ORDINARY PEOPLE LIVING

“I knew it was my time to grow into someone I never expected to become.”

Bill Shafer

Belenda Cypress

FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS

Belenda Cypress couldn’t sleep. Her mind was racing too fast. She thought of how far she had come—from the little girl picking oranges for money, who moved all over Florida, as the family went where the jobs were. It’s why, just a year after high school graduation, she married Jerry Cypress. Her parents wondered if it would last. After all, the first time they met, he announced, "That's going to be my wife one day." And sure enough, it was a happy union.

Belenda and Jerry had three daughters. He started a trucking company, and they built a fine life together. How pleased her parents would be to know that the happy couple were about to celebrate their 45th anniversary.

What should have been one of the best days of their lives turned out to be the darkest. On their anniversary, without any warning, the love of her life collapsed from a heart attack and died. She felt half her soul was torn away.

“In Jerry, I had everything I ever wanted,” she said. “The pain, the unrelenting sadness was nearly unbearable; but I knew that I had to get up and move on.”

Belenda Cypress needed to set an example for her children. She also had to support them, and that meant taking over her husband’s company.

“I sure wasn’t ready for it,” she remembers. “But who is? I just knew I had to go on.”

Cypress turned to her faith for support, which led her to look deep within herself.

“I couldn’t help but cry,” she said. “But they began to change to happy tears, because I knew it was my time to grow into someone I never expected to become.”

Cypress discovered comfort in a most surprising way, by expressing herself through writing poetry.

"I was too shy to articulate my feelings verbally,” she said. “But through poetry, I was able to explore all kinds of emotions. The surprise for me was from how deeply they (the poems) touched others.”

Cypress wrote enough poems to fill two books. The more she shared them, the more positive feedback she received. She read to her family, to church groups; she even read in prisons where the reactions of the inmates touched her heart.

“They all started clapping on my very first visit. Do you know how that made me feel?” she said. “That confirmed to me that people out there are hurting, and they need to know that someone cares about them.”

Cypress had discovered a new calling.

“My purpose in life is to be a blessing to somebody, it’s that simple,” she said.

Cypress realized that everyone suffers from grief at some point and that life seldom goes the way we expect.

“Don’t give up,” she said. “When you tumble into those valleys of darkness, look up and find the light. Go ahead and cry, if you have to; but always put someone else ahead of yourself, because that is the secret. Nothing in life is perfect; but by loving one another and reaching to help someone else up, that is about as close as any of us are ever going to get."