God's Good Time

As you know, my mother is dying. She and we, her family, have all known she is dying, at least since I was last back in Pennsylvania in July.

At the time I left, my mother was on hospice. When last I saw her, I said to her, "Mom, I'll be back before you go..." She looked at me with the sad-eyes-but-glad of one who "knows" her time is short. She said, "Oh, Brad, I won't wait that long!" So we said our "good-byes"...

I wanted things to be that way for my mother. She had been longing to go home to her Lord for a long time. She was relieved to look forward to the prospect of being freed-- at last! She was truly happy in her circumstances.

Yet I suspected that she had a little bit of living yet to do... And while I wanted it to be the way she wanted it to be, I also knew from experience that dying is not something over which we have a lot of control. When it comes to dying, things often do not go the way we want.

This is how it has been for my mother: she is living longer than she ever wanted. Living has become torturous, for both her and my father, who has to watch her dwindle. Each in their own way has begun to wonder about God's mercy.

Dad tells the story of how Mom called out to the head nurse of her unit: Why am I still here? It is not a medical question, but it is a question she asks of God every morning.

There is no answer.

Like so many truly spiritual questions, there is no answer, or at least, no good answer.

There is just the waiting... Waiting for Nature to take its course. Waiting for God's intervention. Waiting...

I feel for my mother. Hers is a not uncommon spiritual dilemma. This waiting, with one's bags packed, as it were, at the station, for the Train that never seems to come, without a schedule posted, looking down the tracks, pacing, increasingly discouraged, despairing over when the Train will come and even wondering whether it ever will...

I feel for my father. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to be done to make the Train come sooner. There is nothing but waiting at the station with my mother, pacing with her, feeling the sad conflict of wanting her to be taken and not wanting her to be gone.

It is difficult for most of us to believe in God without having expectations of God. How do we believe-- in God or in each other-- without expectations? How do we love-- God or each other-- without expectations? This is very difficult...

Jesus' prayer at Gesthemene is always our guide. We are to pray whatever we want! Speak our minds! Unburden our hearts! Get our agenda, our expectations out, on the table, made explicit, known. Be honest! Let God know what we prefer-- and why. Plead. Rail at the heavens. Make our case. Engage the Creator with every fiber of ourselves! It's all good, and important to do.

Yet it is also important to come to the place that Jesus did, to reach the same conclusion: Not my will, but Thine be done. This is not merely a matter of acceptance, both of the situation and of the way things are-- so as to avoid God's question to Job: Where were you when I created this world to be the way it is? (OK, a rough paraphrase!) But we are, like Jesus, to come to this conclusion in order to restore us to ourselves and to our right relationship with God. We are to come to this conclusion in order to discover the "right spirit" within us-- in order, in other words, to find our way out of the despair and anxiety, and in order to find our way back into some sense of patience or peace and even perhaps joy for whatever the day will hold.

And there's no one else who can give us that patience, peace or perhaps joy, than God. In their Gesthemene moments, my father cannot give these things to my mother. Nor can my mother give them to herself. They cannot make this exchange with each other, for that matter.

But they can pray. And they can reach the conclusion Jesus did-- with the similar serenity that settles in the soul.

I've arranged to return to PA for the week of the 17th. My mother's birthday is the 19th. Perhaps she'll still be there for us to celebrate together. Perhaps not. I told her I was coming, and I told her not to wait! If the Train comes, get on board! But I know the timing of this is not up to her, nor to any of us.

We are all on God's Good Time. Always. It is just that, sometimes we are more aware of it than others.