No Coincidence

I feel the need to share a story that happened to me recently back in Atlanta...

My family and I were filming for the ABC show about Tanner's Totes at Scottish Rite hospital.  I had just had the honor to deliver about 10 totes to preteens and teens going through some of the most horrific treatments a person could imagine.  As we began to wrap up the filming for the last day, my mother and I ran into a young man waiting in the lobby of the hospital.  He asked what our t-shirts meant and why there were camera crews following us around.  My mother began to explain exactly what Tanner's Totes was all about and how we began our organization.

I continued to shoot a few more scenes but couldn't get this young man out of my mind.  As I looked over at him talking with my mom, he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face.  I was showered with anguish.  What was going on in this guy's heart?  Before I shot the last scene, my mother grabbed me.  She simply said, "Go get a girl tote, this guy needs one!"  I asked no questions but sprinted through the hospital to find where we had stored the other 20 totes we brought that day.  All I could think about was why this young man needed a girl tote.  He was too young to have a child, but I would soon find out the story that exemplifies why I started Tanner's Totes in the first place.

His sister had just graduated high school that summer and was at Auburn going through rush.  This guy and his father had helped move her in just three days earlier.  Her problems consisted of what outfit to wear for each rush day, how to decorate her dorm room, and who was in her classes? While moving stuff into her dorm, she had shown her brother and father some bruises that she could not explain.  Her father and brother laughed at her to simply brush of the fact that she probably bumped into a table.  The family left, and she began to feel more and more tired... Probably just worn out from rush.  It got to the point where she felt the need to go to the doctor where they did some blood work.

They immediately told her to call her family to come pick her up!

Now her problems consisted of what is wrong with me, how did this happen, and what does the next day hold?  Her brother got the call from his dad and rushed to meet them at the hospital immediately.  He had been attending the practice round for the PGA tournament and beat his father to the hospital by a solid 45 minuets.

It is in this time that we met this young man.  I won't give his name due to confidentiality, but I was appalled at this story.  This is why I started Tanner's Totes.  So girls like his sister would have something to help them get through a tough time.  Her battle will be a long road with countless bumps along the way, but it was no coincidence WE were there that day.  God put us in the same hospital.  Timing is often overlooked.  If we had not had ABC do the show, I would have never met this man.  If we had gone out the back door, showed up an hour earlier, or if he had received the call a day before, or his sister admitted to another hospital, we would never had met.  There are thousands of IF's, but we were there together that day.  Our fates had been intertwined since the day I was born.  It's crazy to think about, but God gives us people in our lives at the perfect moments.  I was there to help this family, but more importantly, the family was there to help me.

I still keep in touch with this young man.  His sister has Leukemia.  She will fight this disease the rest of her life.  I am confident she will win that battle because of the loving brother she has that is with her every step of the way.  God's road maps are elaborate sometimes; other times, his road maps are subtle, but no matter what the map looks like, it is God's ink on the page.

Please pray for this family and thousands of families in the same situation!