If I knew then, what I know now......

When I named this blog, it was in jester towards learning about life and mostly marriage. Yet, during my life since marriage the only thing steady has been my marriage itself. It seems to be the easy part of this equation and I'm very thankful for that.

I'm writing from home (Downsville,LA) tonight. I've endure an emotional week of not being able to talk to my mom on the phone and made the decision to come see her. I'm not writing asking for sympathy but just sharing the thoughts crammed into my mind through this process. Its a process right?

Regardless of what "this" is...all I can keep telling Stephen and myself is that I'm not ready for "this".  I won't bore you to recant the chronicals of my mom's health, not because I don't think that you deserve to hear it but more because it's too complicated to explain and I'm not trying to expose her any more than she's already enduring.

So,I'll talk a bit more about how this affects our relationship and ask your advice as to what role I play in her life now. I've been with her through so many medical delimas. I was 5 when she had her first stroke. I was 9 when she had her pacemaker put in and gallbladder taken out. Then I spent the next 6 years on a montly cycle of her being in and out of the hospital (including stents in ICU).  Through it all it is seeing her in pain that hurts me the most. The helplessness that I feel when I can't do anything to make her feel better is something I can't describe.

Coming home to her tonight has scared me to death life. Something changes about your parental relationship when you're holding the yogurt spoon and telling the person who breastfed you, to "open wide and take just. one. bite". Something aches when you raise your voice and frustratingly plea with the person who spent years consoling you and wiping your tears away. And then something breaks when you scold yourself for having fleeting thoughts of how to give someone the comfort and rest they so desperately deserve.

Some of you know that my adolescent heart spent years thinking that mom wouldn't live to see me graduate high school, much less college. Then my prayers turned to the hope that she's see me walk down the aisle on my daddy's arm and spend a relaxing weekend at 'my' house. And now, she's convinced me that my only prayer be that she live to see my firstborn child.

Amazing. Yet, I've decided not to allow her to hold me on some pedastel and make that her life's goal. Because right now I feel like if I allow that, then I'm not pushing her to look past that. To look at the years beyond my fist child. JUST LIFE. Not any thing specific,why do we have to narrow things down like that? Make them fit in the "goal cubby holes of life"?  Yay, that's one's filled now we can move along?  That's not fair. Fair for me or for anyone else.

So, I've decided not to let myself get caught up in this moment and to keep looking ahead. This is just another "thing" and all I can do is pray she'll get through this and live to endure the next 'thing'.

I don't want sympathy from the people in my life who know I'm going though this. I want strength, I want empowerment, I want positive reinforcement (the REAL kind, not the crappy half-grinned generic stuff). I want people to pray for me and with me. I want to get through this with the kind of positive spirit that overflows to the point that she can feed off my strength and patience, and know that her only hope for comfort lies in the Lord.

I feel like I've probably said way too much, and yet I don't feel like I explained enough.  So I guess I'll just leave it at this.