Caregiving -Release of Rational Expectations

My attitude was changing. Similar to what I’d experienced on the way into town with my granddaughter when the court first called me to reestablish contact with my mother, feelings of déjà vu and the slippery slope of fear and weakness came still revisited me from time to time, but were mostly routed quickly with prayer.

            Another gift of grace came from the realization that each time those fears rose my emotions were weak and my mother’s responses did not meet my expectations seemingly no matter what I tried or how I prayed. I shared my feelings with a friend by whining, offering her I-said, she-said examples. But she cut me off.

            “Maybe you need to stop expecting rational responses from an irrational personality.” Moments like that call for immediate heart prayer and my thoughts raced. God, is that what I am doing? Am I thinking I can choreograph her responses if I am calm and prayerful and praying to be a willing serva

            I brought out Brother Andrew’s little booklet again. I’d recently read Practicing the Presence of God and spent time in prayer asking how I could apply the practice to my situation. It did not matter to me by this time that people looked at me strangely when I spoke aloud to God as I literally practiced His presence. Don’t worry—I wasn’t hearing voices but felt God-impressed statements, directions and cautions inside me. Sometimes these came after reading the Bible portion of the day, and I would feel convicted or encouraged to do something or, as in this case, to stop doing something. Other times I’ve felt a stirring inside to call, write, or help someone in some way. Some might call it an intuition or a thought. When the feeling or thought matches with a scriptural virtue or command, I believe it is the Holy Spirit guiding me.

            I realized just as I sometimes pre-planned a conversation with my husband or a close friend and could pretty well know how each would respond because I knew them so well, (and because they are rational people), I was expecting the same from my mother. I had to accept that whether she wouldn’t or couldn’t meet my expectations of a rational response didn’t matter. I had to let go of the expectation and let her come to discovery on her own if and when God healed her mind and emotions.

            Her issues, I realized, are not really about me – they are about her so there is no reason to get angry about what she says or does because she is reacting to her own issues.  She still attempted to use her anger and distress to threaten and control me.  Once I told her I’d committed everything in my life, including her and any actions by her, to God and thus she could no longer hurt me, her reaction (fury followed by depression) was stunning. She knew she was powerless.

I found through God’s power, I could detach myself from the attempted personal attacks and objectively analyze what was driving her and what she hoped to accomplish.  I could sit back and watch her performance (for without the power to hurt me that is all it became) and remind myself I no longer had to be her victim, and I began to feel pity that she was trapped in all that anger and hatred.

            God was changing me through this journey. That’s what God’s plan was you know. I’d learned that on several short-term mission trips when He showed me that His greater concern was not the so-called success of my part in the mission but to change me through the exercise in trust and patience. Only when others saw God working would they be drawn to the possibility that God could work in their situations too.

Today I will: Focus on what I have and on what is done rather than what is yet to do.