A TOTALLY DIFFERENT KIND OF WHIRLWIND

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 4 (NIV)

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

A time to be born and a time to die,

A time to plant and a time to uproot,

A time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to mourn and a time to dance,

Life is always just a roller coaster of events and emotions, with a bunch of ups and downs. Sometimes it can be thrilling and exciting and other times, it just makes me want to vomit. With my mom being in hospice care, there are roller coasters within roller coasters that are within roller coasters, and they seem to be happening on a daily basis rather than over a longer time period. Each day, I do my best to meet her physical needs. Though my dad does most of the heavy lifting in her day-to-day care, I have taken on the role of keeping up with the various resources involved in her care. As a result, I grope around trying desperately to find the good balance in my attitudes. At times, I feel the pressure of trying to fix everything as if I could make our lives together all okay again, and other times, I chuck it all up to the fact that this is all part of the dying process and that there is no turning back. So I am constantly swinging into various extremes with my emotions.

The other loopty loop in this season of our lives is that at times, my mom would seem to move and feel better and that would just throw me for a loop. In fact, she has not had any episodes of shortness of breath (SOB) for over a month. Because I had subconsciously identified her SOB with her cancer, I now see that I had put an unfair expectation on her about her health. In fact, I also was putting similar types of pressures on myself, which has taken a huge emotional toll on me.

My focus had changed from helping her feel more comfortable and spending good quality time with her to doing whatever I could to try to “fix” her. Throughout the day and sometimes into the night, I would ponder on what might be causing this and maybe we need to try that. We would run her around to different doctor appointments to try to figure out what else we could give her to solve this or that health issue. I would get frustrated with her and with myself whenever something else went wrong. I just wanted her to get better. I just wanted the cancer to be gone. After all, who wants their mama to die!

With the different strains that I was putting on myself in trying to fix everything, I began becoming overwhelmed with all the tasks and responsibilities. I began feeling the burden of caring for my mom. I knew that there was something wrong with my point of view, but again, I was having a lot of difficulty with processing what all I felt.

At times, my head would come up out of the water. God would then gracious grant me that breath of fresh air so that I would once again enjoy the precious moments with my mom as I helped her to shower, fixed her breakfast, laugh uncontrollably about the funny faces that she would make, or cried with her when she was hurting.

Other times, I would revert back to my old ways of dealing with my issues. I would try to deny or run away from whatever I was thinking and feeling. Because somewhere in the back of my mind I found it rather difficult to deal with these dramatically fluctuating emotions, I often would shut down and avoid processing the fact that my mom is dying and that I am totally powerless to fix her. I would plunge myself into the world of competing in online games or I get lost in the many worlds of other people’s imagination as I binge watch movies or TV shows. I craved all the distractions of the world because for me, processing all my feelings, particularly these feelings that I view as negative ones, is currently one of the most challenging endeavors in my life.

I realize now that when I get into this “fix it” type of mentality, I try to take matters into my own hands. As my desire for control increases so does my anxiety. I work hard and then harder in trying to be perfect and make everything perfect. But alas, as much as I would love to have everything the same again, there is a time for everything and God is calling me to spend those precious moments together that he had planned for my mom, my dad and me from the beginning of time.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

None of us know exactly why things happen the way that they do. We don’t know why there are so many roller coasters in life. I believe though that God has created us and has put us in the exact places and times that we should live so that each of us would see how much we need one another and God. There is a time for everything, and I believe because he is in control of all things, he is allowing or sometimes even is causing each situation to happen in hopes that we would draw closer to one another and prayerfully come near to God.

Please pray for my family and me that we will grab hold of every opportunity that we get to spend these valuable moments with my mom and that I will always see what a privilege it is to serve my mom in these last moments of her life. All for the glory of God! AMEN!