Crisis, Revelations and Blessings

There are many great benefits of being a member of the Meeting Professionals International Texas Hill Country Chapter – two of the most popular areas are the meetings industry education offered by the chapter and the many in person options for face-to-face networking that create business to business opportunities by connecting our planner and association executive members with our industry suppliers. One benefit that is sometimes overlooked or may not be listed “in the brochure” (as they say) - is the people that you meet in the chapter and the resulting friendships that happen beyond the business environment. I have one example of this and it’s an amazing story and I’d like to share that with you today.

In September of 2011, over the course of a weekend, I found out that the leaky mitral heart valve I was born with (Mitral Valve Prolapse) had fully prolapsed, I was having shortness of breath and couldn’t lay down at night to sleep because I couldn’t breathe. Not long after midnight on that Sunday night we nervously headed into town and to the emergency room at the Heart Hospital of Austin. It turned out that a case of walking pneumonia that I had from traveling earlier in June that year, had never quite gone away and that my lungs were full of fluid. While my body was fighting it off, my heart valve had prolapsed in the process. This was, to say the least, an unexpected emergency and frightening news that I was not ready to acknowledge or hear: “You WILL be having open heart surgery in the coming weeks.” There was no way to for me to get out of it, almost like a concrete wall had been dropped in front of me and God was looking at me straight in the eye and saying, “You WILL have to deal with this right now.” I was told that the surgery couldn’t happen yet because of the pneumonia, and I wouldn’t be going home until my lungs were clear (which ended up being 5 nights in the Hospital).  

The news and the initial shock had set in that first night in the hospital. Then a funny thing started to happen the next day…people that I knew from the Texas Hill Country MPI Chapter found out what had happened and started coming by the hospital, same with individuals that I knew from TSAE and SGMP. MPI THCC members Susan Greenberg, Eva Leos, Debbie & Bill Farnum and Mary Reynolds all stopped by the hospital to say hello and see how I was doing, along with the phone calls and texts messages that flooded in from many others. This was such an unexpected outpouring of love and support from those I knew from our chapter and was incredibly comforting for both myself and my spouse, especially considering neither one of us had any family in the Austin area.  

Towards the end of that week, as I lay in that hospital bed, I realized how blessed I was for those that had stopped by and took time out of their lives to visit with Jeff and me. Knowing that their prayers and support were with me in my time of uncertainty, a time of fear and a time of need. In parting, I will leave you with this: the next time you attend an MPI event, be sure to look around the room, take a moment to interact with everyone at your table, and make sure you meet as many members as you can while you’re there because, there are potentially people in that room that just might become your lifelong friends. There are people you will strike up friendships with, wine and dine together with each other’s families, take vacations with, or simply just hang out with for a happy hour beverage a few times a year. That’s that benefit that’s not “in the brochure”, but it’s there, it’s waiting to happen for each of you and it is indeed a blessing you will always cherish.