healing

I'm reading a great book right now about how to flourish.  Face it, I'm in mid-life and I guess this is my response to examining my life.  It prompted me to think about my mom and her disease.  What if this disease is a means to  bring healing?  When I worked in hospice, we were taught that there are many aspects of healing, not just the body.  But when we had a patient who was dying, there could still be healing, in terms of relationships, spiritual healing, etc.

When I think about my mother, one of the things that comes to mind is that she has an inferiority complex.  For as long as I can remember, she has been trying to find significance.  When she was younger, it was through her looks.  She has always been a very attractive woman, blond, blue-eyed with a good figure.  And she has the typical extrovert personality  She looked like Shirley Jones when she was younger.  I remember as a teenager her many stories of all the boyfriends she had in high school.  And as with so many teens, all I could think of was how I was not going to live up to that reputation.  Since I was mousy brown-haired and just plain skinny as well as shy, I was pretty much the opposite of her.  Then as she got older, it was her intellect that was the source of her achievements and significance.  She went back to college in middle age and got her bachelors and master's degrees.  She taught my brothers and I how to have intellectual debates.  In fact, I'm sure that is how my brother got to be a championship debater, the practice we had at home.  And finally toward the end of her working years, her significance was found in her job.  And that is pretty much where it has stayed for the past 15 years since she retired.

But what if the stripping away of all the externals that happens with dementia can be a source of healing for her?  The Bible tells us we are to come to God as a little child.  Well that is certainly how this illness can progress.  What if instead of fighting against the illness, I can work through it to help her achieve that sense of acceptance and significance she has been searching for her whole life?  Not that I'm not still going to fight for medicine to slow the progression.  But I do believe God has a plan for everyone and in every life.  And if I can search for the good in this, then that is what I should do.  Now I just pray for the wisdom to know how to do it.