Offering relieves head, money pressures

Eddie Barr had been knocked flat for months. The terrible headaches and terrific pressure in his head were so bad, he was bed-ridden. Surgery at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center revealing an additional sinus cavity in his forehead that wasn’t draining properly helped a little.

But then came pressure of a different kind. He couldn’t afford health insurance during all those months of missing work. After the surgery, he was still experiencing problems and could only work part-time while doctors tried to determine what was wrong.

Add the enormous, ever-growing medical debt, and Barr’s family was in trouble.

“I thought, how am I going to pay this?” he said. “We didn’t know how to make ends meet. My son was going to college so we had a lot of expenses all at once. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, and we were worried.”

But the Barrs did what most people do in times of trouble: They prayed that everything would be alright. And it was.

They received a letter saying Eddie’s debt was wiped clean by the Mother’s Day Offering.

“It was a light in the dark that made all the difference in the world,” he said. “My wife went to the mailbox, and she about passed out when she saw the letter. There were plenty of tears. I just thanked God. It made me feel like I belong somewhere.”

To Barr, the Mother’s Day Offering collected by North Carolina Baptists is God’s hands and feet in the world.

“This offering makes God’s love real because it is real – this is something you can actually touch, you can feel it,” he said. “This is what God tells us to do.”

For the Barr family, a burden has been lifted. But more importantly, Eddie’s faith was lifted too.

“If it hadn’t been for the surgery and the Mother’s Day Offering, I don’t know where I’d be now. I pray more and feel a whole lot closer to God than before all this happened.”

Visit mothersdayoffering.org.