I Feel A Need

I feel a need to share, not because so much time has passed, not because so many people want to know how Mom is doing, but a need, merely because my heart is full.  A need, because life can grow so heavy when one does not share the burden.

Life is different for us, different, because we have, at last, accepted that Mom is not herself, that even though we feel she is on the mend, she cannot do everything she has always done.  She cannot, though she wants to so badly, carry the responsibilities she has always held.

The doctors have not definitely said it, there is no medical proof of it,
but we feel that Mom is over the worst.  We are seeing this time as a time of recovery, and we are moving carefully toward that goal, day by day, moment by moment.

We are eating and living as organically as possible.  Mom is doing coffee enemas, juicing greens and wheat grass, having weekly IV doses of Vitamin C, and spending time in an infared sauna. 

At this point, Mom is completely off all her pain medication, which, in itself, is amazing.  Despite that, there are still lingering effects of the drugs.

Our goal now is for Mom to be free of withdrawal symptoms, and, if at all possible, herself again.  But, that requires patience, and courage.  It is a daily battle for Mom, fighting weariness and depression, fighting a strange weariness, where she feels too tired to rise and do something, but not tired enough to rest.  She is caught between the two, and it is a burden that makes her struggle to hold her head up.

And it is hard for all of us, hard for Dad, because some of the order of his life seems gone, hard for we children left at home, because we are not accustomed to bear our Mother's burdens, and hard for Mom, because she does not want us to.

We do not notice how heavy this new life is, how firm the weight of new responsibilities hangs on our shoulders.  We do not notice till we bottom out, and beg the Lord to please, end this thing.

We have been so, so blessed, honored by gifts beyond our belief... and we have grown, so, so much, felt our hearts touched by truths we never knew existed.  And our minds tell us we must be strong, we must keep on, we must hold our own against the storm.

But our hearts, our hearts tell us we can hold on no longer.  We must find rest.  We must release this "burden of care", and rest.  And this is where the difficulty lies.

We must lean on Him, every moment, every hour of the day.  We cannot survive if we do not.  We must learn to trust Him even more, to hear His voice when so many other voices crowd our souls.

It isn't easy.  In fact, it's terribly hard.  But is this not the struggle of all our lives?

Here in this place, in this journey, God has given us a window, a window to discover Him, to pull him close and never let go.  I do not know how long the window will stand open, or how long the storm will come rushing in, but we cannot see it as a torment, nor as a battle we are too weary to fight.  No, we must see it as a challenge, as a challenge to meet the Lord in our weariness, and find a strength that no army can conquer.

Emma

and the family at Rambellwood