Our Story ~ Who We Are
How many times have you heard the following?
“I understand.”
“I get it.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
And how many times did those words bring comfort to your broken heart or ease the pain you were experiencing?
Perhaps a little? Perhaps none at all?
We know this because we’ve been on the receiving end of similar, if not the same words, and that’s exactly how we were affected too. It’s not the fault of those who love and care about us and genuinely want to help. They’re doing the best they can to show genuine compassion. But when you’re experiencing deep grief from abuse, brokenness, abandonment, rejection, and/or betrayal, you want, and desperately need, someone who truly understands the agony. While the people around you mean well and are honestly trying to relate to what you’re going through, how can they if they’ve never walked this path? We have found that most people can’t.
However, there IS Someone who understands you completely and knows exactly what you need. His name is Jesus! We understand what you’re going through because we’ve been where you are and we know we wouldn’t have made it without Him. While others may not understand, He truly does. He is here for you and so are we.
"The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy." Proverbs 14:10 ESV
You Are Not Alone!
While no one can fully know the pain of another person, there are those who have been through almost identical experiences and can empathize with you and offer encouragement. We have been through the trauma of abuse, and the heartbreak of divorce, and while we are by no means over it nor completely healed from it, we are walking through it…together! Walking through a healing journey is a process. It ebbs and flows. Grief is like that. One day you feel great and the next, you can barely lift your head off the pillow.
We really do understand; we really do.
Sometimes you just need someone to be there.
Sometimes you need someone who gets it.
That is why we started this ministry.
For others just like us.
For others like You!
You are the purpose for this ministry. To meet you where you are and encourage you in the middle of the mess.
To point you to the Someone who not only knows the depth of
your pain but feels it as well.
To show you the Someone who “intercedes for you with
groaning’s too deep for words.” Romans 8:26. To lead you to the Someone who is “close to the brokenhearted; and rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Psalm 34:18.
That Someone is Jesus, and He is the very heart of this ministry:
A ministry with a purpose.
A ministry of lifelong friends who’ve been there, and are there.
A ministry where our own healing is.
Reflecting His heart.
Proverbs 18:24 ESV
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
Will You Be My Friend?
Neither of them can recall a time they didn’t know each other. Many lifelong friends meet in grade school, or Jr. High. Not these two. “Sometime before age four,” Tami responds when asked when she met her friend, “because age four is where my memories come into focus, and she was already there. I don’t remember not knowing her.”
Jennifer has a clearer memory, despite being a year younger. “I was on the sidewalk in front of her house. Tami lived on the corner and I lived across the street, a few houses down. She was outside playing. ‘Will you be my friend?’ I asked.” The answer must have been yes, because 52 years later these two are still tied at the heart. Tami adds she doesn’t remember the two of them ever fighting. “The closest thing to it,” she recalls, “was in early grade school. She and I played every day after school and on weekends. I was either at her house, or she was at mine. We even became friends with each other’s siblings. It was like each of us had a main family, and a side family as back up.” Tami describes how one Saturday during elementary school Jennifer came over to play, as usual. The difference on this afternoon was that her family had out-of-town guests. “It was certainly fine for Jennifer to join us while the other child was visiting. The problem came when the visitor decided it would be fun for the three of us to play in the backyard, and even funnier to tiptoe away and close Jennifer up in the backyard behind a locked gate. I felt horrible. I knew it was wrong, but I was afraid to stand up to the other girl. I can still remember Jenny’s sad, little face and quiet cry to please be let out to go home. The next day I told her I was sorry. She forgave me and nothing like that ever happened again. Through the years we’ve faced different problems, like being afraid moving away might end our friendship, but we’ve never had a fight. At least that I remember.”
“Until I was in fourth grade and she was in fifth,” Jennifer recalls, “our days were filled with all kinds of play. We were creative, too. If we didn’t have what other kids had, we’d improvise. We’d make something up. Probably the best example is what we called ‘water buckets’, and on hot Summer days we’d make our own version of a swimming pool. Neither of our families had money for a pool. We played in the sprinkler, and that was fun for cooling off, but we wanted more. One summer we decided to round up every plastic tub and bucket we could find. Anything that would hold water. We found traditional buckets like water pails, and an old, metal diaper pail from when we were babies, discarded wash basins, baby bathtubs and other things like that. We gathered ten or fifteen of them, lined them up in the grass, or formed a circle, or bunched them together…whatever shape. We filled them with water from the garden hose and proceeded to step from one to another, like musical chairs, until we’d finally plop our behinds down to soak in the icy water. After a while we’d get up and do it again and again. The Tami & Jennifer version of ‘swimming.’
In the Summer of ’73 news came that Jennifer and her family were moving off the block, across the Columbia River, into the Northern Oregon countryside. It might have been the end, but both sets of parents were committed to keeping this friendship alive by taking turns ferrying the girls from Washington to Oregon, and vice versa, for frequent weekend sleepovers; Friday night to Sunday evening. “And no, we never got sick of each other,” the girls giggle simultaneously. In truth, the distance was only a thirty-minute drive, but when you’re 10, that seems impossibly far.
The years went by and things continued much the same. Shared weekends with each other’s families, special events like church camp every Summer, or going to each other’s high school basketball games and rooting for the team simply because it was your friend’s school and it was important to them. “I could talk about these teenage years forever,” Tami chimes, with Jennifer quickly seconding. But the teen years transitioned into ones of young adults, and eventually Jennifer’s wedding engagement. And these changes wouldn’t be as easy to overcome.
“I got married in the Spring of ’83,” Jennifer shares. “While planning the wedding was happy and exciting, we both knew our lives would change forever.”
Tami added, “I couldn’t focus too far down the road because I knew where it ended…with my best friend at Ft. Hood, Texas and me still in Washington. So, I took each day as it came and enjoyed the long weeks of wedding preparation. I’d never planned a wedding before, I’d never been a maid-of-honor before. I took my position seriously and was determined to be the best one ever. But eventually, the big day came and went, and as I’d dreaded, Jennifer was gone. We only had letters or expensive phone calls in those days; none of the modern technology that keeps loved ones close, like today.
“That’s right,” Jennifer agreed. “We wrote letters that took three days to be delivered, and calls were too expensive for a newlywed couple or a single girl in college. We did the best we could over the years, with Tami coming to visit when we were stationed in California, and Alaska. But life got busy for both of us; babies were born, careers commenced…and the distance grew.”
“But different paths weren’t the only reason for what seemed to be a widening gap between us. We now know controlling spouses saw to it that we were isolated from certain family and other loved ones. It wasn’t instant, it was subtle; but it was on-going and relentless. In the last two years, we’ve both gone through separate, excruciatingly painful life changes. In the process, we discovered from each other the underhanded things that transpired to keep us apart…to block communication and prevent us from really being a part of each other’s lives. Sometimes it involved outright lies. Other times, it was more insidious and sinister. It was exactly what our husbands wanted: to isolate us, control us, and for no one to get in the way,” Tami concluded.
“We will get into this topic of narcissistic control and domestic abuse in each of our respective blog posts, but for now, we want to tell the world how beyond thankful we are, in the midst of pain, suffering and loss, to know God saw who did this to us (and what they did), He held each of us safe in His hands, and delivered us from a variety of abuses. And I believe, with all my heart, God is going to redeem the time we’ve lost not being in each other’s lives,” says Jennifer, with Tami in quick agreement.
“Ours isn’t a friendship like most; it is like many in that we laugh, we cry, we talk (oh boy, do we talk), we have fun, and we share a lifetime of memories,” says Tami.
Jennifer continues, “But beyond that, we were chosen. We were called by a loving and Holy God, set apart to do a good work on this earth, in this lifetime. Every Christian is. We refuse for the physical and psychological pain we’ve suffered at the hands of another, to be in vain. We don’t claim to know all the answers, but it is our hope to share what we’ve learned from all we’ve endured and, most importantly, point others to Jesus for their healing. The only reason we can share our story is because of Him. If we help just one person…just one… it’s worth everything He allowed to touch us.”
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” ~ Genesis 50:20 ESV
“The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. ~ Psalm 34:18 NIV
