Looking Through Glass Darkly

May 11, 2014 Mom and Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary

This week was all about grace.  My future self doesn’t get hung up on setbacks like going off plan and eating too much.  She just offers herself grace, doesn’t make a big deal and moves on.  That’s what I had to practice several times this week.  The old me struggled but my future-self won the battle because, well...  here I am. If there's one thing I've learned it is that the best thing to do when you’re an emotional stress eater is to talk about what’s bothering you. So here it goes.

Lately it seems mom is having more and more bad days. It’s a horrible feeling living 754 miles away and there’s nothing you can do.  I know my sisters, who live right there, share in the same feelings of helplessness and guilt. Lots of guilt. When you’re raised Catholic, guilt is ingrained into your DNA. But I feel so separated and far and unable to truly help us get through the emotional difficulty of it all.

Two years ago, mom went to live in a nursing home.  We’ve watched her body slowly decline and betray her in every way possible. Mom has a rare disease that only 20,000 people in the entire country have. Progressive Supranuclear Palsy is a rare brain disorder that’s a form of Parkinson’s.  It has a similar effect on your body as ALS.  Your body just slowly stops working.  You become completely paralyzed.  Communication becomes increasingly difficult; you suffer from depression and eventually it becomes difficult to even hold your eyelids open.  Mom is in the midst of it.

This week I discovered this is the same disease Robin Williams was diagnosed with shortly before taking his own life.  Now I understand why. In the spirit of complete transparency, I was googling the disease to find out if it was hereditary.  It is not. Praise God.

Watching a loved one suffer so intensely causes us to ask why.  Growing old is often cruel. Lately I’ve been struggling with this.  I hold onto the words of Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:12 when he says, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

I've resolved the fact that I will never know why while living on this earth, but I must have faith that someday it will all be made clear. I choose to believe it so. Pastor Jonathan Riddle says God allows suffering to draw us closer to Him. Jonathan's words helped me when talking to mom when she asked me why God is allowing this to happen to her. But in all honestly, this week my earthly mind struggled and my faith tested.

I found an email Pastor Jonathan sent to me after my last trip there. I’ve read and re-read this paragraph every day this week. I hope these words may also bless you with whatever burdens you are struggling to understand.

“For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies…That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So, we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:6-10, 16-18”

Amen