Rough Stone Steps

It seems my feet are plodding and trudging along this same rough path again. The bumpy way trips my feet and I proceed slower and slower as the way becomes steep. I have walked here before! Will it never get easier? I question my own judgement and condemn decisions made simply because I am heart broken and sad.

My previous vision of moving to Louisiana to care for my mother in her own home in these, her declining years, is dying a slow death. I have grieved it before, but here it is again, revived and demanding explanation for my abandonment of Plan A.

I am driving the long drive home from visiting my mama at her Nursing Home. It is seventy minutes of beautiful country roads. I love the way there…but the trip back almost always finds me depressed and mute. I sing on the coming, I mope on the going. Mostly, I do a lot of thinking both ways. My leaving her there finds me carrying away her sad isolation and depressive thinking. It climbs into the car with me and will not let me alone until I call it out and tell it to go away. I know WHO holds me and I know who holds my mother. That heavy ugliness has no right to come near either of us!

Logically Mama is in good and caring and capable twenty four hour hands. I am not able to do that for her. She and I both think that I can. Of course my Mama has always thought I could do anything. As I discovered, when she was at home with me, being so close to her to help, she did not really want me to do it for her. She said my time was valuable and I had to take care of my husband and see my grands and do ‘my things’. She got really belligerent about it too. If I did anything to help her (too much) she would come and yell at me.

Yesterday, when I visited her, I helped her get her shoes on and tied them for her. I was squatted down on the floor and I felt her hand stroking the top of my head and my hair. Even writing this brings tears. I am not certain what she was thinking when she did that but, I felt like I was her little girl again and she was tying MY shoes. Oh! The wonder of being in this place I am walking…

I trip. I fall. I cry. I yell. I vent. To anyone who will listen for five minutes I ask questions over and over. Am I doing the right thing? Is this what is best? Is there a better way? Does it ever get better? All of the difficulties and the things called out of me here in this place are a gift that draws me to my knees while dragging me through streets of stone.

I count it a blessing to hold my mother’s hand and talk about nonsense. I brush her hair and catch the brittle, silver pieces falling out on the floor. She did this all for me once upon a time. I want to hang onto every little bit of her, the good and the bad.

Never the less…I am on THIS road right now and there is no right or wrong way to travel it. Today I trudge, perhaps tomorrow I will be dancing or running or skipping? Either way, I want to look forward to the ‘up’.

I read a little excerpt the other day, in an old devotional I found that speaks of this so brightly. it is from “God Calling” Author unknown.

“The rough stone steps of obedience lead up to the mosaic of Joy and Love that floor My heaven.” -God Calling 1945