This, Too

While I’ve shared our family’s journey through Simon’s allergic reaction and serum sickness, there was an additional thing, an underlying stressor, that I didn’t publicize. My mother was hospitalized early in January. Because it was not my story to tell, I was silent about her decline. She had always wanted it that way and, frankly, our relationship has always been tumultuous. I felt that to honor her, I should give her the space she requested. And so, I stepped back, allowing her that autonomy, finding the small moments she was willing to share with me.

On Friday, her story here on earth came to an end. In the midst of her suffering and illness, I was there. I sang to her as she calmed and her breathing slowed, I held her hand as she slipped from this reality and into the presence of Jesus.

My heart has been walking a tightrope for weeks now, mincing between the heartbreak of my mother’s pain and my son’s, swinging from mother to estranged but concerned daughter, and back. Now, it feels, the tightrope itself has frayed.

I am weary. I have come to a place where I find friends looking at me strangely and realize it’s because I’ve lost my place in our conversation. I have cried over the tiniest of things— my favorite shoes being discontinued, accidentally resetting the internet while my daughter was teaching online. I have told other people’s 12 year-olds to “zip it” (seriously). I have forgotten who I was calling as the phone was ringing in my hand.

I am weary and I am mourning. The combination is almost paralyzing.

I never thought I was strong enough. Ever. I always knew that those things I can do? They are only through Christ.

Now I know it for sure.

This season is going to end. Simon saw a specialist today, and the news was promising. Barring unforeseen test results, we expect a resolution of his medical drama in the next few weeks.

But the loss of my mother? It will become a new normal, and I will find rhythm again. But the season of her absence will never really end.  I will never be the person I was before the fiery caldron of these past two months, before my mother died.

For now, while I’m still pressing blindly through the darkness of this hurt, I recognize that I am still standing in Jesus’ shadow, clinging to His promise that He is sovereign, that He is omnipotent, and that He will provide my daily portion of stamina. Not a month’s worth, or a week’s worth. Just a day. That’s enough. That’s enough.