DIANE MAKAR MURPHY Artist draws strength from her experiences

Chelle Davis is just 26, but she already knows quite a bit about life.
She learned her lessons a very difficult way. Now, she takes everything & quot;moment by moment, & quot; not even day by day. As time allows, she adorns greeting cards with paintings of the lazy Lake Michigan shores of her childhood and enjoys her family.
It wasn't long ago when Chelle met Jim Davis, her husband, at Cornerstone College in Michigan. They began dating, then married.
Paying tuition at the private Christian school became difficult, then impossible. They dropped out, tried to find jobs and embarked on several moves between Paw Paw, Mich., Chelle's home, and Jim's in North Jackson.
Low-paying jobs were all they could get. A small amount of debt started to form -- but nothing compared to what was coming. The couple settled into a home in North Jackson.
Struggles
Christmas 1998, Chelle and Jim invited Chelle's parents in from Paw Paw. Jim was 24; Chelle was 22. On Christmas night, they all sat chatting.
Jim excused himself early, and Chelle got what she later described as & quot;a bad feeling. & quot; She couldn't put her finger on it, but it nagged at her so much that she went in to the bedroom, awakened Jim, and said, & quot;I love you. & quot; Then she rejoined her parents.
Later that night, she found Jim in the bathroom getting sick. The flu, Chelle thought. She tried to help him back to bed, but he was too weak.
& quot;Something's not right, & quot; Jim finally managed.
& quot;'Then he said, 'Up feels like down; left feels like right,' & quot; Chelle recalled. & quot;He sounded like a kid. Jim doesn't talk that way. He has a way with words. I got scared. & quot;
Chelle called an ambulance.
At St. Elizabeth Health Center, Jim's blood pressure was through the roof. They discovered Jim had had a massive stroke. An AVM (Arteriovenous Malformation) -- a congenital tangle of arteries and veins -- had hemorrhaged in Jim's brain.
It took two and a half weeks for Jim's systolic blood pressure reading to drop to 180 (normal is below 130), low enough to move him safely to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for brain surgery. Six months of recuperation from stroke and surgery followed.
At the hospital, Chelle made daily entries in a drawing journal and saw her art grow up, becoming less and less angry as she & quot;came to realize what really mattered in life. & quot; In the meantime, the bills for the couple, who didn't have any insurance, grew too -- to more than $370,000.
New hope
But that was yesterday. Today, Jim works for Lane Lifetrans Paramedics -- he's just been certified as an Emergency Medical Technician. Chelle works at Great Expectations Day Care.
Chelle sat in her apartment (a dog; their 22-month-old son, Jimmy; and Jim exiled to play quietly in the apartment's only bedroom) and showed off the few samples of her art that she has. A beautiful, faintly purple, acrylic fairy poses from one canvas, colored pencil sunflowers from three others. Cards she hand paints and sells through a classified ad for $2 -- cards that take her an hour each to make -- fill a box.
& quot;I wouldn't even think I was good if people didn't say I was, & quot; she said. & quot;I have a lot of technique to learn, but sometimes I surprise myself. & quot; Maybe some day, she said, she will take some classes and even open a gallery of her art.
It's an amazing dream when bankruptcy waits around the corner. But Chelle is certain she will survive. & quot;Sometimes I give myself worry-free days, & quot; she said. & quot;I just decide not to worry. & quot;
& quot;We have been through so much. I don't think anything else will test us as much. When you've faced death, you've seen it, & quot; Chelle said. & quot;Our whole lives we've been waiting for things to get better. But I've learned the important things are family, being alive and having fun, and God ties it all together. & quot;
XFor more information about Chelle's cards, call (330) 792-7046.
murphy@vindy.com