Thankful People: After a tough year, the McCollough family perpetually thankful

Robin McCollough collects frogs. She has more than 300 figurines of the amphibians throughout her home.

"You know a frog means to Fully Rely On God," she said.

For the McCollough family, the past year has required them to trust God more than ever.

They've been through unemployment. They've battled cancer. They've worried about where money will come from to pay bills or buy food.

But through it all, Robin McCollough counters, "you can't change the diagnosis, but you can change the outcome."

The bad news came a week before Thanksgiving last year: Spartech had laid her husband, Nathan, off.

He'd been through it before, a year earlier. After his job in Macon, Ohio, went sour, the family moved to Cape Girardeau to be closer to family. He thought he had a job waiting at the Missouri Veterans Home. It didn't pan out.

But the subsequent predicament came at a particularly difficult time. Robin McCollough had just started undergoing hyperbaric oxygen treatments. Due to skin cancer and previous health problems, part of her face was decaying. The restorative treatment would cost $1,250 a session. She needed 42 sessions.

Epilepsy and multiple sclerosis prevented her from working. Her disability check and her husband's benefits put them $27 over the limit for food stamps. And Christmas was coming.

They had taught their adopted daughter, Tatum, that "Christmas is someone else's birthday" and "to live a life of service instead of get all you can," but they still wanted to make the day special.

Help came in unexpected forms. Someone at school turned Tatum's name for the "shop with a hero" program, allowing the then-6-year-old to go Christmas shopping with a police officer. One day they found an anonymous donation with three boxes of food on their porch. Church friends also did what they could to help the family make ends meet.

Eventually Nathan McCollough found a job through a placement service. But instead of taking him on full time, like he had expected, the Perryville, Mo., company cut his hours, meaning he was driving nearly 80 miles round-trip to work four hours a day.

After working a couple of odds-and-ends-type jobs, the family got news this month that makes them perpetually thankful. Nathan McCollough had been hired full time as a custodian at Southeast Missouri State University.

"Life isn't always easy. But we have so much to be thankful for," Robin McCollough said.

She is thankful for her friends and church family. She's thankful her face has healed, her husband has a job and her daughter is thriving. She said she's thankful to live in a country where people are free to live how they chose. She is thankful for the military protecting those freedoms.

To show her thanks, Robin McCollough has gotten into a routine of giving back. On Mondays she volunteers at her daughter's school library. On Tuesdays, she tutors English language learners at the Adult Education Center. Wednesdays are spent at church, cooking dinner for about 50 people before Bible study.

"We just had to let God do his work," Nathan McCollough said. "There is so much evidence of God blessing us."

lbavolek@semissourian.com

388-3627