What has happened to me this semester? Where did I see God, where did I meet God? These questions come to mind as I reflect on what transpired this semester.
I have found I am capable of things I never imagined myself doing. Who would think I would be standing in the middle of a room, a very upscale room, helping a dying seventy-seven year old man get up from his bed and then hold a container so he could pee in it because he couldn’t walk the five feet to the bathroom? This happened at 5 AM and I had just met the man and his wife at midnight.
Who would imagine I would stay with this man and his wife for 10 and a half hours? Who would imagine I would have a discussion with his wife the next morning, leave their house, go to my house, shower and then sit in my favorite recliner to take, I thought, a well deserved nap: and find God? I mean really find him, for me to do this!
That morning his wife asked me why do we grow old. My answer was we had to go back to the Garden of Eden for the answer. We screwed up. We offended God. Then, God loved us, his creation, so much he sent his Son to fix this wrong against him. God loved each of his created beings just as we love each of our children. That has been an easy thing for me to grasp, intellectually, not emotionally.
Instead of my nap, I sat in that recliner stroking a cat, ready for my nap and started thinking of the events of the previous 10 and a half hours, especially my conversation with his wife and my response. Then I started crying because, at that moment, I understood God’s love for me, emotionally.
The me was the most important part. Now, no matter what I do, I know that he still loves me. Oh, I still have to confess and do penance, but he still loves me. That was a revelation to me. In fact I cried for about a half hour because I just couldn’t get over that revelation, that understanding, that embracing love. I felt it!
I have been in the poorest of the poor places, not much on the material scorecard.
I see, I saw, love there. I see happiness. I se a family held together by a mother dying of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). Yet, without her I truly believe they will split. She is the glue. She is giving up Christmas because her daughter has no money for presents for her children. So, grandma is providing because mama can’t. She welcomes all into her house and they become hers. No conditions, no questions! She is Christ to her family and their friends. She doesn’t condemn. She doesn’t harp. She just accepts and loves. I should be like her!
I see the giving of self. I have seen married couples, of 58 years, one spouse dying of Alzheimer’s and the other dying of cirrhosis of the liver. Both healthy spouses said the same thing in the same week and they are separated by different cities. “I signed up for better or worse and this is just the worse part." This said very matter of factly - it is just what they do (and they would disappoint themselves if they didn’t do it). Not doing it was never entertained. That is sacramental love. One spouse is the channel of grace for the other.
I see the smile and gratitude of an 84 year old man. I gave him an hour without thinking of his very ill wife, a wife who doesn’t even know her husband of 58 years any more. “This is a real treat,” those words after a half hour of looking at some topographic maps of his boyhood home and neighborhood. And it cost me nothing except a little time and gave him so much, memories of a different time and place.
I went into this semester with great apprehension: can I do this? Can I be around dying people (2 of them died in the first month and I had gotten to know them and became a friend as did they to me).
One of the things I learned this semester in Spiritual Direction was how to bring the Holy Spirit into my everyday situations. This has long been a quest of mine - to get God into my life, really, to ask him for help when things are about to happen, not later and say, “I really missed an opportunity there to ask for help.”
He has gotten me through all of the things I was worried I couldn’t do. St. Faustina was right in telling us what the Lord says and wants: “Trust in me.” Now I do! Now I will, more than ever!
I got more than I gave. Thanks be to God!
