Gaining Perspective
Digging back through musty piles of articles on a snowy morning filled with sunlight, fluffy cardinals, a heater struggling to keep the house warm when it's 5 degrees outside, snuggled under blankets with hot coffee, I came across this old bit of work. I wrote this on July 27, 2016, when Vidal started having lots of health issues. I was a year and a half into my chronic health issues and hadn’t learned to think purposefully about my home, but based on what I said here, the seeds were already being planted. Re-reading this made me cry because 2016-me didn’t know that Vidal would go home, not next door, but home to heaven in the fall of 2017. Past-me still got to spend time with her extra special extra Dad. Present-me misses him terribly, and sometimes I cry because my husband looks so much like his father, only more so as he gets older. Realizing that as your husband ages, he’s getting closer and closer to the age his father was when you met, that he will only look more and more like his Dad is both wonderful and haunting.
But I’m so thankful for sweet and happy memories of this man who truly became a second father to me, and I’m thankful for the lessons learned while he struggled through the last year of his life.
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Recently I spent six days in the hospital with my father-in-law. The first day started with a call at 5:30 in the morning saying he was in the emergency room because he fainted. We left the house without showers, me with no makeup, no plants watered, no dishes done, the curtains not even open. We got home around 7 pm, and were so tired I only watered my elephant ears and fed my sourdough starter.
The next morning started slower, and I was able to do everything that didn’t get done the day before, including showering and enjoying a quiet cup of coffee. Standing at the sink doing dishes, I was struck by how often I either complain about dirty dishes or don’t think about them at all. I never get up and realize that doing dishes in the morning is a good sign that things are normal in my home and my family in general.
Everyday chores get a bad rap.
We know we should never be that boring suburban family who never does anything artistic, adventurous, or amazing. Who could possibly want to spend their life mowing lawns or raising kids, right? Travel the world, explore other cultures, and find yourself.
Attitude change: how about being thankful for a morning that starts with simple things? Take the quiet as a sign that your family is well, fed, and off to face the day. You never know when you might wake up and spend your whole day, or several days, in a hospital watching the people you love face major health issues.
Get your hands good and soapy, get out in the heat to water plants, make the bed, take a shower, and be thankful for the small things in life, the little things the Lord provides every day.
As another morning started with chores left undone and coffee in a freezing hospital, my heart went out to all the people I know who’ve had to spend so many more hours in one of these little uncomfortable rooms. My heart went out to those who didn’t have a family member feeling well enough to give every nurse and doctor a hard time. My heart went out to those who had to go through the soul-tearing struggle of coming home one family member short.
I’m generally good at empathizing with others, but sometimes that empathy needs to be reinforced with a shared experience. I imagined how tired those friends must have been, how they were too worried even to go home to take a shower, how confusing all the doctors and nurses and information was. I sat in that cold room and remembered how many other dear saints have sat here before.
Spending a week in a hospital makes you thankful for routine days and it makes you pity others as they face the same thing.
Day after day spent hurrying up and waiting gave me the wonderful joy of watching a real-life example of love. I’m old enough now to have older parents and extra parents. Now, they aren’t old old, but we are starting down the path of old age. How terrifying is it as an adult child to watch your parents start down that path? Very Terrifying. The strongest become the weakest, the together come undone. Roles reverse. But, by God’s grace, there is beauty here too! For almost a full week, I got to see real love. Not silly Hallmark love, (my extra Mom loves Hallmark movies) but love that is there in sickness, frailties, grumpiness, confusion, exhaustion, surgery, and post-surgery. I got to see self-sacrificing love that didn’t run away but chose to be there every day. I saw real vow-keeping visible in stolen blankets, bathroom issues, tidying, carting, worrying, fixing, and fussing. And it wasn’t just my extra Dad that my extra Mom took care of. It was all of us. She made sure everyone else was taken care of before herself. Love was expressed through action, day in and day out, in the most ordinary ways.
Six days in a hospital lead to fresh thanksgiving for the quiet ordinary things, fresh empathy for others who have had to be here too, and a fresh idea of what true love looks like, unfiltered and earthy.
My extra Dad is home, and we’re all happy not to have to spend another day in the hospital, but God gently uses everything to make us more like Him, and for that I’m thankful.
Beauty, thankfulness, the magic of the ordinary can be found in every moment of every day if we will train ourselves to look for it. I think this is something we women are especially prone to miss and uniquely placed to see. Because our worlds often seem small and insignificant, we are exactly placed to see how large and important they are. It may not seem like any big thing that a woman in her 60’s sat in a hospital room, day in and day out, off and on, for almost 2 years. It may not seem earth shattering to fix your husband’s favorite meal, or manage his home so that he can provide for you, or teach a child how to load a dishwasher and bake cookies, or practice the domestic arts, but this is the stuff of life. This is foundational.
Here in Texas we have fun foundation problems caused by the clay and the long dry spells. Foundations crack. Houses shift. Things start to crumble into ruin. Can you see the foundation? No. Do you even ever think about the foundation? Nope, not until it cracks and your house starts to crack with it. Being a homemaker is like that. We do so many things that largely go unsung, unpraised, un-honored except by a passing thank you or maybe a quick hug. We do so many things that aren’t noticed until they are done wrong or not done at all. No one notices when you manage your pantry well. They sure notice when you don’t. That’s the struggle with being the foundation, that’s the struggle with being the Queen of the Ordinary.
That is why we are in a unique position to notice and praise these things. We should develop a culture within ourselves, within our sisterhood of noticing the ordinary. This is our song, our place, our heritage. We, we HearthKeepers, keep the stories. We are the foundation.
