Transcript of Interview with Patti Armstrong about Amazing Grace for Survivors. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Amazing Grace for Survivors is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004802/Amazing-Grace-Survivors/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast that we talk about what’s new, true and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash director of E-Commerce from catholiccompany.com. New stores for all your Catholic needs.

And today in this Spotlight, we’re welcoming back Patti Armstrong, author of many of the Amazing Grace books out from ascension press. And right now, we are preparing to have Amazing Grace for Survivors come out and hit the marketplace by storm. Hey Patti great to have you back on.

Patti Armstrong: Thanks Chris, it’s wonderful to be here with you again.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Now, there is something very special for me at least about this particular Amazing Grace book and that’s the fact that I have a story in there, which is just…

Patti Armstrong: Yes, that – well, you know your story in the book goes to show that really everybody has a story, because you were just talking to me during another interview and I said you know everybody has a story and sure enough your story came up. And I said, “Hey can we do this? Would you share your story for the Survivor book?”

Chris Cash: Now, what’s hard though is that I’ve got like four or five stories, and like that every single one of my kids is a story into themselves for this book in particular. But you know that’s…

Patti Armstrong: Uh huh. And that is – that you know you will think that you know so and we all – you know I think we all would feel that we’ve all survived something. We all will survive a number of things. And as you told me about your kids, I thought now here is dad who had survived a lot day by day. It’s a matter of fact I think to record your story Survivor day by day, because being a parent you have to get through your days. But you have some added dimensions to your parenting, maybe you should explain instead of me telling you what you are surviving.

Chris Cash: Yes ma’am. Okay, well, my children all have different autoimmune diseases, but the daughter, my youngest daughter Catherine is featured in the book and we talk about just the daily struggle of dealing with her diabetes and what a shock it was to have her diagnosed at 15 months. And its just the daily struggle of trying to balance keeping her blood sugars in a normal level, not letting them get too high which kills her slowly or gets – let them get too low, which kills her fast. And you know it’s definitely a scary things, almost every night wondering – you know every night I look in there and I, I want to see her breathing.

Patti Armstrong: And you know you mentioned that, because we were talking, you were doing the interview with me and you warned me you know my daughter Catherine might be waking up. And you explained that you needed to monitor blood sugar, because she had diabetes. And so, I experienced first hand what your life is like that day by day you are looking after her very survival. In a way that most parents don’t have to do. And you were worried about the kids were getting stitches and you found out about that or whatever. You know just wearing the seatbelt, but your parenting role as a caretaker, it has an added dimension of really looking at day by day that your daughter survive. I won’t say hour by hour, because you are closely monitoring her blood sugar. As we talked I thought you know most people don’t realize we’ve heard diabetes and influenza for so many years, most of us don’t really understand the seriousness that it isn’t just take a vitamin pill every morning. That it goes far beyond that and you love your children as much as we love our children, but you have to make sure from day to day. I mean, she can go into a coma and because she is so young, it’s hard to convey to her the seriousness of what’s happening. And that she can’t just – you know she hast to be told, then you have to take her blood sugar and she can’t just go hide in the corner and you know sneak cookies.

Chris Cash: Yes, well, she tries every once in a while. As she is about three and a half at this point and she has at least come to the terms with the fact that she has diabetes, but she still has days where she will say no more insulin and no more blood sugars and we’ll just try to hide in a corner and find a bag of chocolates somewhere, because you know there is always chocolates around the house unfortunately. But…

Patti Armstrong: Well, you can’t go out in the world that there isn’t you know cool I think sure, do you know that you join a soccer team or whatever and there is happily – the kids are happily getting all kinds of sweets being passed out you know.

Chris Cash: Absolutely and that’s a big concern of a parent, especially the child with Type 1 diabetes that no matter where you go you have to be cognizant of how many carbs they are taking in everywhere, plus you always have to be very cognizant of what insulin you’ve given them and what blood sugar they are and you let your guard down at all during any day when you are out with her or even here at the house, and she could end up very sick.

Patti Armstrong: And she is not old enough to be mature enough to make those decisions for herself to use good judgment, because 3 year old does not…

Chris Cash: Oh, we are praying that day.

Patti Armstrong: Well, then it’ll take a lot of burden off you and she can self monitor herself. But that’s you know the book is full of stories to different degree, some are very dramatic escaping in Rwanda, you know escaping of – from being a hold up in a bathroom with some other women and in her story. And some other harrowing experiences and some are extremely dramatic, others are kind of the day to day survival and yours is kind of somewhere in between, because it is day by day. And its you know – you know I wanted to do that story, because I thought most of us have no idea what its like to have a child who has diabetes. But we could all relate to what it must be like when you – when we see what you have go through when the discovery of the situation. And as with all the stories, it is about relying in God and receiving his grace to get us through, to pull us up. Because even though we’re seeing a lot of difficulties, suffering, surviving, somehow everybody in these stories comes out stronger as a result. And I don’t know you are in the state of things right now would you – maybe it’s hard to see the blessing and all of this. Do you ever look and say, yes I have this burden, but I also have you know this from God?

Patti Armstrong: Well, you know to me, I see the illness’ of Catherine and of my other children who have all sorts of different things that we won’t go into right now. You know if it weren’t for her illness in particular, holding us back, it would be very easy to – or at least a lot easier to get caught up in the materialism of things. But because we have her and she needs such intense care sometimes, it kept us from even being able to leave her with a babysitter until she was over two and a half, three. I mean, for many people, they may choose not to leave their children with the babysitter or until they are older. But we honestly could not, because the baby sitters could not safely take care of her. And you know other people have bigger problems and – than this certainly you know. Obviously her prognosis is a shorter lifespan than a normal person without diabetes, but its only – even right now it’s about 10 to 15 years shorter on average than somebody without diabetes, which is a drastic comparison to if she had gotten something like leukemia or many of the other childhood diseases that cut someone’s life short very early. So, you know it certainly gave us a lot of room to praise the lord that even though it’s very burdensome sometimes, we could definitely have had her come down with many things that were much worse.

Patti Armstrong: Would you also say because I see this, I do a lot of interviews and my son Luke worked on this book with me and he interviewed you, but I certainly talked to you and knew the story well. I had a time, but what I find people who go through these types of things, as it gets, it gets rid of the fluff and the materialism like you mentioned and it cut’s life to its very core. And you are so clear on the meaning of life and the purpose, you value your daughter’s life everyday, you never forget that. Like some of us can easily forget its there, but we get lost being busy with other things. And you just kind of have life in a clear perspective than people who maybe aren’t dealing with these struggles on a regular basis. Would you feel that way?

Chris Cash: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I cannot – if she is the house, I cannot ignore her. It is impossible to ignore her, because at anytime she could have her blood sugar start to drop. I have to have a constant knowledge that at this time, I better go out and check her blood sugar, even if I am doing something else as important.

Patti Armstrong: Right.

Chris Cash: So, you know there is no way to forget about the diabetes or about her presence or about what needs to be done and when to keep her safe.

Patti Armstrong: It seems that you live in the awareness of true reality of life after eternity. You are closer to that than a lot of us are, because you are constantly being reminded of life issues and what we are here for and looking out for your daughter. And so, you are less likely than a lot of us maybe to wander of the path and you know forget they are being real important in life.

Chris Cash: Absolutely and you know it – sometimes it can’t seem like a huge burden. For instance, my wife earned a significant trip through the company, she works for recently, and it was going to take wife and I all expense paid overnight for about 4 nights away from the family. And we had a real soul searching about whether or not we could do that by ourselves even with her being three and a half or if were going to need to bring her with us, and in the end we’re paying out of pocket ourselves to be able to bring her with us on this very nice trip. But you know it certainly keeps you from just going off the deep end with any of the material things of the world.

Patti Armstrong: You know this reminds of another story in the book, which was a very different but kind – it’s of with the same result. There was – there is a man who received cancer, I said received cancer because it’s called the gift cancer when we receive gifts. And so much of wife’s crosses and difficulties are actually gift that we don’t see and you know we don’t want. But the gift comes in what it does for us and we join ourselves to the cross Christ. And open ourselves up to his graces and he – and part of gift as cancer, because once he had cancer and he lead a very good life. He went to mass on Sunday – or at least on the surface he lead a good life, but there wasn’t that deep down core I’m living every moment of my life for God to his being. And when he got cancer, he began to prepare to die. And in preparing to die, what he did was he learnt to live. So, it reminds me of your story, because you are so aware of wrong move on you, not paying attention for a little while could result in your daughter’s death, and through that you are truly loosing each moment with your daughter. Just as he felt while preparing to die for the first time in his life, he truly began to live, because all the things he thought were important suddenly he realized the cars, the boats, the vacations that isn’t what’s important. My relationship with God is the only thing that’s really going to matter shortly, because I’ve got cancer.

Well, nobody expected him to live and little by little, he grew. He went to the doctor and came to grips with the idea that he was going to die. And for some reason, he just never did die, he got better. And he has given his life over to promoting the group. He had the holy cards meeting and I think he has sent out close to million of them around the world. And they are used to really promote adoration around the world. So, here God used him in an amazing way to cut the life’s of so many people. But it happened because this man began to prepare to die. And I’m just – I’m thoroughly convinced because I’ve written hundreds of these stories for Amazing Grace Series and go straight a lot of the stories. So, when you interview someone you know their story intimately and I’m convinced that then you cut away of shallow stuff and the materialism and if you are confronted with your own death or the death of your children, you really live for the first time.

Chris Cash: I can certainly second that. And we are going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor, but when we come back we will talk more with Patti Armstrong and we’ll get a little more in depth about just what this book is and the Amazing Grace Series is. Little more generally this is Catholic Spotlight.

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And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Patti Armstrong, author – one of many authors of Amazing Grace for Survivors, as well as the other Amazing Grace books Series. Can you share with our listeners just a little bit about what is the Amazing Grace Series in general here in case they don’t know already?

Patti Armstrong: The Amazing Grace books are a 101 stories of, of miracles, inspirations, humor. Now, some of the books are a little bit less than 101. The Survivor books, we decided on the number 50 for a couple of different reasons. One is the stories tend to be a little more intense. And the other thing is they tend to be a little bit longer, because these are very involved stories in some cases of terrorism and difficulties and crosses that need to be overcome. In spite of the seriousness of many of the stories, we still have a chapter of humor in the books – in this book like we do with all the other books. And the best way to describe these books is to say they are Chicken Soup for the Souls with a Catholic slant to them, because so much of the book, that you can see books are very inspirational, uplifting stories, but we go a little bit deeper. So, you can hear about somebody’s devotion to the rosary and to the - and to the eucharist.

And we are going to include every aspect of their Catholic faith, but we don’t you all really had with that stuff. You know depending on the person in their story; you are going to get a different degree of Catholicism. And we also have people that aren’t even Catholic in the book; they’ve turned to God for his help and receive his graces to help them cure whatever it is they are dealing with. Because we certainly believe that Gods grace is for everybody. The nice thing about this book series is its Catholic book publisher, most of the stories are Catholic and if you get into a nondenominational book, you are going to not see that Catholicism shining through in the stories. Because anytime you get into a denominational, it cuts the Catholic stuff that it doesn’t go down easy for them, but in our series, we can include it on.

Chris Cash: Now, why did you pick Survivors as the topic for this particular book?

Patti Armstrong: While you are done, I mean the grace of every suffer, the catholic heart, mothers, fathers and married couples and families, and I was – I became the managing editor of the book series. So, I would collect stories everywhere I went, whether it was staying in line next to somebody or sitting at a plane and somebody tells me a story, or it’s going to magazines and newspapers, I wish forever collecting stories. And Jack and Matt and I used to teleconference on the phone and we would talk about which book we are going to do next. And so, the books we did mothers, fathers, families, those seemed like natural topics or themes for books, and one thing that kept coming up is one aspect of your life when you really turn to god is when you’ve got a crises or something you need survive. And the difference between surviving and just getting through something is that you come up stronger in the end. And that’s what Gods grace does for you. And not everybody who has experienced hardship can be said to have survived. And I think we all know people in our own lives who are role models, who are inspirations to us, because maybe they have done amazing things. They’ve survived amazing things, but they have done it with grace and strength and love. Now, it doesn’t mean that it was that way all the time, it doesn’t mean that when you found out your daughter had diabetes, that she weren’t upset, that you didn’t say why and how am I going to deal with this and my other kids already have problems, why this now? It doesn’t mean you don’t go through that, but in the end through the grace of God, you come to grips with it and you emerge stronger. And it’s always – and we always say through the grace of god, because people who don’t emerge that way are not turning into go and letting him do their work in them.

And you often end up people that are bitter, that marriages that fall apart, anger and they are just simply are not living life on the same level of people who have actually survived their hardships and become stronger. And a lot of these people, well I don’t want to say a lot – I want to say maybe all of these people can say, I wouldn’t have chosen this but I can say it has made me stronger.

Chris Cash: I can certainly understand that sentiment. Now, since this is about Survivors and some very hard stories, is it in anyway depressing?

Patti Armstrong: You know what it’s anything, but depressing. Because if all you have heard were the bad things that have happened to people, yes, it would depressing. But now you’re story is ongoing one Chris. See everyday of your life for now you are dealing with your daughter’s diabetes, most of these…

Chris Cash: Well, at some point it becomes more her cross, you know to me we are caring her cross for a time, but it is her cross for her entire life.

Patti Armstrong: Right.

Chris Cash: And at some point, we get to hand that cross to her and say we have carried you as far as we can go, and you now have to take care of about yourself and make your own decisions about how you are going to take care of them. So, you know even for me, I can say this is a temporary cross for her its forever.

Patti Armstrong: Right. Absolutely, although I guess our children’s crosses are crosses too, which we never fully realize until we had children. Its not that we not that we have our own crosses, but we share other crosses of our kids too. And so, but your story is an ongoing one, most of the stories have happy endings, so you see the progression of people and their struggles and turning to god, and how they emerge. You know each story is different. For instance, in one story, it’s a story of Melissa; there is a woman who is blind. Her name is Patricia. She is blind and she explains what it was like to be picked up by the gang or I guess, it was a station rag in that had brought them, the disabled kids to school. And there was a girl there who seem to not be able to do much of anything. I think was not able to really speak and there was actually a hierarchy within the handicapped kids, which she would think that all be equally compassionate with each other, but instead there was alike hierarchy. And Melissa was subject to a lot of taunting and cruelty, nobody thought she could respond to anything. And one day – she was kind of ignored as not really there, because she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t hear, she was kind of like a – I don’t know if I want to say a vegetative state, but she really seemed to be pretty close to that. Well…

Chris Cash: A non-communicative state at least.

Patti Armstrong: She didn’t seemed to be there at all, as far as the kids could tell. And Patricia was blind and so, there was a kid who was continually taunting her, pulling her stuff in her hair and he had something – I forgot, well, I think he had pulled her hair or put gum in her hair or something. Then she was sad and so upset, she was crying and much to turn her a surprise Melissa, she felt Melissa’s hand in her squeezing and holding her and putting – and then she put her arm around her. And she was in shock, because here she always thought at least I’m not like her. And she realized the love and the compassion that was coming from this girl that nobody gave a time to and even thought she knew what was going on. So, that was just – to me that was an extremely touching story.
And there is other ones you know father Dan, he probably - he wanted to be a priest, thought he couldn’t because his parents were divorced pre-Vatican. And he ended up going into the world of theater in San Francisco and was making lots of money. And he said something that I just think is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. He said, “He never committed – he had committed a lot of sins and he enjoyed every single one of ‘em. And at first he felt…

Chris Cash: It sounds about like Saint Augustine.

Patti Armstrong: You know it’s such a thing to say that, but then I realized well, yes. He said, “Hey people don’t sin because they don’t like it, they sin because they enjoy it.” But of course it doesn’t lead to ultimate happiness. You won’t ultimately be fulfilled. But he has an amazing story of how is mother had transferred him to the blessed mother, when he was very sick as a baby. He didn’t know this. And just the way the blessed mother pursued him and he ended up becoming a priest. And I just jumbled into him, I was visiting my parents and my sister and my dad were at mass somewhere and she said, oh, this priest its kind of already comes to the church once in a while, I remember we happened to be there. And when he got up to give the homily, I thought wow, he is just – he has a gift of preaching or something. He was – just was amazing. And she said well, “He has an amazing story.”

So, I thought you know when I heard the story, I thought this has to be in the Survivor book. And I said Luke was wrote this book with me, actually interviewed him and it’s – I think its one of the most – it’s the longest story in the book, but it will read the fastest. And it is so amazing, its humors, its funny. This guy is something else. But I guess, he survived secularism and ??? in the book, his mother pursued him and he became a priest. And he is just a very dynamic priest.

And then you know there are story of people, for instance somebody who was hit in a car – hit by car and a situation where nobody expected him to survive. A severe brain injury, he was in the hospital, a situation where he would have expected there would have public him, he wasn’t going to survive. And at the time of the story, when we found out about him, he had graduated from college. And had really made a remarkable recovery, while he was there people were praying to Padre Pio for him, he actually saw Padre Pio appear in his hospital room. He made a miraculous recovery that have astounded the doctors. Later he went back to the scene of where the accident was and the owner of the home came out; his car had hit the tree. And the owner came out and he introduced himself and he explained that he had been in that accident in front of this mans house. And the man said, “I consecrated you to Padre Pio at the time when he you know walked down and saw this horrible accident and saw the condition,” which was amazing to him because that’s who he saw while he was in his coma, it was Padre Pio that he saw. And so, he attributed his recovery and miraculous recovery to Padre Pio.

Chris Cash: Well, it sounds like this book is just packed full of very inspirational stories. And I think anybody who is looking – anybody who is feeling the stress of being down on their own personal situation is going to find somebody in this book who they can relate to and can help to pull them hopefully with the attitude and the success, and the absolute divine intervention that comes to help out these situations. I wish we had time to go through all 50 of them, but you know that’s what the book is for, right?

Patti Armstrong: That’s right. I hope it gave you a little bit of information and even if you never buy the book, just the idea that that’s how you survive your hardship and through the grace of God. And that there is not a single one of these stories that anybody said, oh God, a cross is coming my way. Oh, good I have to carry this cross. Oh, this is great. Nobody said that, but what God did in their lives absolutely amazing. And so, I think that’s something that we all need to remind ourself on a daily basis, I know I do. You know here I’ve talked to hundreds of people, I’ve written their stories, I’ve been astounded, inspired, but I still have my own crosses where I start to get dragged down and the messages and examples of others helps to pull me back up and make me realize, help me to remember where I need to be and how I need to get through everything.

Chris Cash: Well, Patti it was great having you on a second time to talk about this. Thank you so much for coming on and thank you for letting me share my story with my listeners here, as well as the people who read your book.

Patti Armstrong: Well, thank you for being so gracious as to share your story, ‘cause it’s a personal story, but I know you are going to inspire many people with it.

Chris Cash: And with that, I’ve got to say goodbye Patti and God bless.

Patti Armstrong: God bless you.

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Transcript of Interview with Patti Armstrong about Amazing Grace for Survivors. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Amazing Grace for Survivors is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004802/Amazing-Grace-Survivors/