The Worst Best Gifts
I looked through my draft folder and found one of my oldest unpublished posts. And guess what? It’s probably worth 3-4 posts with all the subjects I tried to include. Granted, when looking through all the gifts in life that come with a healthy dose of responsibility, the list can get pretty long. So, I grabbed the first few paragraphs to share a little part of myself and the way my mind and heart functions.
So, ignorance is bliss according to some. Of course, I can admit it would certainly be more blissful to die instantly in your sleep than to run in terror because you hear a missile screaming toward your bedroom. I guess that’s why so many choose to dwell in an almost-constant state of ignorance—because they desire an almost-constant state of bliss.
Then there are people like me. With gifts of empathy, perspective, and discernment, I’ve noticed many details of my surroundings (and been concerned about the world around me) since as young as I can remember. My aunt used to take me to the lunchroom at the old JC Penny’s where she worked. Though only about 5 years old, on one lunch visit, I offered to share my meal with an employee sitting across from us who wasn’t eating. I was too young to consider why he wasn’t eating, but I couldn’t help being concerned that he might be hungry, so sharing seemed the natural response to that.
For the most part, I have never been able to look at a perceived need in someone’s life without it affecting me emotionally. It’s why I’m desperate to try and fix things even when they’re not my responsibility. It’s a way to deal with the pain of the brokenness I see and feel around me—and within me because of my deep empathetic emotions. That is quite the opposite of ignorance, and it is often the opposite of bliss. It is so opposite that I once asked God to make me less sensitive, so I wouldn’t feel so much hurt, but God made me aware of the total cost for that request. It would require me to be less sensitive to good emotions as well. I chose to endure the pain of sensitivity in order to keep the blessings.
I’ve learned that sensitivity is one of God’s gifts to me, and I cherish it even when it makes me feel worse than I would like. I found a description of how I felt in an article originally published at Squidoo, now owned by Hub Pages. It’s still there and titled The Empath Within — Are You a Highly Sensitive Person? Though it hasn’t been updated since 2013 and has a lot more ads now, it’s a great read even though not written from a Christian perspective. And it cleared up so much of what concerned me that generated the prayer I’d offered. The best part is the list of traits shared by highly sensitive people. Here are a few of them:
The empathic person:
Is emotionally sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others.
Is rarely concerned with their own achievements, a quiet leader.Has little trouble discussing emotional issues.
Is uncomfortable around disharmonious or emotionally intense people.
It’s a long list, and if you think you may fall into this category, it’s worth reading all the characteristics. The author concludes with a warning to protect your emotions by being careful who you spend time with since some people can exhaust you from a constant stream of negativity. And that’s where the beautiful gift of empathy can begin to feel like it’s not a gift at all. Like Monk (“the defective detective”) used to say, “It’s a gift — and a curse.” I don’t say it’s a curse, but there are people who can drag me down to a point where I think it’s what I’m feeling until I manage to get away from the source and realize it was all coming from them. Thankfully though, there are also people who can lift me up and energize me just from a few minutes with them. God knows how to give us balance.
I’ll close with a note about one of the first books I made an effort to write from a short story I’d written. It was called “The Blind Man’s Desire” and it was about a girl who rode a city bus with a blind man every day. She told him she wished she was blind like him, so she wouldn’t have to see all the awful things in the world. By the time he explained all the good things he missed and wished he could see, she changed her desires and found a lot of good to describe for him to see through her eyes. I guess God was teaching me that lesson long before that prayer.
1 Peter 3:8 BSB
[8] Finally, all of you, be like-minded and sympathetic, love as brothers, be tenderhearted and humble.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1pe.3.8.BSB
Romans 12:15 BSB
[15] Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/rom.12.15.BSB
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All Aboard the New Year Train
What a ride this life can be sometimes, huh? Four years ago today, I was riding a train headed west to Arizona where I would spend my mother’s last 10 days on this earth. Until this time, I never knew how much the death of a parent could change a life. I don’t think I would’ve understood even if someone tried to explain. It’s one of those “you had to be there” experiences.
Still, I promised after I posted her picture and funeral flier back in 2015 that I would share the miraculous events of those last days. So, I am using this New Year’s Day to keep my old promise.
Mom called me with the news of her pancreatic cancer diagnosis on December 27th, 2014. She said the doctors told her it was an aggressive mass that gave her less than three months to live. I was ready to go into prayer battle, but she told me she was ready to meet Jesus and that she was okay. I accepted her answer and talked with my husband about going out there after my writer‘s meeting on the second Saturday of January. Something inside told me I needed to go sooner, though, and on December 31st, I signed on to Amtrak.com to see what was available. I found a ticket I could purchase with points I’d saved, and it was available the next day at 6:00 AM.
It’s almost a two-day ride from Chicago to Arizona, and in that time, I received phone calls from my mother’s doctors who complained that she was being aggressive since they removed her IV and asking me how I wanted to handle hospice plans. I got the doctor to agree to put her back on fluids so she could be lucid when I arrived. But the stress of broken connections and tasks I’d never performed gave me an upset stomach, A caring attendant did what she could to comfort me in my distress. Finally, I arrived to my old home town of Kingman where I would spend one night with my sister before we headed to Tucson to see our mom.
Fast forward a few days to Mom’s apartment, a hospice team, and helpful members of her church. Mom was still asking for a little food and some crushed ice, so I tried to give her all she desired. On Thursday January 8th, I set up a laptop to allow her to say goodbye to her family members in Kingman and my husband back in Indiana via a Google Hangouts video. By Saturday, she was eating less and sleeping more, and I was sleeping far less but using my time to sing to my mom with all the love I could find inside my heart. It was a battle because of an abusive childhood and trouble in our lives up to that point, but that’s another story for a different post. It’s important for my readers to know there was a PTSD-worthy history involved, though.
On Sunday the 11th, I got a sitter and decided I needed a little break to attend my mom’s church. It’s always awkward for me to figure out where to sit when I visit new churches, but this time, I would soon see how much God was in control. A woman who sat in front of me stood to tell the church of her pain about her husband’s recent death. That was an open door for me to invite her when I invited the rest of the church to walk over to my mother’s house and bid her farewell. Janet, accepted the invitation.
Now, most of the church members had been in to see her, so I brought Janet in to introduce her. While we waited for a few others to pray, Janet grabbed me and said she needed me outside right away. Remember, I had never met this woman before that morning in church. And, it turns out, it was only her second visit to the church, so she had never met my mother. She got me outside and asked if there were spiritual and mental battles between me and my mom. Once I explained, she said she knew why we had the rocky relationship we did. In a nutshell, she informed me she didn’t want to scare me but wanted me to know she saw something demonic hovering around my mother and oppressing her. She immediately gave me a prayer to pray over my mom. We prayed it together and with a neighbor friend, and when we went back inside, there was a noticeable change in the atmosphere.
In the next two days, Janet interceded for my mother and counseled both her and me to take our authority as children of The Almighty God. We stood in prayer against the evil that had likely oppressed her for most of her life, and we received both deliverance and peace. My mother was still dying, but everything was different. She was so comfortable that it amazed even her hospice attendants. They said she should have been more miserable and in far more pain even with the high doses of painkillers they had given her to prepare her for death.
In my times alone with my mom, my singing to her seemed clearer and more melodic than I had ever heard my voice. In addition, some pleasant memories from childhood days returned to my thoughts when before I had only remembered the troublesome times. To me, it was evident God put this woman into that church, and at that specific time, especially for my mother and me. God used her as a blessing in both spiritual and emotional ways. Next, I would see He put her there to be a physical blessing, too.
Soon after meeting her, I found out Janet was a retired RN. She volunteered to drop most everything at her own home to stay and help me care for my mother. That was an answer to my mother’s prayer that her children would never need to bathe her or change her diapers. Janet took care of the “gross” things, like suppositories, and she stayed as my helper right up to my mother’s last breath. And that leads me to my conclusion for this part of the story.
Members of my mom’s church stopped by to visit my mom and let me rest for a few hours here and there. Janet took the last shift on Monday night. She told me she would wake me if my mother needed me. I dreaded the thought of seeing her struggle for her last breath, but Janet did not know that. Still, she woke me right after her final moment on this earth, and I did not have to witness that battle. Her death rattle was silenced, but my mother was still warm, so I knew Janet woke me just in time. And because of all the changes in my spirit, I received the blessing of grieving my mother and our good times instead of beating myself up over so many past days taunting me with the fact I could never change them. When put into the hands of The Almighty, even the old can change and be made new.
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