Meet one of our Clients:
Ms. Lazarus' Story

She is a single mom with four children at home. A year ago, she “died” and was reborn! “It’s a miracle of God’s Love,” says Ms. Lazarus, smiling. “Being led to the Keeler Women’s Center literally saved my life, my soul, and my children.”

Ms. Lazarus had grown up in a very abusive family, and married an abusive man. Her husband was physically and emotionally abusive to her and the children, and they lived in fear. They also went hungry because he was selfish with his money. The kids were hurt and angry, and did not understand why their mom could not give them what they needed, and they eventually stopped talking to her. Ms. Lz feared they would run away and get into serious trouble.

She tried to break away from her husband, but did not have the strength or the resources. She felt ashamed, alone, and increasingly invisible, wrapped in “a gray silence.” She tried to talk to ministers at different churches, but they just told her she was married and God didn’t allow divorce.

She became so depressed she could hardly function, and finally became so weak she could not get out of bed. “I just couldn’t fight anymore and didn’t have the strength to live,” she says. “I didn’t feel like I was a person; I had lost all hope and just wanted to die. I turned my face to the wall prepared to die and went to sleep, expecting to never wake up.”

She doesn’t remember how many days she slept, but she did wake up. She opened her eyes, and realized she felt different. “I sat up drank some water, and was moved to reach for my Bible -- I desperately needed something, anything, from God.”

She continues, “The pages fell open to the verse, ‘Before you were born, I knew you.’ (Jer. 5:1) I felt that was really God speaking to me saying, ‘You are a real person, you are not alone, and I created you out of Love, to love and be loved.’ Somehow, this gave me a sense of being God’s daughter, and it gave me the desire to live and fight again--not not my own strength, but with God’s. This was my turning point, my ‘resurrection’.”

She gathered the strength to ask for help once more when her child’s school principal noticed she was struggling. The principal referred her to a therapist at the Keeler Women’s Center where she received help with depression and with practical needs such as utilities, medicines, home repairs, and parenting classes. “It was the first time in my life that I felt like I was not a victim, and that step by step, I could become a whole person rather than live in fear and despair.”

Even her kids began saying she looked different, that something had changed in her. “They began to actually SEE me as a person, and I was no longer invisible to myself,” says Ms. Lazarus. “I can now see myself through the eyes of Christ who gave his life for me, and now gives me His love, hope and strength. Because I’ve changed, I can see others through Christ’s eyes, and that allows them to change.”

This inner healing has also enabled her to help her children to deal with their father’s abuse by understanding why he is abusive, as well as their own strength. “The kids have become calmer,” she says. “They know they can’t change their father, but they understand they can change themselves, and that they don’t have to take his abuse.”

The main thing is that fear and shame are gone. Her kids are all doing well in school now, and Ms. Lazarus is continuing therapy and taking many classes and workshops at the Keeler Women’s Center. “If it were not for the therapy I receive, and the other wonderful women at Keeler Women’s Center who care so much about me as a person, I could never have made it.”

She knows from experience that God answers the prayer of the soul in distress. “I know Christ saved me,” she testifies, “and I praise Him with Psalm 18: ‘The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; in Him will I trust. He is my shield, the rock of my salvation, and my refuge, my savior who saves me from violence. The waves of death encircled me...in my distress I called out to the Lord. He drew me from deep waters and delivered me from the enemy too strong for me.’ With the power of Christ’s love in me, I know nothing can destroy me anymore!”

To contact Keeler Women's Center:
Sr. Carol Ann Petersen, Director
Keeler Women's Center
2220 Central
Kansas City, Kansas 66102
913.906.8990
email: kwc@mountosb.org