If you read my personal blog, then you know a little bit about my sweet friend, Margie.

I could spend hours and hours and pages and pages telling you about Margie and the incredible things I’ve seen come out of her life and out of her heart.  She is an incredible person and an incredible friend.  But what I want to tell you today is just ONE thing.

Margie came to our second ever Brave Girl Camp and during one of our conversations she said something that’s been in my heart ever since.  See Margie has seen it all…she’s seen the best that women have to offer each other and unfortunately she’s also seen the worst.  What she said that has stayed with me was:

“THIS is how women should treat each other.
When we see someone who’s in a hole
instead of pushing her down or letting her struggle alone,
we should throw her a rope,
pull her out
and put our arms around her…”

Isn’t that one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever heard?!  How true…how loving….and how full of goodness…it feels right, don’t you think?

What Margie said is at the very core of what we believe at Brave Girls Club….it’s probably something you believe, too.  BUT we don’t hear the stories enough…they’re not told enough.

So we’ve asked some of our closest family and friends to share their stories about a time in their lives when someone threw them a rope, and we’re going to share them with you in a series called (you guessed it) “Someone Threw Me a Rope”….Hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we have.

This first story is told by Kathy:

Maybe you can relate to the desperate situation I found myself in several years ago…I was totally at the end of my rope, hanging on by just a few little threads that were frayed and untwisting and threatening to break.

My little family was in the middle of what might be called an economic downturn…can anyone relate to that? We had 4 small children, including a 9 month old baby, and we had a private crisis going on that we kept completely to ourselves, determined to hide the fact that we were in a seriously rough patch.

It was early November in Idaho, and winter was sneaking up on us. The nights were cold, and even the daytimes were getting colder.


The problem was our furnace. Or our lack of one, I should say.  We needed $400 to get our furnace running, and it might as well have been $4 million. We were at the end…the very very very end, and there was nothing left. Winter coming, no furnace, and 4 small children. We were working as hard as we could and doing every single thing we could think of to make ends meet, and in a month or two we were sure that things would turn around….but November and the cold were already HERE.

We had been praying for an answer…for work to do…for a door to open…for a miracle.

My husband’s mother called me one day and toward the end of our ‘catching up’ conversation, out of the blue she said something like, “I’ve been meaning to tell you…I opened a savings account for you a couple of years ago and I’ve been putting a little money in there once in awhile, you know, for emergencies or whatever. It’s there for you to use when you need it. There’s a little over $400 in there right now.”

Well…

What do you say when you’re at the very end….the very very VERY end…sure that you can’t hold one for one more minute…and someone throws you a rope?

To this day, writing this to you makes me tear up and brings back those old feelings of being helpless and desperate, and then suddenly feeling RESCUED. They are powerful, tender feelings and memories, and I have to tell you that I loved that woman more than ever that day. She was our angel.

“how far that little candle throws its beams!
…so shines a good deed in a weary world…”
-William Shakespeare

So…the furnace was fixed….winter cold came and our little house was (thankfully) cozy and warm. On the evenings when I chased my barefoot little ones off to bed and tucked them in and closed their bedroom doors for the night, I smiled with gratitude for answered prayers and for loving hands that reached out and threw me a rope.