Faith & Roses

I am emotionally and mentally pulled back into the past with Mom. Her pessimism shakes my “little girl” fears wide awake. Hearing her say “I can’t.” Her stubborn refusal to accept help. Her negativity and complaining leaves me gasping for air, like someone is trying to suffocate me. I find myself comparing her to my father. When he was sick with Alzheimer’s, he was so compliant. He tried so hard to still be Dad; to be “Reds.” He never complained. This comparison pushes out the loving reality of all Mom did for him during his illness. How she bathed him, cleaned him up; stayed up for days and nights at a time around the clock when he was no longer able to sleep, riddled with hallucinations. When the disease finally broke all the connections he had to his life, she was there rock solid: coffee constantly “on” and endless packs of cigarettes. Mom did not complain. She simply did all that fell to her to do.

“We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step Two, Narcotics Anonymous

There she was at 52 years old, without a husband; wrung out as a caregiver. Left to go it alone and navigate the roads they travelled as “Reds & Rose;” husband and wife. She never asked anything of me. She figured things out and continued to stay in position to be a Mom and a Grandma. I could go on and on and I probably already have. Veering off the path of what God is obviously asking of me and running headlong into “taking Mom’s inventory” is useless. I don’t want to accept what IS now … the fear of all the unknowns paralyzes me. I ask the God of my understanding… please pull me back. Turn my eyes away from what is seen in the physical and towards all that is unseen in the eternal and the spiritual. Give me the power to accept my “assignment.” Of my own will, I just ain’t got it.

“If you choose to see yourself as unloving you will not be happy. You are condemning yourself and must therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the ego to help you escape from the sense of inadequacy it has produced, and must maintain for its existence? Can you escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?”

ACIM