibly had someone telling them they were worthless and would never amount to anything. I can't even count the number of times I have complimented a woman on something she has done and she's tearfully responded with, "No one has ever told me anything like that." Sadly, she's telling the truth.

Here at Blue Monarch we encourage, we believe in miracles, we affirm, we build up, and we celebrate accomplishments. Just like my pocketknife became a symbol of courage for me, the charms we give out for significant achievements are symbols of courage for the amazing women we serve.  They are proud to wear them and show them to their children. For some, it's the first time they have completed something and have a token to show for it.

The courage it takes to willfully walk into a strange place with your children and submit to a totally new way of life in every aspect - the way you spend your time, the way you spend your money, the way you parent your children, the way you interact with others, the manner in which you resolve conflict, even the meals you feed your children - well, that takes way more courage than trying to run a horse farm when you don't know what you're doing. And for that - I applaud the incredible women we serve.  They are truly my heroes.

But my first hero was the one who taught me the tremendous power of an encouraging word - even when I said I wanted to start a residential recovery program for women and their children and didn't know the first thing about addiction. 

"I'm trying to do the Lord's work, (bad word)!"

In the beginning of my Blue Monarch journey, I was on a pretty exciting and totally unpredictable roller coaster ride.  Seemed like I would begin every day with a question and before the day was out a perfect stranger would give me the answer or it would suddenly show up out of nowhere.  Money came in from unexpected places.  Miracles were around every corner and rainbows filled my days.  It was great!  This "doing the Lord's work" was awesome.

But as time went by I became overwhelmed with the enormity of my responsibility to raise the money we needed to operate.  I hired people with the disclaimer up front that they may be laid off any day - only to lay them off two weeks later because we didn't have the funds to pay them.  I remember one year going door to door to raise enough money to pay our tiny staff.  The pressure was awful.  

 

I vividly remember eating lunch one day, looking at all the women and children around the table and wondering to myself, “where are they going to go if we can’t pay the electric bill?”  It was agonizing.

There were many days I was angry that God had given me this difficult assignment and actually felt it was more of a punishment than a blessing.  I sometimes felt like saying, “Get out of my way!  I’m trying to do the Lord’s work, (bad word)!”

One day I was at home having one of those angry conversations with God – the kind where you’re screaming and crying – the kind you hopefully have in the privacy of your own home.  "WHY DID YOU ASK ME TO DO THIS IF YOU WEREN'T GOING TO GIVE ME THE TOOLS TO MAKE IT HAPPEN, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!" 

Then suddenly I heard God speak to me.  He said, "YOU are the one who makes it so hard - by not trusting me."  Hmmm... 
 

That stopped me in my tracks.  I began to consider this and realized I had been trying to do it all on my own.  No wonder it was so flippin’ hard!  I had not trusted God.  I had taken on the entire responsibility myself and foolishly thought I could do it alone. 

At that point I began learning to rely on God for direction.  I started every day with a trust fall that was not easy, but it did become easier as time went on.  What I discovered was that when I truly trusted God, things turned out better than I could have planned myself, and guess what - money began to come in from places I never imagined. 

I finally realized that God had not asked me to do this as punishment.  He had actually given me a priceless gift and beautiful blessing.  I had been offered the amazing privilege of seeing His tremendous work in the lives of the women and children we served and all I had done was agonize over the difficulty of it. 

As my faith grew stronger, not only did I personally develop a joy unlike any I had ever experienced, I began to really see the joy in the faces of the people who came to us for help, despite the fact their problems were much bigger than my own. 

There was the young woman who delighted in feeling snowflakes on her face because the last time it had snowed, she watched it from her jail cell window feeling hopeless and lost.

I saw a mother overcome with joy for her healthy baby that was not born addicted to drugs. 

 

And I watched countless children show great joy over playing with our farm animals when just a few weeks before they were struggling with some pretty painful problems.

Truth is, joy is everywhere and at Blue Monarch you don’t have to look far to find it.  I’m just grateful for a loving, faithful, and patient God who gave me time to finally experience the great joy He wanted for me all along. 

I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.  Until now you have not asked for anything in my name.  Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.  John 16: 23-24

What a holy mess...

One of my earliest and most difficult lessons through Blue Monarch took place the first time a resident left early.  It was 2004 and at that time our curriculum was twelve months long.  (It’s now a one-to-two year program.)

Jeannie was our poster child.  She came to us directly from jail in our very first year.  She had three girls and was able to be reunited with them through our program.  Jeannie was not only beautiful inside and out - she was smart and capable of doing great things.  She developed a strong relationship with God, improved her parenting skills, and even got a job in a nursing home helping the elderly, which she loved.  As far as I could tell, she was a perfect example of what Blue Monarch was supposed to provide and how women could expect to transform their lives while they were with us.  Yep, that was a job well done for all of us.

So when Jeannie decided to leave after only six months I was devastated.  I thought it was a terrible mistake because I knew she wasn’t ready but she was so hardheaded she wouldn’t listen.  So that made me angry.  I remember standing in Jeannie’s upstairs room trying to reason with her while she packed and it ended up in a heated argument because we were both so emotional about it.  Jeannie felt she had accomplished all she came to Blue Monarch to do, and she was ready to go back to her old friends and change them as well.

I might have been new to addiction and recovery, but even I knew that was a terrible mistake.  I couldn’t imagine it working the way she thought it would.  So she left.  And I felt completely defeated and heartbroken.  I actually began to wonder if Blue Monarch was a complete failure. It looked like a holy mess to me.

It wasn’t long after that I ran into Steve Blount, who happened to be Jeannie’s prosecutor.  I shared with him my disappointing news about Jeannie and he patiently listened to me.  When I finished he said, “You tell that story as if it’s a failure.  But to me, it’s still a success story.”

“How can you say that?  She was only with us for six months and she left when she wasn’t ready.  We failed her.”

“Well, the way I see it,” he said, “that’s six months she was not on the streets selling drugs.  And for six months her children were exposed to a much better way of life.  That to me is a success story.”

This revelation completely changed the way I looked at our program after that.  I began to consider what could have taken place during those six months if Jeannie and her girls had not been with us.  The possibilities were endless and the potential for disaster was great.  I eventually came to understand that even if someone leaves our program early, they still gain something valuable while they are with us.  And I now have a box full of letters women have sent me to confirm just that.

Some of those letters are from Jeannie.  Her plan to change her friends failed miserably and quickly.  She ended up in federal prison for four years and during that time we stayed in touch.  I even remember meeting her at Waffle House in the middle of the night when she was transported from one prison to another to participate in an intense recovery program there.  It was great to see her, but it hurt to think of her being separated from her girls for so long and to have all that time wasted in prison.  Again, it looked like a holy mess to me.

During those four years, though, Jeannie developed and strengthened her faith and worked diligently to become the woman Christ intended her to be.  It was a beautiful process to witness as she described her journey through the letters she wrote. 

All those years in prison Jeannie expressed to me that she would love to find a way to help Blue Monarch one day.  She always felt Blue Monarch was a special place and that she and her children had developed a lasting bond here.  She often expressed that their time at Blue Monarch probably prevented a devastating crisis for all of them.  

So after she was released and settled back into the real world, Jeannie began coming to Blue Monarch every Friday night to conduct a Bible study with our residents.  Right away it became evident that Jeannie was able to offer something the rest of us couldn’t.  And it was really valuable. 

One of my greatest dreams has now come true.  Because of a surprising and amazing gift from some generous folks, we have been able to hire Jeannie and add her to our amazing team at Blue Monarch!  More than once I have heard Jeannie described as someone who “just lights up the room.”  Yes, I would agree. She glows by the light of the Holy Spirit.  We are blessed that God took Jeannie’s personal journey that was painful and difficult, and found a way to bless others in a way that only He can do.

Now when I hear Jeannie talking to our residents with such great compassion and rich understanding that only she can offer, I’m reminded in living color how God can take what appears to be a holy mess and turn it into a holy blessing. So I just have to wonder...what looks like a holy mess to me today? 

 Click to hear Jeannie talk about her journey:

My favorite Blue Monarch Christmas story...

My journey with Blue Monarch has been filled with wonderful memories as well as some painful bumps along the way.  When God asked me to take this on, I had no idea what I was getting into.  And when I think back, my expectations were so remarkably low.  I just had NO idea…

This couldn’t have been clearer to me than when I witnessed the birth of our first Blue Monarch baby.  It was 2003 and our program was brand new.  As an artist with no social work background, I was just figuring things out as we went along.  One of our first residents showed up pregnant.  She hid it well because we didn’t know she was pregnant until her water broke.  And that was quite a surprise. 

Chrystal was way too early to be going into labor so she was rushed to the hospital for thirty days of bed rest.  During this time I frequently traveled to Chattanooga to visit her, bringing lots of reading material and trying to structure some kind of productive program for her under the circumstances. 

One thing I noticed was that this young mother was beginning to develop a personal relationship with God – which seemed pretty remarkable considering she was alone in her room much of the time, confined to the bed with very little to keep her busy.

Short of the thirty days, she called me one day and said, “Miss Susan, you’ve got to get here.  I have to have an emergency c-section!”  (It’s always seemed a little sad to me that I’m often the one in the delivery room when you’d assume a close family member would take that special place of honor.) 

So I got suited up for the c-section, completely shocked that they allowed ordinary people off the streets to witness this dramatic surgery.  But when they lifted her baby out, I was horrified because he looked like a little dead bird.  He was black from the knees down and looked completely lifeless.  Fortunately the mother was not able to see what I saw.  They immediately whisked him away and we returned to Chrystal's room to wait for news.  We waited…and waited…and waited.  Three painful hours went by and not one person could tell us anything about the baby.  Things didn’t look good.

Finally the doctor entered the room and said, “We’ve tried everything to save your baby but we’re not going to be able to.  So if you want to see him alive, you only have a few minutes left.”

As you can imagine, our world turned upside down in a split second.  Chrystal was extremely upset, and the entire NICU cleared out so we could visit her baby in his last moments in privacy.  This time he looked like a dead bird in a box hooked up to a million wires.  He was pitiful and tiny and lifeless. 

The doctor pointed to a gauge overhead and said, “You see this number?  This measures his blood oxygen level and should be over 90.  But as you can see, it’s only 20.”

After an understandable emotional breakdown, Chrystal decided to go back to her room because she didn’t want to watch him die.  But it didn’t seem right to leave him alone so I stayed with him.  It was quite surreal because Christmas carols were quietly playing in the background with Christmas only a few days away. 

I watched the dreaded number continue to drop from 20…to 16… to 11…  And then it occurred to me that we needed to be praying for this baby.  So I got on the phone, called my daughter in the middle of the night, and asked her to call all her friends and start praying for this baby.

Even though I had grown up in the church, I had heard about “the power of prayer” until it no longer meant anything to me.  I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly make a difference at this point, but it seemed like the thing to do so I sat there next to the baby and prayed.  I prayed hard.

Afraid of what I might see, I eventually peeked at the gauge and much to my surprise, the number had begun to rise.  It was back up to 20.  I kept watching it – and I saw that number gradually climb all the way to up to over 90 again!  It was truly unbelievable.

The nurses ran over to me and couldn’t believe what they saw.  They quickly fetched the doctor and when he rushed over he looked at me and demanded, “What did you do?!” 

“I really don’t know.  We just have a lot of folks praying for this baby.”

“Well, that’s one helluva prayer team you people have!  I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Trenton remained in the hospital for several weeks since he was so premature, but for that entire time everyone referred to him as “The Christmas Miracle Baby.”

Which brings me to this story.

We recently had a very special reunion at Blue Monarch when we brought together six of the children who lived at Blue Monarch our first year in 2003.  I had the wonderful privilege of telling Trenton about the day he was born – nearly eleven years ago.  The rest of the day he went around telling everyone, “Did you know I was a Christmas Miracle Baby?” 

When this precious boy survived and it was such a miracle to witness, I decided right then and there if that’s all we ever accomplished at Blue Monarch – it would still be worth it!  Anything after that would just be icing on the cake.

And guess what – there has been LOTS of icing on the cake since then.  Come visit me again here to see what I mean.

To watch Trenton as he hears the story for the first time, click the video below or click here:    
Susan tells Trenton about the day he was born...