Disjointed

My life feels disjointed right now.  Not chaotic, but disjointed.

My husband is still gone.  We keep praying for him.  In a relationship sense, we've made steps closer... but not heart level steps.  Not what my heart longs for - assurance that he's changing.  Just steps to coexist smoother.  I learn to set it down.  God will work in him when he and God are ready.  It's not my burden.  So I love and wait.

I'm breathing a little easier now with the introduction of steroids to my inhaling regime.  So thankful for that.

Kid's lives are busy.  I've got a room remodel I'm doing for a birthday gift for my daughter.  We have a party coming up in two days and a bunch of giggly girls excited about it. I bought three more chickens for my coop and am hoping for eggs next week.  I butchered my ducks.  Ducks are just too messy and noisy.

I'm learning to live with a new type of sadness.  I've worked in dementia care for years and am used to death and dying.  But now, working with two boys, one with Spinal Muscle Atrophy and another with Duchenne's muscle dystrophy, means I am again working with people approaching death... but these are the ages of my older two sons.  And they are the only remaining children of their parents.  It is a new type of sadness.  Once took a turn for the worse last week and lost one more ability.  More privacy lost, more freedom.  And I had to introduce him to more medical equipment and more care done to him.  We managed.  I'm good at what I do.  We even managed to share a few laughs during the whole process.

And I went home and cried.

Death should not be nipping at the heels of two boys, barely teens.  I should not be seeing fear, panic, and revulsion in the eyes of a mother watching her son.  (Revulsion at the whole idea of death, not of her son!)  Death is such an unnatural visitor in a highschool. Especially a slow, wasting death. I should not be using words like contractures and range of motion in these halls.  Death belongs by the bedside of a 97 year old with her family gathered around her.  There it is a solemn visitor, unwelcome, but expected... even quietly welcomed at times by those who it has come for.

Yet it is here.  A quiet presence in the rooms, not ready yet to take the child, but to slowly take his abilities and bide his time.

I go from that to the busy activity of my own children.  It can be a disjointing switch.
 
Pray for me as I minister to both mother and child.

And I am physically still weak.  Still recovering slowly. I'm tired.