Hope in the Lord

I haven't posted an entry here for over a month, since the day I found that the future of the book I've written is uncertain. My book, God, Mom, Alzheimer's and Me, contains not just a record of the emotional and spiritual journey that I went through as I became my mother's caregiver, but also the inspired words of guidance that the Lord so graciously provided Mom and me during that terrible time following her diagnosis. I put so much of who I am in the Lord into the manuscript that the threat of losing it feels to my heart like losing record of my ministry. Writing a book can be compared to a long and arduous labor to bring forth a child, and I feel that I've completed the labor but have no child to show for my efforts.

The Scripture that's been going round my head since this analogy of labor and childbirth first occurred to me regarding my book is this: "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill" (Numbers 23:18-20). This passage goes on to say that when God has ordained blessing, then blessing will arrive. "No one can deliver out of God's hand" (Isaiah 43:13).

I believe that I will have the blessing of seeing the heartache Mom and I have endured transformed into blessing as we see the record of our travail bring strength and encouragement to others; I do believe that the book will go to press and that it will reach those who need it.

It has been nearly five years since Mom's diagnosis and incredibly, she continues to linger at the mid stages of Alzheimer's. She is still able to take care of her own basic needs and is mobile, needing no help to transfer from bed to chair to bathroom. She is lucid in each moment that she is in, although she has no memory of moments immediately past, and so she needs my support to know when it is time to bathe, dress, and eat (she doesn't know if she's done these things already or not). I don't know how she is able to enjoy reading, but she apparently does. She reads the same books over and over with apparent enjoyment.

The ongoing grief is difficult but when I abide in the Lord I am fine. The instant I take my eyes away from Him I am in trouble, like Peter when he took his eyes off the Lord and found himself sinking in the waves.

Book or no book, I praise God, who has been our help. He has been so very gracious to us.