This journey with my mom while she has been on hospice has
been a bit of a microcosm of life. We
have taken off on a journey, having some sort of vision of the destination as
we depart, but the route there has not been anything like we had imagined it
would be. And in its unpredictable
nature there have been a number of pleasant surprises. All of which is to introduce the latest surprise…my
mom is staying home.
We had been planning to travel to Milwaukee tonight and to
move her back into our home tomorrow. I
wrote about the move in the most
recent post of this series. Yesterday, my wife,
Robin, and I figured that we had most of the details worked
out.
Then I had a call from my brother, who was with our mother,
who had some news for us. And the news,
in a nutshell, was that she was going to be staying in the Milwaukee area for the
foreseeable future. A care option that
had not been on our radar earlier was now a viable choice for her, and she was
choosing to use it.
And that is okay with us.
We were looking forward to spending this portion of her life with her
and there is a bit of disappointment that it won’t be happening. On the other hand there were a few issues
that we hadn't fully sorted out and we can now just set those aside. Most of all we are glad that her day-to-day
health has improved and that there is a viable option for care that keeps her
close to her friends and in the geographic area that, for her, has always been
home.
As Robin and I came to a place of offering our home as a
place for my mom to live we did so primarily as an act of faith in Christ. But if we believe that God is calling us to
something and as we follow along things don’t turn out as we expected, does
that mean that God wasn’t calling us in the first place? I don’t think so, and neither does Robin. You can read her thoughts here.
Maybe the idea of opening up our home to my mom was intended
by God for some other purpose. It could
be that my mom will come to live with us, but at a different point in time. Or maybe God led us in this way for some
other purpose. Not to test us, but to
prepare us for something else in His plans for us. Something to be revealed further down the road.
I don’t know His intent to this point, and I’m not going to
worry about it. I’m just going to keep
praying. To praise Him for who He
is. To thank Him for what He has
done. To lift to Him the concerns of my
heart. And to continue to seek to
discern and follow His will in my life.
“I
wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.” Psalm 130:5
Scripture quotations
are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by
Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
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