A voice of encouragement

Donna Lehman

Standing beside a street in Berne, Indiana after watching a parade, I heard someone calling my name. "I'm looking for Donna Lehman. I'm looking for Donna Lehman," the voice said. I turned toward the voice and immediately saw Raelene Hirschy. Her bald head stood out in the crowd. Walking toward me, she continued calling until I identified myself. Why was she searching for me? I wondered.

Raelene explained: She had met my husband, Michael, who had recognized her because we had read an article and seen her picture in the newspaper. It had told about the disease, alopecia areata, that had caused her to lose all her hair. Raelene said, "Michael told me you have Parkinson's disease. I wanted to meet you. He pointed out approximately where you were standing." Raelene knew my family but would not have recognized me, so she called my name until she found me.

I was deeply moved by Raelene's determination to find me, so I listened as she explained what she believed was her calling in life. "I believe God has called me to encourage other people," she said. She told how she is attempting to do that by working with youth. "Because of the problems you and I face, God gives us more opportunities than others to offer hope to other people," she concluded.

A week earlier, Muhammad Ali had stood in Atlanta and lit the Olympic flame with a torch. His hands shook from the tremor of Parkinson's disease, a chronic neurological disorder that affects one out of every 100 people, most over age 45. Symptoms include tremors, muscle stiffness, slowness of movement and loss of balance.

The brief encounter with Raelene kept running through my mind. "God calls us to encourage others." If Muhammad Ali can stand in front of the TV cameras and shake, and Raelene Hirschy with her bald head can walk among people calling out a stranger's name, each of us can reach out to someone. Encouraging others won't win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, but it will give light to someone's day.

Donna Lehman is a writer from Fort Wayne, Ind., and author of What on Earth Can You Do? Making Your Church a Creation Awareness Center (Herald Press, 1993).

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