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#KIMSMILLION

Finding Healing in a Legacy

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

JOHN 11:25–26

I HAD DECIDED: 2016 was going to be a record-breaking year for my team. We would skyrocket from $383,000 in annual sales to more than $1 million in just twelve months. In the fifty-five-year history of our direct sales company, few had ever produced a million in annual sales, and no one in our company had ever jumped from where we were to a million—until now. We were going to be that history-making team. I knew it.

Our fiscal year ran from July 1 to June 30, and when July 1 hit, we were race horses bursting free from our starting gates. We were ready to set records, and we would do it with a smaller team than any team that had ever tried. It was exhilarating, and we were perfectly poised for this twelve-month, million-dollar race.

Three months after the start of our monumental year, Kim was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was now in her own race—against cancer—but she was still excited for us to achieve our goal. She asked if she could come on stage with me at Seminar, our year-end company event. I told her yes, of course, and then she said she would need to borrow a dress. I remember her adding, “Well, at least I’ll be skinny for it.” She was always making light of her diagnosis.

She was one of my biggest cheerleaders, and I loved her for it.

At the end of December, Craig, Ella, and I headed to Chicot in Louisiana for the precious family reunion where we took pictures we’d end up treasuring the rest of our lives. But at that point my team was six months into our sales race, and for the first time, I was starting to toy with the idea that we may not achieve our million-dollar goal. The numbers were too far off, and our team was just too small. I wasn’t sure how to pull out of it, what to do, or how to handle it, so I decided to strategize about how to tell my team we would not make this lofty goal once I returned home.

New Year’s Day came and went, and I formulated a message in my head: “We’re having an incredible year, but it’s just not enough. I can’t see how we could do it.” Soon I would tell my team.

But when my sister died unexpectedly on Tuesday, January 10, I was shocked and devastated. I never imagined I would lose her. I know that sounds naive, given her diagnosis of breast cancer and all the treatments she’d had. But it was unconscionable to me that she would not survive this.

Kim passed on a Tuesday, and I flew to Tulsa to be with my parents on the following Wednesday. For the first time in my life, I felt our roles reverse; I was the one caring for them as they waded through their unimaginable grief.

My mother was in shock and had simply fallen apart.

My father was working so hard to be the stoic man he’d always been. He was our backbone, and until this, I could count on one hand the times I had seen my father cry. But I’ve never heard him weep as much as he did that Friday afternoon as we laid her to rest. It broke my heart to see and hear his cries. They are etched in my mind for a lifetime.

Saying goodbye to my parents after laying my sister to rest was heart-wrenching. I boarded my flight that Saturday, sat in my seat, and let the tears flow. I kept my head turned toward the window, looking at the tarmac, to hide my wet face from those around me. My baby sister was gone, and I didn’t care about work or goals. I knew I would not hit my million-dollar goal, and that was fine. Honestly, there was a relief of sorts. I had just lost my sister, and no one would blame me for pulling back and not working to finish this grandiose goal. My sister was gone. I was allowed to fall apart.

And then I heard her. I heard Kim in my mind, saying, Don’t blame me for not hitting your goal! It made me chuckle. But this was not the time to think about work or goals, and I didn’t give the moment much more thought.

DON’T BLAME
ME FOR NOT
HITTING
YOUR GOAL!

I returned home, and my sole objective was to climb into bed. I wanted to stay there the rest of my life, curled up, covers over my head, hiding from this new reality. I wanted to fall into a sea of sadness and mourning, and wrap myself in grief. I wanted the world to go away.

The next day was supposed to be the start of my company’s big leadership conference in New Orleans. I had registered and paid to attend months earlier, but I knew I wouldn’t go, not now. My heart was too broken, and I just wanted to be in bed for weeks, maybe months.

Within hours of returning home from Tulsa, my bed plans were diverted when I received a message from a dear work friend who suggested I should still attend the conference. “So many of your dearest friends will be there to shower you with love,” she said. “It would be good to be busy.”

I was shocked and I was angry. How could she even suggest such a thing? I had just lost my sister. I was furious and in awe of her insensitivity. Phones went off. I was going to bed.

My bed felt like heaven, a hideaway from the world. My room is white—white sheets, white linen curtains, white walls. It’s bright and most days it gives a glorious feeling of peace, but not now. It felt stark and lonely. I made it as dark as I could. I cried, I slept, I ate. And then I cried and slept some more.

Following several hours of this, I heard Kim’s voice again. So you have the chance to go to New Orleans, but you’re going to stay in bed and cry over me? You big dummyhead.

Dummyhead was Kim’s word, and it made me laugh every time she said it. Kim loved New Orleans, maybe more than any human in the history of the world. She adored all things Louisiana, and she was always up for a good time. If you’re ever in New Orleans enjoying a night out, raise your glass and give a toast to the most wonderful baby sister in the world. She loved the food, the drinks, the people—everything. Staying away from New Orleans because of Kim would have been, well, something only a dummyhead would do.

THAT LOVE
WAS THE
CATALYST FOR A
DRAMATIC SHIFT
IN MY THINKING.

I don’t know what on earth possessed me, but I got up, went to the living room, and told Craig I was going to the conference. Then I called my parents, and they agreed I should go. So I went.

It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I can’t tell you about anything I learned, or any events I attended, or anywhere we went; all I can tell you is how I felt. I felt loved. I felt as if hundreds of women wrapped me in their arms and carried me through those few days.

That love was the catalyst for a dramatic shift in my thinking. Ten days before, I was certain we could not achieve the million-dollar goal. And now I knew I had to achieve this goal. If I achieved this goal, I’d have the opportunity to stand on a stage in front of ten thousand women in Dallas and tell the world about my sister Kim. The thought of that one moment in time became my driving force to finish.

I wouldn’t miss this goal because Kim died. I’d finish this goal because Kim lived.

My parents were thrilled with my decision, and Craig was completely behind me. We all understood this wasn’t about selling products—it was about sharing Kim’s legacy. I told my team we’d dedicate the rest of our fiscal year to honor Kim, and everything we did for the next six months became “Kim’s Million.” #KimsMillion was plastered everywhere—our social media posts, our shirts, our cups, our tote bags, and anywhere else we could share the story.

I WOULDN’T
MISS THIS GOAL
BECAUSE KIM DIED.
I’D FINISH THIS
GOAL BECAUSE
KIM LIVED.

Appointment after appointment, I shared about Kim and what we were doing in her honor. I became obsessed. I still grieved and cried through those months, and I have no doubt working so hard was an escape from dealing with her loss, but I also felt God’s blessing on what was unfolding. I knew we were called to do this. He was in everything we did, and even when it was hard and I couldn’t see how it would come together, I still felt Him saying, “Trust Me.”

Hearing “trust Me” and doing it are two very different things. I didn’t feel like God was saying, “Trust Me, girl. This is done. Sit down, relax, and kick back. It’s all good.” God can move mountains, but don’t be surprised when He throws you a shovel. I knew the shovel was in my hands, and it was up to me to dig and dig and dig. And when I did, the blessings came: I was invigorated by connecting with friends and strangers, and I was touched by the passion and energy in my team.

GOD CAN MOVE
MOUNTAINS,
BUT DON’T BE
SURPRISED WHEN
HE THROWS
YOU A SHOVEL.

But even through all the blessings, I couldn’t see a way to hit our goal. I am a strategist. I love a good spreadsheet and numbers. I can take a situation and tell you how to get to a finish line, and I can also tell you if things are just not going to happen because numbers don’t lie. My team and I were too far away, and when I looked at everything on paper, I could see, big faith or not, our goal was not going to come together.

It was the middle of May, we were forty-five days away from the finish line, and those numbers were screaming, “Girl, pack that bag and buy a ticket to some place with tiny umbrellas in your drinks because there is no way you are going to pull off the million-dollar miracle.”

So I did what any self-respecting, soon-to-be-monumental failure would do: I called my best friend to cry. I told Kali I needed to come over right away, and that’s what I did. I ran up the stairs to her bedroom, and we both sat on the bed, cross-legged, facing each other. I looked at Kali with tears in my eyes, and I told her we weren’t going to make it. I had crunched the numbers a million different ways, and it was just not there. No matter what scenario I had run, I could not see us finishing our million-dollar goal.

She took my hands into hers, tears filled her eyes, and she smiled and said, “I’m so glad.”

Now, just to be clear, this is not the response you want to hear from your best friend when you are explaining that you are about to fail bigger than the rebooted Dallas. Then she said, “Because now you’ve crossed from strategy to faith, and this is where God gets all the glory.”

YOU’VE CROSSED
FROM STRATEGY TO
FAITH, AND THIS IS
WHERE GOD GETS
ALL THE GLORY.

That statement right there—where God gets all the glory—I recognized immediately as the truth. If this goal was going to honor God and my sister, then it had to be a race finished in the faith zone. And it was.

In the last five minutes, on the very last day, it was done. We achieved our million-dollar goal because of a million little miracles, every single day for twelve months. An unlikely group of women were brought together for a year such as this, and they did something miraculous.

Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

I cannot tell you how often I have struggled with that verse. How can there be good that comes out of a child’s death? Or out of the loss of my sister? It seems impossible. But there was joy and there was good that came because we lost Kim. Was it good that she died? Absolutely not. I hate it, and I’m still angry and hurt, but there were blessings and grace amid the pain.

A small group of women broke records because of her. We grew exponentially in our faith and believed in ourselves more than we ever imagined. We had a front-row seat to watch God work in miraculous ways, and I know without a doubt we would not have done these things had we not lost Kim.

Six months and two weeks after I lost my sister, I stood in the middle of a stage in Dallas and shared the story of my baby sister with ten thousand women. My mother stood on the floor front and center, tears streaming down her face, filming me with camera in hand. A friend of mine took a photo of her in that moment. It is and always will be one of my favorite photos. Not because it was my mom watching me, but because it was us, in a moment, sharing Kim with the world. World, meet Kim. It was perfect.

Kim’s legacy will live on and good will come from the heartache of her loss. There’s a ripple effect of good in her story—a beautiful example of God’s love passing on and on and on, even in pain.

Loss can immobilize us, blindside us, and take us down deep into a valley where it seems the tears will never end. But when we lose someone precious, maybe through our tears, we’ll see a light to lead us forward. Or hear a voice to push us on. To share the gifts they gave us and the joy they brought us, to expand on the love they’ve planted in this world—until it grows a millionfold.