To win a Dream Home

This is the story I wrote to win a "dream home" on Regis and Kelly's TV Show. Pray that we win with this letter I wrote about Kevin and why we want a dream home. Hope you like it. Pray for favor for us to win!!!


I’ve dreamed for more than 11 years about a home that would be mine on the corner of Carol Lane in Texarkana, Texas. We’ve sketched out the plans, and we even have the land. The house is the part we’re missing! Being awarded a “dream home” would make all of the struggles we’ve faced seem far away!
My name is Ami McCarty, and I am a 34 year old woman who has been married to my wonderful husband Kevin for nearly 11 years. Our story is one of difficulty, but it’s a story about a man that has changed my life. Giving him the home of his dreams would grant me a new lease on life.
It all started when Kevin and I first met in 1999. I met him online at Match.com. Back then, internet dating was brand new. I was interested in meeting someone and after I put in my desired criteria, Kevin was my only match! He emailed me the next day. He was from Texas and I was from Maryland. From the first moment we met on the computer, I fell head over heels for this man. Pretty soon we were calling and flying back and forth to see each other.
When I flew down to meet Kevin for the first time in Texas, he showed me this piece of property, which was a little bigger than an acre. His father had purchased it for us and was giving it to us as a wedding present! Originally we had plans to jump right in and build a house near his family on our land.
But life quickly took other turns, and the plans we made got pushed by the wayside.
At Christmas he came to visit me, and I got sick and had to be taken to the emergency room. The doctors weren’t sure what was wrong. Over the course of several months they found out that I have the connective tissue disease Lupus. It can affect a lot of things in your body. Little did we know what was to come.
My dad told Kevin that I was sick, and Kevin assured him that he would take care of me once we were married. I don’t think any of us realized how committed Kevin really was. We got married, and life happened.
During our first year of marriage, I gained 90 pounds because of steroid medications I was on for the disease. But Kevin didn’t care. He never left my side. He was there for every second. He always told me how beautiful I was, and he just put up with the side effects of the medications. He never made me feel like I was a burden. I couldn’t go places or do things because I was sick all of the time. The medication was taking a toll on me. I had to work, and on the weekends I had to take this awful medicine that would have me sick and in bed all weekend.
Kevin would take care of me. He would sit with me in the bedroom because I was too sick to come out to the living room. He would keep me company and do things for me that I couldn’t do myself. It seemed like we’d get through one thing, and I’d have a set back. We had preexisting conditions on my medical coverage, so we had so many medical bills. The dream of building a home was there, but we couldn’t make it a reality.
I had been teaching Spanish but finally the realization came that I was too sick to be able to teach anymore. I was missing so much work, and I was granted disability right away. It was hard to face the realization that I couldn’t work anymore. We also faced the grim realization that we would never be able to have kids either. We became foster parents, but my health was in such disrepair, even that wasn’t possible, so we have had to give up the dream of having children for now. I had to have a hysterectomy also due to complications from my disease.
Two years ago, I developed chronic pancreatitis and as a result, I became so ill that I have to have a feeding tube. I have had the feeding tube for a year now. I am not able to eat regular food because I can’t digest it. In addition, I have developed diabetes, and I may be facing another surgery to put an additional tube in my stomach. I am seeing a specialist next month at John’s Hopkins University to see if that’s what we’re going to do. We have a lot of tough decisions to face in our life, but I know that with God and with Kevin, I can face them all.
Kevin has been there for me the whole time. I can’t count how many times I’ve been sick in bed throwing up and he’s been there, stroking my head and telling me he loves me. He says I’m the strongest person he knows, but he doesn’t know that my strength lies in him. He is the reason I want to live. He makes each day worth facing. He could have walked away. That would have been so easy to do. But he did the hard thing. He stuck with me, and today our marriage and relationship is stronger than ever. We have weathered the storms, and we feel like we can face anything because of where we’ve been.
Because of this sickness, so many times I’ve felt like dreams were being taken away from me. We still dream, but because of my medical bills and financial situation, we can’t build now on this land that has been sitting there waiting for us for years.
We have house plans for the home that we’re dreaming about. It would mean so much if I could give the man of my dreams the house of his dreams for being there for me all of these years. It would be the best thing that’s ever happened to me!
Thank you for letting me share my story!