Angie Doub pauses; words hard to capture from her jumble of
thoughts.
Her and husband Reggie’s son, Austin, was diagnosed with
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) at age four. Ten years later, Austin is in
the eighth grade at Northwest Middle School in Mocksville.
Every step of the way, members of Red Bank Missionary
Baptist Church in Germanton have walked alongside the Doub family, which also
includes Austin’s sister Casie, a 17-year-old senior at Forsyth Tech Middle
College.
This isn’t a case where a handful of members threw together
a one-time fundraiser and were done with it. At Red Bank, it’s much, much more
than that. Helping Austin has become a way of life for the congregation. In
addition to an annual Austin Doub Fun Day fundraiser, members have taken
significant steps to make their church building “Austin friendly.”
They added a ramp entrance and a lift-chair to the basement,
widened hallways, took out steps to classrooms and replaced long pews in back
of the church with shorter ones to accommodate the young man, who is now
wheel-chair bound.
It is a case study for how a church can rally around a
hurting family to ease their pain. To explain the joy of such an
all-encompassing church family is hard for Angie to put into words.
“They have just reached out to us and done so much,” says
Angie, the emotion thick in her voice. “Words can’t even express how you feel …
it’s just overwhelming to know that these people love us that much, that they
have just reached out and said, ‘This is our family. We’re not going to stop at
just praying. We’re going to do something.’”
Frankie Poindexter, president of Red Bank’s Women on Mission
group, took several seconds to come up with an answer to the question, “What
does it say about the church that it would go to such lengths to help one of
its own?” Ultimately, she simply said isn’t that what a church should do? How
can it be that a church wouldn’t do such a thing?
“It just comes sort of natural,” Poindexter says. “We’re
just trying to follow what we should do as a church and as a Christian, and
that’s to help each other. When one of us in trouble, we’re kind of all in
trouble. We pitch in. Our church is like a family. We’re not so big that we
don’t all know each other. When something happens, here we are.”
According to Wikipedia, DMD is a severe form of muscular
dystrophy that generally afflicts only males. The most common form of the
disease, DMD impacts one in every 3,500 males. The average life expectancy is
the mid-30s, although some have lived past the ages of 40 and 50.
As a church, Red Bank has put together several Austin Doub
Fun Days to raise funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
The event has grown from raising $500-$600 in its infancy to
now more than $2,000 in its most recent event held Oct. 18. The event includes
a car show, putt-putt golf, yard sale led by the church’s youth group, games
for children, bingo and silent auction. Expenses are paid by church members,
allowing every cent to go to the MDA.
“Austin loves it,” says Angie, a third-grade teacher’s
assistant at Rural Hall Elementary School. “His favorite thing is bingo. It’s
just overwhelming. He knows that this is his church family.
“This has been a learning event for us, along with our
church family. And it has been a church family. It’s not like we’ve been
treated any different. (It’s like the church says) ‘This is our family, and
we’ve got to take care of him.’”
Angie Doub has been a staunch advocate for her son and to
find a cure for the disease that afflicts him. That’s what mommas do, after
all. The things that members of Red Bank have done, that’s just what churches
do.
“Stress how much we appreciate our church and how much we
love our church family,” Angie tells a writer. “I don’t understand how people
can get through things like this without a church family and knowing you’re
loved that much. We’ve all been there together and held each other’s hands.
Words can never express how much this means to us as a family.”