There are some life lessons which I seem to learn over and over and over again. Or maybe it’s that I haven’t really learned them yet so the opportunity is presented over and over again. Regardless, one of those frequently repeated lessons, which I may not have really grasped yet, is that I don’t know as much as I like to think I know.
My mom had been living in an assisted living facility just a few blocks from our house. She’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s-type dementia some years previously, and we had only recently made the move from having her live in our home to living in an assisted living facility.
My dad had died nine years earlier, and in those nine years Mom had told us repeatedly that she was “ready to go” and in fact she wanted to “go.”
I had been complaining to God for some time about my mom’s situation. Watching her deteriorate, and frequently being on the receiving end of her fearful and frantic outbursts because she didn’t remember where she was and nothing was familiar to her anymore, was taking its toll on me. I knew her heart’s desire was to go Home, to be in Heaven with my dad. She had told us this enough times. She had been a faithful child of God her whole life. I didn’t understand why God was leaving her here to suffer.
The more I complained to God about it the angrier I got. Or maybe the angrier I got the more I complained to God. After each heartbreaking experience with Mom I would retreat to scream at God. In my hurt and anger I had actually gotten to the point of flippantly telling God that I thought I would do a better job at being God than God does. That I didn’t appreciate a God who didn’t seem to even notice that my mom was suffering and afraid. That this reality of God was not the God I knew.
Actually, I guess the fact that I wasn’t immediately struck by lightning for my impertinence is probably itself a testament to the graciousness of God. The gracious God I had always known.
One day when I had gone to visit my mom I was met at the door of the assisted living facility by a client of the agency where I work. She was a young woman who had served several years in prison and had been mandated to substance abuse treatment at our agency. She had only recently completed treatment, and couldn’t wait to excitedly tell me that she had just landed her first real job. She was now working at the assisted living facility where my mom lived, and in fact would be taking care of my mom.
The counselor code of ethics says that we will avoid dual relationships with clients. And here I was suddenly in an uncomfortable and unavoidable dual relationship. My 85-year-old mother who was struggling to live her final years with dementia was now being cared for by a client.
Over the next weeks I did my best to avoid contact with the woman, whether at the assisted living facility where she was caring for my mom, or at the agency where she herself was continuing to receive counseling services. I continued to visit Mom every other day. And I continued on a regular basis complaining to God, asking what in the world God was doing keeping Mom here instead of letting her go Home. Her quality of life had diminished significantly. She felt she no longer had a purpose. She looked forward to nothing. She was confused and scared every day.
I couldn’t fathom why God was leaving her here to suffer. Why God seemingly wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening for her.
One day I was notified that the woman had shown up at the agency without an appointment and was asking to speak with me. I said okay and went out to the lobby to greet the woman and usher her back to my office.
I didn’t know her whole story. I knew she’d been an addict since her teenage years. I knew that she had a handful of children, none of whom she was raising. I knew she’d done jail time, and that she had recently completed residential treatment. And that these last few months had been her only real experience with being clean and sober. I knew she was tough. And I liked her.
When we sat down in my office I asked her what was going on. She took a second to gather her thoughts. It was obvious that she was struggling with something.
“So last night,” she began, staring straight ahead at nothing, “I was helping your mom get ready for bed.”
My discomfort increased at that. If this was a session to talk about her care of my mom it wasn’t appropriate to be doing it at the agency where she herself was a client. I was trying to figure out how to derail this conversation when she continued.
“And when I finished helping her she smiled at me,” she stopped to take a deep breath. “Then she takes hold of my face with both her hands,” and again she stopped for a second to breathe. Her expression flat and her eyes focused on something beyond the wall of my office.
I waited.
“And she says to me, ‘You are such…..a sweetie.’”
The sob broke through on the word, “sweetie.” She leaned forward in her chair, pressing her hands against her face. And in a second or two the tears started to drip through her hands onto her shirt.
“No one,” the woman continued, working to get the words out through the sobs, “in my whole life,” and she sucked in another ragged breath, “has ever…. called me….’sweetie.’”
We sat there in silence for a while after that. She didn’t need me to say anything. She had just needed to tell me about her experience last evening. I thanked her for coming in to tell me this and I said that it had meant a lot. She nodded and collected herself.
A few minutes later I apologized to God. For my complaints. For my flippancy, and my impertinence.
And once again, I realized that I often don’t know as much as I like to think that I know. Here I’d been so caught up knowing that Mom didn’t feel she had a purpose anymore, that I had started to believe it. I’d started to believe that her life was over and that God had somehow just forgotten about her. Leaving her here to languish. For no reason.
But I was wrong. Again. There was a reason. Mom still had a purpose. One for which she was uniquely qualified. Because there was just one more thing which needed to be said.
penniesonmypath 