SOS for R&R

I'm war weary. My brother and I both showed up to cheer Mom on at supper, and my battle fatigue was obvious. Mom started packing up all the food she hadn't eaten. My brother's and my reaction was quite different.He said, "sure, Mom, take it back to your room!" In my mind, I saw those stacks of to-go boxes in her room. I remembered her rolls, toast and other bits of food stashes in her chair, her bookcase and, of course, her walker pouch. I was reminded of a conference with the director of her assisted living place, discussing how Mother's stashing of food was a bug and rodent hazard. My reply was, "No, Mom. You CANNOT take it back with you!" She pointed out the bird houses that don't really exist. He turned around and started looking. I whispered, "Remember A BEAUTIFUL MIND?" I really need a vacation. I'm losing perspective, Lord. Give me your eyes to see. May I have time to regain the love her the way you love her.

ALL Things Work Together

I'm in shock. The captain of the cheerleaders from my graduating class has Altzheimers. I'm shocked that something so sad could happen to her. I'm shocked that someone my age has a disease that's associated with the elderly. And, growing up with this girl, whom I'll call Linda Sue, I had thought she would always get her way. In the little girl mind within me, I'm shocked that she can't.

I remember camp the summer after the sixth grade. After arriving by train and being transported with our luggage, we all stood in the central area of the camp. The counselors, one by one, called out the girls who would be in their cabins. Linda Sue was put in the cabin with several of us who were not her best friends. She immediately let them know that this was not to be. In front of everyone, in that campfire area, she threw what could only be described as a tantrum. And it worked. She was put where she wanted to be.

My parents made sure I went to the "best" schools. I did. But that "best" came with a price. The children of high achievers often mimicked the behaviors that brought such success to their parents. Friends were not people. They were a means to an end. They propelled one into the spotlight, into the groups, even on an elementary school level, that would bring influence and power. And so it was with Linda Sue.

What are you saying to me, Lord, in this situation? Are you reminding me that I came to know you in high school? This very attitude of being ignored by those clawing to the top was what called my attention to my desperate need for something.You reached out to me, and I knew that You were my answer. You took away that despair and filled that void. And life has never been the same again.

So, thank you, God, for Linda Sue and all the dozens like her. They provided the inky-black darkness in my soul that made the beam of light from Your lighthouse even brighter. She helped prepare the way in my heart for You. Nothing could be more important, leading me to the rich, full life you have for me, a life where there is no room for bitterness and resentment. As it says in Romans 8:28, it all works for good in your plan for your own.

I am Hoke

Taking care of Mother at the end of her life, is so strange.  Every day I watch her waste away a little more. I spend hours helping a weak, frail woman, who seems more like a stranger than the woman who raised me. She is like my toddler granddaughter with her short attention span and her need to be cleaned by others.

Like Hoke in the final scene of Driving Miss Daisy, I coax her to eat. She takes the bite I have put on her fork, barely making it go into her mouth because her hand doesn't seem to want to turn the fork to fit. Then she stares outside the window.

"Look at those birdhouses in those trees," she says. I turn and look hard. There are no birdhouses. Possibly the shadows among the leaves seem, in her mind, to be shaped like birdhouses. I turn back around and remind her of the food before her.

And so it goes. A bite. Attention gone. Gradual refocus. Another bite. Attention gone. Slowly focus again. Usually, she tries to get me to eat the food.

"Mom, I've already eaten," I reply. "You're the one who needs to get stronger, not me. The more you eat, the stronger you'll be."

I don't know if it does any good or not. I cheer her on. Yesterday, it took her two and a half hours to eat lunch. Today, she eats well. Hopefully she has more of an appetite. The increase in amount could be due to the fact that I keep reloading her fork and drawing her attention to it.

She really needs people around. She always did. Growing up, when she needed us around, I thought it was because she wanted someone to scream at. Now, I see bits and pieces of the one who constantly forced her will on us in anger. Mostly, though, I see a toothless tiger, one who is no longer so angry at the world. I know this is due, in large part, to the antidepressant they give her daily. I thank God for the man who invented the antidepressant.

Mother tries to talk constantly, as is her custom. Her words are garbled and many sound like each other. My granddaughter asks me how I can understand her. I answer that I have spent so much of my life teaching a foreign language, maybe I can put together bits and pieces and make sense of the whole. In love and respect, I nod and give verbal assent, and Mother feels better. Someone is listening.

Lord, I see again Your patience and caring for us. We are weak and helpless. You are strong. You could have easily left us there in our weakness. Instead, You reached into our world and gave us hope. You sent Your Son as a bridge between your beloved creation and yourself. Your made a way for us to ascend Jacob's ladder, so to speak. Because of His sacrifice in my place, you see me as having never done and thought the things that kept me from you.

You helped me when I was helpless. Help me to remember.

To the Least of These

To be honest, I don't want to visit my mother today. For over six weeks, I have attended to her in her apartment, in the hospital and in rehab. She's getting cranky. She snaps back at me. She piles everything she hasn't eaten into a paper napkin after a meal and hands it to me, "So it won't go to waste." It looks like garbage to me, but I take it and ditch it into a garbage can on the way out. She needs help, but won't let me help her because I don't do it like the therapist told her to. But she can't remember how the therapist told her to do it, and we have to call the nurse for help.

I must be just like this to Jesus. He's there constantly, yet I snap at Him, asking why He has allowed this or that in my life. I'm ungrateful for what He has given me. I often treat the gift like garbage. I want to do things my way, not wanting help. Then I end up calling on Him, because I really can't do life myself.

I'll go, and I'll smile, and I'll kiss her wrinkled face. Jesus takes me as I am. Mother is just "one of the least of these," today.

Comfortable Christianity

One of the comforts to which I cling, vacationing in Destin, Florida. 

Last night my attention was riveted by a speaker who talked about American Christianity and why others aren't coming to Christ.  She pointed out that we American Christians will follow Christ as long as we are comfortable. When commitment to Him asks us to give up our things or our pleasures, we back off. 

The result is that others see a "Christ-less Christianity." We don't resemble the one we say we serve, because we serve only to a point. God can't shine His light through us, because we unscrew our light bulbs, so to speak. The circuit is incomplete, and the beauty and winsomeness which is part of the Lord Jesus never gets seen by those who don't know Him.

I thought about this last night as I climbed onto my feather-bed-topped mattress with its soft sheets and down comforter. My husband had just turned off the large flat screen television that faces the bed. The air conditioner blew gently, though it wasn't really hot outside. We just wanted to get the humidity out. He read by an attractive bedside light, while I played "Words with Friends" on my iPhone. 

We are not wealthy at all by American standards. We don't have a house at the lake, though we have many generous friends who do. There are so many things that we could look at and say, "We don't have that!" We have chosen contentment over lavishness in retirement. Despite all this, we are like other Americans, in that we crave our comforts.

What if Jesus is asking us, as He asked the rich, young ruler in Luke 18, to give up that which we hold most dear? The things and the comfort are not wrong in themselves. They are destructive when they get in the way of our relationship with God. They are a rock thrown into the gears of our usefulness to God.. They dim the attractiveness of Jesus in us, when His goal is that we joyfully present Jesus in all His beauty to those who are living desperate lives without Him.We are given the privilege of throwing ropes to those drowning around us, and we sit on the shore under a beach umbrella. 

Lord, I want to give all that I have to you, including those things that make me feel comfortable. I want to be a lighthouse that sends out a life saving beam, not one that turns off its light because it hurts my own eyes. I am so guilty of putting myself before you. I say I love you, but what I practice speaks so much louder. Help me. It's only you who can do this. And as you do, You promise me your joy and your peace. And those other things begin to look like cheap rhinestones next to the brilliant diamond of who you are.