Toby Dorr: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Fierce Conversations with Toby, the show where we discover the silver lining in life’s most difficult stories. I’m your host, Toby Dorr.
Toby Dorr: Hi everyone today, I am so excited to introduce you to my guest Kathy Harvey Kathy and I met at a writers conference. I think it was 2019 And she had the most amazing story and she’s working on her own book. So i’m gonna let her share her story Uh without doing too much interjection because her story is certainly something that’s gripping.
Toby Dorr: So welcome Cathy I’m, so delighted to have you here.
Cathy Harvey: I am so excited to be here, Toby. Thanks for inviting me. I was delighted to get your email and invitation. Good to see you again.
Toby Dorr: Yes. It’s great to see you too, even though this time we’re digital, but gosh, that’s how the whole world works anymore, isn’t it?
Cathy Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Thankful for that. Yeah.
Toby Dorr: But it’s a blessing really. So I have an odd question that I like to start all my podcasts off with and it drives my husband crazy cause he thinks it has no purpose, but my listeners like to know what’s your favorite color and what does it mean?
Toby Dorr: What does that color say about you?
Cathy Harvey: I wrote a poem about that.
Toby Dorr: Oh, really?
Cathy Harvey: In fact, I wrote two because I have a hard time deciding. I’m an artist, as you can see with my craft supplies behind me. Um, that question has plagued me most of my life. However, I think one of my very favorite colors is peacock blue.
Toby Dorr: Oh, that’s dramatic.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah, there’s a richness to it. And, um, I wear a lot of red because red looks good on me cause of my hair.
Cathy Harvey: And I like red and I like Ruby red. It’s those Royal colors, you know, the Emerald green and the Sapphire blue and the Ruby red. So those are colors that I, I tend to gravitate toward. I like them all.
Toby Dorr: I do
Cathy Harvey: decision for me to make.
Toby Dorr: I have so many books about color here next to my desk and the other day my husband said to me, I wonder how they came up with paint colors. I said, oh, I have a whole book about that where all the paints pigments were discovered and he, I pulled it out and he was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you.
Cathy Harvey: Well, The fact is I love color, and I love colorful things, and I love flowers of all kinds because they’re colorful, and it makes me happy.
Toby Dorr: I do too. I always said my dream job would be the person that gets to name the paint colors. You know, on those paint chips, you get to pick the names of those colors.
Cathy Harvey: Ha ha!
Toby Dorr: That would be so fun. I think it’d be, I would love it. Um, anyway, let’s dig into your story, Kathy. So your story is an unbelievable story.
Toby Dorr: That it’s based on a tragic event, but you’ve turned it into something beautiful. So I’m just going to turn over to you to share your story with us.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah, well, um, I’m hoping in the future, our story won’t be so unbelievable. I hope it’ll become more common.
Toby Dorr: It needs to,
Cathy Harvey: yeah, and it really wasn’t all my doing. Um, It really was the power of love and the power of God in our life that helped us get through this. And so, let me explain that, um, our daughter, her name was Anna.
Cathy Harvey: She was an eight year army veteran and a single mom when she came home from, she was in 9 1 1 in the war. And due to a medical condition, she was unable to drive, which was annoying for her, but she was, um, very healthy, studying health and wellness, personal wellness. And so she ran, jogged, biked everywhere.
Cathy Harvey: She was very strong and we invited her to come live with us. Um, after she got out of the solitary at that time, she was a single mom and she had two girls with her and one had been adopted out by her brother, our son. So she came and lived with us and she had been there for eight years and one day, this is back in 2013 already, I can’t believe how much time flies, but I was just thinking Scurrying around the kitchen in the morning, grabbed my jacket to head off to work, and she was not a morning person, so I kind of had to tone down my chipper, you know, morning bird stuff, till she woke up on a couple cups of coffee.
Cathy Harvey: But all of a sudden I remembered it was her 34th birthday, and I was at the coat closet getting my coat on, and her two little girls had come down, and they were seven and ten, and um, trying not to be too chipper, I just kind of gently said, Happy birthday, Anna. And her two little girls thought that was so fun.
Cathy Harvey: You know, they forgot it was her birthday and they giggled, you know. And, um, I grabbed my coat and headed out the door and I had no idea. Those were my last words to her. And, um, she was a Facebook, uh, person at the time, and people were pinging her all morning, wishing her a happy birthday, even the girl’s bus driver knew her.
Cathy Harvey: She was very social. She always talked to the bus driver when she put him on the bus, and the bus driver wished her a happy birthday. So she put her two little girls on the bus that morning. And, uh, she had four classes left to finish her degree in health and personal wellness at the community college.
Cathy Harvey: And so she signed off her Facebook that morning with four words, getting near the end.
Toby Dorr: Oh,
Cathy Harvey: And that kind of haunted her friends later on that day. Um, you don’t know when you type those words that your end is. less than eight hours later,
Toby Dorr: yeah, we never know usually.
Cathy Harvey: we never know. So, um, I was really grateful that my last words to her were so positive, you know, that we hadn’t had an argument or something, you know.
Toby Dorr: yes,
Cathy Harvey: things can be
Toby Dorr: they can not be so pretty sometimes.
Cathy Harvey: under the same
Toby Dorr: Yes. Yeah,
Cathy Harvey: And so he loaded up her bike. She had community college classes.
Cathy Harvey: Uh, that started at noon and he was the second shift person. So he loaded up her bike in the car and he dropped her off at the community college just five miles from our house. So she could ride home after class around two o’clock and be here when the girls got off the bus after school, which she did every single day.
Cathy Harvey: And so, uh, After her classes, because there weren’t always sidewalks where she was biking, uh, she was biking off the road on a two lane highway on the gravel shoulder. Uh, and uh, when she was about two miles from our house, a young man in a car traveling, um, opposite. Uh, she, he was going south and she was coming north.
Cathy Harvey: And she was on, uh, they were on the same side of the road, but she was off on the gravel. And, um, he took his eyes off the road for, what do we say, just a moment,
Toby Dorr: it’s all it takes.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah, and it was just a two lane highway, and, um, he wasn’t speeding, he wasn’t texting, he wasn’t under the influence of anything, but he was looking off the road, and he didn’t see her at all, and his car veered just ever so slightly over that white line.
Cathy Harvey: And he hit her, you know, almost head on. And, um, he told the officer in the corner that he noticed that the sun had come out after a light rain earlier in the day. And so he was looking over his left shoulder for a rainbow. And then he heard a thump and that was it for Anna’s timeline, you know, she passed away within minutes right there, uh, in the ditch off the road.
Cathy Harvey: So, so on my end, uh, shortly after 5 PM, I was hustling to get home because I knew one of the girls, one of our granddaughters had a dance lesson that night, uh, that I had to take them all to. But I got home a little after five and nobody was home. I thought it was kind of strange. And I called out, and I thought I’d hear the Disney Channel on, and Ann Obster, you know, clacking away on the keyboard.
Cathy Harvey: But it was quiet, and I thought, well, maybe she thought I was going to be late, you know, she was post military. She was very on time kind of person. I thought, maybe she asked the neighbor for a ride, you know. And so I sat down and turned on the TV. I still had my coat on. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because I knew we were going to be late if we went to dance class, but I texted her to see where she was.
Cathy Harvey: I thought, well, if someone’s driving her, she’s hands free. Um, but shortly thereafter, uh, there was a knock on the door and two men dressed in black were standing
Toby Dorr: always wear black, don’t they, see, when they come knocking at your door?
Cathy Harvey: Well, it was the coroner and a deputy sheriff. That was their uniform. Um, I didn’t know who they were. I thought they were police. I thought they were fundraising. That’s the only other time a policeman is knocked on my door. They were fundraising. And, um, they asked if Anna Harvey was there. Was home. And I said, no, but I’m her mom.
Cathy Harvey: She lives here. You know, I’m the home homeowner. And, um, they didn’t introduce themselves. They said, can we come in?
Toby Dorr: Oh. Uh
Cathy Harvey: was strange because when police officers had come to our door fundraising and I invited them in, they always said, Oh no. So I thought that must be a policy. They don’t step into the house.
Cathy Harvey: They just stay on the front porch, you know, but he, Asked if they could come in. And so I didn’t know any better. I didn’t sense anything wrong. I opened the door and I said, sure. For about two seconds, my stomach flared up like, Oh my gosh, they might hurt me. I didn’t even ask for any ID. You know, who are these guys?
Cathy Harvey: Um, but then I thought I just didn’t sense any danger. And I thought I was being a little dramatic. So I just stepped back into the living room and, and the one man who later turned out to be the coroner invited me to sit down and I thought, this is really odd. They’re inviting me to sit down in my
Toby Dorr: In your own house, yes.
Cathy Harvey: So, they sat and I sat opposite them and then he asked for my ID again. And I’m like, this is just strange, you know. I didn’t have any premise that anything was wrong because Anna was very independent. You know, if she couldn’t get around one way, she figured out a way to get around
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: you know.
Cathy Harvey: And. And after the fact, I realized he didn’t want to tell this news to the wrong person. So I said, well, I’ve got my driver’s license. Do you want to see it? You know, I’m Kathy Harvey. Do you want to see it? And he was like, no, no, that’s okay. I think he felt pretty
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: And then without any clue, he still didn’t introduce himself.
Cathy Harvey: He didn’t say I’m Korn or so and so. Mrs. Harvey, I have some really difficult news for you. Um, he just said one sentence. And he just looked me in the eye and he said, Your daughter was riding her bike on Highway 45 and was hit by a car and killed.
Toby Dorr: Uh
Cathy Harvey: And I, I went, Did I just hear what he said?
Toby Dorr: huh.
Cathy Harvey: And the words, you know, it’s weird what your body does.
Cathy Harvey: But I saw the words circle around my head in digital, kind of like the New York
Toby Dorr: Yes. Uh huh. Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: That’s what it did around my head. The very exact sentence went around my head like that. And I thought, how are you supposed to respond to this? Who teaches you how to respond to
Toby Dorr: Yeah. We really don’t.
Cathy Harvey: and I thought, I want to cry, but I don’t want to cry in front of
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: I want them to go away now.
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: but, Here’s the one unusual thing in the first four seconds after that coroner said that you know what my first emotional response was
Toby Dorr: No.
Cathy Harvey: I felt relief For Anna and let me tell you why and I had a really struggled life And she was abused by men, used and abused.
Cathy Harvey: The father of the girls was not kind to her. He didn’t support her financially. Uh, life with him was really hard, you know. She was living with us with the girls and trying to share visitation. It was really, really stressful. Plus, trying to get around without a car. Can you imagine your life? Always having to ask for rides every time you want to go somewhere.
Cathy Harvey: She had a really struggled life. And I knew the background. And I knew things that, that other people didn’t know. I knew she had been raped when she was in high school. I knew the men that, some of the men that had abused her. And so my thought, I felt relieved because I knew where my daughter was. Because she believed in Jesus Christ.
Cathy Harvey: She trusted him to forgive her sins. She had eternal life. And based on what the Bible says, Absent from the body, present with the Lord, I really believed Anna was heaven. She was in heaven. And so I felt relieved for her. But then, it took about 15 seconds for me to think about the girls. And my body had a physical reaction.
Cathy Harvey: And started to quiver from the inside out. Really bad. And that scared me. Cause it, it was not, it was out of my control. And um, And I put my hands to my face and I said to the coroner, I said, Oh, the girls, what about the girls? And I, you know, your brain works in lightning split seconds. And I thought they got on the bus this morning with a mom and they got off without one.
Cathy Harvey: And I said, the girls, what about the girls? And he said, uh, do you have a relative, Nathan? They’re with Nathan. And I said, no, we have a neighbor across the way. Like As the crow flies a couple blocks, but if you have to take the street route, it’s about a mile almost, but we can cut through the backyards and, you know, get to their house in, you know, a few minutes.
Cathy Harvey: He said, they’re with Nathan. And I just immediately thought, okay, okay, they’re fine. They’re good. But then I looked at him and I said, what do I do?
Toby Dorr: Ah,
Cathy Harvey: I’m a doer. And what do you do with this situation? You know, so he said, why don’t you make some phone calls? So I had. I had the presence of mind to understand, in this internet age, word gets around pretty quickly.
Cathy Harvey: So, I wanted to talk to the right people in the right order. And even though Anna didn’t have the best of relationships with the girl’s dad, we had a friendly relationship with him because Um, they had shared visitation, and the girls went to his house every other weekend. And, um, I knew I should call the dad first.
Cathy Harvey: So I called the dad, and it was really kind of miraculous that I got a hold of him. Um, he wasn’t home, and I happened to have his parents number. And it was a Thursday, and I called them. And his mom shouldn’t have been home, because she has class. But all three of them were there,
Toby Dorr: Oh.
Cathy Harvey: at his mother’s house. And she answered and I said, I’ll just call him Jack, that’s not his name, but I’ll say, is, is Jack home?
Cathy Harvey: Is Jack over there? And she’s like, yeah, he’s right here. She’s like, hi, how you doing? And I just said, fine. You know, I wasn’t
Toby Dorr: right?
Cathy Harvey: know, I wasn’t going to tell her, you know. And I said, is Jack over there? And she’s like, yeah, he’s right here. I said, can I talk to him? And so I said, um, I thought I’m going to give him a little warning.
Cathy Harvey: Not like what the
Toby Dorr: Yes. Yes.
Cathy Harvey: And I said, Jack, listen, um, Anna was biking home from school and I said, I’ve got some really sad news for you. I said, Anna was biking home from school and she was hit by a car and she was killed. And he just said, I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll come right over. Well, come right over.
Cathy Harvey: He was in a suburb of Chicago, 45 minutes away on a good
Toby Dorr: Wow.
Cathy Harvey: And now it’s 5 30 or so.
Toby Dorr: right in the middle. Rush hour.
Cathy Harvey: o’clock traffic. So I knew he wouldn’t be there for at least an hour and a half. And so that’s all I said to him and got off the phone. And I said, should I, should I call my husband? He said, yeah.
Cathy Harvey: And I said, should I tell him on the phone? He said, no.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Ooh, getting hold of my husband was hard. He works in a large postal distribution and sorting plant. That’s about two football fields big.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And I never call him. Only for emergencies. And in my lifetime, and we’ve been married for, almost 50 years. I’ve only called him three times at
Toby Dorr: Wow.
Cathy Harvey: and all three times was a medical emergency with Anna.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: so, um, he said, don’t tell him I got the number. And I’m like, Oh God, please let this call go through. It’s always like a real staticky walkie talkie, you know, kind of thing. And somebody picked up right on the first ring. And I just calmly said, This is Miss, this is Kathy Harvey, Steve Harvey’s wife. I do have a medical emergency.
Cathy Harvey: Is he there? Can I talk to him? And he said, sure. And he paged him and lo and behold, Stephen was standing just feet from a phone. And he picked up the phone and it was clear as day. It was like he was standing right next to me. And so I said, um, um, Ann has been in an accident, uh, and it’s pretty bad. Uh, can you come home?
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And he said, should I go right to the hospital? And I, I paused to pretend like it wasn’t a big emergency because I wanted him to be calm while he drove home and I said, um, no, come home. I want to be with you.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And I hung up because I was afraid if he asked a follow up question, I didn’t know what to say. And he thought that was a little weird, but you know, I just said, come home. I want to be with you. So that’s how that happened. And, uh, I really wanted the coroner and the deputy sheriff to leave because I needed time to process. I needed time to think and pray and be still and put on some music and, and just figure out how I’m going to tell my husband this.
Cathy Harvey: But they were, they didn’t want to leave me alone until someone was going to be with me. Uh, you know, and I realized it was out of the kindness of their heart they were doing that.
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm, mm
Cathy Harvey: So I tried to think of things that my husband might ask. And so finally it, when I told them, you know, that, you know, they weren’t going to be here for another hour, they kind of sighed and I felt
Toby Dorr: hmm,
Cathy Harvey: I’m sure they had plenty to do, but finally it was time for them to leave. And, um, I thank them for coming. And I said, I’m so sorry. You have to deliver this kind of difficult news. You know, we’re going to be, okay, it’s, it’s all right. We forgive
Toby Dorr: mm hmm,
Cathy Harvey: And the coroner said, Oh no, you don’t want to say that. Cause I had just asked, um, I just thought, Oh, Stephen’s going to say, well, what happens to the driver? Does he get a
Toby Dorr: mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Does he pay a fine? Does he go to jail? And the coroner said, well, one or all of the above, it’s up to this date attorney. And I didn’t understand how the court system worked. Uh, it wasn’t the Harvey’s versus the driver.
Cathy Harvey: Now someone had been killed. So now it’s a
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Now it’s the state of Illinois
Toby Dorr: you, you’re kinda removed from any, um, control.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah. So he said that, and then I, you know, I was thanking him and I, I made that comment about, you know, it’s a, well, it’s okay, you know, we forgive him. And he said, oh, you don’t want to say that. And I said, yes, I do. And I thought, oh, he’s thinking we’re going to sue them or something like that, you know? And I, the example I’m going to give right now, I can’t, I can’t remember how many times I repeated it to different attorneys, whoever was working on our case, and I said, no.
Cathy Harvey: I said if. Let me explain it this way. There’s consequences and there’s forgiveness, but they’re two different things. And I said, the neighbor boy can hit a ball through our window and break the window, and I can forgive him, but he sure as well better come over and fix the window or pay for somebody to fix the window.
Cathy Harvey: So there can be, I can forgive him and there can be a consequence, but I don’t have to be hateful about it.
Toby Dorr: hmm. You don’t want revenge and
Cathy Harvey: yeah, and so that really confused everybody. They weren’t used to that kind of response.
Toby Dorr: society isn’t. If you watch the news, you know, when someone, some accident like that happens and they talk to the family in there, they always say, we want them to get the maximum sentence. We want justice. You know, we don’t have our loved ones, so why should they have theirs?
Toby Dorr: And it doesn’t make things better.
Cathy Harvey: It doesn’t. And I didn’t know until about five years later, actually. I’ll jump ahead a little bit. I was back in the state attorney’s office. This was all, had all been solved and resolved and I was bringing something to his office and, and I said, do you remember me? And he said, yeah, remember you. We tell your story all the time.
Cathy Harvey: He said, usually when families come in and something like that has happened. And the more he talked, the more emphatic he got, like almost violently emphatic. I started, I started to tear up and shake. He said, and he hit, he hit the desk. Every time he made a point, he said, when family, when something like this happens, the families want the person to go to jail, they want them to rot in jail.
Cathy Harvey: They want the jail to rot on top of them. And they want another jail built on top of that. And every time he hit his hand, he just got louder and louder. And I just. started to shake and I backed up and I’m like, Oh no, no, we’d never, never would have wanted that. So let me go on and tell you what happened.
Cathy Harvey: So this happened on a Thursday and, um, the following Wednesday we had her funeral and then the day after a week, it would be exactly week Thursday. I don’t know how to explain this to your audience if they’re not believers and they don’t understand, but to those who understand and believe in the Holy Spirit in our lives and God in our lives and working, I sensed a still, small voice
Toby Dorr: Ah!
Cathy Harvey: to me,
Toby Dorr: That’s my favorite scripture, the still, small voice. I mean, that’s really special to me. Wow. Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: yeah, call the mom and actually I’ll be honest with you Dobie. I heard that voice the day before the funeral to call the
Toby Dorr: hmm.
Cathy Harvey: but it seems so crazy. I thought there’s no way I’m going to explain this to my husband. He’s not going to understand and I pushed it aside because we were doing so many funeral
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: But then we had the funeral, and then the next day, you know, it’s like the dust settles. Everybody goes home, and it’s quiet, and you know, the company went home, and Stephen’s in the basement working on the computer, and I heard that still small voice say, call the mom. Call her right now, because I had
Toby Dorr: Yes. A couple days before. Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: right now, and tell her you’re going to be okay, and it’s okay for her to have a happy Mother’s
Toby Dorr: Um.
Cathy Harvey: We’re going to get through this. It wasn’t an accident. It was God’s
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm. Mm
Cathy Harvey: and I have lived with the fact and the reality and the truth that we all have a timeline
Toby Dorr: I believe that too.
Cathy Harvey: and God, God knows our timeline.
Cathy Harvey: He says our times are in his hands and ever since my Children are little. Every time they walked out the door to school, I always hugged and kissed them goodbye because I was aware I might not see them again. And my, my teenage son, and he, he grew up to be a strong, robust Marine with tall tattooed up and everything.
Cathy Harvey: And when he came in, he’s like, when do you stop? When do you stop doing that, hugging and kissing? I’m like, oh never, that’s a
Toby Dorr: Yes. Yes.
Cathy Harvey: um, I said, you know, you go out the door in the morning to school, I don’t know if you’re coming
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm. Mm
Cathy Harvey: want the last thing to be that I hugged and kissed you goodbye.
Cathy Harvey: And so I was very aware of this, not in a morbid
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Not in a morbid way. I’m comfortable with death in the sense that I accept that it’s going to happen. And I accept that I probably won’t know when. Some of us get a timeline, a medical timeline. You’ve got three weeks, you’ve got two
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: but most of us
Toby Dorr: We don’t know when it’s coming. Yeah.
Cathy Harvey: So I have lived aware of that intentionally and so, um, Anyways, I lost my train of thought.
Toby Dorr: You were calling the mom. Real small voice. Call the mom. Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: So I just think the Lord gave me clarity. And I went into the kitchen and I found the one page accident report that the police had given me. And on it was the driver’s contact information. So I found the home phone number.
Cathy Harvey: It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I put on some quiet I sat down on the couch. I was all by myself. I called the number. I didn’t even know what I was going to say. None of this was planned or
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And, and I thought, who’s home at two in the afternoon anymore? Everybody works, you know. Um, but I, I wasn’t going to push that voice away anymore.
Cathy Harvey: And so a lady answered the phone. And I said, um, I wasn’t sure how to pronounce their name. I said, is this Mrs. So and so? And I heard this, yes, who is this? And I said, this is Kathy Harvey, Anna Harvey’s mom. And I just wanted to call and tell you we’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this. And it’s all right for you to have a happy Mother’s Day.
Cathy Harvey: That was coming up
Toby Dorr: What a beautiful gift of grace that was for her. Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And she, you know, when I said this is, Kathy Harvey, Anna Harvey’s mom, she got real quiet on the other end, so I knew she recognized my voice and knew my name. And she said, actually, um, my husband’s having a real hard time with this. And I didn’t even think about the
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Steven and I were really concerned about the driver. We did not want him to live under some umbrella of guilt all his life, because I sat down and tried to think, if I had killed somebody’s child, what could they tell me to do? To help me and I couldn’t think of anything. I thought this will bother me for the rest of my
Toby Dorr: Yes. Mm-Hmm?
Cathy Harvey: and so We were very concerned about him and I had learned from the coroner in the conversation We had while he was waiting with me that the driver had a disability and I said, oh I kind of perked up and I still had my coat on but I I opened You know my coat to show them my name tag.
Cathy Harvey: I worked at a college for students with intellectual disabilities.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: So I had a lot of compassion.
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And the coroner kept with the privacy laws and he didn’t say what his disability was, but that was part of the reason I had so much compassion for him because I worked with these students every day. And I had an aunt that had cerebral palsy that I grew up with.
Cathy Harvey: So, She, I told her, I said, the coroner told me your son had a disability. I said he, he kept with the privacy laws and didn’t tell me what they were. But, and she cut me off and she told me what they were. She was very open about it. And I said, well, I’m very concerned because I work at a college for students with intellectual disabilities.
Cathy Harvey: And my husband and I are very concerned on how this is going to affect him. Is he going to replay this over and over again? Some of our students get on a track. We call it, we call it, um, um, perseverating. They perseverate. They just repeat over and over. Like two students will get in a squirrel and one will just say the same thing over and over.
Cathy Harvey: And you have to kind of break that train of thought and help them calm down. And I said, you know, How does this affect him? Uh, what does he need, you know, to get past this? We’re not angry, we’re not bitter. Um, the girls are ready to forgive him, but we just want to know what he needs to get over this. Does he want to, does he just want to pocket it in the back of his mind and put it away?
Cathy Harvey: Does he want to write an apology? Does, you know, what, what does he need? You tell us. And the only thing I asked was that whatever he wants to do, please. We’re just asking that you do it soon because the girls are healing and they forgive him. And I, I don’t want three months to pass and this wound has healed.
Cathy Harvey: And then all of a sudden they’re confronted face to face with the driver, you know, who hit and killed their mom. If, if he wants to apologize or something. And so we had a wonderful connection. I learned they were born again Christians and we shared faith. And I was immediately drawn to her. I loved her. I cared about her.
Cathy Harvey: I thought, this is a mom who knows what
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: I just loved her already. And we got off the phone. We didn’t have any more phone call after that, but I already, we already loved them. And they were, they were fellow believers with us. And I just felt that we had brothers and sisters in Christ who were going through this horrible thing together.
Cathy Harvey: So. I didn’t hear anything for a little while and all of a sudden, my husband comes to me, he got a phone call from our attorney. We had, we had, I always say we had two attorneys. One was the one that processed the accident and all the insurance and all that. And then there was a state attorney, who I thought erroneously was working for us, until I understood the court system.
Cathy Harvey: But the accident attorney called my husband one day and said, the driver wants to apologize and he wants to set up a meeting and apologize to you. And I said, okay. And then my husband said, and the attorneys are going to be there. His attorney and our attorney. And I’m like, Oh man, do they have to be there?
Cathy Harvey: I don’t want them to be there because then we have to speak politically correctly and legally. And
Toby Dorr: huh. Ah.
Cathy Harvey: no warm fuzzies with the attorneys. I don’t want them there. Can’t we just meet them? And he’s like, It’s not going to happen if the attorneys aren’t there. And later on, I found out from my attorney, they didn’t even know if they could have a meeting with two wrongful death parties meeting before the court case.
Cathy Harvey: Is somebody going to show up with a gun and kill somebody? I mean, they didn’t even know the attorneys were on the phone with each other. Like, can we do this? You know? So what happened was, Um, the driver’s mother and I can say her first name. I can say their first names. They’ve given me permission. Linda went to her attorney and in fact she worked for a traffic court attorney. She was the administrative assistant to a traffic court attorney, and her office was across the street from the county courthouse where he was going to be tried. So she was familiar with all these legalese.
Toby Dorr: Mhmm.
Cathy Harvey: told her attorney that her son wanted to apologize. And so he typed out an apology and the attorney had to approve it, you know, and they wanted to have a meeting.
Cathy Harvey: And so that’s why our attorney called us. The driver wants to have a meeting and he wants to apologize. And so we said, okay, and we set it up. It was about a month later and it was my husband and I and the two little girls and it was the driver, his mom and dad. And we invited his pastor and we invited my pastor.
Cathy Harvey: And the two attorneys, and I had another friend from church who just sat in the corner and prayed the whole time. She was a biblical counselor. She never said a word. I don’t think anybody else remembers she was there, but she was there praying for us. And um, I have to say when our attorney walked into this conference room, we had it at our church.
Cathy Harvey: He just kind of like had little beads of sweat on his forehead, you know, kind of deer in the headlights. He was sitting on the edge of his chair. He was really nervous. And, um, everybody got there at the last minute. Their pastor wasn’t able to make it, but the two attorneys were there. And I, a few days before the, all this happened, the Holy spirit, again, that still small voice said to me, Kathy, write an acceptance letter.
Cathy Harvey: He’s going to apologize. And the devil’s going to mess with his mind after the meeting and say, Oh, did the Harveys really, did they really, uh, forgive you? They were, were they just being nice? He said, write an apology, write an acceptance letter and sign, have all of you sign your name, your husband, you, the little girls, print their name that you accept his apology.
Cathy Harvey: So when he goes home, he has documentation. He can reread that the Harveys forgave him and don’t want him to live under this banner of guilt. So I did that and then like two days before the meeting, the word flowers came into my mind and I thought, Oh, I’m going to give the driver’s mom flower. I want to give the mom something because don’t we moms carry the emotional
Toby Dorr: Yes, we certainly do.
Cathy Harvey: I said, I want to give her something. So I looked on online at what flower means forgiveness and it was yellow daffodils. or red tulips. Well, it was May. Well, it was June and it was killed on her birthday, May 2nd. And now it was like the first week of June. So all the daffodils and tulips were spent and none of the flower shops even had them.
Cathy Harvey: And I wanted live flowers. I didn’t want artificial flowers. So, um, I thought about what other flowers, bright yellow, and I thought of sunflower. So I substituted the daffodil, the sunflowers for the daffodil. And I didn’t look up what they meant. Cause I didn’t want them to mean jealous rage or something. I didn’t look up what the sunflower meant. I just was using it in place of the daffodil. And, um, I, I won’t use up time telling the whole bouquet, but there was forgiveness and there was innocence for the girls and there was love and there was, um, uh, A flower that represented heaven and I’m just made a big, huge, beautiful bouquet and put it in a vase for her.
Cathy Harvey: So we wrote, we, we went to this meeting with our, our acceptance letter and these flowers and everybody was there. And when we got there first and when the driver’s mom, Linda came around the corner into the conference room. Oh my God, I just loved her so much. First of all, her name is Linda, which is the name of my sister.
Cathy Harvey: She was exactly the same height and size as my sister. And I, we just opened our arms to each other and wrapped our arms around each other and gave each other a hug. And I just felt like I was hugging my own sister. And I literally looked up to heaven and I said, like to the Lord in my mind, this is so easy.
Cathy Harvey: I just loved her
Toby Dorr: Wow.
Cathy Harvey: much. And I, we just had so much compassion for them because actually the Saturday after Anna was killed, my husband and I had a conversation and we came to the conclusion. They really had the harder burden to bear. Their son killed a single mom of two little girls.
Toby Dorr: there’s never any sympathy on the other side. There’s never, you know, I was thinking when I listened to you telling the story how beautiful it was that you were concerned about the mother of the driver because that isn’t the norm. People just don’t have sympathy. You know, I think that’s really tough. I think you could be right that your burden was easier to bear than theirs.
Toby Dorr: I don’t know. That’s pretty eye opening. Uh huh, uh huh
Cathy Harvey: you know, your son kills the single A single mom of two little girls. Now they don’t have a mom. So we just, it was just such a beautiful meeting and our pastor opened it up and, and, um, he knew I loved music and he had quiet music playing in the background and driver. I had this beautiful half page written all in capital letters.
Cathy Harvey: That is how our students did it. We had to teach them, our students with disabilities, don’t type all in caps, it’s like shouting at people. But it just was a tender thing to me to see that he, he typed it all out, all in caps, a half page, and he read it so graciously. And then, um, Pastor introduced that, that the Harveys have a letter they want to read to you, and I read mine.
Cathy Harvey: The acceptance letter, you know, words just came to me and we said, we, we just, we don’t want you to live with this guilt. We can’t, it’s too heavy of a burden to bear. The Lord Jesus bore that guilt for us on the cross when he died on the cross for all of us. So we forgive you. Yes, we accept your apology.
Cathy Harvey: We accept. And we all signed our names. And after the meeting, we switched letters and we went on our way and I didn’t see them again until the court case. So what happened in the meantime was the state attorney of Illinois was trying to figure out how to ticket him or what consequence he should get.
Cathy Harvey: And I, I didn’t understand how all of this works. I thought. You know, you hit somebody, there’s a certain ticket for it, you know. And so we had a meeting with the state attorney and he explained it all. He’s like, there’s not one set ticket for certain things in this case where someone is killed. We also want to know what it will take to appease and satisfy the family. um, at first they actually weren’t going to ticket him because they heard about the forgiveness meeting they called me on the phone while I was at work and they, and they told me that I’m, I didn’t have a very Christian answer. Right there in the office. I said, well, that’s not fair. I said, if somebody doesn’t get to get in their car and kill somebody and they don’t get any consequence, he needs a consequence, first of all, to feel like he paid his debt.
Cathy Harvey: And then I explained again about hitting the ball through the window, you know, you can forgive them, but there needs to be a consequence, but it doesn’t have to be hateful and revengeful and bitter. So she said, uh, so I agreed to go in and have a meeting. I didn’t want to, cause I was missing so much work for so many meetings, but I said, we’ll come in and we’ll talk.
Cathy Harvey: So then I understood when the told me how this all works and they have to get the blood test back and the urine test back and was he driving under the influence and how many times before has he had a ticket and so that’s why on the news report you always say that it’s pending well yeah it’s pending because it takes time to gather all this information and all these facts so i um i said you know he gave up his license the day of the accident And when, on the, at the scene of the accident, when the, the deputy sheriff was talking to him, he was very open and said what his disabilities were, and he said, I take this medicine for it, and I took these meds this morning, and I have an Illinois driver’s license, but I think I should give it up now.
Cathy Harvey: And he gave it up right there on his own. And of course, all the toxicology, Reports came back clear and he wasn’t speeding and all that. So when we were talking to the state attorney, I said, um, now he doesn’t have a license, so now he can’t get a job. So it’s going to be very hard for him to pay for tickets.
Cathy Harvey: Or a ticket and, um, I said, can they ever like transfer the amount of the tickets into community service hour? I said, I don’t know how that works. Like if one hour, $1 is one hour or what I, I, I don’t know, but would that be a possibility? Could he just do community service since in, in place of a payment of the tickets?
Cathy Harvey: He said, well, we’ll see. I’ll, you know, we’ll. Talk to the judge. We’ll ask the judge. So I didn’t know anything more about it. The next day I wrote the state attorney a thank you letter because I could see how stressed he was in his job and explaining all this and trying to appease the families and a very stressful job to do all that.
Cathy Harvey: So I was writing him a thank you note and it just popped into my head in that moment. About the community service hours, I said, Anna died on her 34th birthday and she actually had three daughters, two lived with us and one was adopted by our son during the 9 11 war. I said, what if we multiply 34 times 3 for the three girls and came up with 102 community service hours?
Cathy Harvey: Would that work? And he never answered. It was just one of those things he was going to
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: So that was all in limbo, and so he went to talk to whoever his boss He’s like we got this unusual case here, and I don’t know how to charge this young man. So five months pass and now finally it’s the driver’s day in court, and I wanted to go be there.
Cathy Harvey: They said I didn’t have to be there. The state attorney would take care of it, and I thought no. This is my life and I’m going to show up for it. And, um, my husband couldn’t come to this one because he, he was working nights at this point and sleeping days. And he came to every meeting he could, but you know, I really wanted him to get asleep.
Cathy Harvey: So I just went and, um, the state attorney’s administrative assistant, her name was Deb. She kept inviting me to sit with the, in the attorney’s chair. So the court was set up with the judge’s bench. And then like an L shape in front of it, there were long like Wooden church pews where all the public people came.
Cathy Harvey: Every Monday morning was traffic court and anybody could come. All the people that were being tried and the public could go sit and watch. And they did this from 9 to 9 to noon every Monday. And then along the wall were nice big leather chairs. where the state attorney could sit while he waited or the attorneys could wait and the victim’s families could wait.
Cathy Harvey: And she kept inviting me to go sit with her, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to sit next to
Toby Dorr: huh.
Cathy Harvey: and the family, and I thought, no. No, because then that makes me the victim and we’re against them, and I’m not against them. I want to sit with them. We’re walking through this together. So our, our case, or his case, I’ll say, the driver’s case, was supposed to be before court opened at 845 because they wanted to give him, extend him the courtesy of privacy because he had
Toby Dorr: Uh huh.
Cathy Harvey: Unfortunately, the state attorney on this case got hung up on a phone call and he couldn’t get there. So we were just all sitting in there with everybody else waiting our turn and the attorneys come in and they sign in and it’s first come first serve and they call the cases in order as the attorneys come in and sign up.
Toby Dorr: Right.
Cathy Harvey: So, finally, about 10 o’clock, um, the driver’s case was called and his attorney and the state attorney rushed forward to the bench and were whispering to the judge. That they wanted to talk to him in his chambers because they had some things to explain to him before the case and I could See he was annoyed.
Cathy Harvey: He was about six foot two. He was very commanding. He was one of the sternest Judges in this circuit court. He didn’t mess around I watched him talk to the other people that came forward for their case and he didn’t even look at them He looked one way. He looked the other way. He recited the laws by heart and he’s like if you don’t comply with this You It’s Christmas in jail for you, buddy.
Cathy Harvey: You’re dismissed. Very, very, he had a lot, I counted 40 cases, 40 files on the table in front of us. He had a lot of, he had to get through those from 9 to noon, and he just, you know, he’d been doing this for a long time. So I could see he was very annoyed that they wanted a special meeting in his chambers, which is just off to the side, you know, through a door.
Cathy Harvey: And he rolled his eyes, and they’re like, no, no, really, we have to explain some things to you before you hear this case. He’s like, all right, fine, go take a break and come back later, and I’ll get through the rest of these cases. So we did leave. We left for almost an hour, and we came back, and, um, fortunately, the courtroom was almost empty, so the driver was going to have his privacy anyways.
Cathy Harvey: And, um, so they called, they called his name. He went, he went forward with his parents. And then the state attorney called my name to the stand, Mrs. Harvey. And I, I looked at him, and I, I just did like, I shook my head, like, no, I don’t want to go up there. This is the driver’s day in court, it’s not mine. And he puts on this big Cheshire grin on his face, and he’s waving at me.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah, yeah, come
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And I’m like, no. And I thought, well, holy cow, I don’t want to be in contempt of court. This isn’t even my, my car. So, what could I do? So I went forward. So then it was the dad and the driver and Linda and me. I was standing next to her. This is a little short, adorable thing.
Cathy Harvey: She comes up to my shoulder a little bit. And I didn’t even know what to make of all this. Because when they came back from their chambers, from his chambers, the attorneys came out first and then the judge came out last. And I
Toby Dorr: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Something’s, something’s up. And I didn’t, I thought to myself, he looks softer, because he was very stern all morning.
Cathy Harvey: And, and I was trying to figure that out a little bit more, but then they called him up and I didn’t have time to think on it anymore. But he just looked softer, you know. So then I’m standing next to Linda, and the first thing he says out of his mouth is my name. Boy, he really had my attention. And this is what happened.
Cathy Harvey: He said, Mrs. Harvey, your attorneys have told me what happened. This is a very horrible thing that has happened. And you’ve seen how busy this court is. And he nodded over to the table that had 40 cases that were now empty. And he was looking at me. He was kind of looking at that table. And then he looked right at me.
Cathy Harvey: And he said, Your attorneys have explained to me the meeting and the letters you wrote. And in all my years on the bench, I have never heard of forgiveness. You have restored my enthusiasm for my job. And then he looked at me like he was waiting for a response. And I was trying not to cry. And I thought, Oh, don’t cry in court, don’t cry in court.
Cathy Harvey: And I thought, Oh God, please. What should I say? Where’s a movie script when you need it? You know, it was something profound to say to this judge or quote a verse or something. But I was just trying not to cry and the tears were going to just fall down my face. And he was looking at me for a response. And so finally I just gave him the slightest nuance of a nod like, Thank you. you. And then he snapped out of that soft mode. And he went back into stern judge mode and he looked at the driver and he said, do you understand the unusual number of community hours that you’ve been set to serve? And I thought, Oh, he got community service hours instead. So, so I was really happy about that.
Cathy Harvey: And, um, it turns out he got two tickets, one for improper lane change and one for not being in control of his vehicle. And I, I don’t know what the amounts were, but they, The judge accepted the 102 community hours that I requested for him to do instead. He still had to pay court fees, which I was a little bummed about, but of course you have to pay the court.
Cathy Harvey: And honestly, if I’d had the money, I was going to run down to finance and pay it for him, you know, but I didn’t have the money. But as it turned out, his mom told me, um, he ended up getting the car fixed. Our daughter went, her face went through the windshield. and broke the windshield pretty badly. And so he got the car fixed and her bike dented his fender and he got all that fixed.
Cathy Harvey: And the money that, he sold it to his uncle, and the money that he got for the car was almost exactly the fine that he got fined. And he had 20 left over. uh, so they, they were really, really relieved because the fines can be huge. One, one person had a fine of 1, 200 and I whispered, I dared to whisper to Linda in the courtroom, is that normal?
Cathy Harvey: And she said, Oh, he got off lucky. That’s usually a lot higher. So, yeah. So anyways. I started to leave the courtroom with Deb, the administrative assistant to, um, the state attorney. And I stopped. The family, the driver’s family, was up at the bench with the court clerk, clerk of court, signing papers. And I said to her, I said, you know, in this brief time in the court system, I learned something.
Cathy Harvey: I said, there’s no room for love here. It’s one party against the other. It’s one party against the other. And one person wins, and one person loses. There’s no room for love. she looked at me, and she said, You’re right. And so we walked out, and then the state attorney was walking out behind us, and we all stopped, the three of us, in the hallway, and I, and I said to both of them, and I was kind of nervous, and my voice was kind of shaky, and I said, What you saw in there was the power of God.
Cathy Harvey: That was the power of God’s love. And I don’t mean God up in the sky, an invisible blob. I mean, and I dare to say, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to forgive us. And we just pass that forgiveness on to a fellow pilgrim, bumbling his way through life. And sometimes you feel a wall go up when people don’t believe the same like that.
Cathy Harvey: And there was no wall, they just were wide eyed. And I said, I am so tired of stumbling over the name of Jesus. And Toby, I stumbled while I said it because I was nervous. I said, but I am so tired of this whole politically correct scene, you know, and everybody gets to say their point of view, but we don’t get to say ours.
Cathy Harvey: I said, I’m tired of it. And I’m going to say, I’m going to give my point of view. It was Jesus Christ on the cross who died for us. That’s how we all came out of this, friends.
Toby Dorr: And you and Linda have gone on to do something
Cathy Harvey: We have all gone on. Yeah, sometimes we
Toby Dorr: Uh huh,
Cathy Harvey: And, um, it’s very powerful because As a speaker, I can say, oh, we’re still friends with the family. Well, what can the audience do? But believe me, you know, but then I’ll say something like, wouldn’t you just love to hear the story from their end of it?
Cathy Harvey: You know, what was this like from the driver’s side? And I’ll see a lot of people in the audience nod. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then I’ll say, well, you have a unique opportunity tonight because the
Toby Dorr: Oh wow. Uh huh, uh huh, uh
Cathy Harvey: And then she comes up and we hug and it is, that’s all the audience needs.
Cathy Harvey: It’s so powerful and she’s so succinct and practical and, and she adds so much to the story, so much depth. And at one point, all three of them, the dad, the mom, and the driver spoke with me at a church, and they each got up and told their side of the story. And when, when, uh, the driver’s dad got up, he said, um, even though we had had the forgiveness, we called it the forgiveness meeting in June, they worried the whole time up to the court case, how this was going to play out.
Cathy Harvey: And see, my ignorance was bliss. I thought that took care of it. I thought they knew we weren’t going to charge them. We weren’t going to sue them. But they didn’t know what the state was going to do. And I didn’t know how all that worked, but Linda worked in that system and
Toby Dorr: Who knew what it could be?
Cathy Harvey: to put him in jail?
Cathy Harvey: And can you imagine putting a person with disabilities in jail? And he said, he cried into his pillow many a night. He said, I know my son’s going to tick somebody off and that’s going to be, he’s not going to last one week in jail. And, and can you imagine now we need to think about the ripple effect. If my husband and I had taken a bitter, hateful, revengeful stand, what that would have done to our two granddaughters who lived with us.
Toby Dorr: Yes.
Cathy Harvey: I mean, you got to sit and think about that for a while. The ripple effect of that terrible attitude would have eaten all of us up alive. And that there’s no peace in that. And what about his family and him in jail? And what if he got killed in jail? I mean, there’s a long ripple effect to what we do and what we say.
Cathy Harvey: And. You know, sometimes we get a little glimpse and we’ve been friends with them. We email, they ended up moving away for the dad’s job. Uh, but we’ve been on vacation with them. They’ve been back here in Milwaukee. He’s a train, he’s a model train, um, buff and they have a model train thing in Milwaukee.
Cathy Harvey: Wisconsin and we met them up there and you know, we brought snacks and sat down and, you know, enjoyed the train fest. We’ve been up to Holland, Michigan to the Tulip Festival together. We had Easter breakfast together in church one year, uh, because they still, you know, they had friends in the area. And so, uh, they’re just friends.
Cathy Harvey: And when, when I see her, I don’t think, oh, this is the mother of the guy that killed my daughter. We’ve never thought that. We just have always loved them
Toby Dorr: I think that is beautiful and so powerful and it’s not the norm and it should be because nobody, you know, when you hold a grudge and you remain bitter, you don’t win. Bitterness is no place to live and be stuck. That’s not a gift. So I think,
Cathy Harvey: it’s, it’s,
Toby Dorr: think,
Cathy Harvey: it’s not the norm, but it’s, it’s supernatural. This just, we don’t,
Toby Dorr: Oh, I lost your sound. Mm-Hmm.
Cathy Harvey: but, um, yeah, this is, this is supernatural love that comes from God, and,
Toby Dorr: And, and I think that’s what we’re meant to be as humans. That’s what we’re capable of. And we, you know, I personally think social media is the worst thing that ever happened to humanity because people can say the most horrible things when they’re not saying it face to face to someone, and it’s turned us into spiteful, mean, unloving, And, and that’s not who we’re meant to be.
Cathy Harvey: Well, the problem is that hiding behind the screen does not give us the accountability If we were doing that to someone’s face,
Toby Dorr: Yes, I agree.
Cathy Harvey: and, um, and then you really hurt a relationship. And then, then how do you mend that? You know, so, yeah, the accountability is gone when you start hiding
Toby Dorr: I agree. I agree. And it, and it’s, it’s sad. And, and you’re right. There’s so many times you have to be careful of what you say, because somebody’s going to jump on you and attack you for it. And. That’s, it’s just sad. It’s just a sad state of affairs, I think.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah, I just really appreciate that you gave me a chance to. To
Toby Dorr: Oh, it’s a story that needs to be
Cathy Harvey: I just really, I really wish a ripple effect of forgiveness would
Toby Dorr: Perhaps it will. You know, I’m hoping someone will hear this that is maybe facing a similar situation and they choose to forgive and love instead of be bitter and vengeful. And so much more comes out of it, you know. And you’re so right, there is no room for love in the court system. And, and there should be because justice, being just, should be about loving and forgiving and being fair and not vengeful.
Cathy Harvey: Everybody’s not ready for it, and you know, true reconciliation takes both parties. I think the reason we have such a beautiful friendship is because we, we were both
Toby Dorr: Yes.
Cathy Harvey: it together. Um, Deb, the administrative assistant to the state attorney, called me aside one day the same summer, and she said, Kathy, Kathy, I gotta tell you something.
Cathy Harvey: She said there was a dad and a daughter, they lost their mom. Um, similar to how you lost your daughter, and they wanted to come here and tell the driver and his dad that they forgave them. I think it was a teen driver, drunk driver. And she said they met, and so the dad and the daughter said, We just wanted you to know that we forgive you.
Cathy Harvey: And she said, Kathy, then there was this long, awkward pause. And the driver did this.
Toby Dorr: Ah.
Cathy Harvey: now? And so
Toby Dorr: You’re right.
Cathy Harvey: But here’s, here’s what I tell my audience. When you do the right thing, whether you believe in God, but you know this is the right thing, you can lay your head down at night and sleep in peace because you did the right thing. And it’s not up to you how they respond. That’s on them.
Cathy Harvey: But you do the right thing. You be a person to say, I’m going to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing. And then you can sleep peacefully. And not be eaten up with bitterness and anger
Toby Dorr: Don’t you think the right things are always the hard things?
Cathy Harvey: Probably because it’s our nature to go the wrong way. We’re born with that sin nature, the Bible says. And the only way we can heal that is, you know, through Christ. And the sacrifice He paid for us to get over that. Another good thing that came out of it was, um, at one point, Linda, the driver’s mother, um, her father, um, Uh, really needed to quit driving.
Cathy Harvey: It was getting to the
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: was dangerous. And do you know how
Toby Dorr: Oh, yes. Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: the car keys away from them? Nobody in the family wanted to do that. And then she said, and this was part of her testimony when she spoke with me at her church with, um, her son and husband.
Cathy Harvey: She said, nobody in the family wanted to do it, she said, but then I
Toby Dorr: Um
Cathy Harvey: I didn’t want there
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: Anna. So I sat down and talked
Toby Dorr: Mm hmm.
Cathy Harvey: And nobody else
Toby Dorr: Oh, yeah.
Cathy Harvey: So
Toby Dorr: Yeah, there’s so many ripple effects of everything we do. And so shouldn’t we be putting loving ripples out into the world?
Cathy Harvey: Wouldn’t that be
Toby Dorr: yes, it would. It would.
Cathy Harvey: Yeah.
Toby Dorr: thank you so much for your story. And I believe you’ve written a book, right?
Cathy Harvey: I am so working on it. I’m on my third or fourth draft and then I took a pause the last year and a half to help a new writer with their book. So, I hope to get back to it this year and really nail down how do I want to, you know, how much, how much
Toby Dorr: Yes, you know, I had so much stuff when I wrote my book, and I found the hardest thing to do was to figure out at what moment does the book start and at what moment does it end, and you can still fold past stuff and future stuff into that text, but where’s the beginning and where’s the end? Because you could start anywhere and multiple places.
Toby Dorr: So, yeah.
Cathy Harvey: well, pray for
Toby Dorr: I definitely will. I can’t wait to read it.
Cathy Harvey: And I’m, I’m thinking it needs to be shorter in this day and age. People are used to, um, Twitter and, you know, TikTok and, you know, just really short blurbs, but maybe they’re not ready for a 300
Toby Dorr: Oh, I think they might be. I think you’d be surprised.
Cathy Harvey: Well, it moves along, that’s for sure. And I give some background about
Toby Dorr: huh.
Cathy Harvey: that’s helpful and, you know,
Toby Dorr: I think that’s good. I can’t wait to read it. You’re welcome. And we’ll have a link on that in the show notes to Kathy’s website, which is kathyharvey. org. Purpose dot life. So we’ll have a link to that and you’ll be able to get on her newsletter list and learn when the book comes out. So thank you so much for joining us today, Kathy.
Toby Dorr: I hope that in listening, uh, you, you’ll create more love ripples out there in our audience.
Cathy Harvey: that would be so
Toby Dorr: I agree. You’re welcome. Bye.
Cathy Harvey: Bye bye.
Toby Dorr: Thank you for joining me on Fierce Conversations with Toby. Your support and listening means so much to me, and I hope today’s conversation makes a difference in your world. If you would like to support this podcast, there are many ways to do so. I found these ways tend to help the most in getting our message out into the world.
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Toby Dorr: The theme song that you’re hearing now, Groovin’ was composed and arranged by Lisa Plasse. Lisa also plays the flute for the theme with Carolyn Parody on piano and Tony Ventura on bass. Find out more at tobydorr. com. This is Fierce Conversations with Toby. Escape your prison.
