The Most Delicious, Healing, Pumpkin Bread

Here is a note that a Heartworker gave me when she dropped off the most delicious pumpkin cake for the Summit football players. I know it is the most delicious pumpkin cake because she also made one for the Advisory Board that we ate at our meeting yesterday morning. The note below (I have her permission to share it) is the transformation that took place for her while baking this delicious pumpkin bread for a group of boys she has never met. I am writing about it because it exemplifies exactly why we do Heartworks, perhaps in a way I am unable to explain when we gather at meetings. Now, for the record, this Heartworker is not having the easiest time…she is living with some significant sorrow, fear and pain in her life. She would be someone who I would easily tell “Hey, it makes sense you want to have the pity party, I’ll just sit here next to you and hand you pumpkin cake as needed.” Her words in this note brought me to my knees because they teach an almost unteachable concept

That when we stop separating out our stories of suffering and simply allow them to all merge together into one, they begin to heal each other regardless of story content, time of event or name of people involved. Suffering is suffering and when we acknowledge our own and reach into someone else because of it, unexpected miracles take place.

Please read the note and know that there is a power in being present with our own struggles while giving (or baking) for someone else.

Dear Megan, Holly, Tressa, Beka and all Heartworks,

Please enjoy these treats as a very small token of my enormous appreciation. I am so grateful to have Heartworks in my life. I am honored and blessed to be a part
of such an amazing group of women. The love and kindness that you have shared with countless people (including myself). But you appear to pull off these miracles with such ease and grace.

As I was baking for the football team, negative thoughts began to creep in to my mind- I’m tired. I hurt all over- physically and emotionally, when will I be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel? Then I realized that I was feeling sorry for myself while baking for young men whose lives will be forever changed, the whole community that is so devastated by this loss, the Moms and Dads who are trying to comfort their severely ill children, all of those watching their loved ones take their last breath, the list of tragic events happening all around us can be staggering.

So I stopped my pity party and continued to bake with love in my heart and sending prayers to all of those struggling.

Please accept my sincere gratitude and appreciation for all you are and all you do!