Mark Reiter - learning about life

Mark Reiter used to play covers by Van Halen and Hank Williams Jr. for a living. That was when he had what he wanted and knew where he was headed. He married his childhood sweetheart, and they had three children – two boys and a girl. He turned in his guitar for a respectable career. He went to church occasionally and all was well.

Then his marriage hit what he considered a rocky time that would eventually right itself. Instead, he found himself in the middle of a divorce that he had never seen coming.

“It was an extraordinarily traumatic event,” Mark said. “I was extremely depressed.”

Mark didn’t know what to do or how to cope, and if it weren’t for the faith he had grown up with, this could be a far different story. He chose to talk to his pastor, and to come to worship on Sunday morning.

“I came helpless,” Mark said. “I was emotionally naked. People had told me that the time will come in life when you can’t fix it, you can’t hold on to it.” That time had come for Mark. All he could do was cry out for help, but he directed his pleas to God.

During this time, Mark found joy in his children, and he is admittedly nuts about them. And he continued to come to worship. Eventually he realized he didn’t feel so alone, and even though few people at Holy Cross knew his story, they inadvertently lifted him up in ways that helped.



Mark Reiter

Little did Mark know that his days as a pew sitter were quickly coming to an end. He mentioned on Facebook that he had a guitar, Pastor Mike picked right up on that, and then on Thanksgiving Eve came the call from Anthony Badell, our Contemporary Worship Coordinator, asking Mark if he could play in the band that weekend.

Yikes! Mark hadn’t picked up his electric guitar in 25 years, and the last stuff he played was covers of Huey Lewis and the News, the Judds, Ronnie Milsap. He was more comfortable playing mountain music by Alabama than anything that mentioned God.

“I asked Anthony what I could do to prepare, and he told me to start with listening to K-Love,” Mark said, referring to the Christian radio station. “I had never listened to that before. I thought it was for Bible-toting, certified whacko Jesus freaks.”

Mark wanted to say no, there was no way he could or would play. But the no turned to yes as the words came out of his mouth, so he dusted off his guitar, replaced the rusted strings, and started practicing. It was time to pay his dues, to be that 10^th leper who goes back to say thanks.

“I kept saying to myself that God’ll come knocking,” Mark said, “after I had been crying and begging so long for help.” The thing is, Mark said, you have to be ready to listen, and then you have to be ready to follow.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Mark suffers from something akin to stage fright. Though he now plays two to three times a month with the praise band, he doubts himself each time he picks up his guitar, worrying that he’s not good enough, that he’ll forget something, that he’ll mess up.

Even so, playing praise music has become his passion, he said. And he wants to share that with everyone. “I want people to be joyous, to enjoy worship, to want to come each week,” he said. “It’s not a performance. It’s a time of worship. I want to make sure everyone is worshiping.”

Mark has come a long way these past two years. He used to be the guy who said, “What’s with all this brokenness stuff? Get a life.” It took his own brokenness for him to realize just what that means. He now has a life, completely different from the life he had envisioned, but in so many ways that much richer, and so much more blessed.

Craig Hauser - Celebrating Recovery

Craig Hauser, a female, and yes, she’s heard all the jokes about her name, is one of those people who smiles a lot and always seems to be happy. You would never know that a dozen years ago, she nearly destroyed her life with excessive drinking.

At Holy Cross, she is known as the face and coordinator for a local group of Celebrate Recovery. CR is a 12-step, Christ-centered ministry that launched 20 years ago at Saddleback Church in California. It uses eight principles based on the Beatitudes, and is designed to help people with a wide range of hurts, habits and hang-ups.

Hauser said the CR group at Holy Cross will begin its sixth year in September. While everything discussed and shared among the participants is strictly confidential, Hauser said that some of the issues that people need help with include alcoholism, drug abuse, co-dependency, pornography, eating disorders, grief, financial matters and gambling.


Craig Hauser



“We had no idea what to expect for the first meeting,” Hauser said. “Two people came. And I realized it’s not the number who come but if you can help someone that matters.” Now, about 15-18 people meet on a weekly basis.

Hauser’s personal struggles began when she was 50. “I was a late bloomer,” she said. “I had problems I couldn’t talk about, and alcohol gave me a nice, numbing effect.”

But soon, a couple of dinner drinks became four, and then came drinks during the day, until finally Hauser found herself reaching for alcohol as early as 9 a.m. She drank steadily for a couple of years, assuming she didn’t have a problem because, as she explained, “What is that limit, the one drink that takes you over the edge?”

So she continued drinking, and over the next two years, her dependency on alcohol became all too obvious. Her hands were shaking, she was filled with self-loathing for what she had become, her health was in decline. “I knew I’d crossed the line,” she said. “But all I could say was, I give up. I can’t do it. I don’t care.” Her husband encouraged her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, which she did. But the AA meetings didn’t fill the hunger that had begun to consume her. Still, she managed to reach a point where she quit drinking for 30 days. But that turned out to be the calm before the storm.

Whatever demons she was fighting compelled her to walk into a liquor store one fateful day to buy wine. Interestingly, the clerk said, “Craig, are you sure you want to do this?” Hauser’s first thought was to wonder how he knew her name. Then she realized he was in her AA group. But she chose to ignore the meaning behind his question, and left the liquor store, wine in hand.

She describes the next six days as a living hell. “It was just a blur,” she said. “I stayed on the couch. I missed my son’s 16^th birthday. I had no desire, no nothing.”

Then came the seventh day, when she suddenly and inexplicably asked her husband to take her to rehab. She spent the next 30 days there, talking, healing, and eventually walking out the door as a newly sober person.

If you see divine intervention in her story, you’re not alone. “I had nothing to do with saving myself,” Hauser said. “That was God. God picked me up. He saved me. And he didn’t save me just to say, ‘You’re okay, go do your own thing.’ He wanted me to do something for other people.”

That something turned out to be helping others through Celebrate Recovery. Hauser said she has respect for the AA program, but for her, it wasn’t enough. “I knew something was missing,” she said. “And that something was Christ.”

Hauser, the woman who would never talk about her problems before, is more than willing to share her story now. And here’s what she wants others to know: “There are miracles in life, in healing, in situations,” she said. “Problems can be addressed. It’s not hopeless.”

For Hauser, that sign of hope was delivered in a beautiful, personal way. She was in a car with her son, who was then 19, when out of the blue he reached over and patted her hand. “I forgive you,” he said.

If you’re reading this story and you are struggling, or at a point where you feel lost, don’t hesitate to seek help. If you’d like more information about Celebrate Recovery, visit the website at www.celebraterecovery.com. Or drop in at 7 p.m. any Tuesday evening at Holy Cross to see what the group is all about.

Randy Sims - A Boston Marathon Perspective

Randy Sims runs regularly, though generally not in races, except 5Ks with his 11-year-old daughter to give her encouragement. He has only run one marathon. So the path that took him to Boston on April 15 was a bit more circuitous.

 

Randy and Dina - the Boston 5K



He was there to support his girlfriend, Dina, who is active in our local running community. Sims said her favorite is the Boston Marathon, which she has run about a half dozen times. He described how Boston residents and businesses come together for the weekend in support of the marathon – the air of anticipation and excitement as visitors pour in, how spectators line up everywhere to cheer their favorite runners.



“The whole city participates,” Sims said. “I can see why it’s Dina’s favorite. It’s fun, joyous.”

Sims said that he and Dina ran the Boston 5K the day before the marathon. But the big day, Monday, April 15, he took a place in the spectator stands near the finish line.

 

It was mid-afternoon, 2:49 p.m. EDT, and he expected Dina, who was in the third wave, to come by any moment. Sims said the weather was perfect, and everyone was clapping and cheering as the steady stream of runners came by him on Boylston Street. He remembers thinking that he would like to be there again. As he watched, he heard a loud explosion and saw smoke across the street.

“I saw the explosion, glass shattering,” Sims said, “and I knew immediately what it was.” Or at least what he thought it was. “I thought some kids had lit off fireworks, and something had gone wrong.”

But about 13 seconds after the first explosion, as he was trying to process what was happening, a second explosion shook the ground.

Those first moments following any sort of disaster are chaotic, as people try to understand what is happening and how to respond. There’s a lack of information, then misinformation, and more questions than answers. Sims’ main concern was trying to contact Dina, who because she was in the race, didn’t have a cell phone.

Sims said no one was rushing to get out of the stands, and since there was only one entry and exit, it wouldn’t have helped. But it was only minutes before security began ushering him and the other spectators away. That’s when he started seeing some of the victims.



“There was a man sitting up in a wheelchair, he was conscious,” Sims said. “But his legs, they were bloody stumps. That’s the first time I realized how bad it was.”

Searching for Dina, Sims made his way to the Family Meeting area, then the medical area, then eventually found Dina’s bus and discovered her backpack was still on the bus, meaning she hadn’t picked it up yet. At the same time, he started receiving and sending texts to family and friends who knew he was there, and wanted reassurance that he was okay. Thankfully, he was able to get word about Dina after about 45 minutes. She, with the other runners, had been diverted by police from the finish line, and was in a nearby bar.

Sims said he initially didn’t want to talk about the experience, because there was too much to think through. “I kept playing it in my mind over and over again,” he said. “I didn’t want to talk to anybody about it for a while.”

He said he has been in an accident, tornado, and natural disaster, but this was different. “It was more personal,” he said. “It was a planned attack. You literally watch it happen in front of you, and it doesn’t make sense.”

 

Randy Sims loading hay bales
to be sent to Moore, Oklahoma.



He is also trying to keep it in perspective. He realizes it was a tragic event. After all, it killed three people and injured more than 260. Yet he is also aware that there are people in certain parts of the world who live with this sort of death and destruction on a daily basis. Too, Sims is trying to understand something that can really never be understood – how do some people get so misguided that they think bombing innocent people seems like the right thing to do.



 Sims spent some time recently loading hay bales that were being sent as part of a relief effort to Moore, Oklahoma, an area devastated by a tornado. He is a firm believer in giving back, and was before the Boston Marathon bombings. He explained that at the Boston Marathon, his original plan was to watch the race from the Starbucks patio, about 15 feet from where the second bomb went off. But it's futile to ponder the what ifs in life, he said. "Life is full of a lot of ‘what ifs’. I think we should learn from the past, but never dwell on the past or the ‘what ifs’, but instead work on the present and future, focusing on being a servant to others in need.”

He also still runs. As for Boston, he said he plans to return next year.

Janet Huber - Yoga, a Way of Life

Thirteen years ago, Janet Huber was in a bad place mentally and physically. She suffered from depression and was in poor physical health, overweight and dealing with fibromyalgia and other issues. Then a doctor’s recommendation to try yoga literally changed the course of her life.

“I was depressed, and didn’t even realize it was getting worse,” Huber said. “The doctor asked me, ‘What do you do for physical activity?’ I said I work, I’m a mother, I keep busy.”

But while talking with the doctor, she realized her activity was sporadic at best, and it was time to try doing something for herself that would offer some healthy benefits too. So she went to a basic yoga class.

Janet Huber

 “It had a profound effect,” Huber said. “I never enjoyed physical activity, but I enjoyed this. At the end of class, I commented that this hour went super fast, then realized that it had been 90 minutes. I had a feeling of calmness I had never experienced. It affected me mentally, physical and spiritually.”

Huber became a regular at the yoga classes, trying never to miss. Many times, she would be aching at the start of class, but always felt better by the end. Though she would generally be sore later and take aspirin, she found that overall she experienced less pain than if she didn’t take the class at all.

Over the next few years, she continued to think of herself as a student. She said she figured she was kind of old and far less than perfect to consider herself as anything more. But as yoga became a personal journey for her, she found she wanted to learn more. Eventually, she began the 200 hours of training to become a certified instructor, spending one full weekend a month studying, journaling, doing homework and leading classes under a tutor. She earned her certification last November.

Now, Huber teaches a weekly yoga class to cancer patients through Gilda’s Club, a free, support community for people impacted by cancer. “Their lives are in turmoil,” she said of the class participants. “This gives them a time to think about ‘me,’ not cancer. We spend a lot of time talking and laughing. It lets them live in the present moment.”

Living in the present moment is one of the benefits Huber herself as experienced, she said. “When you live in the past, or in the future,” she said, “you are either rehashing or worrying. You’re missing out on living in the present moment.”

 


Several class participants at Holy Cross
Instructor Janet Huber is second from left.

Huber teaches basic Hatha yoga, which she described as more deliberate movement, where breathing is linked with the poses, and each student can work at his or her own pace and comfort level. Besides the Gilda’s Club class, she has led a twice monthly class at Holy Cross, though is taking a break until the fall. She also leads her great nephew, who has cerebral palsy, through weekly yoga stretches, and does chair yoga with her 92-year-old mother. Besides teaching, Huber continues to take a regular class as a student.

 

Through yoga, Huber is better able to manage her fibromyalgia and her depression. She feels the meditative practice has also made her more spiritual.

“I’ve always been a faithful person,” she said. “Yoga for anyone is a supportive addition. It helps you become deeper in your faith, and physically and mentally healthy.”

Huber said it’s an honor for her to be able to teach. She hopes her students get as much out of the class as she herself does, and that they become wiser and happier as a result.