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His ‘n’ Hers

This post describes, my recovery from the loss of my wife to a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. She was healed of this condition when she went to live with our Heavenly Father at 2:30AM, the 10th of January 2021. You can read the announcement here.

Or if you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start with: How We Got Here…

As we continue getting settled in, the place is really beginning to come together. This afternoon (Sunday) we will be getting our washer and dryer delivered. They are both made by LG and while I have never owned one of their appliances before, I did have a couple LG phones that I really liked, so I’m hopeful.

I mentioned last week that a dear friend’s daughter died of HD. Well this week there were visitation hours over in the Dallas area so I attended. I am so glad I did!

In business there is the term, “flying the flag” that refers to attending a meeting with little or no expectation of really doing anything useful, but you go because you feel you need to. As I was driving to the visitation I was feeling on some level that this was a bit of a “flying the flag” kind of trip. I was going because she was a dear friend and I wanted to be there to help support her but I had no idea what that would look like. Plus, to be honest, there was a certain amount of apprehension as well. After all, we had never actually met so I guess on some level you never really know, do you?

But what I found was very different from those worrisome thoughts. Jean is as wonderful a lady in person as she is online, and her family is great too. Turns out that her daughter taught at a local Christian school and a lot of former students were stopping by to pay their respects – which says a lot about who she was during her life here on earth. But more importantly, attending the visitation really did accomplish some things that were very positive.

In case you didn’t know, Janet donated her body to the local medical school to help train future doctors in anatomy. Consequently, when Janet died, her “final arrangements” consisted of calling a pager number and telling the school where they could pick up the body. There was, therefore, no visitation, no memorial service, and no funeral – just a phone call and a pickup by a local mortuary. In six months to a year when the school is done with Janet’s body they will cremate what is left and send the ashes to us via UPS.

Now don’t get me wrong, her body donation made the time immediately following her death much more bearable. Moreover, I am so glad that she made that choice because it was a perfect expression of her life and attitude. But there were also negatives to that decision. For instance, seeing her body in a casket would have provided a certain kind of closure, which Frannie and I missed.

But in the end, while I benefited from this visitation greatly, this visit wasn’t about me. The primary goal was still to support Jean and her family. I have never met IRL (In Real Life) someone that I had first met online. Hence, one thing I became aware of was that, for me at least, the initial meeting felt a tad awkward. We had talked so many times, about all manner of things, so in one way it seemed like we were old friends, but in another way we were just meeting. Still, we had time to share blessings and challenges, and I felt very blessed by the time together – and hope Jean did too.

On a completely different track, this week I realized a couple of other nice things about living in a small town like Mineral Wells. First, at night it gets really dark so you can see so many stars, it is incredible! Second, it is quiet. When we were living in Pearland, the TV volume was typically set around 30 to 40 on a 100-point scale. Here in Mineral Wells, with the same TV displaying the same programming, I have the volume set between 10 and 12.

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Many years ago, a common gift idea for newlyweds was “His ‘n’ Hers” gifts. At one time, nearly anything that both members of the couple could use came in special monogrammed versions. However, linens were often the most common of such gift idea – and the most practical. When Janet and I were married, Janet’s best friend (and Frannie’s future godmother and namesake) gave us a set of monogrammed towels and washcloths from LL Bean. Amazingly, some of the towels survive to this day.

That towel serves as a reminder to me that as a married couple there are certain things that we should share. However, one thing that we should not share is symptoms – and sometimes when caring for someone 24/7 it is hard to avoid that sort of “togetherness.”

The first time I ran into this effect was with my first wife’s mother. All mother-in-law jokes aside, she was one of the most emotionally hardened, manipulative, bigoted people I ever had the displeasure to meet. She would come home at night laughing about how she had twisted a person’s words and manipulated situations to accomplish what she wanted – oh, and did I mention that she worked in Child Protective Services? Sweet, right?

From day one, she angered me and I was offended by her warped sense of ethics that allowed her to do things like tell her daughter that if her future son-in-law had a black best man she was going to walk out on the ceremony. It’s a long story, but I didn’t find out about it until years later. When I did, I blew my stack, and had to deal with her retribution for years. Which is another long story.

The point is that the more I thought about what she had done, the more emotionally hardened I became. When I realized what was happening, I was confused. How could I become like the person I disliked so much? But then I was going through some counseling, and the therapist explained it to me. She said that at the subconscious level our mind doesn’t understand right and wrong, so if it sees me focusing on something a lot – like what a jerk my ex’s mother was – it would figure, “Oh, that’s what Mike wants to emulate,” and start moving me emotionally in that direction.

But this principle also appears in other places – like in the Scriptures where Paul gives us the prescription for preventing the problem: “Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Col 3:2.

In other words, concentrate on the good stuff, and the best of the good stuff is our Creator.

While this is an important lesson for everyone, I think that it is particularly critical for caregivers. On the support forums you are inundated with people asking for help with a loved one who is becoming increasingly argumentative, judgmental, and accusatory. Sometimes you see that the original poster has started mirroring their loved one’s emotional state – which the loved one sees and can, in turn, react to by amplifying their behavior.

So ‘round and ‘round she goes,

and where she stops, nobody knows.

Compounding this tragedy is that the emotional responses that started the cycle in the first place weren’t even real, but the symptom of a disease. So they end up with His ‘n’ Hers symptoms. What is needed is a way to break the cycle of ever-worsening actions and reactions – and Paul’s prescription is an excellent tonic. But it will require letting go of some stuff before you can experience its salutary effect.

For example, there’s the attitude that says, “Well they started it! They have to say, ‘I’m sorry’ first.” Of course there are two immediate problems with that perspective.

First, you probably aren’t five years old any more. Do I really need to go into more detail here?

Second, the person who you are wanting the apology from is ill. Often things like repentance, logic, and even “common sense” are all things that they simply don’t possess any more. Sometimes expecting them to behave in a different way is akin to asking a paraplegic to run a 100-yard dash.

The other factor that plays in here is forgiveness. Very often as a caregiver you truly have been wronged by the person that you are caring for, and that injury must be dealt with. Thankfully we live in a world where our Creator has also made true forgiveness available, and it is only that forgiveness that has the power to wipe the slate clean and give us a fresh start – both with Him, and with our fellows.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you are feeling short of patience…

“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 Your compassion and forgiveness. I know firsthand how healing the words, ‘I forgive you,’ can be. So today I want to bless You especially for the gift of being able to forgive others. Thank You for making available the blessing of forgiveness to all. Amen.”

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Having pain – or is it a paean – in my heart

This post describes, my recovery from the loss of my wife to a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. She was healed of this condition when she went to live with our Heavenly Father at 2:30AM, the 10th of January 2021. You can read the announcement here.

Or if you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start with: How We Got Here…

We are continuing to get settled in, and for those of you worried about us Texans, we didn’t lose power or any utilities during Winter Storm Uri – which is a blessing. The main negative about the bad weather has been that we are needing a lot of stuff for the house and nothing is getting delivered. Still, on the whole, that is a minor inconvenience.

A somewhat bigger inconvenience is that when we arrived, we discovered that there was no refrigerator in the place. Hence while it was cold, the garage was our refrigerator and the picnic table on our deck became the freezer. However, the cold is apparently over because it got up into the 60s Saturday, and even the overnight low was still above freezing. To handle that situation, I’m going to try to find a small “dorm room” size fridge to tide us over until our new refrigerator is delivered in a week or so.

As we unpack, we keep finding stuff we didn’t intend to move here – like the Crocs that Janet wore because they helped her balance. I think that the rubber gripped the carpeting in the old apartment better and so she felt more stable. We also found a couple of Provale cups that I bought to help with Janet’s swallowing problems. Each time the cup is tipped, it dispenses exactly 10cc (or about 2 teaspoons) of liquid. I thought that I had a home for both of them but – more about that in a moment. In the meantime, if you could use one of these cups, send me your address via private message and one will be on its way to you.

Even though it was a pain moving in the midst of everything, it has really been worth it. Getting settled in here, I am realizing how many memories the old apartment held. Moving has created a new space for Frannie and I that we can fill with new hopes and new dreams. It must be terrible trying to “move on” when you are surrounded by a place that reminds you of… before.

One last look, then always forward…

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One of the fundamental problems in human conversation (especially with caregivers and others going through grief) is that when someone asks how you are doing, they expect a simple answer. They want to hear me say, “Oh I’m fine.” Or, “This week has been really hard, I still miss her.” Or, “I am so tired all the time. I don’t even want to get out of bed.”

Regardless of what the one answer might be, they want THE answer and that expectation can result in the person answering the question to begin feeling as though there is something wrong with them. However, the truth is that having a loved one die, or begin going through the process of dying, is a very stressful time that calls out a whole smorgasbord of (often conflicting) emotions, and which belies the ability to give simple answers.

This week, I came to a better realization of the exact nature of the feelings in my heart, and I found it contains a curious mixture of tragedy and triumph. On the one hand, I was listening to one of my favorite Moody Blues albums and there was a line in a poem that ran thus:

“Night time, to some a brief interlude

To others the fear of solitude”

The poem is so poignant that it brought me to tears. Right now, I am definitely in the “To others” category, and did I mention that I was listening to it at work on headphones…

In a related issue, early in the week when I found the cups I mentioned earlier, I had contacted a dear friend of mine who had a child with HD, and offered her the cups. She accepted the offer happily, but then Friday just as I was leaving work, I got a message from my friend that her daughter had died. This loss brought up fear for me about my two children who are at risk, and a heaping load of fresh “fear of solitude.”

The storm also got in on the act, bringing on its own feelings of inadequacy. Driving home from work one night, I cried because I realized that I needed Janet back, because Janet would know what to do. Coming from New England, knowing how to deal with winter storm warnings was coded into her DNA. As hard as I tried, all I could think of was to buy bottled water and stock up on batteries for our flashlights. But I was able to find a gas station that had gas and the local Walmart announced that they would stay open until they ran out of stuff to sell, they lost power, or 11pm – whichever happened first. So I managed to get food and other things that we needed.

However, that is not the only side. Remember, I said this is a mixture. In compound with these feelings is a sense of joy that directly contradicts the negativity.

Frannie and I are in a new home, making a fresh start together. We are drawing closer together and I see every day, ways in which Frannie is becoming more self-reliant and confident. It is as though not having Janet in the home has freed Frannie to grow, expand, and flourish. This development, in turn, gives me joy because one of the things that had always worried Janet and me was that Frannie would get drawn into taking care of us and not have a life of her own. But the distance from Houston seems to be drawing her closer to her boyfriend and his family – especially his mother and aunt.

In other news, Saturday it was so warm, we took the dogs out to play in our fenced backyard. This is a whole new sensation for them, to be outside without being on a leash. We have dogs on all three sides of us in the back. They are all larger dogs and Lawtay was running around in circles making friends with all of them.

Then also at work, things are going exceptionally well. It is good to feel useful again, and to work for a company that doesn’t start with the presumption that its employees are lazy jerks who will get away with whatever they can. In addition, I am making great headway in defining the software systems that the company needs and we are ready to start building those new systems. And I think it goes without saying how good it feels to have a steady paycheck coming in.

But how about my friend whose loved one died from HD, that is all bad news, right? Nope. There is good news (in fact, The Good News) there as well. Just as with Janet, death is not the sad end of her loved one’s story either but is instead a release from the grip of a terrible disease.

Yes, in the midst of all the upset and the negatives there is much to be thankful for as well. But where does that leave me? Is life a song or paean of joy and triumphant celebration or it is rife with pain, disappointment and sadness? The answer is obviously, Yes! It is both, pain and paean, so regardless of how bleak things might appear at any one moment, there are always reasons for hope.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you can only see the darkness…

“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 light that you bring into the world – first at the moment of creation and second through Your coming to live in the world with us. But today I want to bless You especially for all the ways that You bring light into my life. So many times I feel like a puppet being pushed and pulled around by forces that I can’t comprehend or control. But despite those emotions, I can know that You have control of my strings and are directing and guiding my feet. Amen.”

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Rubicons, as Far as the Eye Can See

This post describes, my recovery from the loss of my wife to a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. She was healed of this condition when she went to live with our Heavenly Father at 2:30AM, the 10th of January 2021. You can read the announcement here.

Or if you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start with: How We Got Here…

Last Sunday, I shared that Frannie and I were getting packed up for a move up to Mineral Wells, Texas. This Sunday, we feel really blessed because the move went without a hitch – aside from the one I had to get mounted on our car. The movers arrived right on time and packed us up carefully and efficiently. They finished up around 3PM, so after Frannie and I packed a few things that we didn’t want to send with the movers (important papers, contents of the refrigerator, etc.), we got on the road ourselves about 6PM, towing a little 4×8 U-Haul trailer.

The drive was about six hours, so we arrived in our new home slightly after midnight. We were tired, but otherwise safe and sound. The next morning, we unloaded the trailer and while I went to return it, the movers arrived and started off-loading the truck. At one point I was concerned that we would run out of space in our new house before we ran out of boxes in the truck! But in the end everything worked out well and even the finances offered a nice surprise, as the cost of the move ended up being considerably under the company’s original estimate. In addition, U-Haul didn’t charge me extra, even though I kept the trailer an extra day.

In addition to unpacking, to be fully at home we need to come up with three appliances (washer, dryer, and refrigerator) and a couple pieces of living room furniture to replace items that we had to get rid of about a year ago to make room for Janet’s hospital bed.

In any case, the utilities are now in my name, and the cable is hooked up – though all we have is internet. I got a Roku unit about a year ago and really like it. If all I want to do is sit and watch documentaries about Blue Whales, they have a channel where I can do that. If I want to listen to music, I can do that too. It’s a neat service that doesn’t require me to buy cable TV with a bunch of channels that I don’t want – or find offensive.

Something else I have noticed since leaving our old apartment, is that rather than growing dimmer, my memories of Janet are, for now at least, growing stronger and more vivid. I well remember the rough texture of the gray wool coat that she wore the first time we met. The sound of certainty in her voice the morning after we first had “unprotected” sex: “That did it! I’m pregnant!” And she was! Her courage, sitting in front of a room full of 2nd year medical students and letting them watch her undergo a neurological examination. So many good memories!

So we are getting settled. And yes, God is definitely taking care of us…

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The title is a reference to the phrase “Crossing the Rubicon,” as it is used to describe a decision that implies a point of no return. The phrase itself was derived from the historical event where the Thirteenth Roman Legion under the command of Julius Caesar, in direct defiance of orders, crossed the Rubicon River which formed a portion of the northern border of Italy. As a result of this action, Julius Caesar became, well, Julius Caesar.

The interesting thing for me was that this crossing took place on January 10th, 49 BC, or to put it another way, exactly 2070 years to the day before Janet made her own “river crossing” (of the River Jordan). As I looked into this bit of historical synchronicity, I found some interesting sidelights that apply directly to being either a caregiver or someone who is being cared for.

To begin, you would think that the Rubicon would be one of Europe’s mightiest rivers – after all, an event this important should take place on a powerful, majestic river. But not so. Except for a short portion right at its mouth where it empties into the Adriatic Sea, the Rubicon is little more than a creek that Julius’ men could have crossed without getting much more than their caligae wet.

And so it is in our lives. We tend to think that big, momentous turning points should have big, momentous signs and markers. But the opposite is more often true. I know that in my own life, most of the major turning points are only clearly discernible in the rear view mirror – like a random thought drifting through my head that perhaps running an ad in a singles paper (sort of like Tinder, but hardcopy) might be a way to meet a nice lady to date. Or a snap decision in high school to take a creative writing class because it was supposed to be an “easy A” only to have it ignite a love of writing that has lasted 50+ years. Or sending in a postcard from an engineering magazine, to learn about a new programming language that would become my profession.

The lesson is that you never know how a small, even insignificant, change is going to impact your life. I certainly had no notion at the time of anything big afoot. And if you think about it, that means that we can (and often are) passing dozens of life’s turning points everyday without even realizing it. Which is sort of what I meant in the title. Every step we take is in essence wading through another personal Rubicon – and as with the real one that Julius tramped through, there is no getting halfway across and turning around.

The significance of water…

Passing through and over water is a very powerful image that has been used since time immemorial to symbolize rebirth and new beginnings. Which is really the point of baptism, whether Christian or the ancient Jewish rite that came before it. But wait, there’s more.

There were other images about water: Moses and the children of Israel passing through the Red Sea, Jonah passing through the sea in the belly of a “great fish”, Noah riding out a flood in a massive boat that he built. And these are just a few of the references in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

When you add to those examples, the use of similar rites by everyone from the ancient Sumarians to indigenous tribal groups in North and South America, and you begin to get the feeling that there is something “hardwired” in us as human beings that needs these sorts of observances.

The other thing to notice about crossing the Rubicon is that it wasn’t actually very hard to do. Perhaps that’s another important lesson. In addition to expecting big landmarks, and big portents of the future, we also expect big struggles. While there are numerous obvious exceptions, many times in the actual doing, they aren’t very difficult. To be sure, I have struggled about whether to take a step or not, but that is different from taking the step itself. In those cases, the big struggle wasn’t always against fear, but rather apathy. It is so easy to fall into justifications like, “What’s the point? Nothing will ever change.” Or the ever-popular, “What can just one person do?”

But I think that one of the big defining factors of Rubicon moments is the rules: either the rules we keep in those moments – or those we break. Here I’m considering the word “rules” to stretch far beyond formal laws and social mores to include things like personal commitments. It is the rules that put the teeth into decisions because regardless of whether you choose to keep or disregard a given rule, there will be repercussions. For example, while Julius Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon led to his becoming the absolute ruler of Rome, it also led to his death just five years later on the 15th of March, 44 BC.

In the same way, if I had done something different at any of my big Rubicon moments, my life would have been very different. But that fact highlights a problem: if looking back I see that I made the wrong choice, am I just stuck with the consequences? Thankfully, we are not, due to what I like to call anti-Rubicon opportunities – also called redemption. For instance, I have mentioned before that Janet was my third wife. I made two very bad decisions and crossed two “rivers” that I should not have. The damage done by divorce can be redeemed, but it is not something I could do on my own – it needed divine intervention. Although, there are still visible cracks, like Japanese Kintsugi, God can make my life’s cracks and broken spots beautiful, such as when you consider that my five (surviving) kids are all just brothers and sisters. The prefix “half” doesn’t exist in their vocabularies.

So if you have crossed some rivers that you should not have, take heart. The damage is redeemable.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when you made a really bad choice…

“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 perfection of Your plans and creation. But today I want to bless You especially for Your unlimited ability to redeem that which is indentured, repair that which is broken and find that which is lost. I feel so often like my life is an unmitigated mess, but bit by bit, piece by piece, You manage to miraculously reassemble the shards of my life into something beautiful. Thank you! Amen.”

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UNambiguous Loss

This post describes, my recovery from the loss of my wife to a degenerative neurological condition called Huntington’s Disease. She was healed of this condition when she went to live with our Heavenly Father at 2:30AM, the 10th of January 2021. You can read the announcement here.

Or if you would like to read our story from the beginning, you can start with: How We Got Here…

This week we are preparing for our move, and as you read this we are making our final preparations for the movers who, if everything goes as planned, will arrive bright and early tomorrow morning and start packing us. The movers estimate that it will take eight hours to get everything in the truck, so the day after, we will start our migration north.

Getting ready to move means going through a lot of old papers, especially in our garage. I have told you before that Janet was a school teacher. However, she was also something of a pack rat. In our garage we have boxes with her grade books from classes she taught 40 years or more ago. Likewise, there were boxes of canceled checks that were not only written on accounts that don’t exist anymore, but in some cases on banks that don’t exist anymore!

However, I also found other things… One such find was a note that she wrote sometime in August of 2019. I know that because in it, she refers to the shooting that took place on the 3rd of that month where a deranged man shot and killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso. I don’t know why she wrote it or who it was for as she never showed it to me. She was apparently worried that I would be “inspired” by his actions and go on a similar killing spree.

I well remember those times. She was constantly worried about anything and everything. It was then that I started having to censor the radio and TV programming. I also had to be very careful about what I said around her because there was no knowing what news item or bit of conversation she would pick up on and start obsessing over.

For example, if I came home from work upset about something trivial that happened at work, she would right away jump to the conclusion that I was about to get fired, and she would go on about it for days. Ironically, by the time I eventually did get fired (for not communicating well!) her condition had degenerated to the point that she only asked me a couple times if we had enough money, and that was about it.

Thankfully, I had been putting a bit of money aside and we had enough for two months, which I was able to stretch to three months. Still, God brought this job along just in time.

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Several months ago I wrote a post entitled Ambiguous Loss. As I wrote then, this sort of loss can take two forms, the most common of which is feeling you have lost someone when in some way they are still there. A typical example of this type of loss is when dementia turns your gentle, loving spouse into a harsh, judgmental stranger. Or when your bubbly, outgoing loved one starts becoming sullen and unresponsive.

UNambiguous Loss is the old-fashioned, familiar kind, where the bed is empty and you are now officially a widow, widower, or orphan.

(Which, by the way, makes me wonder why isn’t there a word for describing someone who has lost a sibling? We really should have one…)

Even when the loss is finally unambiguous, the ambiguity can nevertheless continue in other ways. For example, a few days ago I got a care package from Houston Hospice that included a couple of books on the topic of grieving. Unfortunately, the books were not written with the world of caregivers in mind. Reading them, you find that the books do spend a page or two talking about death after a “prolonged illness.” The problem is that as you read further, you see that they define “prolonged” in terms of weeks and months – not years or even decades. Not surprisingly then, these books were written assuming a timeline that proceeds something like this:

  1. Loved one becomes ill, injured, etc.
  2. Loved one dies.
  3. Grief starts.

To be fair, this plan works fine for the majority of deaths – like if Janet had been hit by a bus, or had suffered a sudden heart attack. But it falls apart when the illness takes years or decades to reach its solemn conclusion. The problem is that in the sort of scenario many caregivers face, the three steps are no longer discrete points in time delineated by sharp edges separating one step from the next.

Rather, the steps get smeared out in time like a rain drop running down a window, or a tear running down a cheek. As a result, the steps start overlapping, getting smeared together. Or to put it another way, each step becomes a process. Sometimes it felt as though all three were happening simultaneously.

To begin with, it is not at all clear when Janet became ill – or is that even the right way to formulate the question? Perhaps I should say it is not at all clear when Janet became symptomatic. Remember, HD is a genetic condition so there was never a time in her life when her genes weren’t messed up. But even determining the onset of symptoms can be fuzzy. Her jaw used to “pop” shut. She said she had TMJ (temporomandibular joint problems) but maybe it was the HD.

But surely death is an absolute, isn’t it? Well in one sense, yes. But in another, I’m not so sure. As I look back, I try to figure out when the Janet I knew started dying. For months, my vigil by her bed had not been about waiting for death, because she seemed to be drifting back and forth between two worlds: the one where we all live, and the one where she is now. So even the concept of death became indistinct and cloudy.

In the end, about all I do know for sure is that, for me, the grieving did certainly not start the 10th of January 2021. For me, and I suspect many others who are caring for loved ones that truly have “prolonged illnesses,” the grieving starts a long time before the person you love and are caring for stops breathing.

In fact, if you look at any list of symptoms of grief you will see that the list is largely indistinguishable from the normal everyday experience of being a long term caregiver. Depression? Check. Feelings of guilt? Check. Exhaustion? Loss of Control? Loneliness? Check, check and check again!

I guess the point here is that things we read can serve to set out expectations of what is right or normal during grieving. So what happens when someone who is already in a precarious state emotionally reads a book that models grieving in a way that is so very different from their own experience? I’ll tell you one thing that can happen: the feelings of guilt that were never very far away, jump out and, taking center stage, start yelling at you.

“See your wife is dead and you can’t even do that right! Man, you are a piece of work! There is nothing that you can’t mess up.”

Needless to say, those sorts of comments are a load of what my Dad used to put on his roses.

Beyond the guilt, the other big issue that has been making itself known is anxiety – especially the fear of being alone. It suddenly struck me today that things are getting more and more serious between Frannie and her boyfriend. His mom and aunt are calling her regularly on the phone and she has met most of his family – of course everybody loves her. So Frannie could be moving back to Houston in the next few months to get married. Which, to be clear, would be a good thing. I have always wanted Frannie to have a life of her own, but still…

So, day by day, the battle goes on and along the way I am learning a few things. For example, it is pretty clear to me that Frannie and I have a lot deeper understanding of love than we would have had otherwise. I remember once, a long time ago, telling Frannie while I was helping Janet get cleaned up after a pee accident, “Don’t even consider telling a young man ‘I love you’ unless you would be willing to do this for him.”

By George, I think she has been listening.

In Christ, Amen ☩

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A prayer for when your grief seems overwhelming…

“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 gifts of strength and wisdom that You give so richly to all Your children. But today I want to bless You especially for eyes and ears that are learning to work better and better. Many times when he was among us in the flesh, Jesus talked about needing eyes that can see and ears that can hear. The lessons are hard, but I am learning to develop both. Thank you. Amen.”