Happy Dependence Day!

As a way of introducing the point and purpose of this blog, I thought I would tell you about what Partners in Care has meant to me in the short year Ive been working there. But as the final date of the blog's debut became July 4th, I began to wonder if it was more appropriate to comment on the similarities between the holiday the blog would be published on and our work here at Partners in Care.

Independence Day is a day that we celebrate the willingness of our founders to strike out against an unfair tyrant. But as each signer wrote his name on the fated document, he declared his independence from England and his dependence on every other man in the room. Together, these men would risk everything; their lives, their homes, their fortune, but, together, they would eventually achieve their life's goal and grant us the freedom to live independently of England.

Every day, Partners in Care works to help elderly and disabled adults remain independent in their homes. But this independence requires dependence on others. We actively and willingly depend on our volunteers, our gracious donations, our cheerful members for every part of what makes us work. Even among the office staff, at moments of need, of struggle, of triumph, we depend upon each other for the love and support that keeps us going.

The story I was originally planning to tell you had to do with my own moment of absolute need, when Barbara and Joyce stood around me and hugged me with all the love and support I could ever want. Though I'll tell you that story in another post, it is that moment that made me realize I could never expect to work in a “normal” work environment again. This place, Partners in Care, is a haven where people are taken for who they are, where they are, and what they can give, and expected to be dependent and depended on. We can take nothing for granted.

And it is out of a grateful heart that I begin to write this blog to tell the stories of all that have been touched by their own dependence. We wage our own war against all the struggles that threaten to force us as a society to drift apart into loneliness, and these are our war stories. Our tales of the battlefield remind us of our higher calling, our greater purpose, and our shining reward: the freedom of dependence upon the love and support of our neighbors.