!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> rachman-unprecedented: Hope, Are You There?

rachman-unprecedented

So what is this going to be? A little bit of everything I think. Maybe that's it. What I'm thinking. What I'm believing. I hope what I'm knowing. And why would anyone care what I think I know? There's no reason in the world that you should. But then why are you here? Cuz you have to be somewhere I suppose. I've never been here before. I may not be back. I might get too busy to care; time is short. That's fine. Nobody can deal with it all at once. There is a lot to deal with.

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Location: The Great Plains, United States

I try not to take myself too seriously, but I know I have far too much. So I'm trying to learn how to laugh again, as I had forgotted for a while there. Also I'm relearning to enjoy life; you know, like when we were kids. The biggest challenge ahead is learning how to love God with all my heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. This one is not really that hard when you know the truth. But along with it comes learning to love others as I love myself, and that one is, as they say, "a horse of a whole different color." I think I need to learn to love myself a little more, but the problem may be that I know all these facts about me. Sometimes the facts are simply wrong or they are just stuck in the past. I'm trying to get my facts to line up with the truth. As someone once asked a great man, "what is truth?" If he had only known.

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Monday, September 04, 2006

Hope, Are You There?


And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.~Romans 5:5 (NIV)

Hope springs eternal, or so "they" say. Most people know that it can be lost, hope can be lost, that is, at least momentarily if not longer. For me, "momentarily" lasted about six and a half years or...oh, let's say seven years. (My goodness, that's Biblical.) It started when I noticed my, somewhat elderly Mother, who had been widowed and had now lived alone for the last eight years, was having a hard time getting certain things done. Paying bills and balancing her check book for example. It was not the lack of money, though she was not wealthy; it was just the mechanics of reconciling the figures and so forth. I knew I needed to start helping her take care of some of her affairs, but I didn't know how she would take this. She and Daddy had always been reluctant, as I think most people of her generation are, to share their financial matters with anyone, including us kids. However, she seemed more than ready to let me take over in these matters. I had just recently started driving her every where she needed to go. (I was thankful that the usual list of weekly errands consisted of only three places: sunday church, the grocery store, and the hair appointment.) To get her to stop driving herself, because of her failing eye sight, I had said that I needed to borrow her car, while mine was out of commission, and that I would take her to do her errands in the mean time. (While my car was getting a little old, it was still running; but I justified the lie because I was a coward about confronting her with the problem.) In addition to the bill paying and so forth, her memory seemed to be going a bit. For example she worked in the church nursery, with the three-year old's Sunday School class, and had done so for forty years. She finally gave it up because she said she just couldn't remember the names of those little faces anymore.
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One saturday night I came home from work and there was a message on my machine from a neighbor of Mother's. It basically said that I needed to come check on my mom. The neighbor sounded a little distraught, but didn't explain anything on the answer machine. So I changed clothes and made the short five-mile drive to see what was up. When Mother answered the door, I was shocked. My usually cool and collected mom was agitated, incoherent, and had "wild" looking eyes. She had grass in her hair and on her clothes. It was hard to figure out what she was telling me or what had gone on. (It's hard now to remember what I did learn or how I got the information. I was told later that I should write everything down, but at the time I didn't feel that I had the emotional energy to do so. For me at least, "acting" on something and writing about it, don't really go together. It is one or the other.) I know I called the neighbor from across the street to get what information I could from her and pieced it together with what Mother could tell me. Basically Mother must have fallen in the backyard, though we don't know why, and called out for help. When help did come, they helped her up, but she refused to go to the hospital in the ambulance. Some people will wonder at that, but they will just have to understand Mother. She's always been very strong, very independent, very private, and I guess you would have to say very stubborn. Going to doctors was not something she did willingly. Since she could walk, they got her inside her house, (they had to get the door off the hinges to do it,) and then the neighbors called me. After I finally got her to some medical care, the doctors didn't believe that a stroke or a heart attack had caused the fall. She doesn't have thinning bones and nothing was broken. She did hit her head in the fall, but all the tests showed no problems there. She must have just stumbled on the uneven brick pavement leading from the house, but how long she was outside after the fall, or how long she had called out, we don't know.
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I have grown up watching different members of my family taking care of the older family members. My great-grandmother was 99 years old when she died at home (actually the home of her son and daughter-in-law.) My grandmother died at home, where she had been cared for by my aunt. My grandfather and my other two grandparents (maternal side) all died in the hospital, but had been watched over by various aunts and uncles and by my own parents as well. Mother had encouraged her parents to move into the house across the street from where we lived, in order to watch over them there. I remember some of the anxieties that Mother went through caring for her parents. So now it seems only natural and "right" that I care for Mother at home. (I have two sisters, but one is living overseas and the other one is 600 miles away.) It did take me a little while to decide the proper course of action. When I asked God what I needed to do, I got nothing. To my knowledge God never did tell me to go live with Mother and watch over her, but He never told me not to. I think we get some of our guidance from what God doesn't say as well as what He does say. I do know that Jesus made arrangements for His mother before He left this earth, so I knew I had to take some kind of action. But what? The thought of moving back home to my mother's house repulsed me. I'm single and now I'm going home to mom. What a loser! But if I take her into my house, as opposed to going "home" to her house, well that seems okay. My ego could handle that. I start checking into real estate for what we will need. Now I'm not completely unaware of what I'm thinking about doing, as I used to sell real estate. I'm thinking we just need a place with two bedrooms and two baths basically, but I'm not financially able to do it. I start asking God again what I need to do. I tell Him what my needs are. A house with two baths and two bedrooms, no stairs. (My apartment is on the second floor and Mother can't do stairs.) And of course it has to be something that I can afford. Now God speaks to me. He tells me that I already have those things in the house where Mother still lives and I grew up. So I swallow my pride, put some things in storage, and move back home with my mom.
More thoughts later on...
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~ rachman
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