learning to trust…

I never know how the serious blogs are going to be received. There is pleasure in laughter – especially when I am able to find ways to laugh at myself. But there is also a comfort… a peace from just sharing thoughts. Today I need to affirm the things that I have worked so hard to plant in my mind. To remind myself mostly, to let go of what I can’t control and that God is taking care of it all.

 

This is triggered from a conversation I just had with my mom. She is having a rough week, which has turned into a rough few weeks, which will, it appears, turn into a rough month or more. She doesn’t say hello anymore when she calls. Instead she immediately updates me on the news of the day. I bite my lip when she phones in fear of what it will be that is about to jostle my world after the next ring.

 

I will save for you the details of each event as they merit their own blogs, however, as a point of understanding she called to say that she is headed to MF hospital to see my great uncle. Then she will go down the hill where his wife is recovering and check on her. After that she is headed to the next hospital where she will see her mother before meeting up with my dad who will be at St. C’s seeing his mother. Finally, they will head over to a friend’s home — a dear friend who just found out that she has lesions on her brain and is about to find out what exactly that means. There are others too. Others who have health concerns that are okay right now, but who work their way in and out of our conversations.

 

As I listened to Mom, I remembered to breath – that’s always the first thing. Then I thought, for myself as much as for her that I should say something — something that acknowledged the rough terrain of today, but looked forward to a more peaceful path in the future. Comfort.? Understanding? Humor didn’t seem appropriate as I tried to come up with something that went just a bit deeper.

 

So I told her that eventually she would move through all this and look back and everything would be alright. Not necessarily back to what it was, but something that was okay and would eventually be better than today. I wanted to quote the Danish theologian who observed that, “life can only be understood backwards, but …it must be lived forwards.” Or perhaps the words in a book that I keep next to my bed that advised to trust the Spirit in order to be free from anxiety and worry. The peace mom desires is on it’s way… “there’s absolutely nothing to fuss about…”

 

I must not have delivered my message well, because somewhere in there she got upset with my sister. I won’t say who, except that it’s one who did not go to church today. It was not my day to begin my career a spiritual guide and if I was going to set my sites on that endeavor I wouldn’t start with my mom. To paraphrase something that Jesus himself said… … it’s hard to be a profit in your own town. So I got off the phone fast knowing that eventually my sister was going to be mad at me.

 

However, as I started thinking about all the people Mom was worried about, including my sister, I came up with a few thoughts…

 

Trusting God is something that will come at exactly the time that it is supposed to. We can’t change other people, and when we try, unfortunately we might be getting in the Spirit’s way.

 

When people are in need, we can support and advocate and love them in ways that assist God’s plan. But, it’s a waste of time to question the Creator of the Universe; instead, we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is no more perfect a plan than God’s.

 

The phone just rang. It was my sister. I told her it was my fault before she had a chance to tell say that mom had just called to harass her. Somehow she didn’t seem surprised. When the world gets all mixed up we have a mom who tries to fix it. We love that about her.

 

However, right now it’s all for God to fix and we just have to trust. God has a plan for healing those who need healing, a plan for teaching those who need to learn, and a plan for getting my sister into church. There are moments when comfort comes in knowing that I just have to keep answering the phone, take care of what I can, and then stand back and watch.