You want to bang your head against the wall and or scream when you're greeted as you walk in the door with "______________ I think you should sit down, your _______ called and I need to tell you some things."
I don't want to get into it tonight, I don't know how public I can be with some things that are going on in my family, but no one has a terminal disease, no one was murdered, and no one has murdered so it could, as Tolkien pointed out last night, be much worse. I just hate feeling helpless. I hated it when Mom had cancer, I hated it when my grandfather was dying of congested heart failure (he lived with us) and I hated it when my grandmother was dying of cancer.
It's a special kind of hell, watching someone you love suffer. Part of you, the largest part I think, wants nothing more than to go "I'll switch places! Please! Lord, let me swap out for them, please?" The smaller part, the part that no one really ever admits exists, at the same time is going "I'm scared, I don't like this and I don't want to be near them and watch them suffer. I want to go and hide." So the one and the other today have been making me flip flop emotionally until I finally said "Self, this is silly. You can't swap out for them, He's not going to let you do that. And, you can't hide either so the best thing to do is to stop mulling it over and imagining the worst, and find a constructive way to support them." Sometimes, I give myself good advice. Now the question is, will I follow it?
Thursday, September 13, 2007
You Know Its Bad When
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Psalm 49
A Psalm of Repentance
About Me
- everlastingscribe
- I tell stories all day long. Some with my pen, some with my keyboard and if you can find me, buy me a coffee and I'll tell you one too!
5 comments:
Sorry to hear of your news...whatever it may be. I actually know just how you feel--the part that wants to run away, to not see the suffering. I had a friend who died of brain cancer. And rather than withering physically, it reduced him mentally until the end. I did not deal with it very well. I felt like I'd just drank a potent cocktail of fear, guilt, selfishness, and doubt. It's so very hard. And being a Christian in some ways make dealing with such things easier...but it also makes it harder. I kept expecting God to heal my friend. But He didn't. And I didn't get why? Still don't. But God is omniscient. It's not like He woke one morning and said, "Oh, shoot, I forgot to heal______." God knows what he's doing. It's just hard for us to trust when things like this happen.
Praying for you, ES. *Big Hugs*
Thanks Wayne. Somehow it makes me feel better to know I am not alone among those who have battled their own cowardice for the sake of someone that they love. I read the 23rd psalm today and really liked the bit that says 'surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell forever in the house of the Lord' And like Mom tells me, you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you don't pitch your tent there and stay, you go through it.
(No one's physically dying, I think I covered that before, but there are other kinds of deaths before that last one and they can hurt like nothing else)
And Eve, I will take all the prayer I can get. And hugs ;) hugs are very good.
I know exactly how you feel, Scribe. I went through the same thing with my mom the year before she died. My mom died of emphysema. That whole year, leading up to her inevitable death, we pretty much did nothing but watch her suffer, and it wasn't pleasant. I wanted it to be over with. I was glad when she finally died, because I knew she was with our Lord and was not suffering any longer. The last month of her life she was only alive because of machines, and that was far far worse.
I miss her tons, especially on mother's day, but I know she isn't suffering any longer, and that gives me peace. And I'm convinced that it was God alone who got us through all of that. He got my dad past his depression, and eventually mine and just ... God is AMAZING, and He loves His children, and I think He cries with us when He's carrying us through those times. I love the poem "Footprints" because it's been true in my life.
I know you said no one's dying physically, but I threw that explanation out there anyway. God will carry you through whatever it is you're going through, my friend. That's just the way He is.
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