Underground

...this reflection is from the Church of Our Saviour Youth Community's Weekly Update, I write a reflection each week for our community, a sweet friend thought it may be smart for me to publish them here.  Smart friends, it's good to keep them around...


Two weeks ago on my time off  I took a day to plant late spring and summer bulbs and bushes in our front yard. I wrote a few weeks ago about how I never got around to my grand plan of white tulips, well this was my second chance.  I spent an entire day with my hands deep in soil and my knees against the cold earth.

I learned quickly that a bulb planter is the best gardening tool invented and why people who garden are, no joke, amazing.  After pruning back unruly bushes, turning up the soil, and planing close to 100 bulbs and bushes I stood back to admire my work.  It looked like one big bare front garden.  

Then it started to rain.

Thankfully it has been raining steadily for the past two weeks so I know those deep planted beauties are being fed but my front yard still looks bleak.  I know that there is something happening beneath the surface but I can't see it, I know that soon there will be peony bushes and colorful flowers and green leaves but at the moment  it's all dirt.  Wet dirt.  

Does your life ever feel like my front yard?  You know that something is growing but you just can't see it popping above the surface.  The rain keeps coming, the storms blow through, and you know God is preparing something beautiful but it hasn't broken ground yet and you are left with nothing but the hope that the good thing is on it's way?

My plants are growing but for now it is all happening below the surface, beneath the soil, where only God can see.  God knows our hearts and sees the good things that are growing in us even before they become visible. 

These rains and storms we endure can be used to grow good things.  God can take even the worst that we walk through and transform it into something beautiful in us.  

 

Here it is.

I've been referring to the 'big bad news' for a while now and it just feels like it's time to write it.  To see it here.  To have it in words that I can read again.  I think I may have had to wait until the tomb was empty again.  Till I heard the Gospel read from the lips of a dear friend as my community surrounded me.  To remember the joy that Mary Magdalene felt when she realized that Jesus' body was not stolen but that he was standing before her.  I needed Easter for this.

My mom has Alzheimer's.   

She was diagnosed July 17th.

I have known in my heart for the past four years.  I've been losing her little bits at a time.  I held deep hope that there was another explanation, that there was a fix, a cure, a hope.  My mom has been blessed with the most amazing friends that have taken me in as a child of their own.

My Aunty Mary Alice actually called to tell me the news.

Can you imagine?  Calling your friend's child to share their single parent's diagnosis of a terminal illness when they live across the country.  That women gets all the gold stars and glasses of wine and bonus points there are.

Since July I have been everywhere.  I have cried every single day for weeks straight in the shower.  I have hidden from the reality of it in workouts and chocolate cake.  I have what-if'd and researched and banned myself from research and started the cycle all over again.

I have a large family but the reality of my childhood was that there were lots of people but my life was made up of my grandmother and mom.  They were my world, my memories, my family.  Grandma died in 2006.  I held my breath for all of high school and college awaiting her death, I had a slight break and now I'm back at it again, awaiting the loss of another parent.  But this time the loss happens differently.

I am already losing her.

There is no one left who holds the memories of my childhood.  There is no one left to tell my story to me.

When families gather and reminisce and remember the things you have forgotten you hate it and love it all at the same time.

I am realizing that what is forgotten is just that... forgotten.

Writing has always been my safe place, my therapy, my little world.

I am realizing it is now my memory box.  Each day I pray that I don't one day have to share this diagnosis with my own children but I don't know what lies ahead for me.  I do know that the memories matter.  The stories of our lives mean something.  I also know that this journey I am walking with my mom will change all of us.  I need to write about it, I need to also write down the stories of our kids and lives and keep them somewhere.  I need a place to put all that is inside of me.  There are at least 25 half written blog posts that have something that references my mom's disease so I haven't posted them.  Most 30 year olds don't have a mom with Alzheimer's but some do.  My children will not know my mom as I thought they would, but we are going to need to figure out how this looks for us.  We are going to have to pick up and live our new normal.

The real shit part is, we know what the end looks like.

The comforting and also shitty part is that we are not alone.  This disease is everywhere.

We have to make our way.

The one big rule we have as a family is to be honest and kind.  That also means being loving and vulnerable.  A part of me wants to hide my mom's disease.  I know that she does, too.  I am a little bit scared to write about it because I am outing her as well as me.  It's our disease.  I know lots of things will always be changing but being kind and honest are non-negotiables for us so I'm laying it all out.  WWBBD?  What Would Brené Brown Do?

So here we are.  Amazing things happening, hard things happening, this is being alive, I suppose.  The past nine month I have had the same hymn stuck in my head... It's God's annoying way of being present with me.  I would have preferred a mom without a terminal illness.

Blessed Assurance ...

1. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
2. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
3. Heir of salvation, purchase of God 
4. Born of His Spirit, Washed in His blood.
5. • This is my story, this is my song,
     Praising my Savior all the day long;
     This is my story, this is my song,
     Praising my Savior all the day long.
6. Perfect submission, perfect delight,
   Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
   Angels, descending, bring from above
   Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
7. Perfect submission, all is at rest,
   I in my Savior am happy and blest,
   Watching and waiting, looking above,
   Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.