My mom has one of those diseases.
You know the ones. Those that when you see it in someone else, it makes you go, “I don’t ever want to be that person.”
The ones that cause pity to boil up from the little-thought-about depths of our humanity.
Some days I cannot believe this is our life. Her life.
My mother, who spent our entire childhoods oversharing, cannot talk. She is fed by a tube. She has no use of her right hand and painfully little use of the left.
Communicating is a grueling process of pointing at letters on a laminated printout of the alphabet. I say I want to get a high priced, eye gaze technology communication device for her, but the paperwork sits unattended.
There are always a million plates spinning.
*****************
I often don’t like reality.
I prefer hope.
*****************
I want to believe that if I find the right vitamins and do the right therapies and hire the right people my parents might get better.
Everyone looks at me like I am nuts, and I am beginning to think they are right.
******************
Lord, I really want to live a life that honors YOU, but I admit I also want a bit of the miraculous to spill onto my mundane.
There is so. much. mundane.
*******************
In the span of ten days, as I am trying to create a thriving routine for both my special needs daughter and my special needs parents, people have had car problems, kidney problems, the stomach flu, tooth aches, seizures, electrical problems, allergies and an impending snow storm.
I need to take a moment and say, “Back off, Satan. You are not welcome here. You will not reign. YOU DO NOT WIN.”
The enemy of my soul desires my destruction and if he cannot have my destruction he will take my discouragement.
He cannot have it.
*******************
I start again tomorrow. Praying for progress and peace.
Searching for beauty. Trying to grow. Making things I can control better while accepting the things I cannot control might very well get worse.