by Nanette Malher
Attempt something so great that it is doomed to fail unless God is in it! 
“Attempt something so great that it is doomed to fail unless God is in it!”
Harrington doesn’t just use the line rhetorically — she lives it.
She is a successful entrepreneur, the chairman of the state chapter of a national non-profit organization, and a radio personality.
“I’m a Type A,” Harrington states. “I have to do it all.”
Fourteen years ago, she started an Albuquerque-based screen printing business called Screen Images out of a garage with business partner Maria Cordova-Barber. The women serve small and large businesses and government entities and focus on media and marketing companies, and the areas of education, athletics and special events.
As her business began to thrive, she decided she needed an additional challenge. Eight years ago, she became a board member of the New Mexico chapter of the Make-A-Wish foundation. One year ago, she became the Chairman of the Board of the chapter.
“The New Mexico chapter is celebrating its 25th anniversary. We will give away 92 Make-A-Wishes in our current fiscal year,” she said with great joy. “We’ve given away 1300 Wishes over the last 25 years. It’s an amazing job, but I don’t think of it as a job.”
Even with all that was on her plate, her Type A personality didn’t stop her at two jobs. She felt she needed another one, and she wanted the third job to involve something that served God.
I wanted to do something on the side — something for God. I prayed about it, and He gave me everything. “I wanted to do something on the side — something for God. I prayed about it, and He gave me everything.”
During the time that Harrington was making her request, she reconnected with friend Dewey Moede, Station Manager for Christian News/Talk Radio KKIM in Albuquerque, NM. After Harrington had been helping with marketing and promoting the station, Moede suggested Harrington try doing live radio. She eventually became the host of her own show called “Something About Women.” The one-half hour program features Christian women who are out in the world doing great things. Harrington wasn’t sure she could handle it in the beginning. She laughs when she recounts how she encouraged herself, “I’m a woman and women talk!”
The show has been a success for three years. Harrington gives women from all walks of life the chance to talk about their faith, obstacles they’ve overcome and how they’ve moved from thinking to doing. She’s interviewed a beauty queen; a once-homeless woman who became a director of a local Boys and Girls Club; a cancer victim; a car-care specialist . . . the subjects are diverse and their stories are compelling. Her obvious love of people and professional NPR-esque interviewing style make the show interesting and informative while marrying Christian principles with current-world significance.
Harrington’s life wasn’t always about God. She admits that her childhood upbringing in Iowa left her with “a bad taste in her mouth” for Christianity.
“I was the second oldest in the family. My father was a Methodist. My mother was a strict Lutheran,” she said. “Church life only existed for us children. We were dropped off at Sunday School. I didn’t like Sunday School, but it was good that my parents did take us, even if they didn’t attend church themselves,” Harrington said.
It wasn’t until years later when her father was dying of renal failure from diabetes that she came to know God on a personal level.
“It was around Christmas time, and my husband and daughter and I packed up to go help my dad get set up with Hospice. The dying process scared me to death,” she recalls. “But as I sat with him, I began to realize that it can be a beautiful process.
“One day my dad was lying in the bed and opened his eyes and said, ‘There’s a hole in the ceiling.’ We all looked, and of course, there was no hole, but it was then that I realized he was moving into the spiritual world. Another day he was looking up and smiling and saying ‘Unbelievable! Unbelievable!’ He was seeing things we couldn’t see.”
Watching her father in his last days on earth moved Harrington enough that she began to seek God. She was very touched by the Christian actions of her family and friends during the entire experience, and she and her father became very close. One day the pastor who visited him on a regular basis asked her father if he’d like to be baptized. Between church services one Sunday, the pastor baptized him.
“Unfortunately, I had gone back to Albuquerque and wasn’t able to witness this. The fact that the pastor heard God talk to him about baptizing my dad made a huge impression on me!”
Three to four hours after the baptism, her father died.
“I look back and I realize that God put people in my life prior to acceptance of Christ,” she said. “As difficult as it was, I’m really glad I had that experience with my dad.”
We know we have God in us.We’ll be OK.
As her thoughts turn back to her business, the economy and the state of the world, Harrington feels that people may begin to start relating to a “new normal” that she hopes will involve God.
“America has, for so many years, focused on greed and money. It’s been our downfall. We have to accept that there’s going to be a new normal, and within that we have to be steadfast in our beliefs and be positive.”
At a time when the economy has affected so many businesses in a negative way, Harrington makes a point to practice what she preaches.
“People will come in the door and say, ‘How’s your business?'” Harrington imitates the slow, tentative tone with which people ask the question.
“I always reply, ‘We’re doing GREAT!’ I’m amazed by how many people are so anxious and depressed,” she said. “But we know we have God in us. We’ll be OK.”
You can listen to Sandy Harrinton’s “Something About Women” streaming live from the Internet at www.MYKKIM every Thursday from 3:30p.m. to 4p.m. MT, and on Sundays from 7p.m. to 7:30a.m. MT. If you live in the Albuquerque, NM area, you can listen to her on the radio at KKIM-AM, 1000 and KKIM-FM, 94.7.