A conversation with an old friend

A few nights ago I received a phone call from a friend I grew up and knew from church, Tim Chase. Our families have known each other for years. He lives in Minnesota with his family, he settled there after college. Tim is a high quality Guy and the type of person people don't forget. He is the type of guy everyone likes and Tim probably carry on a conversation with anyone, he is insanely personable and down to earth.

We were catching up and he asked about my mom. I told him she was not doing well and he started telling me about his aunt who happens to be a mean woman who has not done much good in the world and in life. Yet someone like her will have no health issues and my mother who is a wonderful person and has done so much good is plagued by health issues. He began to ask why and wonder and I am sure it was done in such a way to comfort me but it didn’t. I took his question literally and began to answer him with something along the lines of it most likely has something to do with God’s plan to grow us and in some ways we will never know why.

Over the last few days I have been thinking about that conversation as it comes back to me. While jogging on Saturday I began to wonder how God has worked in my life and the person I am in many ways goes back to my mother and growing up with her experiencing various illnesses and health concerns. I can see how it has developed certain characteristics that I may not have had or been developed in me if it were not for my mother having illness and me growing up with the experience of a parent with several health issues.

I can see how I have become a more sensitive person and also someone who likes to learn and educate myself. In learning to detect when my mother is not doing well, sensitivity to perceptions, speech, how one thinks & acts has been developed. I also developed a way of creating emotional distance between me and other people so I can help them without getting emotionally attached. I have been an overly sensitive person, so tender I would not attempt to get involved with people or issues so I can see how these tools are something I may not have learned if God left me as a sensitive person. I can think of a few different examples where these have come in handy for helping others & ministering to people.

As I sat in Church tonight I began to think about my relationship with God. Many of times I have felt close to God were the years of turmoil and struggling with my mother’s illness. I have always felt there are few people who understand mental illness, fewer still who understand what it is like to grow up in a home with a mentally ill parent and fewer still who attempt to understand my experience and what I have gone through. I have never felt alone as I knew I could always talk to God about what was going on. I always felt that if anyone understood, would listen and care it would be God.

While thinking about these things this weekend my mother had a fall & with low blood pressure was taken to the hospital. I drove out to visit her after Church and was admiring the design of the hospital while finding her room & wandering around the lobby & first floor. There have been major renovations to the building over the last few years and I have not been inside to see the changes. The building use to look like an office building from the 70’s with no color or decorations. It has been redone with flooring that has a resemblance to marble, it is decorated with sculptures & bright colored paintings, and the elevators look state of the art. I realized I would rather stay in this hospital than a nice resort hotel as this place looks just as nice as a modern & upscale resort.

While riding the elevator up to her room I began to think that maybe part my focus is off kilter. What if I am like this hospital building? What if I am being made into a work of beauty? Maybe the experience of having an ill family member is it gives me the opportunity to strive for a level of selfless humanity that I would not normally care or reach without this experience. Maybe my mom isn't sick so I will be depressed, have pity parties, and constantly say woe is me or “Why God Why?”. Maybe she is sick so I learn to drop everything I am doing and get her to hospital when she needs it, or when she is not well stepping up to do her taxes when she cannot, or spending an evening cleaning her house while she is out. Maybe it is about growth and many other things I will not see for maybe know for certain.

As I walked into my mother's room to visit her I realized I may never know why she is sick and struggles with illness and I am okay with not knowing. One thing I do know is God, I have a relationship with him, and he is somehow using this experience to make me into something beautiful that gives him glory. At the end of the day that is all that really matters.