Jill
Hi, Barbara. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Barbara
Hi, how are you today?
Jill
I am doing well and I am so excited to be visiting with you. It was a real blessing to get to meet you at our retreat a few months ago, and I would love to just start by giving you an opportunity to tell the listeners just a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what life is like for you there.
Barbara
Sure. Thank You so much. I am originally from New Orleans born, and I grew up there and left New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina approached the city. And I now reside in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Now, it took me a long time to call this home. I would always say, referring to New Orleans, I'm going home when I would go to visit, but I now call this home. I Know this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and I'm grateful to be here.
Jill
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're glad you're here, too. So when you came to the while we're waiting weekend a few months ago, and you shared Kevin's story with us, but you also shared quite a bit of your own story. You are a gifted and compassionate communicator, and I would like to just give you the opportunity to share. I'm just going to turn the microphone over to you to share your testimony with our listeners with just minimal interruptions from me. So please feel free to share whatever the Lord puts on Your heart to say. And I'll follow up with some questions when you're finished.
Barbara
Thank you. As I said, I grew up in New Orleans. My parents were married 19 years before they had any children. I was born in January of '65 and my dad died in February of '66. So 19 years, no kids, and just eleven months after my mom finds herself as a single parent, my mom was born and raised in Mississippi. And I say all these things to say, how God is in control and in the midst no matter what anything else looks like. My mom was born in Mississippi in 1923, so she was 41 when I was born. And she only had like a third grade education. Came from a family where she had to go to work as a part of that process to help with the other kids. And her only work that I've ever known her to do was cleaning homes. So I say that to parallel how God uses these things. Me, on the other hand, she grew up, like I said, in Mississippi then me, on the other hand, I came in right in the midst of civil rights, 1965, and my life was just very different from my mom's life, and I was her only child. And then her husband passed, and she's responsible for all of the responsibilities at this point. And our lives sort of clashed. Like, I did not see life the way she saw it. And part of it is because I didn't live the life that she had lived at all. And because of those huge generational gaps, I didn't even understand a lot of it. So part of that led me to kind of be and try and do my own thing. And then as a teenager, you definitely think you know everything anyway, right?
Jill
Yes.
Barbara
So as a teen, I got pregnant really young, and I had my son, and he was born with some heart issues. And I think at some point, I really believed that he was sick because of my mistakes. So I lived with some of that, but he changed my life. When I had my son, I was actually still in high school, but I was determined that I was going to make a better life for us. Then I got married after college. Well, in college. No, after college. I got married in 89, graduated college in 87. And my husband and I had been together all through high school and college. And then we get married, and seven years later, it's fallen apart. And it's fallen apart. We had just had another child, so our boys were 14 years apart. We had just had our second child, and then 18 months later, I'm divorced. So parallel in my life to my mom's life. Here I am now, a single mom with two boys, and my divorce was really one of the most difficult things I've faced in my life. And when I said things like that to people, having lost my son and then I lost my mom a year after my son died, people often say, well, how can the divorce be so difficult? I think part of the divorce, what made it so difficult is I felt like it was my fault, like I should have been able to do something different. I didn't feel that way in the death of my son. I didn’t feel like there was something that I should have done differently. So I think that’s what made it so difficult. But my son that passed away, he was a very very loving person. He loved to talk, and he loved giving hugs, and he loved giving kisses, and everything that I wasn't. I even teased and said when he was about five years old, I bought him a tape recorder, and his favorite book was Porky Little Puppy. He would listen to it so much that he would bark, because when it was time to flip the pages, it would bark so he could tell you all the words and bark when it was time to flip the pages.
Jill
Yeah
Barbara
And I told him, I said, I know that you really love to hear yourself talk, so we’re going to buy this tape recorder for you. And I even let him record himself. Yeah so he was very loving. And then he had kids. He had his first child when he was 19. And then Katrina happened, and it was, as I think about those areas in my life, when I think about my marriage and then my divorce and my son, the way he experienced the divorce, it was very difficult for him. From the perspective of his question was, so, is this what happens when things get hard? Do we just walk away? So it was very devastating to him. And because of that, I feel like he learned to love differently. Like, he wanted to make sure that he was not going to walk away from anything so he loved fiercely and he loved really hard always. So it’s been as we left to come to New Orleans, left from New Orleans, one of those huge turning points in my life. I accepted Jesus as a young child, but what I tell people know we need him as Lord and Savior. And back then I accepted him as Savior.
Jill
Right
Barbara
I was Lord of my own life. I understand he could take control when I couldn’t handle it, but in so many areas, I felt like I could handle this. Lord, you got other things to worry about, but when Katrina happened, it completely changed my life. It was a breaking like none other. And it was definitely moments when I realized that Jesus has to be my sole purpose because I have absolutely no control over anything else. So my control is in my surrender and surrendering my will to his. So I know that Hurricane Katrina and coming to Arkansas was all a part of God's plan, even though he knew he was going to call Kevin home because it didn't catch him by surprise. So He knew he was going to call Kevin Home because we came here in 2005, and Kevin passed in January of 2011. So we had only been here for a few short years, but God had come in, and I tell people, I know this is where I'm supposed to be because he planted me. LIke I didn't just end up sitting on the surface somewhere, but I was deeply rooted and planted. and as a result of that, when he took Kevin Home, I was able to rest. Now, not immediately, but I was able to rest in the fact that God knows Best, he loves me beyond measure. And because of that, I trust Him. And my statement would be, just until we meet again. Yes, we have this gap here, but it's until we meet again.
Jill
That's right. I remember when you were at the retreat, you were talking about Hurricane Katrina and the impact it had on your life, and you said it was like dropping a china plate on a tile floor. So talk about why Katrina was so impactful in your life.
Barbara
Yes, yes. That's actually how I felt. So let me backup a little bit to say how I know that God was directing. I lived In New Orleans, so we had hurricanes all the Time, And we always prepared to leave. And for us, it was like a weekend. Now, you get up, you're going to leave, find someplace you want to go, spend a couple of days and come back home. That's how it always felt. And as Katrina is approaching, you kind of feel the same way. I'll be gone a couple of days, and I'll be back home, and I have been thinking about where I'm going to go. What do I want to do? I had been to Kentucky. Now I've been to Tennessee. Earlier that year, I had a friend who had moved to Kentucky, and she was at work spending some time in Nashville. So we went up to Nashville to visit with her. And then my son wanted to go to Memphis. Well, it's not necessarily on the way, so we didn't go to Memphis. So I decided when we were leaving for Katrina that we would go to Memphis, since that's where we wanted to go. Just two weeks earlier, we'd go to Memphis. But I went to bed that night. Well, planning and thinking through that, like, I took and removed some clothes and put them on top of a washing machine. We took some pictures and put them on top of the bed. And when I went to bed that night, I had already decided that we would go to Memphis. And this was a Saturday night. So Sunday morning, I'm trying to decide if we're going to go to thinking, will I go to church or not? But I go to bed, and about midnight, it felt like someone was shaking to wake me up. And I wake up, and the Scripture that's on my mind is in kings with Jehoshaphat. When he was facing the army and they come to tell him that he's going to be attacked, and he's fearful, but he calls everyone to fast and pray. And then God says to him, I just need you to go stand, take your position. This battle isn't yours, is mine. And that's what I heard really clearly. So at that point, I decided that we needed to go stand and take our position, that this battle wasn't ours, it was the Lord's. So I get my son up, Kevin, the one who passed away because he had three kids at the time and they were with us because they had spent the night with us. So him and his three kids, me, my mom, and my youngest son, so I get him up and he gets about three outfits ready for his kids to take with us. And I get things for me and my mom and my youngest son. And we pack the car with an ice chest and some sandwich meat and just kind of pack up and with the intent that we'd be back in a couple of days, we pull out the driveway and we lock the gate and say a prayer and get on the road, and we get to Memphis that Sunday. Here's what made me decide not to go to church. I called the church number and the answer machine said, know, this is the pastor's like, you know, Hurricane Katrina is on its way. My family and have, we're not having service. We've gotten out of town, and I encourage you to. I told my son, I said, well, Pastor probably has a closer connection. If he's gone, we're leaving. Yeah, that's right. So we leave, we head to Memphis, and the weather is predicted to be bad there. So we spend the night. Hotel is horrible, so nothing there is allowing us to feel like that's where we should be. But I feel like that's God again, pushing to send me where he needs me to be. So then we end up in Cabot, Arkansas, on Monday because I left New Orleans on Sunday. I end up in Cabot on Monday. By Monday afternoon, the levees are broke. And I know I'm not going to be home anytime soon. We had enough clothes and everything till Wednesday, but I know I'm not going to be home anytime soon. So I go to the front office. I had paid through Wednesday, so I go to the front office, and I'm going to pay through Friday. I'm not really sure how effective or what that was really going to do. Add a couple more days when the whole house is flooded. But I paid through Friday because that's as far as I can think. And I come outside and I stand in front of the building and I stop and I say to God, okay, God, I have done what you told me to do. You told me to go and to stand and take my position. The rest is up to you. I could close my eyes and pin a tail on a map. And wherever it lands, I could go, because wherever I go, I have to start all over. And it literally felt like a china dish being dropped. And in my mind, I'm imagining all the many pieces. Like, even if you sweep it up, you still can't get it all. And you'll be walking months later and stepping on a piece of glass because you can't get it all. And that's how I felt. I can't do this. I can't put this back together. I can't do any of it. So I am leaning and trusting and depending on you. And all seven of us were staying in one hotel room at the tIme, and just so many things that God was doing. Like, when I go to pay for the room and I come out and I say that prayer, and I'm walking back to the door, there's a car that pulls up, and a gentleman gets out the car and says that he saw my license plate and he saw that I was from Louisiana, and he wanted to pray with me. And he prayed with me and gave me money that covered exactly what I had just paid the hotel. So God was just doing all these things to say, you did. And I have you. And I tell people, I mean, I have tons of stories like that, how he just showed up and how there's no doubt that this was God. And I tell people, the road has not been necessarily smooth sailing since then, but when, you know you're not traveling it along, then the road is a journey that you can take. So that's, like I said, I have tons of stories, but what made Katrina, I think, this monumental? It's literally a marker in my life. When I refer to my life, I refer to my life as pre Katrina and Post Katrina. And I think what made it that marker in my life was the mere fact that it brought me to a place where I had nothing but him, and I could depend on no one but him. I'm in a place where I don't even know people. The only people I know are the people that came with me. And God was faithful just doesn't even describe it.
Jill
Yes, well, and I have to believe that that was him preparing you for what was to you. You already had that foundation of faith established. And then it grew even stronger through Katrina, knowing that there was no one else you can turn to. There's nowhere else that's going to give you what you need but the Lord. And so then when things began to happen with Kevin, you knew where to.
Barbara
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it wasn't very long after that that things started to happen. Kevin, he had lupus. He got diagnosed with lupus as a teenager, and as a result of that, it just wrecked his body but he had gone into remission and he was doing better. He was working. Everything was fine. And like I said, we got here in August of ‘05, and by November of ‘05, he had had his first heart attack. So it was not very long after. So it's like, you're right. God was preparing me, strengthening me, helping me to see where all of my strength came from. And then it wasn't so far off that I would forget. I mean, yeah, we're still in the midst of trusting moment by moment. And I had left New Orleans to go for a meeting. And I was on my way home and I got the phone call that he had had a heart attack and he was in the hospital. But again, even in that, I felt like God drove me home because my mind is not clear at this point, but I was safe. I didn't get lost or any of that because I felt like God was literally carrying me, which he has done in so many.
Jill
Yeah. Yeah. So Kevin had that first heart attack, then not long after Katrina. Had you all settled in somewhere by that point? Surely you're not still in the hotel.
Barbara
We were not still in a hotel. And even with respect to that, we went to Cabot on Monday. We're in a hotel on Monday. By Saturday, we were moving into an apartment and we were moving into East Gate, into housing in North Little Rock. But again, all these little stories I had gone when we were in Cabot that Monday after the guy met me. When I went back to the hotel, I get inside and then the guy from the front desk tells me I have a phone call. A Phone call? Nobody knows I'm here. How can I have a phone call? Yeah. I go to take their phone in the front office, and it's a church around the corner. Who says that? They knew I was there and they wanted to invite us to lunch. So I take the whole family, we go around the corner to lunch. And then what I realized at that point is it's a soup kitchen. And it was like, hey, yeah, we are homeless. Yeah, that's right. This is for us. This is what I need. But even that was one of those moments where. Okay, just a minute can change everything.
Jill
Yeah, absolutely.
Barbara
We were at that soup kitchen. I met a woman who invited me to come to her house. She lived in a trailer park somewhere in the area. I can't remember, but she invited me to come to her house. And here's what she said to me. She said, I don't have any money to give you. As you can see, I was eating at the soup kitchen. She said, but I want you to look in my closet, and if you see anything that you or your mom could use, you take it.
Jill
What a kind thing to do. Wow.
Barbara
I know. I know. And then she called the housing in Cabot and was coming with me to the housing department in Cabot to show me where it was to try and help me get some housing. And my son was working for a chain store. He was working for Rainbow or City Trends, I think, at the time. He had talked to his district manager, who was going to get him at the store in Little Rock. So the housing person referred me to North Little Rock's housing, and by Saturday. So I'm in Cabot on Monday. By Saturday, we're moving into an apartment in East Gate with furniture. The entire house is furnished. People came out from everywhere. The school district, banks. I mean, people came over from everywhere, and the house is furnished. We ended up with so many clothes that I had to find places to bring them.
Jill
Wow.
Barbara
And just a funny side note is there was a gentleman who had come, I think he brought us a bed, and I was downstairs and thanking him for all that he had done and saying how grateful I was. And he said to me, oh, sure, I'm glad I could do it. There's a place for people like you guys in heaven. But even thinking about just those moments, how God can even use moments like that to change people's hearts now, I don't know whatever happened beyond that, but all of those things are by God's design. Absolutely. Every day I'm asking God to allow me to see the opportunities that he placed before me to bring him glory, to make him famous.
Jill
Yes. Because that's what I was just thinking is all of those people had to be willing to be used by God. They had to be willing and.available to be used by him. And that's the way we should be all the time.
Barbara
Absolutely. Yeah. So we were still in Eastgate at the time when he had his first heart attack. And like I said, he had been sick since he was a teenager, and I had always worked hard to not make him feel different. Like, if you feel well enough to do it, and the doctor said, we can do it, we're going to do it. I don't want to say, no, you can't. No, you can't. And then even as I look back on that now, his life was such a short life that I'm so grateful that I allowed him to have experiences and didn't try to prevent him from it, because I didn't know that his life would be so short.
Jill
Yeah. So he had that first heart attack, and then what happened with his health journey from that point?
Barbara
Well, he had his first heart attack, like I said, that November of ‘06. And then he recovered, was still able to work, but within the next, because he died only five years later, because he died in January of 2011, he had had two more heart attacks, and he had had a stroke. So before he passed away, he had had three heart attacks and a stroke. Now, he was such a trooper that even up until the admittance to the hospital, he was still working. But it had wrecked much havoc on his body. He had lost so much weight. A stroke had slurred his speech. Matter of fact, when he passed and we put pictures in the paper, one of his coworkers said, because he was working for Target by this time, one of his coworkers actually stopped me and said, how long ago was this picture, meaning a former picture versus what they saw of him then. And it had not been long at all. It had only been about a year before. So his body was deteriorating. And the night that he had his stroke again, I can only see God in all of it. The night that he had had his stroke, he had left that day, had gone to work, and he came home and he had a headache, and he said his head was hurting. I cooked, and the kids wanted, I don't know, McDonald's or something. So he left and took all the kids, his brother, as well as the three little kids, to get food. And they went on a street that had a bunch of different restaurants, but he had four kids in the car and came back with four different meals from four different places. Everybody wanted something different, right? So he came back and he sat down, and he's sitting on the sofa, and we're in the kitchen. We're getting ready to eat. And I send his youngest son. This is in 2006, toward the latter part of 2006, and I send his youngest son to go to get him to tell him to come to the table. And his youngest son is four at the time. And he comes back and he says to me, and this is only about five minutes after they've been back in the house, if that long. So his youngest son comes to me, he says, daddy won't get up. He said, he has spit dripping from his mouth. So I go in, and he'd had a stroke. But even in that moment, I found myself so grateful that he was home because he was out in the car driving with the four kids. God brought him back home, just minutes later, he had a stroke. And again, like I said, he had such a great heart and he was such a trooper by the paramedics come and they're asking him questions, and that paramedic said, can you lift your left arm? Because he's leaning. So he takes his right hand and he lifts the left hand up.
Jill
He's going to figure out a way to get it done, isn't he?
Barbara
Right! So his health was declining, but he never gave up. Like, up until the last minutes, he never gave up. When he went in the hospital, he had gone in the hospital, he had a cold. So I said to him, you probably need to go check that out because a cold for you isn't the same thing as a cold for me. So you need to go check that out. So he did. And they told him that he needed to have a pacemaker installed. And it was right before the holidays, because he died on January 3, so it was right before the holidays. So that weekend, they decided to let him come home. They said the doctors aren't going to do any surgery this weekend, so there's no need for you to stay here. So you can go home and come back on Monday, which was the third. And he did. He came home, and Friday night was always movie night. We watched our movie. And again, God has given us all those little sweet moments. And then he went to the hospital that Monday, and he just didn't survive the procedure. So his heart was just weaker than they knew, and he didn't survive the procedure. But I think about, again, how God is right there. We just have to see it. My youngest son was 16 at the time, and he had just started driving, and he had gotten his license, but he had to wait six months. His birthday was in June. He had to wait six months before he could drive alone. So January was the first time that he'd be able to drive alone. So he got to drive his brother to the hospital while I stayed home to get with the little kids and then went up. And he talks about that time in the car with him. That again, God is just, He's so loving and kind and amazing. And I don't want anybody to miss seeing God in the midst of things, because things can get hard. And it's easy to just see what's happening right here in the moment. But I want to encourage everyone to look beyond the moment and see what God is doing. Because God hasn't forgotten. He hasn't walked away. He's right there. It's not catching him by surprise. None of this is like, oh, really? Is that happening over there? No, he's right there in that moment, right there with you. And just not to miss all that God is doing.
Jill
That's right. And that's such a good encouragement because I do think that we sometimes just don't look. We're not looking for those things. Like you said, we're looking at the crisis or whatever it is that's right in front of us. And we're not looking for how God is working through that situation or in that situation or has worked before the situation to prepare us for what is to come. And I think a lot of it is just training ourselves to look for those things and to be aware of them. So thank you for reminding us of that.
BarbaraI often tell my ladies, I lead a women's Bible study. I often tell my ladies that God is always speaking. We're just not always listening. And I tell them, I said, think about your children. I said, if your kids are in a room full of kids and that child cries, Mama, even though there are a lot of voices and a lot of things going on, your ears are perking.
Jill
Exactly.
Barbara
And you will know your baby. I said, so that's how God is. God is always speaking to us. We just need to make sure that our ears are perking and we can hear our father.
Jill
Wow. Yeah. That's a great illustration. Thank you for that.
