family — Page 5

Remembering When

April 24, 2014 By Diana

Both Laura Brown and Jessica Turner have invited bloggers to post old pictures and tell stories about them in a meme called “Throwback Thursday.” Laura’s is specifically tied to her lovely book, “Everything That Makes You Mom,” and the request from her was to share an old picture taken with my mom. I don’t have many of those, at least not in digital form, so these three will have to do.

My mother, in her heyday, was truly a larger-than-life person.

That hat, for instance.

And the gigantic bow atop my head.
She started those bows when I could barely hold my head up,
ostensibly to announce to the world that this was a female child.
Apparently my baldness led many to believe I was a boy,
and my mom was having none of that!

I was a much-wanted child, long-awaited, and adored by my dad.
My relationship with my mom was more complicated,
very different from the easy, quiet companionship I enjoyed with my father.
Part of that is because my mother was a flaming extrovert —
easily the most socially gifted person I’ve ever known.
My father was quiet, reserved, careful.
Mom was glamorous, dramatic,
a loud laugher and a loud crier.
She was also an extraordinarily creative homemaker and hostess,
usually operating on the slimmest of budgets.
She set beautiful tables, told wonderful stories,
often acting out each part,
and she brought light and laughter wherever people gathered.

She was also deeply insecure, believing herself to be
intellectually inferior to my dad and to most of her friends.
She had a mother-in-law who was sharp-tongued and
judgmental and a father who belittled and verbally abused her.

So when I was growing up, she depended on me to be
an emotional sounding board and a hands-on helper
with all things domestic.
For most of my growing-up years,
she was my very best friend.
I idolized her and thought she was the smartest
and most beautiful woman I knew.
and I tried to please her in every way I could.

My mother loved me and, most of the time,
she also liked me.
She struggled to understand me, however.
In some ways we are similar, sharing
a lot of the same interests and laughing
at the same jokes.
But in other ways, we are most definitely not alike,
and during those early years,
I intuited that it was not okay to step outside the box she drew,
the box of acceptable behavior and language,
of dreams and goals.

She worked hard at being a mom.
Until the last two years of high school, she made almost all my dresses.
She coached me in public speaking when I was ten,
helping me to be at ease in front of hundreds of people —
and to enjoy doing it, too.
Although she never finished college,
she read widely and well,
and she had a great facility with language.
I remember being given a long list of my mom’s favorite authors
when I was in elementary school,
then walking through the traveling library-van to find them.
I read voraciously, from about grade two right up until today.
Because of her encouragement, I read well above my
grade level and in the process, learned a whole lot
of great vocabulary words. How?
Whenever I came to a word I didn’t know,
I’d spell it out and she would pronounce it and
tell me what it meant.

I thought she was the smartest woman I knew.
And the most beautiful.
And, of course, she is the most genuine extrovert I know,
always smiling that 100-watt smile,
reaching out with a hand to touch an arm
or a shoulder, offering kind words
and a gentle laugh.

Even in the midst of her dementia,
she does these lovely things,
saying ‘thank you so much,’
and ‘I’m so glad to meet you,’
and, ‘Have you met my daughter?’

Yes, Mom. I’ve met them all. Many times.
But I’m happy to meet them again. And again.

She is still one of the most beautiful women I know.
And she is still that flaming extrovert,
gifted with social skills that she uses with grace and aplomb.
The vocabulary is shrinking by the day,
as she loses more and more of her ability to communicate.

I miss her.
I miss our good conversations, our shared reading projects,
our party planning and execution.

And I am so deeply grateful for her and to her:
for being such a terrific mother in so many ways;
for modeling marital commitment through thick and thin;
for being a lifelong learner, genuinely fascinated
by this world and all its wonders;
for her deep, seeking heart,
hungry for God and goodness.
She taught me so much.

And she still does.

Joining this with Jessica at The Creative Mom’s Thursday link-up.
AND — Mother’s Day is right around the corner and Laura Lynn Brown’s beautiful, small book is a perfect gift, especially if you fill it with some good, shared stories. You can order it here.

Filed Under: Beauty, Blogging, family, God's gifts, personal journey, The Journey with Mom

What a Woman Is Worth — Launch Day!!

April 1, 2014 By Diana

The Big Day is finally here! A wonderful collection of essays, edited and organized by Tamara Lunardo, is releasing today on Amazon! I am honored to be included — in fact, to contribute the final piece in the collection — with a remarkable group of women writers, speaking to the truth that women matter. No matter how life has treated us, we matter to God and we matter to one another.

Here’s the beautiful cover of our book and at the end of this post is a shot of the back cover, too. As those of you who read here with any regularity will know, this essay was written quite a while ago! Almost exactly two years ago, to be exact. Lilly is now 4 years and 2 months old; in this piece she is not yet two. But the truth of who she is is always the same. Here is the first section of the final essay in this fine collection:

Lilly is 22 months old, and a real pistol. Funny, charming, inquisitive, secure in herself and in the love of her family. She plays with us two days each week – one of the perks of grandparenting and retirement. And every time she’s here, I celebrate who she is becoming.

Last week, she climbed up onto my bed (where all good computer work is done in this house) and begged to see ‘pichures, pichures!’ So I opened iPhoto and went directly to her favorite event: her older sister’s 6th birthday party. Each time we look at this set, we scroll through all 90 photos, identifying as many people as we can, usually lingering longest at the pictures of the ‘happy cake-cake.’

Lilly has not quite grasped the truth that these ‘pichures’ she loves so much are only 2-dimensional representations and not actually tiny versions of the people she sees every day. Sometimes she will cup her hands next to the screen and say, “I pick her up! I pick her up!” puzzled that she can’t quite make that happen.

But one day last week, she surprised me with words that marked my heart in a powerful way. She surprised me with what she did understand. She saw a close-up of her own face. And she patted the screen gently, saying, “Oooh, that’s Rirry [still working on those L’s]. She so cute. I love her.”

“She so cute…I love her.” I wrapped my arms around her small body and kissed her on the back of the neck and said, “Oh, YES, Lilly. You are so cute and I love you, too. I hope and I pray that you will always be able to look at yourself in exactly this way. Always.”

What is it that happens to us between early childhood and adulthood? Why is it so easy for us to lose that clear, common-sense, of-course-I’m-loveable-it’s-just-so-obvious-I’m sure-you-can-see-this-too sense of our value, our worth, our intrinsic ‘rightness?’ And what, as parents, aunts and uncles, siblings, cousins, grandparents of girls – what can we do to foster an atmosphere in which little girls will always see themselves this way? When we look in the mirror at age 16 or 21 or 35 or 50 or 75 or 90, why shouldn’t we be able to see ourselves through eyes of love?

Is this not the message of the Gospel? Is this not the Truth that Jesus saw and taught and modeled and lived? That fundamentally, to be a human person is a good, good thing. So good that God chose to be clothed with our flesh, to walk through the steps of our life, to eat and sleep and laugh and cry, to connect with others and to spend time alone, to hang out with all different kinds of people and see each of them as interesting and important and valuable? Yes, I think so. . .

To read the rest, you’ll just have to buy the book!

Filed Under: Book Essay, community, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, family, personal journey, Storytelling, synchro blogs/blog hops, What a Woman Is Worth, women, Writing

What’s In a Name?

March 31, 2014 By Diana

It’s been quiet around here of late. I’ve written around the blogosphere at several different places in the last few weeks, but not terribly often here, in my space, just writing for me, and whoever might stop by to see whatever words I’ve gathered.

We had a quiet weekend, celebrating Dick’s birthday in several small gatherings. On his actual day, just he and I went out for lunch and to a matinee. On Saturday, our son and his family surprised us with a drop-in, take-out dinner from our favorite local Mexican hang-out. And on Sunday, after church, we met our eldest daughter and her husband and youngest son at BJ’s in Ventura. We love s t r e t c h i n g birthdays out as long as we can — and three days was just about right.

My guy was hungry for ribs, and BJs never disappoints. And to finish things off very well indeed, he was served his own individual Pazookie, complete with candle! Do you know what a Pazookie is? Just one of the divinest desserts ever invented, that’s what. A freshly baked cookie (several choices – he picked peanut butter), fresh from the oven, topped with a scoop of Haagen Daaz vanilla. Heaven in a small aluminum pan, that’s what.

The drive south took us past this lovely spot, looking down on Summerland Beach. The day was breezy and the water a little bit wild — always fun to see. And somehow, the celebratory mood of day and meal and family seemed fitting and right after a profoundly moving worship experience earlier in the day.

This was our fabulous worship band-of-the-week jamming after the service was over. Our Director of Worship Arts, Bob Gross, planned a perfect combination of songs for the theme of the day, including a masterful arrangement (his own) of, “Lord, I’m Amazed by You” with The Doxology. The entire opening sequence brought me to tears more than once — filled as it was with what we do best: contemporary and traditional music, both poured through the inventive mind of Mr. Gross. We sang that old favorite, “Holy, Holy, Holy” this way – verse 1, totally a cappella (and we can SING the harmony in our community!), verse 2, full band with quiet percussion, verse 3, up a key, adding the most moving slow roar of the drums I’ve ever experienced, and verse 4, straight ahead and gorgeous. Oh, my.

As always, the music, the prayer, the readings from Old Testament and New coordinated well with the preaching text of the morning, which this week was taken from the last eleven verses of John 16.

God spoke powerfully through Pastor Jon about what it means when we pray in the name of Jesus. Here are a few highlights from that passage:

“My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name . . . I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God . . . A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me . . . I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

These few verses contain some mighty huge ideas, ones that linger and permeate. Ideas like these:

The name of Jesus is strong, redemptive, life-changing. It is not magical.

There will be suffering in this life — which should come as a surprise to precisely no one. But because of Jesus, because we are given the inestimable gift of praying in his name, we are never alone, no matter what.

Praying is not about words alone. In fact it is more often about silence . . . or it is experienced in action. We pray in Jesus’ name whenever we offer comfort/aid/solace/provision for another.

We pray with our bodies, not just in them. WE are the continuation of the Incarnation as we allow the Spirit of our Lord to work through us, as we live out what it means to be the Body of Christ.

Praying in the name of Jesus touches on one of the foundational truths of the Christian faith — we serve a Triune God, Father, Son, Spirit — One in Three, Three in One.

We do not ask Jesus to pray for us, so as to somehow buffer the space between us and God the Father. Too much of the church has painted a picture of a scary God, one that Jesus saves us from, a God that cannot be approached by the likes of us. But Jesus says clearly and beautifully, “. . . I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you . . . “

“Take heart,” Jesus says. Immediately after predicting that all his friends will desert him in his hour of need, that they themselves will have their share of trouble. “Take heart,” he says. TAKE HEART? Yes. And not only that, but because of that name, that powerful name, they — and we — will have peace, the kind of peace that makes room for this truth: the One in whose name we pray has overcome the world.

I carried these pieces of grace with me as we drove down the coast, as we laughed and ate a good lunch with our daughter’s family, as we came back home and prepared for the week ahead. Turns out there’s a lot, a LOT, in a Name. I am grateful

Filed Under: biblical reflection, birthdays, community, Creativity, Encouragement, family, Fun, God's gifts, Holy Spirit, hope, personal journey, prayer, preaching, Suffering, Sunday Reflections, The Church, worship

On Vulnerability and Boundaries — A Guest Post for Nacole Simmons

March 26, 2014 By Diana

In the fall of 2006, I got a new boss. He arrived on the scene after two years of searching, two years marked by upheaval in my life, personally and professionally. I had been working as an Associate Pastor, part-time, for almost ten years by then, and I was deeply relieved to welcome him and to learn to work with him and for him.

One of the first things he asked me to do was start a blog. Yes, you read that right. My boss, the senior pastor, asked me to begin writing on a blog. He already had one, and used it for brief reflections on life and ministry, very rarely for anything personal.

But I’m not wired in the same way, and when I was invited to write, I chose to get pretty vulnerable, pretty quickly. And I loved it. I was careful, especially when trying to write out the difficulties that always attend a new working relationship. I tried to make it about me, and what I was thinking/feeling. And, for the most part, I found my way to a pretty good balance. I posted infrequently, about once or twice a month for that first year. I learned to import photos, and often chose to write about my family, especially my grandkids.

But in July of 2007, something hard happened. Our son-in-law was in the midst of a long and very difficult dying, suffering from the after-effects of intensive radiation to his head and neck when he was a teenager. Our daughter was trying to finish a masters’ degree in special education, so that she could go to work after fifteen years as a homemaker. Her husband was on full disability at that point, and they desperately needed medical insurance. Her program required a 10-week internship at a hospital 400 miles north of her home and she worked like a champ to make everything happen. Some weeks, her husband was well enough to go with her, but some weeks, he needed to be closer to home.

We housed her husband and two younger sons (the eldest was working at a camp on Catalina Island that summer) for one of those closer-to-home weeks. And that experience was one of the most difficult times I’ve ever walked through. Watching someone you love suffer — and watching how that suffering impinges on the lives of two young people — well, it was hard, sad, painful. . . there are no words.

But I tried to find them anyhow. I wrote a post, not using names, about watching this particular kind of suffering. I finished it late one night, posted it and went to bed. At 7:00 the next morning, I went in and removed it, feeling unsettled about writing something so deeply personal.

The post was up for less than twelve hours.

But in that time, someone close to him found it and was deeply wounded by it. I was crushed — repentant, sorrowful, so sorry for causing pain and for further complicating my daughter’s life. My heroic girl was already exhausted and overwhelmed and my post made everything worse.

I crossed a line, one that I deeply regret.

Please follow me over to Nacole’s site to read the rest of this post . . .

Filed Under: Blogging, Confession, Encouragement, family, Grandparenting, Guest Post, Hard Things, Marriage, personal journey, Spiritual Formation, Storytelling, The Journey with Mom

Iced Tea, Decaf, and the World Changing on Its Axis: A Deeper Story

March 26, 2014 By Diana

My monthly contribution to the wonderful collection of essays at A Deeper Story is up today. Click here to continue reading:

The California sunlight was angling in the window, scattering itself, checker-board style, across the shiny surface of our table. I could feel its warmth on that crisp fall day as she and I visited, chattering about life and family, checking in.

The woman across the table from me was twenty-plus years my senior, a spiritual mentor for most of my life. I had a glass of iced tea that day, she a cup of decaf, and we were splitting a piece of pie after enjoying some soul-warming soup.

I remember that I was animated as we talked, excited about something I was learning in school. I was midway through a 4-year seminary experience at that point in my life, tentatively exploring whether or not God might be calling me to ministry.

She was intrigued and a bit cautious, wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew. Mostly, though, she wanted to hear me talk. Always a learner, she couldn’t help but be excited by my enthusiasm for lectures, large books, and hard questions.

At some point in our conversation, she sat back with a big smile on her face, dropping every bit of caution from her voice. “Diana,” she said. “I am so excited for you! I’m so glad you’ve gone back to school — I remember when I did that for a year and how much fun it was to be in the classroom again.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “It is fun. It is exhilarating.”

And then I felt the sting of tears. She looked at me with concern and asked what the tears were about. And this is what I said:

“I love what I’m doing. I love it. And I believe more and more each day that this is exactly where God wants me to be. More than that, I think God may be pushing me into ordination, to a job, working as a pastor.”

“Ah,” she said. “A job. Is that what brings the tears?”

“No, not really. This is what makes me feel sad: that I would never be doing this, never, if my husband were not making enough money for me to pay the tuition costs. And to pay them easily, without any member of my family having to sacrifice one thing for me to be in school.”

And then she began to cry. She understood this kind of thinking all too well.

After all, that’s how she raised me.

Women are the ones who sacrifice for their families. Not men. Not children. Women. In her world, God could not be calling any woman to do something that would cost her family anything. Not.Possible.

Please follow me over to A Deeper Story to continue reading about this life-changing event/realization. I’d love to interact with you in the comments over there.

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, A Deeper Story, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, memoir, ministry, personal journey, The Journey with Mom

Sunday Dinner: A Deeper Story/Family

February 13, 2014 By Diana

Another installment in the series of reflections I’m writing on this final walk I take with mom, the one through dementia. You can begin reading here, and then click over to A Deeper Story, where I’m writing for the Family Channel today.

The sun streams in through the French doors on the south side of the building, adding warmth and light to the carefully set dining tables. It’s a lovely space, recently redecorated, with linen napkins popping up out of the water glasses. My husband and I eat lunch here every Sunday, joining our moms for a nicely presented 3-course meal.

There are floral centerpieces on each table, assembled every Wednesday morning by the people who live here, under the gentle direction of two volunteer Garden Ladies. Today’s bouquet consists entirely of white rosebuds and looks lovely as we take our places around the table.

I must say that the dinner guests are an interesting assortment. All of them are over 75, most of them over 80. A few – like both of our mothers – are over 90, moving closer every day to the century mark. They move slowly, these diners. A variety of metal walkers are lined up along each wall and I always hold my breath until all the stragglers are safely seated at the table of their choice.

Last Sunday, we counted 12 residents out of a possible 15. One is out to eat with family, one chooses to remain in her room, and one – my mother-in-law – is too sleepy to sit up at the table. One of those missing is a singer. During past dinners, we’ve heard the battle hymn of every division of the US military, “Home, Home on the Range,” “You Are My Sunshine,” and a few we don’t recognize.

This Sunday, however, that voice is missing. At first, it feels like a relief. A quiet meal! But after a while, the silence becomes thick and cumbersome, like a too-heavy blanket on an overly warm day.

You can continue reading this post over at one of my favorite sites on the web, A Deeper Story. . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, A Deeper Story, Aging, Beauty, family, God's gifts, personal journey, The Journey with Mom

Surviving the Worst Thing Possible: A Book Review

February 4, 2014 By Diana

I have always had an active imagination. And a sometimes anxious psyche. Combine those two things, and the mind pictures grow exponentially! I’ve imagined my husband or children lying by the side of the road, injured, dying. I’ve ‘seen’ my loved ones’ airplanes falling from the sky. I’ve pictured waking up to flames around me, with no way of escape.

And I’ve always believed that the very worst thing that can happen to a parent is to lose one of their children to death.

After reading, “Refuse to Drown,” co-written by Tim Kreider and Shawn Smucker, I’m not sure I believe that anymore. Because what happened to Tim is even worse than that: he discovered that his oldest boy, Alec, at the tender age of 16, viciously murdered his best friend and both of his friend’s parents. Stunned by this revelation, Tim had to make the hardest choice of his life — to turn his son into the police, and then to wait for his child’s fate to be determined by a court of law.

Working from journals, an early manuscript, and painful memories, Tim and Shawn have created a compelling book, with enough suspense to keep us reading until the very end. In the process, we learn what it means to live a life of integrity even while in the grip of overwhelming grief. There are no heroes in this story. What Tim chooses to do is, indeed, heroic, but it is not something he takes pride in, not something he feels good about doing.

And that’s one of the primary reasons this is a book that I sincerely recommend. There is real wrestling going on in this story. What is the right thing to do here? Can I do it? Can I live with the consequences of making the right choice? What more could I have done for my child?

Hard questions, no easy answers. Throughout the tale, Tim is fiercely honest and admits to mistakes made along the journey of parenting his son. The question that rises to the top of all the others is this one: how are parents to learn what mental illness or serious personality disorder look like? What are the signs? Is there help out there?

At the end, we are left with the truth that no one can know what’s going on in the heart of another, even if that other is someone we’ve known their whole lives. It is unsettling to read this book, disturbing, even painful.

What redeems the story is the bright thread of hope that weaves its way in and around the sordid and painful details. The grace of God shows up, right in the midst of this terrible darkness, as Tim’s soon-to-be second wife, his friends and his church community rally round, offering silent companionship, meals, words and notes of comfort. And Alec himself seems to find some measure of comfort in God, and to express some remorse for his vicious actions.

This is Tim’s story to tell and Shawn has helped him to tell it well. As a reader, and as a mother, I wanted to know more about what Alec’s mom was thinking, how she was finding comfort in the midst of all this agony. But that is not the story here, is it? I often found myself praying for her, and for all the family as this story unfolded, because every member of the circle is changed forever as a result of Alec’s horrible choice that dark night in May 2006.

This is a story worth reading. It is sad and hard, but ultimately hopeful. There can be life after the worst thing possible happens. And it can be a rich, good life.

Filed Under: Book Review, family, grief, hope

What Remains – A Community Book Review

January 20, 2014 By Diana

When I began regular blogging a little over three years ago, I discovered so much rich content out here in cyberspace. A favorite place to read good content quickly became The High Calling, an online magazine with a long list of contributing editors and writers, all of them writing about living an integrated life — a life of integrity — at home, at work, at leisure, in our culture. Then I went to a writing retreat they offered in September of 2011 and another one in 2012 and discovered that these people are for real, that they’re funny and smart and loving and sincere. So whenever I receive an invitation to write for them, I am honored and grateful. Today, I am writing the third in a series of four reflections (Laura Boggess, Jeanne Damoff and Seth Haines being the other three contributors) on the book, The Geography of Memory: a Pilgrimage through Alzheimer’s, by poet and essayist, Jeanne Murray Walker. Here is an excerpt and a link:

She is old now, and increasingly frail. Her hair is a beautiful shade of white and though her blue eyes are clouded a bit by near-blindness, they sparkle as much as they ever have. And her smile?

It lights up a room.

On a good day, I see that smile a lot. I see it when she stops to greet everyone she passes—people whose names she does not know or cannot remember, people who are suffering from the same kinds of confusion and cognitive loss that she is, people who live and work in her assisted living unit: guests, cleaning ladies, visiting musicians … Everybody gets a glimpse of that magical smile. And everyone who is on the receiving end moves away from that encounter flashing a great, big smile of their own. My mother is the most naturally extroverted, hospitable person I have ever known; even into her 90s, doing daily battle with dementia, those parts of her still shine into my life and the lives of everyone she meets.

I am so grateful for these pieces that remain as she and I walk this hard road together, this journey through the unraveling of her mind. And I am grateful for Jeanne Murray Walker’s stories about her own travels through this strange terrain in her compelling book, The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage through Alzheimer’s.

Please follow me over to The High Calling to read more and to join the interesting conversation happening in the comments. Click here.

Filed Under: Beauty, Book Review, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, grief, Hard Things, hope, memoir, personal journey, The High Calling, The Journey with Mom

About Settling Down . . . A Deeper Story

January 6, 2014 By Diana

Every month, I share a story at one of my favorite websites ever, A Deeper Story. This month, I am once again writing for the Family Channel. Here’s a piece of this month’s story and a link so you can read the rest:

You think you know so much when you’re twenty years old. When that third decade begins, you’re a little bit full of yourself, impressed with what you’ve learned in school and in life, and convinced that you’ll be able to handle whatever life throws your way.

And, if you were a 20-year-old raised in the 50s and 60s, you also understood the order of things, especially if you were a female. Even more especially if you were a female raised in the conservative wing of the Christian church. Your life was pretty well mapped out for you: childhood, adolescence, a little bit of young adulthood, marriage, motherhood.

Being an eldest child with a strong sense of propriety and extraordinarily overactive responsibility glands, you did exactly what was expected of you. So, in the year you turned 20, you got yourself married. You found a good, Christian man, dated him (carefully!) for a good long time, got engaged and then, of course, you “settled down.”

Well, five out of six ain’t bad, right? The meeting, finding, dating, engaging, marrying thing you did according to plan. It’s the settling down part you’ve struggled with for the last — how many is it now? — FORTY-EIGHT years.

I chalk it up to delayed and extended adolescent rebellion, that’s what. As an eager-to-please, hyper-obedient child and youth, you never truly rebelled against anything or anyone. And that remarkable man you married? He wasn’t exactly a rabble-rouser, either, was he?

Yet somehow, you’ve traveled this wild and wooly, sometimes adventurous, always unique journey-through-life that began with an afternoon of “I do’s” at the end of 1965. Now you’re taking a gander at 2014, as it rises out of the fog and begins to take shape. Holy crap, next year, you’ll hit the big 5-0. Can you believe it? Doesn’t that happen to old people?

I look at the pictures from this most recent anniversary and I still see those kids in there, those good kids who so wanted to do ‘the right thing,’ whatever the heck that was. Yes, the years have added pounds to our frames and lines to our faces and a whole lotta white hair to the head of at least one of us.

But you know what else I see? A couple of undercover rebels, that’s what. We obeyed the rules, we followed the protocol, yet somehow, we never managed to settle down, did we? At least, not in the way our parents envisioned settling.

Please click on this line to read the rest over at A Deeper Story. . .

Filed Under: A Deeper Family, A Deeper Story, Aging, Dreams/Dreaming, Encouragement, family, God's gifts, Grandparenting, Marriage, parenting, personal journey

Holy Ground in the Lunchroom

December 4, 2013 By Diana

Wednesday is my day to take my Mom out to lunch.
She lives in a dementia unit nearby, a lovely place.
She loves her room, she thinks the food is great,
and she talks about moving almost every time we are together.

I get that, I do.
All my life, my mom has been a restless soul.
She loved to move the furniture around,
to create beautiful tableaus on tabletops,
counters, corners.
She dreamed of traveling,
and she did a fair amount of it, too,
and she often wondered if there was
more she could be doing with her life.

There are days when my mother forgets she is old.
Why not? She forgets lots of other things, too.
And I think there are days when she just
rebels against the whole idea!

And I get that, too.
I’m not crazy about all the indignities
that come with an aging body.

Today, she forgot to put her ‘teeth’ in,
a bridge across the back of her mouth,
and a ‘flipper’ in the front.
Usually, you cannot tell that her
front teeth are fake,
and you can never see that bridge.

But today, there was no denying it —
there was a gaping hole where her teeth should have been.
And her blouse was gaping in a few places, too.
One of the drugs she takes — which has almost
eliminated some troubling auditory hallucinations —
very occasionally causes weight gain in a small number of patients.

And, of course! given our genetic heritage,
my mom is one of that number.
She looks beautiful always, but a few of her clothes —
especially blouses that button — just don’t work as well
as they used to work.

And part of me found these small things
deeply troubling and sad,
further evidence of the ways in which
my mother, as I have known her,
is slowly disappearing.

But as I’ve thought about it and prayed about it
throughout this afternoon and evening,
I believe I’ve been given a gift today,
an answer to the pleading of my heart,
my begging prayer for a way to love my mother
exactly as she is right now,
a teary request to find a path through the sorrow.

So tonight, I look back on our time together,
and I see my mother in an almost ethereal light,
I remember a radiance that I cannot explain except to say
that Jesus lives in her —
the her she once was, and the her she is at this minute.
And that lunchroom where we sat?

Holy ground.

It was cold and blustery today,
too cold to take mom outside her facility,
too cold to go up and sit by the pool, as we often do.
So we sat together at the familiar tables
of her dining room, quietly enjoying
a turkey sandwich, Waldorf salad, jello.

And I watched as my mother smiled her beautiful smile
at every single person she saw.
I listened as she said to the aide,
“How would I get through a day without you?”
I heard her tell me, after we returned to her room,
and I set up a few small Christmas decorations,
“Oh, how lovely! Thank you so much, Diana.
I love you so much, I’m so glad you came today.”

By this time, we had found her teeth.
I had persuaded her to give me the blouse,
to store with her spring clothes,
which sit in a bin in my guest room.
She donned a new knit pullover shirt
in a beautiful magenta color. . .

And there were no more gaps.

The truth is, there never had been.

Thanks be to God.

Joining this tonight with Ann, Jennifer, Jen, Emily and Heather: