My mom said as she has read my blogs about my twins’ birth and the challenges we faced over those first few months, she feels like she is reading a book for the second time. She lived it right along with us the first time. And that first time through was touch and go in so many ways. At least the second time through she knows there will be a happy ending.
Prior to me being discharged from the hospital after my twins were born my mom and nana had come to visit me and see my boys. They said goodbye as they left. A few hours later my mom was back in my room. She said my nana had collapsed in the hospital parking lot and they had spent the day downstairs in the ER. They discovered my nana had some major problems with her heart.
As I settled at home with my newborn twins, my mom came over every day to help us. She would hold babies, wash bottles, do laundry – lots and lots of laundry, and she was there for moral support.
About a month after the boys came home and two days after celebrating Mother’s Day, my nana went in for a quadruple bypass and valve replacement surgery. She was just shy of 89 years old but she was generally very strong and healthy. Of course my mom was there with her.
And then, as I described last week in Teetering on the Edge, one of my boys spiked a fever and a whole new family crisis ensued. I honestly don’t even recall who called her or how we let my mom know. She had her elderly mother in one hospital and her 7-week old grandson in another, about two hours away. And yet, somehow, there she was in our hospital room that week.
As I have been reflecting on some of these stories I have been thinking a lot about my mom in that season. I recently completed a Bible study that had us imagining a great big beautiful climbing tree in our yard. We were not alone on that climbing adventure. We could reach up to those above us for encouragement and support. They had been in our shoes. We could reach down to support those coming up behind us. We could help them learn from our experience.
As I read about that tree, it reminded me of my mom in this season. She was the climber in the middle. Only the person above her, my nana, and the person below her, me, both needed her. She was there in the middle trying to keep both of us stable on our respective branches. But who was helping her? I know my dad was watching over her and my brothers and their families were of course checking in on her and my nana. But I can’t fathom emotionally how she was holding it all together.
Sadly, I had no real understanding or appreciation until much later (and even more so now as I recount these stories) of what my mom was experiencing at that time. I was blinded by my own needs and the uncertainty of my own situation. It sounds so shallow and uncaring as I tell it. But giving myself some grace, isn’t that true of most of us? We get our blinders on and we can barely see the path in front of us, let alone recognize that others are on their own course fraught with their own obstacles.
The message in all this? We have no idea what other people are dealing with. I can only see through my own two eyes what’s in front of me. But I need to use my ears to listen, and my heart to feel the impressions of the Holy Spirit to better be aware of my surroundings; to better appreciate that people I encounter daily have true needs. They could use an encouraging word. We can offer to lift them up in prayer. We need to take off our blinders and look up. We need to look to the Creator of heaven and earth. What has He called us to do? To whom has He called us to reach out?
Imagine yourself in that big climbing tree in your yard. Do you see that hand above you reaching down? Grab a hold of it. Let someone help.
Do you hear the cry of the person on the branch below? Reach down. Lend a hand. Help point out the strong branches of the tree where that person can feel safe.
Life can be hard. Circumstances can overwhelm us. But we are not meant to do this adventure alone. Be aware of the world around you. Listen for those crying out to you. See the open arms of Jesus up ahead.
Give yourself and others grace as He gives us grace.
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