Quotes from emails between Jackie Hollingsworth and Karen Barber about the beginning of the Blanket Ministry
On May 8, 2007, at 3:30 PM, Karen Barber wrote:
Dear Ben and Jackie, I appreciate so much all of the time Jackie spent with me on the phone the other day telling the story about your blanket ministry. As you know I've done an 11 part video series on prayer and am doing a guidebook to go with it where people can try out different ways of praying. It's called Personal Prayer Power. In each session I'm writing a 3-page section called "Postcards from the Scenic Route" where I tell about meeting someone who taught me a valuable lesson about prayer. I've written something about you for session 7 on prayer and healing. I'd like for you to look over it and see if it will be all right with you to use it. Please let me know if there's anything that's not correct or anything that you'd rather not have printed. I haven't done a final edit on it so there may still be typographical errors and sentences I need to clarify and edit. I don't mention Jackie's name in the video but tell about how God used my allergies in a positive way one time because I was assigned to visit a cancer patient who was allergic to perfume and I never wore any because I'm allergic, too. I also mention Jackie in video 9 when I talk about my morning prayer walk and as an example I say that I pray for a school teacher who started a blanket ministry. When the video is finished up and goes out to other churches (hopefully in July) you may get inquiries from others about the blanket ministry, so we'll talk later about maybe making a way through my Personal prayer Power website that they can contact you. I really appreciate all you two do to help other's feel God's comforting presence!
Many blessings to you today!Karen
In response a few weeks later Jackie wrote:
Dear Karen,
Your account of the Blanket Ministry history inspired me to spend more time in my prayer journey. God truly has blessed you with a writing gift. Many friends have urged me to put the story on paper, but I could never get started. Now I know why. Your account puts the emphasis on God's love and ever presence instead of on a person seemingly with a broken heart. Thank you so much. I thank God everyday for friends such as you.
I must apologize for my late answer to your request. I don't know the reason I couldn't read the story until just a few days ago. Maybe I was afraid I would have to think about cancer too much, but I was pleasantly surprised to feel uplifted instead of depressed. I thank God for your gentle and thoughtful style of writing and hope that others may be moved as I was.
Thank you again for sharing your gift with us and hopefully many other churches.
Love,Jackie
Copy of Blanket Ministry Story written by Karen Barber
Postcards from the Scenic Route
My dear friend,
Have you ever come up against an illness that was so overwhelming physically and emotionally that you wondered how on earth anyone could ever find a healing path?
I wondered the same thing when I was assigned to visit Jackie Hollingsworth, the cancer patient I mentioned in this video. Jackie was a gifted middle school chorus teacher who taught piano lessons and accompanied and directed church choirs. Music wasn’t just Jackie’s job, it was her healing path. Performing music helped Jackie overcome her lack of self confidence. When Jackie was performing she felt that she was making a worthy contribution to the world.
Radiation, chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and an old threadbare nightgown.
Then one day Jackie was diagnosed with the advanced stages of breast cancer. The radical surgery severely impaired the use of her right arm and then chemotherapy walloped her strength. One day when I visited Jackie I noticed an old threadbare pink nightgown lying in soft wrinkles beside her on the bed.
She fingered the fuzzy material of the old nightgown and explained, “I know this is all worn out, but I wore this when I was pregnant with my two children. Whenever I touch it I remember those wonderful times when Ben and I were bringing up our children. I even hold this nightgown when I pray.”
During the following months the old pink nightgown became more and more threadbare as Jackie clung to it during chemotherapy, radiation treatments and a drastic bone marrow that brought her close to death’s door.
Cruel and unfair.
After more than a year of grueling treatments Jackie was well enough to return to teaching full time. With eager optimism she drove to school picturing herself directing the school chorus again. It didn’t happen. Her long absence had taken a toll on her career. She was assigned music appreciation classes teaching students with very little musical background or interest.
Losing the job she dearly loved seemed cruel and unfair. Jackie was crushed and so was I. The only thing I could do was to grab her hand and tell her how sorry I was. Even though Jackie pulled out her old music appreciation teaching materials from her early teaching days and tried to make the best of things, I felt like her long hard healing path had come to a terrible dead end.
All too soon it was time for me to be reassigned to visit another church member and I promised to continue to pray for Jackie daily. A few months later I heard that Jackie was suffering from a painful bout of shingles. Then half a year after that she developed lymphedema that made her right arm swell with excess fluid and she had to stop playing the piano. I knew God had been with Jackie with His healing presence during her cancer treatment. But where was He now?
A back porch stacked to the ceiling with fabric.
Then one January day two years after I’d been reassigned I was surprised when Jackie called me and said, “Can you come over? I have something to show you.”
When I arrived at Jackie’s she beckoned me to the back glassed-in porch where four years earlier we had sat crying and praying after her diagnosis. I was surprised to see that the whole far end of the porch was stacked nearly to the ceiling with thick folds of colorful fleece material in every design imaginable - plaids, camouflage, flowers, cartoon prints, animals.
I was mystified. I knew Jackie avoided using sewing machine, pins and scissors. Any small prick or cut would send her lymph system into high gear and clog her right arm in spite of her efforts to keep it constricted in a special elastic sleeve. “What on earth are you going to do with all of this?” I asked.
I’m so down I can’t see any way out.
Jackie sat me down in a wicker chair and began telling me the story. She said,
“After we stopped meeting two years ago I had to face the fact that I’d never get my old job back. Then this arm made me give up playing the piano. I got really depressed. One morning I couldn’t think of a single reason to get out of bed. I said, ‘God, what am I supposed to do now? Music is my gift and it’s gone. If there’s something else for me to do that doesn’t have anything to do with music, you’re going to have to show me because I’m so down I can’t see any way out.
“One day soon afterwards when I was feeling really low I stopped in a fabric store and scrounged around the remnant table. I got excited when I saw the most beautiful fleece fabric sticking out from the bottom. It was a red with stars of all sorts of colors on it. When I pulled it out I was disappointed that it was hardly an eighth of a yard, a scrape really. I bought it anyway and cut up the end like fringe and used it as a scarf. Somehow whenever I put on that scarf my spirits lifted a little so I went back and picked up a bigger piece of fabric that was printed like a red and blue bandana.
An amazing change of attitude.
“One day when I was hurrying to go to the nursing home to visit Ben’s mother I ran around the house looking for something to take. I found that bandana fleece fabric and figured it was better than nothing. When Ben’s mother saw it her face lit up. Even though it was nothing but a piece of fabric cut right off the bolt she pulled it up over her arms. She always fusses like crazy when the nurse comes in with her pills, but when the nurse came in Ben’s mother said, ‘Look at this. This is the best blanket I’ve ever had.’
“I was really amazed at her complete change of attitude. I remembered how that old pink nightgown had helped me so much when I was sick. I started going over to the fabric store whenever I felt discouraged and low. If I saw some fleece fabric I liked, I bought it.
“One day the clerk asked me, ‘What on earth are you going to do with all of this?’ When I told her I wasn’t sure she said, ‘There’s another lady who comes in here and buys tons of fleece all the time. Her little girl had cancer and she makes blankets and gives them away.’ I felt a light turn on inside of me and I got really excited. But the clerk didn’t know the lady’s name or where she lived.
Sarah’s story.
“The next day on the spur of the moment I ran by the fabric store again and the clerk came running up and said, ‘The lady I was telling you about is here right now!’
I hurried over to meet the woman and she told me why she gave away blankets. ‘My little girl Sarah had a brain tumor. The day she had her operation our church sent a big basket of toys and things to cheer her up. Sarah took one look at the basket and instead of grabbing for one of the toys or goodies she pulled out a little blanket somebody had stuck in there. She just wrapped herself up in it and that’s how they wheeled her right into surgery.
“When we had to take Sarah back and forth for her treatments that little blanket went with her. Then one day Sarah said, ‘Mommy, I wish the other children at the hospital had blankets, too.’ Our church got a Serger sewing machine and we cut out a few yards of pretty material and hemmed around the edges and made blankets to give out to the children. We put a tag on every blanket telling Sarah’s story and letting people know that someone cares and someone is praying for them.”
“Sarah’s mother promised to send me a sample blanket. A few days later a huge package arrived with six blankets in it. As I unpacked them I could tell by the different prints that there were sample blankets for children, men, women and teenagers.
The message in the colorful stars.
“In the bottom of the box was a blanket with a tag on it that said it was for me to keep. I gasped when I saw it. It was that red fabric with stars made out of all sorts of beautiful colors that I’d found on the remnant table, the one I’d been so disappointed because there wasn’t enough material to really make anything. I felt like that blanket was a confirmation from God that He had finally answered my prayer. He’d sent me something wonderful to replace my music – comfort blankets.
Ben and I began buying all of this fabric you see piled up here. That’s why I called you. I want to somehow get a ministry going at our church. Would you pray with me that God will show us what to do next?”
I surveyed the mountain of soft fleece material and smiled, suddenly aware that God hadn’t abandoned Jackie on a dead end path after all. As I grabbed Jackie’s hand and prayed for her comfort blanket ministry I silently thanked God that although we might not see the path for months and years, there is always a healing path up ahead even when we feel like we’re lost in the darkness.
6,000 blankets.
Soon afterwards a church women’s group took on Jackie and Ben’s blanket ministry. Each blanket comes with a tag telling the recipient that others are praying and that God cares. The blankets are given free to anyone in the church or community who wants go take them to someone who needs comfort. Today Jackie has lost count of how many blankets have been given away. She guesses it’s 5,000 or 6,000.
Maybe you noticed on a scene in video two that I was wearing a navy blue and green plaid scarf around my head when I re-enacted finding the bust of Christ in the ashes after my sisters house burned down. Jackie gave me that scarf the day I prayed for her blanket ministry. Several years later on that horrible March day when I needed it the most, tying Jackie’s scarf around my head did more than simply protect me from the bitter March wind. It reminded me that whatever cruel and horrible losses we suffer there is always a healing path somewhere up ahead.
After an illness or a great loss we sometimes feel that all that’s left of our life is a small remnant or scrap that used to be beautiful. We feel that our life has collapsed into something so small and weak that we don’t have any real purpose left to serve. Paul explains our true pathway to healing this way in 2 Corinthians, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthains 4:16-18)
Although it was dark most of the time I was traveling, I finally found the right road.
Love,
Karen
