A Giving Kind of Living

Today I want you to hear from an amazing young lady that I met on Twitter. Besides having great taste in baseball teams as she is a big Mets fan. Her memorable, vibrant expressions and such positive reactions to life are absolutely priceless.
Her name is Michelle Ioannou and amidst a selfie generation, she stands out in a good way by sharing her selfless and giving soul. She champions today some of those precious lost values of family, faith, and friendship.
I wish there were a thousand more like her, but I am grateful to God that there is at least one and the Lord allowed our paths to cross. Now Michelle could have become a very bitter woman because of all the brokenness she has experienced in her short life to this point. But this girl bubbles over with a smile that exudes life, and this is why I wanted you to hear her heart.
Here is Michelle’s story in her words taken from the blog “notanothermillennial.com” where she is the brand manager. Her post is entitled: “One House, Four People, Two Wheelchairs: A Glimpse at My Childhood.”
She writes, “I learned early on just how unfair life is. I am beyond lucky to have been born into a wonderful, loving family. I was my daddy’s little girl, my mother was and still is my best friend and my brother, and I get along extraordinarily well. For a long time, I was living the perfect life. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.
I was 6-years-old when everything began to change. I can distinctly remember my father going in and out of the hospital. I remember upon his return home we made a “Welcome Home” sign and hung decorations around the house.
I was just so happy to have my daddy back home. Little did I fully realize that the doctors had diagnosed my father with multiple sclerosis, and I would spend the next decade watching the disease progress to the degree that it eventually would take his life.
They say bad things happen in threes but in my world, it occurred in twos. Around the same time that all of this was going on with my father, one of the teachers at school noticed my brother Christopher was walking a bit differently and urged my mother to have him checked out. Well, she did.
No, my brother didn’t have the same neurological disease my father had. Instead, his was muscular. Christopher was suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy- a progressive disease that would weaken all of his muscles including his heart and lungs.
The next few years after both diagnoses were announced caused a major shift from the life I had known before. In one sense, I was lucky that all of this happened when I was so young, as I didn’t really know any other kind of life.
In another sense, at such a young age, all possibilities of normal family things were taken away from me.
In 2009, just five months before my dad passed, I was just 7-year-old when I had my first clear revelation of how ill my father really was. My father planned a huge 40th birthday party for my mother, and all of our family and friends were in attendance.
At this point, my father was walking with a cane. That night while he was going down the hallway, he lost his balance and fell hard. He was rushed to the emergency room because he needed stitches. From that day forward, birthdays and gatherings were never to be the same again.
During this time, my brother’s disease progressed as well. I would spend my lunch period in middle school going to his classroom to hold his hand while we slowly walked around the room.
Christopher who loves baseball so much was forced to stop playing on his Little League team. His life had changed drastically, and he could no longer participate in the same activities as his peers.
Christopher would never get his driver’s license or do the other things teenage boys get to do. Instead, his future consisted of needing to rely on other people for everything.
As you can imagine, growing up in my household was quite different than others. Our family vacations were limited to the Jersey Shore and even those ended suddenly once my father’s MS progressed.
Father-Daughter dances were not to be for him and me. I began to join other families on their outings. My father and brother were never able to attend many of the extracurricular activities that I was involved in. 
By the time I was a teenager I was helping to feed my father. I’d scratch him when he had an itch. I’d massage his legs to help get his blood flowing better. I’d bring him something he couldn’t get on his own.
Of course as a teenager there were still times we would disagree like any other father and daughter would but I could see how his MS was affecting his brain. He would get stressed out or fed up with the disease, and he’d say things that I knew he didn’t mean.
But I knew he loved me more than anything, and I truly was lucky in that respect because I still had a father who despite his disease would do everything he possibly could for me. I ended up losing my Father to MS when I was just 18 years old. I still miss him so much that just thinking about it hurts my heart.
As for my brother, I am so grateful to still have Christopher in my life. He’ll be turning 22 in October, and he is my best friend only rivaling my mom for that title.
It’s not easy as he can’t do much for himself, but I learned rather early on that life was never going to be easy. I went from feeding my father to feeding my brother and wiping his nose when it runs, giving him the remote or the PlayStation controller, putting on his jacket and doing so much more.
My mother is his primary caretaker and does significantly more than I do, but I do try my best to help out as much as I can, and it is the huge reason why I moved back home after college.
Growing up in a house with two wheelchairs gave me a real life experience not many other children had. It’s almost weird to me that others didn’t grow up helping care for others in the way I did.
I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and I was given the life I have because God believes that I was strong enough to handle it.
I certainly have learned much from it and through my experiences have been used to help others in similar situations also suffering from hardships.
I cherish the importance of family. I treasure the importance of having strength but also realize my need at times to ask others for help. I have been able to put things into proper perspective and to determine what really matters in life and what needs to be valued above all.
It is powerful to love another to the point where you would do anything for that person. Hard times divide the crowds into two distinct groups. There are those who run and then there are those who stay.
It is the faithful few that you truly need in your life. The people who know that you could use help without you having to ask. The people who are there to just listen to you knowing full well they can’t fix it.  The people who may not know exactly how to relate to what you’re going through, but they love and care for you anyway and won’t abandon you when you need them most.
No, my life hasn’t been easy. My life still isn’t easy. Maybe it will never be easy. But I do know others out there have it much worse than I do, and I am truly grateful and blessed for everything that I do have.” 
I am honored to call Michelle Ioannou a friend. She is one of my young heroes, and her joy can light up any room she inhabits. It is refreshing to see someone her age determined to make a difference rather than just gripe and complain! No life is free from bumps and bruises, and God gave us one another to be there and care just when we need it the most.
Thanks Michelle. It is my prayer that your story inspires and encourages someone who needs to smile in the storm today. Shine on.