They Used to Carry Us--Now We Carry Them

Back in Missouri last week where I had gone to spend a few days helping with the care of my dad, Mom called to me one evening. Craig had arrived back from an appointment with my dad, and he was carrying my dad into the house!

Mom thought I should take a picture! 

Dad has lost so much weight, and he was so weak that Craig just picked him up in his arms and carried him inside. 

My parents used to carry us; now we carry them.  

When Dad was resting in his chair, Mom sat down to play the piano. 

"Day by Day" she played, one of Dad's favorite hymns. 

 I took a few snapshots--because I never knew which one might be the last one.

Tucked onto the only chair in their room was this little pillow my niece had cross-stitched for Mom and Dad's 60th anniversary. 

I slept in the double bed next to Mom's in Mom's room, the bed Dad can't sleep in anymore. Mom helped me put on clean sheets and a clean comforter--a gift from old friends many years ago. 

I noticed the lovely sheets on Mom's bed--brightly flowered with snow white background, with a matching pillow case.

"I got them at a garage sale!" she explained when I complimented how pretty and snow white they were. My mom is a classy lady! She likes clean sheets and neatly organized drawers.

You don't have to have money to have class--and my mom has class!

Mom went to pay the property taxes last week one day while Dad was at dialysis. I took her to the court house to do that, as it was not far from our other stops, and it saved postage. 

The lady inside was friendly and kind. Yes, Mom had figured and counted correctly.

Mom is good that way.

And one of those days, I found her resting--something she didn't do much. She was run ragged caring for Dad, even when I and others were there. 

Care-giving is simply consuming.

 I didn't have much time to just take pictures, even though I tried to take one of these pretty red berries on the branch outside their windows.

I tried to keep meals on the table--or on a plate taken to Dad in his chair.
He liked these potato patties made from leftover mashed potatoes.   

I spent a couple hours at my brother's house one day, cutting sweet potatoes from their garden into fries. Those were yummy, too! 

I did that while Tim, who had driven me over to Missouri in his little old stick shift car, helped the cousins butcher the deer they had bagged this season.

And more than once I escaped to my sister's home--to try to regroup. 

My hat is off to all caregivers.

God bless you! How do you do it?  

Three days into it I wanted to run. But I couldn't. I knew I had to overcome.

I had to overcome sleepless hours at night, and watching someone I loved suffer and worry about his condition and be confused and upset about things because meds were making him loopy.

Foot baths, meals, bringing blankets and pillows and prepping for appointments and dialysis, comforting, rubbing his back, listening, helping back to the bathroom and trying to figure out how to treat bed sores that three doctors haven't helped much with; coming up with pleasant conversation to divert his thinking...

such as telling about how two of his granddaughters were in the local paper that week!

Crystal and Candace had visited the open house at the florist shop where two other granddaughters work, and a reporter came through to snap a picture!  

"Even to your old age, I am He,

and even to gray hairs I will carry you," God said in Isaiah 46:4.

"I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you."

And that isn't a promise just for the aging parents who are frail and weak.

It's for caregivers, too. 

God carries us both when we can't carry on.

The Sacred Cup--and I am Blessed!

 I don't deserve this grace. 

The grace of sitting in church Sunday morning with my family around me, including Rose's boyfriend.

The grace of watching the communion bread and cups being served--and watching careful hands of each of my children take the bread,

and the hands of my husband, and Rose's boyfriend.  

All of us believers--sharing the bread and grape juice--signs and tokens of the blood of Jesus and the body broken for us. 

Not perfect; not angels; not without fault or mistakes. 

But all of us believers.

All of us.

I don't deserve this priceless gift.

It had seldom hit me quite the way it did Sunday morning, the first morning of the month when our church shares communion together.  

I am a blessed mother.

 

Please Pray for My Dad

Please remember my dad in prayer.

Dad has been a tough guy, still out mowing his own yard at age 85, but recently it's been found that his leg artery is almost completely blocked, which has been causing serious issues with his circulation. He's in a lot of pain and his feet and legs are not receiving good circulation, with all the symptoms that go with that. He goes to dialysis three times a week, and has been on medications to prepare him for a heart catheterization possibly later this month or December, because his heart, the doctor said, is only performing at about ten percent.

Jonathan and I are discussing when to go to Missouri to be with him and Mom. 

My sister Dorcas in Virginia is usually upbeat, but this evening, she is very sad.

She and her hubby Ben were looking at their beautiful Virginia sunset, and thinking about the beauty that lies "beyond the sunset," but the walk through the valley to reach "beyond the sunset" can seem very dark. 

Pray that my dad will not walk alone--that he will be able to commit himself to the One Who loves to reach His hand to those about to cross a very deep river. May he sense forgiveness, peace, and comfort.

And pray for us siblings that we will know how to be the best support to Dad and Mom through this time.

When Tarantulas Cross Your Road

A few weeks ago, the day I was told the mammograms and ultrasound looked like I had cancer, Jonathan and I drove to one of his work sites after spending a couple hours up in the mountains.

And then we were on our way to a second place, when Jonathan suddenly stopped right in the middle of the dirt road and backed up. And then he told me to open my door and look out. This is what we saw! I guess it is the time of year when tarantulas were migrating. Scary, hairy tarantulas!

Like hairy-scary mammograms and biopsies and diagnoses--just crawling across your road like they own the place.

Job said, "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." 

A few evenings ago, Danny was burning up a bunch of old pallets he'd sawed up to fit into the wood stove or burn barrel, and thousands of sparks were flying up into the sky--like trouble flies into our lives.

Like the hornets or yellow jackets fly that had built this nest in the trees we'd just been under earlier in the afternoon.

I was blessed by the first chapter of this book I found in the library several weeks ago, The Gift of Hard Things.
 

  Jesus, Who healed every sickness and disease that was brought to Him, knows exactly how to help and heal us even today. 

He knows just how to deliver us from the hairy-scary tarantulas in our lives and cover us instead with His feathers.

 

Till we can just help make October pumpkin pies, with pumpkin from our own garden, and enjoy every minute of it.

Danny--Proud Elk Hunter

This evening, I got a text from Jonathan that Danny had shot a bull elk! 

He said that he wouldn't have time to talk this evening because he was heading up to help him bring it back to camp!

In the picture below, looks like they had everything neatly organized, including the fire wood they cut and split once they arrived on Friday afternoon!

 

Tim got this beautiful photo of the camping spot. 

 And this one at night.

And this one!

 

And yet another beautiful photo!

When Danny found out that the girls had forgotten to bring a spatula, 

he whittled one! 

And then he got his first bull elk!

He had gotten a cow elk when he was 13, and now a 5x3 bull this year! 

Everyone in on the prize!

Jonathan cooking on the woodstove.  They usually take granola bars and snacks with them in the wee hours of the morning when they take off in the dark to find a spot to wait for elk, and then eat breakfast very late morning. 

They eat only two main meals a day then, and today Jonathan sent this picture of Tim successfully making biscuits in a skillet on the woodstove!

One Year Since Mama Lucas Went to Be With the Lord

 Today Jonathan and I met his father at Fairview Cemetery to place a wreath at Mama Lucas's grave. It was one year to the day that Mama went to heaven.

When I first arrived, Jonathan's dad was placing the wreath, hammer, and other things near the stone.

I loved how the camera captured rays of light coming down, as if it was rays from heaven upon the quiet scene where a few of the family were coming to remember a loved one and honor her memory with flowers and a wreath.

Carrie had brought a bouquet she had put together earlier that morning, and placed it by the headstone--right by Mama's middle name, Mae, which is also my own mother's middle name, and the name we chose for Carrie's middle name.  

Daddy Lucas had chosen this autumn wreath to bring, with the lavendar bow he'd saved from the bouquet of flowers at the funeral a year ago. He was worried about the colors going together, but they went just fine, especially since Carrie's bouquet was brown, yellow, and lavendar as well!

Jonathan pounded in a rebar stake so that we could wire the wreath to it to keep it intact in the certain Colorado winds that blow--even across graveyards! 

  

And Daddy Lucas took a picture of us--just before Jonathan had to leave to join the children down south of Alamosa to hunt elk once again, and I headed back home to check on Carrie's dog who has been due to have puppies any day.

The cemetery was beautiful with fall colors. I drove around just a little afterward, thinking about others buried there--Mary Jane McVey, Linda DeGarmo, Mrs. Karr, Dale O'Maley, and so many others--all very human people with their faults and failings, but who died in faith.

People like George and Goldie, Mama's brother and sister-in-law. George had a lisp that was a little hard to understand due to a tied tongue in his childhood and youth, and which made him the butt of much laughter.

But everyone knew he loved the Lord, and he is now in heaven with the Goldie he loved, and with Mama, his sister. 

I drew one of the flowers out from the bouquet I'd brought to send home with Daddy Lucas--and placed it on their stone.

Somehow it just seemed like a thing that ought to be done--because every life has value. 

Last night for family worship I asked Rose to read from Revelation 21, the verses about heaven, and what Mama Lucas is enjoying right now.  

Even the dog seemed to be in perfect bliss listening to what the Bible says about heaven. 

And we sang one of Mama's favorite songs, "In the Garden." Daddy Lucas has told us that Mama would sometimes sit down at the piano and play that song.  

At the graveside, Jonathan's dad asked if we could pray together, and we did, Jonathan's one arm around his father and his other around me, and mine around him. 

All three of us prayed--Daddy Lucas thanking God for giving him Helen for so many years and for the five children she gave him. He prayed for them, and prayed for God's help and grace for his future. Jonathan thanked God for the godly heritage, for his mother's faith, and prayed that it might be passed on to us in the next generation. I prayed as well, and it was a precious time out under the autumn sky and sun in Colorado. 

"Perhaps I will make this a tradition," Daddy Lucas mused, "bringing a wreath for each season."

I thought that was a great idea--a wreath of flowers, or acorns, or evergreens--all entwined by prayer.

 

The Flyswatter--and the Cross

 I have this uncanny way of putting the most unlikely things together--like a flyswatter and a cross. But here's how it happened.

So Sunday morning I was at the mission office kitchen making Sunday dinner. But while the ham and veggies roasted and the banana cake baked, I went over to the quiet chapel to have some prayer time.

I couldn't help pausing at the front of the chapel where there were these two chairs where Keith and Tasbah Lavery sit, with this little green chair in between where little three-year-old Yamni sits. And there on that green chair lay an orange flyswatter. 

The reason it was there is that flies tend to enjoy coming to chapel, too, and Yamni loves to swat them before service!

That flyswatter was just a little illustration of the simplicity and welcome found in this little chapel--a place where you are allowed to come as you are.

Where the pastor sits in the same chair as everyone else and teaches from his chair instead of from up behind a high-sounding pulpit.

A place where little children are valued. The chapel has at least three little chairs set in places where young families sit with small children. Because children are welcome.

So is everybody.  

And the plaque up front, "Come as You Are," ministered to me that quiet morning. 

So did the cross. 

I know, I'm a person who is a little bit weird, but I do things like go up to a cross and just treat it like it really was Jesus' cross.

A place where He is present, because of His shed blood, still pleading for a simple person like me, over there in my old blue jacket and just-washed hair.  

And I just go up to it and lean my head against it, and bring myself and my needs to Him, without saying a whole lot.

Just leaning into the cross.

I feel sure He understands. 

And then I sit down at the piano and open the hymnal to "Just as I Am," and I play it. 

I'm sure I don't get out of it all I could if I weren't so concentrated on getting the notes right, but I think God understands notes without words, too.

 Big prayers are sometimes encapsuled in trembling notes and bowed heads,

i

in simple chapels where orange flyswatters lie across a little child's chair.