"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." C.S. Lewis
I have my mom here in my house with me after a prolonged hospitalization. She's never been what I'd consider frail and as I see her now, she has never been weaker or more dependent. I was terribly anxious before she arrived. Would she be too needy? Will I be able to juggle, simultaneously, my most demanding roles; wife, mother, daughter, doctor. I unabashedly admit that my family has been subject to a few ugly outbursts lately. Let me clarify that statement; my children have been casualties of the not-so-friendly fire. When things are spinning out of control you grasp on to what's closest for some sense of stability.
I recently had an episode of vertigo. I've diagnosed it plenty of times but I had never experienced it myself. Any time I'd make a sudden movement or lie back in my bed the room would orbit around me so rapidly that I'd have to stop and cling on to anything in my proximity to reorient myself. The worst of the symptoms lasted for about 2 weeks and for those 2 weeks I was desperately grasping for stability in my own shaky world. It's kind of a good metaphor for what's been going on with my mom. And it's kind of clever of God to have put my mother's medical predicament on the heels of my own case of vertigo. Quite simply, with my mom's illness, I had the rug pulled out from underneath my world and I've been in free fall ever since. I've prayed for A LOT the past 3 weeks and, mostly, my prayers have been unspoken. One night, when she was in the ICU and I could no longer take looking at her monitor and all the abnormalities and flashing lights or listen to the chaos of alarms and buzzers and bings and pings, I walked down to the hospital chapel at 3 am. There was one man in there praying, but he soon left and it was just me and God and the 4 walls and I had no words. And even though I was terrified, I didn't even have tears. I don't have a beautiful voice. I sing at church, but always in subdued tones because I don't want to offend people since I'm so out of key. But that night, I didn't care. As I said, it was only me and God and so I reached for the hymnal and sang out loud with as much volume as I could muster. As I sang the words, these hymns of my childhood, they became my prayers.
As a human, I'm prone to human frailties such as trying to establish order in a disorganized world. Lately, because I can not control my circumstances I've been attempting to control other people and situations, mainly my children. Things that are seemingly small or have little significance have taken on distorted proportions. It's as though they are my minions and their programming has gone haywire and ...
I m u s t b r i n g t h e m b a c k t o s u b m i s s i o n. It's never good when you look for an outside solution to an inside problem. You gotta fix the inside before you can focus on the outside. Luckily my kids (and my husband) are pretty cool so they recognize when I'm getting my broom out of the closet and they take cover.
The past 2 days I've been to bible study and with respect to and regardless of anyone's belief system, my faith is my anchor. I've been moored in shallow waters lately and that's a good thing. The God of the universe is bigger than all of this and he's bigger than you or me or our hopes for today or worries for tomorrow. His grace is sufficient for me today; for this moment. He is in the boat with me. He awakens when he hears my cry. He is enough (and I don't need to have my kids organize their binders or closets or create a chore chart to bring order to my world).
