Category Archives: Alzheimer’s
The Mystery of Prayer
Sunday’s sermon was on prayer and I find that my experiences bring me to a slightly different, but possibly important slant on it. My friend, Montez, pointed out that we have a two way relationship with God that is the basis of everything else. A relationship with God is the heart of the matter. And that relationship is expressed, fleshed out in our relationships with others. Prayer is an important aspect of caring about others.
We can’t really understand God, so our relationship with God is always going to be something of a puzzle. (If we understood God, we would be equal to God and the story of Adam and Eve points out the very human, but treacherous path that takes us on. ) Let’s face it, whether we live in a small cave in a world hard to explore on foot or in a world of trips to the moon and other planets, we are still teeny tiny vulnerable limited beings in a immense and scary universe. Our very understandable human desire for power, whether it comes from the illusion of power through knowledge, riches, weapons of destruction, or even our sense of a relationship with the creator of it all, it is to some extent an illusion. Our relationship with God is a dialogue that’s about growing in our ability to love unconditionally. It’s NOT about power.
My experience has been that a simple openness to something far greater than anything we are or know can be life changing. Unfortunately we are naturally limited in our understanding, so once we become aware of the size and power of whatever it is, the temptation is to use it for our own agendas. So it can be a temptation to turn prayer into an illusion of power.
Over and over Jesus turned to prayer for refueling, for understanding, for empowerment to both teach and heal and feed others. Prayer was his WAY of keeping his relationship with God open for understanding, strength, and the gifts of the Spirit, but MOSTLY it kept him aware of his dependence on God. In the end, he was powerless, totally dependent on his faith in the Love of God.
My experiences of both the power and the lessons of prayer have varied in extremes.
Once at a Catholic Charismatic Conference I witnessed the shorter leg of a young woman friend respond immediately to prayer with instant growth. She had to take her built up shoe off and go barefoot that weekend! Ten years later she was still able to wear flip flops and tennis shoes.
Yet, I watched my mother die by inches with Alzheimer’s for fourteen years.
A forty-year-old woman friend, who had not been raised in any religion, was in intensive care on a respirator in the hospital. She had a diagnosis of incurable idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and was told she would never again be able to breathe off a respirator. She wanted to be unplugged, but a woman stopped to talk to her in the ICU one night and told her to simply give herself to the God of Jesus and trust his Love.. She did this. Three days later she was permanently off the respirator. She became a beautiful witness to the Love of God that was fleshed out in Jesus for all. But she continued to have all sorts of other health crises, even losing a leg. After about ten years she was polishing the candle holders and praying in her Episcopal church and was finally freed to forgive her father, who had been so awful that she had actually been happy that he died in a fire. Shortly after this she had a heart attack and was freed from her earthly struggles.
God is simply beyond anyone’s understanding. So, prayer is also.
I have had many prayers answered so quickly that it was beyond doubting a connection. But also, plenty that seem to fall on deaf ears. This isn’t heaven. And though when we are suffering it seems like eternity, it isn’t even a blip in eternity. My youngest son was seriously ill from a heart defect his first four years, running temperatures that were beyond the thermometer. Every time he had to have a shot; it took three adults to hold him down. I’m sure that few minutes seemed like an eternity to him, because it did to me. At four years of age, he finally was healed without any medical repair. Through the whole four years I had many Christians of many denominations praying with me for him. (Note: Obviously as a child he was not being punished for anything).
My guess is that healings are so we will know that when God or medicine does NOT heal us, that it’s a part of our journey to a new level of faith and capacity for loving God and all others unconditionally.
Many Europeans seem to have given up on God. Most of the small churches have been turned into cafes or theaters. The crowds in Cathedrals are tourists. We in America have not had widespread bombing blitzes, fire-bombs, or nuclear destruction of our homes and cities. When in Holland my brother asked the tour leader if people in Holland thought we were now facing the end times. She said, “We thought it was the end times when we were eating our tulip bulbs to survive.”
Here in the USA, we don’t really realize how spoiled we are. We think it’s the end of the world when groceries cost too much, Hurricanes increase, and Covid makes us reclusive.
If it’s the end of our world, it’s because we killed it, not because Jesus is coming. Though I am seeing what seems to be some seeds of a renewal of faith in our country, as a History major, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the rapture.
Contrary to what Americans still seem to expect, this life is not heaven. As I’ve said before it seems to me to be a school for growing from need to the capacity for unconditional love……like the life journey of Jesus. And obviously we haven’t gotten there yet.
But I could be wrong, since I’m only 87 and God isn’t finished with me yet.
Finding the Gold in the Golden Years
Whatever time is left
Use it up
Wear it down
Regardless how thin
The fabric becomes
It is rich with the sounds
Of laughter
Salty with tears and
Friends.
(From the poem Time on the blog: poetry, photos, and musings, oh my – by lea)
Six years ago, my ninety-one year old friend Barbara, who was on a walker from a painful hip surgery, expressed her despair from feeling useless. But as we shared lattes with a friend in her mid sixties, who had slow growing cancer, we laughingly imagined walkers for us like baby walkers with crinoline skirts to hide them, and small secret Porta-Potties built in. Then, in the parking lot as we attempted to help Barbara into the van, somehow she got stuck bent over half way in. We tried to gently boost her backside without hurting her hip, until the giggles overtook us. Frozen in place, the three of us laughed helplessly, humor overcoming even our fears of age weakened bladders. When I called Barbara the next morning to make sure she hadn’t been hurt, she started laughing all over again, insisting she had been laughing all morning just thinking about it, and even wished we had a photograph.
The next day, I visited my friend with dementia in a nursing home in Nashville. She had once again dreamed of her parents’ death as a present day event and had awakened overwhelmed by loss and frantic about funeral arrangements. Each time she grieved anew, I could only hold her hand and ache for her endless losses. But later, seeing the wonder in her eyes, when she listened to me telling one of the caregivers about her courage and faith and her kindness to so many in her life, I recognized a moment of grace even in the now worn fabric of our lives.
The following day, my alarm went off three hours too early and I had the coffee made before I finally noticed the actual time. Later, I realized on my first stop of the day, that I had my coat on inside out. That night at a my sister-in-law’s eightieth birthday celebration in an upscale restaurant, I somehow managed on my second trip to the bathroom, to go into the men’s room. Then when leaving, I couldn’t find my coat check number in my tiny purse. Since I don’t drink, I couldn’t even blame it on something temporary. At least it’s fodder for a blog post.
The Gold in the Golden Years are our friendships and shared memories, but perhaps most of all, the freedom to laugh at ourselves. Laughter is carbonated grace.
Wishing all of you a joyous Christmas season filled with laughter. Eileen
These Three Things Remain: Humor, Music, and Faith
The mind is a mystery. My mother had Alzheimer’s before we knew what it was. Three things seem to out last memory and logic: humor, music, and faith.
When mom was living with us, one day when I was stressed out doing bookkeeping at the kitchen counter, she insisted on starting dinner. So, finally I put a large pot of water on for corn on the cob and a small pot of water for one package of frozen broccoli and told her to just put them in when the water came to a boil. She called me over later saying, “Something’s wrong, this doesn’t look right.” She had put the corn in the small pot where it was now dry and burning and the broccoli was in free float in the huge pot of water. My response was not kind or spiritual. I shook my head in despair and exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” Quick as a flash, she responded, “Call on someone you know!”
Some years after her death, I was leading devotionals at a nursing home. I kept wondering as I spoke, whether I should call a nurse to check pulses, since most of my “listeners” seemed comatose. But when we started singing the old hymns, they all came to life and knew every word of every hymn.
It may be music or it could be faith. Because one of my favorite nursing home stories is about an elderly woman whose memory was failing. A caregiver was helping her get into her nightgown, when the woman asked her, “What is my name? I seem to have forgotten who I am.” Before the caregiver could reply, the woman smiled and pointed to a picture of Jesus on the wall, and said, “Never mind, he knows who I am and that’s all that matters.”
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 