Defending Clara

I received this this morning through my email, and thought again, It is germane, and I think appropriate to post. That said, this is going to be the last post on this subject. I hope Clara writes more as I enjoy her insights, and we all have both detractors and supporters in this thing we call life.

So Happy Fathers Day to those of you who are one, and for the rest of you go forth and do no harm..... Read on...


Defending Clara

After reading some of the malicious comments written about my dear friend Clara, I felt the need to step in and respond. I have known Clara Hart since 2002 when she was introduced to a friend of mine. Clara was asked by her pastor to help a young woman with two small boys attend church and Clara being Clara agreed, sight unseen. This woman had lost her husband in the September 11^th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Six months later this widowed mother of two was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

Clara befriended this woman and her children at great expense to herself. Clara planned her life around this small family and was always ready and willing to help whenever needed. I remember the times Clara called me crying, “I don’t think I can do this, it’s too hard, it hurts too much.” I told her “If this is where God wants you to be He will give you the strength to get through”. Clara survived on that strength. How many people would enter into a friendship with a dying woman? Clara did and she did it wholeheartedly and while she did her heart was broken.

When this woman died and her children moved away Clara grieved. She grieved not only for this young mother who had become her friend but also for the boys who had stolen her heart and now were lost by distance and time. Clara lost far more than friends; Clara lost a piece of her heart that I am not sure she has ever regained.

When Clara does something she does it oftentimes at great expense to herself. See, Clara is the type of person who thinks more of others and their needs than of herself and her own. When Clara does something she is motivated by the need to help, this need to make things right. She does not do it for recognition, she does it to try and make someone’s life a little easier simply because she can.

In many ways Clara has touched our lives. For those of you who’ve had the privilege of meeting her can you honestly say, with all the things she has said and done, your life would be better off if she had not entered it? My life would not, see, I inherited a gift from a dying woman, a woman who left me a wonderful, caring friend to fill the empty space left by death.