Today

Today Dad is sleeping in and I think he's depressed. He looked at the stack of receipts for all the meds he's taking and then told me "it's so much money" (remind me to put that kind of stuff away!) and "I'm not worth it." No matter how much I say that he's "worth it", I can't make him believe it. He has spent his whole life being productive and just sitting around is not cutting it.

He wants to do something and I'm trying to figure out what that can be.

Our first foray into projects was a bit of a disaster. He was helping me put shelves together for the bathroom but instead of reading the directions he just started putting the screws in - without the locking washers. I would have let it go but they were wobbly and he even realized it so we had to go back and do them all over again. He's too "with it" to not realize that this made the project twice as long and it was a bit frustrating for me. I tried not to show it but I'm afraid he intuited it - or maybe he didn't and I'm just worrying about it. Then came the fiasco of putting the door handle on. I hadn't asked for his help but he stepped in anyway. He's no longer strong enough to put in screws by hand and when I got him the electric drill, he ended up stripping one of the screws and scratching the new handle.

So what I really need to do is find projects that he can succeed at without being patronizing. And not worry if something is not perfect (damn my perfectionism rearing it's ugly head). I was able to tell Dad that the scratches didn't matter - and say it with sincerity. I'm afraid, however, that this was not my first reaction and he knew it.
So I go back to remembering how important love is to this whole situation - it really is the foundation from which I must operate. Love covers over a multitude of sins (including perfectionism) and not only has this been my parenting mantra - it is now my parenting parents mantra.

A follow up to the morning's reason for sleeping in. He was just snuggling with mom and they were saying how much they love one another. When I found that out, I told them to not let me interrupt them and left them alone. Love, it really is the reason to live and does heal all wounds. And it is in such short supply simply because we do not turn to the Giver of Love and ask. Well, I'm learning to ask (and have been for some time) in each and every situation. This is the joy and challenge I've been given for this season. And every season.

Bewildered

...that's how Dad looked when I came out from helping Mom and found him with his breakfast upchucked all over the nice clothes he'd put on for church. The look was sort of "what just happened?" and "what do I do now?" I got him cleaned up and back in his pajamas as quickly as possible and then tackled the floor. He's not sick very often so it took us both by surprise and I'm still wondering if it was the combination of his meds and orange juice on an empty stomach? He slept most of the day but today seems to be much better so I've made a mental note to get food in him before giving the fistful of drugs that he takes at each meal.

The bigger reminder for me is that these kinds of episodes will some day be more of the rule rather than the exception. The day when both of them need more intensive care and what if that happens simultaneously? Those are the kinds of questions / concerns that I can't solve now so am choosing to trust them to God, the One who holds the future.

This afternoon I dropped a smoothie on the floor and it splashed from one end of the kitchen to the other. This time I found the humor in being back on the floor, washing it on my hands and knees and it reminded me of my favorite book "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life." In this 1880's classic by Hannah Whitall Smith, she talks about how our daily circumstances can be used to grow us into the likeness of Christ IF (and it's a big if) we allow them to. How do I let the little and sometimes not so little challenges affect me? This is truly my challenge and I choose to let God stretch me in uncomfortable ways. As I was mopping up the smoothie I thought of Romans 5:3-5 "And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." And while a spilled smoothie is hardly suffering, it is a circumstance that I can choose to endure and allow character to be built by my response to it. That and all the little challenges I face in caring for mom as she despairs over her illness. My choice is to keep looking to Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and pointing her to that hope as well. This is my calling and my daily choice - thanks be to God for the gift of His Spirit!

Living With Mom and Dad

This is so much like life when the kids were little that I have to remind myself - they're your parents! So often I want to write down what they say but, at the end of the day, I'm usually too tired to do so. Sound familiar? Here are a few snapshots from the first 9 days of living together:

Mom (hollering to Dad in the bathroom) "Bob, I need you to give me your ears!"

Dad (this morning at 7:30) "Are we going anywhere?" "No Dad, where did you think we were going?" "I thought I needed to go to school, but I graduated didn't I?"

Me (when I came into the bedroom and found mom hogging most of the bed and snuggled up to Dad) "Dad, you need to tell Mom to move over so you don't fall out of the bed again." Dad - "but I like it when she's close to me."

Mom had a rough day today and was upset about how confused she gets. When she's upset she tends to blame Dad for everything and anything. I'm so glad I can run interference and redirect her. He's so sweet and doting on her but she often misses it. It's almost as if she's gotten stuck in a few bad experiences from the first couple of years from their marriage. She brings up things that happened when Mark or Adie were babies. When I get impatient with either of them I ask God to help me learn what I'm supposed to learn from this whole experience. Today I kept going back to how hard it must be to lose your sense of control and the ability to order your life. Often when Mom is going to do something (like get dressed) she just gets stuck and doesn't know the next step to take. I just keep reminding her that I'm here to help - she doesn't have to remember. Still, she's been in control her whole life. That's a whole lot like me and so I'm learning to let go of control now and then maybe it won't be so hard later!

So why am I doing this? I love hearing how happy our daughters are in college and so glad that this enables that. I am deeply satisfied to know that Dad has an advocate when Mom gets unreasonable and that I can calm her down when she gets panicky. I really love being able to tackle projects around the house that I've had to put off for so long as well as make nourishing meals for everyone and be here when Ben gets home from school. All of this is just icing on the cake for the real reason that I'm caring for my parents. I know that I'm called to do this and that God is using this for my growth. I made a commitment to "just do what God wants" several years ago and I'm certain that this is what He wants. Obedience, in this case, has many blessings attached to it and that's what keeps me going when I start to think about the challenges ahead. God will give me the grace to do this, one day at a time. We made it through another day.

Parenting our Parents

I hardly know where to begin as I think about the events that have unfolded these past two months. I know it began for me when Mom fainted in their retirement home apartment just a couple days before Christmas. She ended up in the hospital where they diagnosed her with heart problems - a valve that needed replacing. At 85 years old this was not a viable option. After a few days she returned to the place that she's never embraced as home even though she and Dad had been living there since the end of August. The home is nice - clean, new and spacious with lots of activities to participate in and two meals provided every day. They had the largest unit - a big two bed/bath that a fair amount of their favorite possessions still fit into. Still, it was not their home and Mom started isolating herself and withdrawing from social interaction almost from the first day. After she came home from the hospital it got worse until she wouldn't even go for meals (and our 91 year old father began bringing food up to her on a tray). I didn't see it but it caused the staff and other residents of the home great concern. The turning point (and possibly saving grace) came when Mom's heart shot a blood clot to her leg and she was sent back to the hospital for minor surgery to remove it. Something had to change in their situation and this forced it to happen.

My brothers and sisters all have their perspective on this unfolding of events and I don't claim to have the corner on truth - I can only tell it as I experienced it. I'm so very grateful that we have each other to lean on, cry with and, sometimes unexpectedly, laugh with. I don't know how we would've done all that needed to get done without each of us taking a part. That, for me, has been the silver lining in this rapid downward spiral of our parents' health.

After several trips to Wenatchee to visit mom and dad in December and January, I began to see that they needed more care than they were getting and that being centrally located would help that to happen. All of us were set to meet on February 5th to plan how to do this - our parents were having a hard time accepting the reality of their situation and every change was a battle. That is why the last hospitalization and move to a rehab facility turned out to be a gift. Suddenly they were forced apart and it caused them to be more open to new options.

The week that everything changed for me was when I went over to help get her set up in the rehab center. She was to stay there until she was strong enough to take care of herself again. The place she ended up in Wenatchee was the place I promised myself that our parents never would. The staff was kind, hardworking and possibly understaffed. The facility was old with a smell that seemed to cling to you as you left. Mom had a roommate who was there permanently and with no TV or phone, she would often chat and throw out riddles for us to solve. She was a delight but her situation was so depressing. Then there was the man down the hall who would begin hollering for help in the evening (sundowners, they call it)and wouldn't let up for a couple of hours..."help me, help me, help me...." Finally there was the food....so worried that Mom wasn't eating we began bringing in Subway (and later cheeseburgers from Mickey D's). All that Dad wanted to do was sit by her bedside and hold her hand. Then they would both fall asleep and it was so touching that it made me want to cry.

to be continued....

Our Baby's in College

I think I'm in shock - that's kind of how it feels. Today at noon we drove away from the Linfield campus after helping Hannah get all 5 suitcases, a small refrigerator and an assortment of "must haves" into her dorm room. I made her bed up with the new linens we purchased a couple of weeks ago - that felt like a good mom thing to do. I truly felt like the momma bird pushing the baby out of the nest as I tried to get us all to leave while she was complaining that she didn't know where to go to meet with the cross country team and we "obviously" didn't want to help her. We did help her connect with her coach and then kissed and hugged her one last time. I'm excited for her, I know she'll do well, I miss her terribly, I'm weeping as I write.

A few minutes ago I wandered into her impeccably neat room and wondered how 18 years could go so fast. I knew it would and told myself it was going fast but still wasn't prepared for the shock of knowing that this would now just be her vacation home. Her, while I'm not somewhere else, home. I saw on a curriculum website that we only have 940 weekends with our children and then it starts counting them down saying, "if your child is in Kindergarten you have 636 left, if your child is in 3rd grade you have 468, 9th grade - 208 and if your child is a senior, you already know how few you have left." I'm right there and it's causing me to be both grateful for the incredible privilege of being her mom and indescribably sad for all the ways that I've let her down.

I wanted to be the perfect mom, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there is no such being. So I did the best I could and always tried to point her to God. Since the time she was very little I always told her how much her dad and I love her - "tons and tons," and then quickly followed it with "but you know Who loves you even more than we ever could? God! (or Jesus)"
Now as I think of her in her dorm room alone (her roommates won't come for another 10 days since she's running cross country) I take much consolation in knowing that she isn't really alone -she has the Father, Son and Spirit with her.

In this age of nannies and daycares and early preschool I find myself wanting to say to every parent that I meet - do you know what an amazing gift that child is? Do you cherish the moments - even the tough ones? Do you treat every day as an adventure and are you quick to mend the broken places in your relationship? No one does this parenting gig even close to perfectly but I trust that the good outweighs the bad and that "love covers a multitude of sins."
So here I sit, in the dark, feeling the weight of 18 years of responsibility being shifted to a beautiful young woman who stole a big piece of my heart and is now walking around with it - outside of my body. Here's to you, Hannah Ruth Greider, have a fabulous first year of college.

Back to Africa

Africa, the place where I bump into myself, my culture, my agenda and then I have two choices: to force my way or to let go and see how things develop. I'm so glad that I can see the improvement from my first journey yet even so, I'm still wrestling with my expectations.

Yesterday we went to New Destiny for the first time to visit with the widows and orphans who have banded together in order to sew, make beads and garden as a cooperative. This is the group that we brought the first sewing machine to and it was great joy to see their new building with 15 sewing machines! I was eager to jump in and help them with their sewing projects and so promptly planted myself in front of one of the machines. Without an interpreter, I began to find out the Kinyarwandan names for needle, thread, bobbin, etc and to try and teach them the english words - that was a lot of fun! However, when I began to actually use the machine, I discovered that this is a "horse of a different color." After breaking a couple needles, struggling to get the tension right and trying to get the foot treadle to cooperate, I was forced to deal with the reality of sewing in Rwanda. I had an ideal in my head but I ran smack dab into Rwandan reality. I had visions of us efficiently diving into the project of shopping bags, perhaps with me leading the way. What I discovered is that sewing in a dark, stuffy room with uncooperative machines is hard work.

The garden was even more overwhelming to me - not the neat, tidy rows of vegetables that I'm accustomed to but rather fields of weeds and plants growing together in disarray. I'm not quite sure if this needs to be but I did acknowledge that working in the African heat with primitive tools is grueling.

So today we went back to New Destiny and I was determined to try a new approach. Learning how to sew from them and getting a real feel for what it's like to produce something in their sewing room. What happened instead is that we got a late arrival after wandering the market with Steven in search of a new place to house their operations. When we got there, they were not prepared to sew because they had decided to work on beads instead. After adjusting my expectations, once again, I sat and talked with them about their machines: what they need, how many were inoperable (most!) and how simple it would be to get them going again. I also got to hand out the sewing supplies that had been sent from Betty Ann and that was such a delight.

So, adjusting my expectations has been, once again, the constant challenge as I learn to unplug, relax, let go and take cues from my Rwandan friends. I am definitely back in Rwanda.

New Starts and Fits

New job, new attitude, new calling, new family room and a renewal of me. But I'm still in the midst of it all and not finished with any of it. The middle ground where being stuck is a huge temptation. And that's where I'm at. The already and the not yet - the place where life happens and faith is the only thing that keeps me moving forward.