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Thoughts on Thanksgiving

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

If you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start here: How We Got Here…

This week, in the U.S. at least, a holiday was celebrated (Thanksgiving) that had its foundation in the earliest years of our country’s formation, and was celebrated sporadically until it was formally defined by a Presidential proclamation in 1863. Although this event occurred during an exceedingly dark time in our nation’s history – our Civil War – President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November to be a day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” That much is history.

This year, Thanksgiving in the Porter household was a bit different. To begin with, Frannie and I can’t be out of the house at the same time now, so rather than going out to dinner, we decided to do Thanksgiving dinner here at home. I got a 12.68 lb turkey and fixed it with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. Although the recipe specified 15 minutes per pound, the actual cooking time according to the all-knowing pop-up timer was slightly less that the 3 hours, 10 minutes and 12 seconds that the formula predicted.

In addition, Frannie and I ate on TV trays in the living room so we could be near to Janet – not exactly Norman Rockwell, but it got the job done.

Frannie in her Huntington’s T-shirt

As usual we did the “Five Kernels Of Corn” ritual, and while our mouths were still filled with the requisite thanksgiving and praise to God, this year some of the things for which we are giving thanks would probably seem a bit odd for those on the outside of our “community” who, looking in, might wonder what there is to be thankful for.

For instance, this year my first kernel of corn was, “I am thankful that Janet has started having bowel movements again, and is continuing to pass urine.” Strange, right? Not if you have ever cared for someone in the end stages of a terminal disease.

My second kernel of corn thanks God that things have worked out such that Janet can be in hospice here at home, protected from fearmongers that would isolate her from what little humanity she has left in order to “keep her safe.” Here at home, she has her husband and daughter to care for her, and while we might not be the most professional at times, we love her and care about her as a human being. Moreover, we recognize that the ultimate outcome is not in our hands. Although we might try to ignore the fact, this point is also true for all of us. Worry cannot add a single second to your life: all it does is steal your ability to live the life you have. There are no guarantees, and (with the possible exception of one or two) everyone ever born has died.

The third kernel of corn reminds me to be thankful that Janet is not surrounded by medical instruments and monitors to catalog every beat of her heart and measure every breath she takes. I did that once with my son Larry, who died when he was three days old. Those three days were beyond indescribable because, among other things, it turned his tormented little blue body into a machine that they had to keep going for one more hour, one more minute, one more second.

Unfortunately, that attitude can exist even without the monitors. And seeing humans as but mere machines has other implications, like the recent ruling in Denmark that says it is now permissible for a doctor to sedate a person to keep them from interfering with those who are “assisting” them with their “suicide.” Can you say “Orwellian?”

Kernel number four is for my daughter Frannie. She has been, and is continuing to be, amazing. She is daily dealing with things that women her age should not have to be concerned with. Together we have learned how to tag-team Janet’s care and how to work together to do such things as change the linens on a bed while it is still occupied.

The fifth, and last, kernel is for me a thankful reminder – and reassurance – that the words put down by the founders of our nation are most certainly true, that we, “ … are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights … ” – a truth, by the way, which they did not create. It was another truth that they discovered, not unlike the truth of gravity or the truth of a (roughly) spherical world.

However, this bold statement changed the world, because it made clear the fact that human rights are not given by governments and rulers, but that they come from God. Secondly, the document as a whole proclaimed that that wasn’t true just for the citizens of thirteen British colonies in North America, but rather, this truth is fundamental and applies to all people regardless of who they are or even when and where they live. This point, in turn, should give rulers pause when they try to either take credit for, or abridge the rights of a people. Though it rarely does. I wonder what was the last thing to go through the minds of Benito Mussolini or Nicolae Ceausescu – I mean besides the bullets.

Therefore, while there might be much to be aware of, there is also much to be thankful for even in the hardest of situations. Yes, it is true that Janet’s health is failing day by day. But it is also true that when her end comes (whenever and however it might occur) she will not simply meld into some impersonal cosmic consciousness, evaporate into nothingness, or be patted on the head and told to go back and try again.

When she leaves here she will be going on to another somewhere, where she will meet the Someone who created her. Then, free of the Huntington’s Disease, she will be reunited with those who have loved her and gone before, “ … back a thousand generations, to the beginning of the worlds.”

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are feeling less than thankful…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for all the manifest gifts that You bestow upon the world that You created. But today I want to bless You especially for the gifts that we remember on Thanksgiving. Please give me a perspective that allows me to see the blessing in all that You bring into my life. Then show me how to share those blessings and truths so as to enlighten the hearts and souls of my fellow travelers. Amen.”

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Caregiving Beyond “Fear and Loathing”

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

If you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start here: How We Got Here…

It is clear that death is drawing nearer. It would be nice if other things were equally clear. Dying is apparently a longer, more difficult process than I imagined. To be brutally honest, my main experience in watching people die has been via the medium of old westerns on TV or at the movies, where the process takes a maximum of about 30 seconds. True, my mother died a few years ago, but after standing by for 48 hours at her bedside, she waited until I went out for five minutes to get a sandwich, so all I got was a call from hospice that she was gone.

Old memories and attitudes continue to replay this week, though some are far from being “old friends” that have come to visit one last time. For example, this week Janet started to refuse her sublingual anxiety med because she said it made her constipated – and it does no good to remind her that she hasn’t had a bowel movement worthy of the name in several months, long before she started taking the sublingual meds. Her reply is always, “Well, I know my body!” – another very old tape that has been replaying a lot this week. I have often wondered how things might have been different if she had listened to her doctors, rather than fight them every step of the way. No doctor is perfect, but no doctor is 100% wrong, either.

We had to get her Foley catheter replaced because her original one was leaking. She has also become obsessed with the time. I bought her an “Alzheimer’s Clock” a couple months ago with letters big enough for her to read, but I suspect that she can no longer see things clearly that are more than a couple feet away.

This week we also decided to do Thanksgiving at home for the first time in several years. Typically we have gone out to keep things simple, but with Janet so ill, Frannie and I can’t be gone at the same time so I got a small bird and we are going to do it on our own again. In addition, we thought that Frannie’s boyfriend Leroy was going to eat with us, but his presence is required at his own family’s table – though he will be able to come by in the evening for pie and coffee. The end result is that we are going to have more turkey than we need for two, so if you are in southeastern Texas and alone, PM me and you can have Thanksgiving with us. Our place isn’t large but I think that we can fit in one or two more friends.

PS: If you like white meat, that is a “plus.” Frannie and I don’t.

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Maybe it’s the time of year, or maybe I am just becoming more sensitive due to where Janet is in the process of dying, but I seem to be seeing more posts expressing, as the title suggests, considerable “fear and loathing.” For example, fear of the future or the judgement of others, or self loathing rising from an unreasonable belief that you should do more, and complain less. The many other sources of these feelings are well known, so I won’t attempt to list them all here – besides you probably already in mind your own private list of triggers: that thing (or parade of things) that popped into your head as soon as you read the title.

This week I was conversing with a friend who has been amazing, caring for various members of her family for 40 years, yet she described being angry with herself for not doing more, and not being able to simply “snap out of it” when her latest loved one died. But it doesn’t take death to bring on the “fear and loathing.” I have seen the same issues come up when considering various care options for a loved one who is still alive. While the ”big one” is always the issue of whether it is time to consider a nursing home, it can also arise over issues such as needing to go to work, hiring an outside aide, preparing meals, or even asking for help from other family members.

And then there are the loathsome familial guilt-trippers. Like for example, the sister-in-law who lives two doors down and is constantly telling you what you should be doing to take care of your mother but refuses to lend a hand because, “She isn’t my Mom.”

The thing to remember when considering these issues is that there is a fundamental paradox involved. The people who logically have the least reason to feel these negative emotions (and guilt too, we can’t forget guilt!) often feel them the most strongly, while the people who have the most reason to feel them, rarely ever do. Why is that?

There may be many reasons, but a pattern I have observed over and over again is that good caregivers are never satisfied with the level of care they are providing. Consequently, they are constantly critiquing their own job performance and constantly finding it lacking. Combine this type of self judgement with the obvious fact that many caregivers are isolated from other human contact and you have the perfect setup for fear and loathing, with a heaping side dish of steaming guilt.

By contrast, we have what we shall call the good-enough caregiver. These people concentrate not on what the loved one needs, but what is good enough to be able to check all the right boxes. Just as the previous scenario is a recipe for fear and loathing, so this one typically ends in self-proclaimed absolution. “After all,” they reason, “what I’m doing may not be perfect, but it is good enough.”

But are those the only two options? Frankly, neither one is particularly appealing. For a little added insight, I once had a friend who was in AA. It was about this time of year and we were talking about how he gets through the holiday season sober, and his answer was telling. He said the way to get through it in one piece was to not get “too.” When I asked him what I meant he said, “You know: too happy, too sad, too depressed, too carefree, just don’t be ‘too’ anything. To stay out of the ditches, steer for the center of the road.”

So what does steering for the center of the road look like in caregiving? Well, the first step is make sure that we are making the most important thing, the Most Important Thing. Which is to say, making your loved one’s care the central focus of the exercise.

Next, make room for growth. We need to recognize that while constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of care is a good thing, that improvement is itself a journey, not a destination. Whether you are caring for your spouse as I am, or building automobiles like Toyota, the proper goal is not quality, but continually improving quality. So rather than beating yourself up for not as being as good as you will be tomorrow, acknowledge yourself for being better than you were yesterday.

Finally, we need to recognize that we do not have unlimited resources. While there are many things that we as caregivers can and do learn to do ourselves, there will often come a time when our loved one’s needs will out-strip what we can do, or learn how to do. When those situations arise, it is time to call in the people or services that can provide the needed care. In that case, your job as caregiver is to help identify, and set up the services that will provide what your loved one truly needs – which might require a bit of creativity.

For example, there was a situation where a daughter was worried for her parents, Her mother (84) had dementia and her primary caregiver was her father (86). It was absolutely clear to everyone in the family that Mom needed to be in a skilled nursing facility, but Dad wouldn’t hear of it. In his noble mind, it was his job to take care of his beloved, not work for some stranger. The solution: the family found a care facility that they could go into together and share a room. This arrangement gave him the dignity of continuing to fulfill his duty to care for the love of his life, while giving him the support and care that he was increasingly needing too.

So take heart, if you are worried about how good a job you are doing, you are already over the first and largest hurdle: You care and are dedicated to the best of care for your loved one. Now just steer for the center of the road.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are feeling guilty and afraid…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for the divine wisdom and care that gives the cosmos its form. But today I want to bless You especially for the reassurance and strength that You provide. Thank You for holding me up when I feel weak. Thank You for the gift of life that You have bestowed upon me, and that You allow me to share with { Name of your loved one }. Show me every day how to do the job better. Amen.”

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Nonverbal Communications

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

If you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start here: How We Got Here…

This week we found out that Janet’s CNA nurse Latonya, prior to becoming a CNA, worked as a hairdresser. Consequently, when she came in on Monday, she was able to cut Janet’s hair to a much more easily maintained shorter style that will not get tangled and matted. She also remembered that the 13th was Frannie’s birthday and so brought her a dozen decorated cupcakes to celebrate.

In terms of Janet’s medical condition, the catheter is continuing to work well and her fluid intake has remained higher than it had been previously. One concern was that the fluid in the tubing and bag had begun to take on a cloudy appearance. However, the CNA said at this stage, that was not unusual – plus it has since cleared out again.

Janet’s eating regime has also changed over the past couple days. Recently, she has been eating soft foods (pudding, yogurt, baby food) three times a day. Thursday, she announced that she was no longer hungry and didn’t want to eat anymore. While she hasn’t yet fully stopped eating, she may be working herself in that direction in that she has shifted to an increased number of mini-meals where she eats a few spoonfuls and then stops. The first time she did this, she said she was feeling full, though she has since also complained of acid reflux.

Finally, she started complaining this morning of her hands and arms being either “dead” or “asleep,” and of an inability to feel her legs. In addition, she can no longer tell where she is or how her body is oriented. This evening she was feeling confused because she said that it felt like she was floating in the air. Don’t know what that means – if anything – but there we are…

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This week I have been thinking about something that, when it comes to being either a caregiver or the one who is being cared for, is often the 900 lb gorilla in the room: Communications – that constant struggle to comprehend the flow of information that is going on around us.

Notice, please, how I phrased that sentence. Although we tend to concentrate on spoken communication, the fact of the matter is that we are inundated by information in a variety of forms. In point of fact, there exist forms of communications that uniquely take advantage of each of our five human senses, and which deliver messages that are tailored to each mode of sense impression. Messages, I should point out, that are carried on, and mediated by, the central nervous system.

For example, we can hear language (typically words – though not always) that communicates ideas and concepts from one person to another. But hearing doesn’t stop there, we can also hear other sounds such as music, that communicate feelings or make us understand that the heroine on screen should really not go downstairs into the basement because that is where the guy wearing the hockey mask is hiding. Likewise, there are sounds like the cooing of babies or the smashing together of automobiles that each communicate their own kind of information.

Similarly, the senses of touch, smell, and even taste have associated with them their own unique types of messages. For example, taste helps me to understand my own physical condition, because when I am coming down with a cold or the flu, the first symptom I always detect is that I get a strange sort of “metallic” taste in my mouth. Smell can advise us that dinner is ready or that there is danger in the form of an overheating electrical device. Even touch can provide critical feedback that we are being loved and cared for, or that our phone is ringing thanks to haptic technology.

Finally, vision can help in the comprehension of language – as it is doing for you right now through a process called “reading,” or help us understand messages that pass between us through the ways that we hold ourselves or the looks on our face. However, this visual language is far less standardized than even English (which is notoriously bad on this account). For example, consider this picture taken in 1921 of the great Buster Keaton and his first wife Natalie Talmage on their wedding day.

Now we have no way of knowing whether the expression on his face was an accurate representation of his true feelings at the moment, or whether, given his persona as “The Great Stone Face,” he was posing for the photographers. However, if he had any inkling of how that union would turn out, it might have been either one. Regardless of which it is, the picture well illustrates the problem with a task that we take on without thinking every day: trying to understand what people are thinking based on hints that we get from their facial features and body language. If people’s faces are the windows to their emotions, those windows are often dirty or clouded by cultural, societal or personal concerns, garbling the nonverbal communications.

In addition, psychologists have done studies to analyze how people extract emotions and it appears that the processing required is far from trivial – and that’s for someone with a “normal” brain. If you start considering people with known neurological problems, you can begin to understand how daunting and fraught a task it can be for your loved one, who is dealing with some sort of degenerative condition – or you, for that matter, after having only gotten eight hours of sleep in the last three days.

Is there anyone alive who has not had the experience of saying something that we thought was rather obvious and suddenly had it blow up in our face? Now the first thing to understand is that these sorts of miscommunications will always be with us. Therefore we need to approach all communications from a place of humility where we need to hear what the person is really saying and not be simply “triggered” by certain words or phrases. For example, the book Huckleberry Finn is today censored and removed from library shelves because it uses the dreaded “N” word – while ignoring the fact that the book is a devastating evisceration of slavery and bigotry in the pre-Civil War south.

And the same concept applies on the mundane level of personal relationships. Let’s be honest, when you live with someone for a number of years, you learn words and phrases that you know are guaranteed to offend and exasperate the other person. For example, Janet learned the phrase that would trigger me, and as the disease progressed, she used it often. The phrase was, “ … I hate you, I want a divorce … ”

I well remember a couple of instances where, after she made that statement, family had to (metaphorically speaking) talk me in, off of the ledge. Now in a healthy relationship, both parties can be educated to not deliberately say things that they know will hurt a loved one, but in a situation where caregiving is involved, the relationship is not healthy – or at least not healthy in that way.

A contributing factor, that may sound strange, is a lack of vocabulary. If you are a caregiver, sometimes your loved one can simply “lose” words. A humorous instance of that occurred after my Mother’s first stroke. She was recovering well, but one troubling gap was that she could not think of the word “sofa.”

Oh, she had dozens of the other words to name that piece of household furniture, but “sofa” was just gone. So if I was trying to explain something to her and used that word, she would have had no idea whatsoever what I was talking about. More recently, I have had conversations with Janet, where I said something rather simply and plainly, but Janet didn’t understand, and surprisingly, saying the same words louder and more slowly, did not help her comprehension. What did help was rephrasing. Using different words allowed “meaning” to thread its way through the swiss cheese that is Janet’s brain, to reach “understanding.”

There are many parts to this effort to ensure clear communications, but as with all things in this life, we are not alone in this struggle. Sometimes it seems like God’s main job is to bring order out of chaos. The creation started with a formless chaotic void to which the Creator brought order and light, and so it is with life today: God continues to strike down the chaos of confusion and bestow on it order and light. A beautiful prayer that closes the sabbath observance for Jewish faithful speaks directly to this point by praising the Creator for bringing order to the world by making distinctions: distinctions between the holy and the profane, between light and dark, and between those who are faithful and those who are not.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are misunderstood, or are misunderstanding…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for bringing order of chaos. But today I want to bless You especially for all the many and diverse ways in which you work to bring order and beauty to my life. Teach me to lift up your order and truth to those around me. Amen.”

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Tempus Fugit

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

If you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start here: How We Got Here…

I don’t know if I mentioned it in the past, but a big concern with Janet, or anyone at this stage, is the operation of their kidneys. Which is to say, you worry over whether they are producing enough urine. We had a scare earlier when she went about 36 hours without wetting a diaper. But then it “let go” all at once in a veritable flood. After this cycle repeated a second time, we made the decision to insert a Foley catheter to help her pass urine. This procedure has been a rousing success in a couple ways: First, she is much more comfortable. Second, she is drinking more – no doubt because she feels more at ease doing so without the constant sensation of an overly-full bladder.

Unfortunately, her confusion is getting worse daily. In particular, she keeps asking me to help her to lie down in bed – when she’s already in the bed. Sometimes she thinks she is standing up, while at other times she thinks she is lying on the sofa that she used to sleep on. Just this afternoon she surprised me by asking me how my ex-wife Susan was doing.

I also realized that I need to be very careful about what I say around her. Even when she seems to be asleep, she hears conversations and gets worried about things she doesn’t understand – which is a lot. Been feeling very isolated this week.

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This week’s post marks something of a milestone. I have been writing this blog now for 52 weeks, or one full year. To me this feels a bit unreal for a number of reasons: To begin with, it doesn’t seem like it could have possibly been a whole year, even though it has been a very full year. While it is true that I had started healing by the time I began writing the blog, I was still very much an emotional basket case in November of 2019 and I feel amazed and incredibly blessed to still be standing a year later.

A year ago, Janet was in the midst of her violent, angry phase where she would strike out physically at anyone or anything that angered her, and at that time I angered her a lot. So not knowing any better, I guess, I just wrote about what I was thinking, reading, and feeling – everything. Although I probably wouldn’t have said it in this way back then, the bottom line was that I was tired of hiding. I was tired of having to maintain a public face for the world around me. Looking back, it is no surprise that this openness began healing some of the wounds in my heart – and seems to have helped a few other folks as well.

Looking back at some of my early posts, I realize that many of them were written in a state of near panic as I was trying to figure things out and keep my head above water. Some of the places where this panic is most obvious is in the prayers with which I closed every post. While some might consider this fact to be ironic, to me it has always made perfect sense. Consider, for example, the Psalms. They aren’t all lyrically enraptured reveries on the wonder of God’s creation – though a lot of them are. Many are also simply David complaining to God about how much his life at that moment stinks, but which nevertheless end with affirmations that everything really is under control.

I have often wished that Christians felt as open to complaining to God as our Jewish brethren do. How different our spiritual lives would be.

Something else I have learned is that the human body is a truly amazing thing. A year ago, I was in a rush to finish the first seven posts, because the way things were going I didn’t think Janet would last till the spring, but here we are in November. A year ago, Janet weighed 185 lbs, and when her weight dropped to 100 lbs I was sure death was very soon. But now she weighs less than 80 lbs – and still she keeps going. And if the body in general is amazing, how much more so the human brain?

The other day Janet and I were talking and she asked me how Dr Furr-Stimming (her neurologist) was doing. Janet was worried that her death would make the doctor feel like she had failed – a statement, by the way, that is so Janet. But it got me thinking, when was the last time you gave your loved one’s doctor a hug. Whether we are talking about Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, Parkingson’s, Lewy Body or any of the many other degenerative neurological conditions, these folk go into work everyday knowing that nobody ever “gets well.” They, and the entire medical team, come to work day in and day out understanding, better than most, that behind all the platitudes lies the same grim reality: every one of our patients is dying and often there is little that we can do to even slow it down. Yet, they keep coming, prepared to face down the abyss.

In truth, they deserve far more than a hug, but maybe we can start there.

I have also learned that who you are coming into this experience is both a boon and a challenge. My approaching things as an engineer, the “boon” side of the equation included a predisposition to learning and figuring things out. Several posts are the direct result of my researching a topic that I needed to understand in order to better care for Janet. The “challenge” came from the innate drive that engineers have to fix things. However, in situations that are not “fixable” this drive can lead to frustration and anger. The lesson here is that regardless of how you were prepared for your journey as a caregiver, there is no universally perfect preparation, only what is needed for your specific situation.

Note also how I phrased that last sentence. The wording, “how you were prepared” was deliberate. At times it will feel like you have just been thrown into the deep end of the pool without any swimming lessons, but such is not the case. The truth is, no matter your background, it contains a veritable treasure trove of gifts for your current challenge, you just need to find them. And remember that the word “gifts” implies the existence of a “Giver,” and the presence of the gifts is an assurance of the Giver’s concern and involvement. The Giver is not silent.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are on the way…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for being our guide and provider. But today I want to bless You especially for all the ways you support me, the people who you bring into my life, and the knowledge and insights You bestow. But thank You especially for the opportunity to serve others. Amen.”

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Waiting on God

This post describes, in part, the effects of a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. Any negative behavior on the part of my wife should be attributed to that condition. Any negative behavior on the part of myself should be attributed to my need for God’s ongoing grace.

If you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start here: How We Got Here…

Janet got back from her hospice respite time well-rested and well-cared-for, even if a bit confused. She didn’t understand who was picking her up, or where they were taking her. One thought was that they were picking her up to drive her to Heaven. But then she became convinced that she had been “kidnapped” by some shady operators from a political campaign, but she had forced them to bring her home instead.

While it might be tempting to snicker at or worry about these sorts of expressions, they actually show that her brain is still processing information and trying to do what human brains do best: make sense of the world – even when large chunks of information are missing or distorted.

Another example of the wonder of human consciousness is memory, and everyone knows that dementia means to forget. Nevertheless, there are exceptions. For some unknown reason, while the ability to retain short-term memory in general gradually disappears, something will occasionally “stick” and be retained.

A couple weeks ago when Janet was trying to figure out the logistics of how she was going to get to heaven, she asked me what dying would be like. In response, I told her it would be like drifting off to sleep, but when she woke up she would be looking into the face of Jesus. While that answered her question and put her mind at ease, it did create another issue: disappointment.

Every morning now, Janet opens her eyes, expecting to see Jesus, but instead beholds only me. Being understandably disappointed, she asks the one simple question that has been this week’s focus: “Why am I still here?”

Before continuing, I also want to acknowledge the CNA that the home hospice agency we are working with has assigned us. Latonya is a wonder, always kind and professional, but also playful and friendly. For example, this week she brought Janet some flowers to help cheer her up.

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One of the most common faith-based themes deals with the idea of waiting on God. However, in English, at least, the phrase “waiting on” can carry several different meanings. For example, in some usages it is a synonym for “serving,” as in: “I will be just a moment, I am waiting on another customer.” Occasionally this concept is used in a religious context to describe service to and for God. Interestingly, when considering the teachings of Jesus, the distinction between providing service to God and providing service for God, can get very fuzzy, especially when you consider the degree to which God identifies with the weak and powerless – as when he tells us, “As you have done to the least of these, so you do to me.”

Next, there is the idea of waiting on someone to provide an answer, such as God answering a prayer. We are often advised to pray and then wait on God to provide an answer. As an aside, we are told that God answers prayers by saying, “Yes,” “No,” or “Not now.” However, I have learned that other variations are possible, such as, “Yes, but…” Those are the tricky situations because like Cinderella we tend to hear the, “Yes you can go to the ball,” but miss the admonition or condition that follows.

Then finally, there is the sense in which Janet and our family are “waiting on” God. This type of waiting on isn’t primarily about service – though for those of us around Janet, there is that component. Likewise, we aren’t really waiting for a decision, because all the decisions to be made have been made. Rather, it feels like our task is simply waiting for the right time. But why is that waiting needed?

Well, in a world where we are alone and nothing we do or say impacts anyone else, there would be no need for this type of waiting. However, as you are no doubt aware, that is not the world we live in. Rather, we live in a world of unimaginable complexity. In the secular realm, this complexity is why governmental centralized planning has never worked well, regardless of how many times it has been tried, and it is why the phrase “unintended consequences” is now a standard part of the modern political lexicon.

An interesting movie that played with this idea of interconnectedness and the importance of timing, was a 1998 German film named Lola rennt, or for its English release Run, Lola, Run. The plot is really pretty simple: Lola gets a panicked phone call from her boyfriend Manni, who has just lost a bag full of money that belongs to the mob. If Lola can’t replace it in 20 minutes he will probably be killed. Because she has no car, she has to run across town (in this case, Berlin) and come up with a scheme for obtaining the money.

In a series of real-life instant replays, Lola tries three separate times using different ploys to get the money and obtained from the first two attempts different (unpleasant) results. On the third try, she finally gets the money, only to discover that it wasn’t really needed after all. However, for me, the most interesting part was how along the way she encounters the same people over and over again. Although the timing of their encounters varies by no more than a few seconds, the encounters produce dramatically different results in the lives of the people involved.

The obvious point of the movie is to highlight the chaotic nature of life and the unimaginable complexities of all the possible interactions between people and events. That much of the movie, at least, I can agree with. Unfortunately, the larger framework of the picture ends up being profoundly nihilistic in that the ultimate message is that all of life is left up to random chance. While the main characters (Lola and Manni) end up having what might be called a happy ending, the underlying message is despair masquerading as irony, because they just happened to be lucky – this time.

In that view of the world, the complexity of life results in despair because there is no one who sees the big picture, no one has a plan, and no one has their hands on the control levers. In point of fact, in that view of the world, there isn’t even any reasonable explanation for why the complexity even exists in the first place. In that view of the world, Janet and all the people like her are simply written off as unimportant because no one has a real answer to the question, “Why am I still here?” – let alone really hard questions like, “Why are any of us here?”

However, there is an answer that explains the complexity of the world, and which gives meaning to Janet’s life – and your life too. This answer has such power because it starts with the Creator God’s bold declaration at the birth of the universe that all of creation has value and meaning. We can know this because in Genesis 1, at the end of each creative step, the Creator God proclaims that each part of creation “is good” – an idea that the psalmist echoes over and over again in his glorification of God’s handiwork. The one exception, of course, is the creation of human beings, which He describes as, “very good.”

With that truth as the context for life, meaning and value are always available, because it recasts the hurt, pain, and brokenness of life in terms of renewing and restoring the goodness that was in the world originally, but was lost and is now being recovered through the faithful actions of believers. In this context, my wife – indeed all human life – is of infinite value regardless of age or circumstances because God has declared it to be so. Likewise, our service to others becomes a monument to truth and fidelity in a world that is sorely lacking in both.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are wondering why…

“Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe. It is right that I should at all times and in all circumstances bless You for who You are. But today I want to bless You especially for how Your nature defines reality for us. Thank You also for not being silent, but speaking out to the world. Thank you for a reality that is plain and open, and not hidden behind esoteric masks. Amen.”