Driving home from the hospital, from time with my mama, I think over the last moments with her that day and ask myself, When did you stop moving furniture?
I don’t know.
Time alone and I gathered together so often when I was a teen, time I’d spend in my room, alone, rearranging furniture and cleaning, keeping my space tidy and comfortable. If I moved it just right, I’d create a cozy nook just for me.
Mama would come home from work, eye my room over, and say, “You’re going to hurt your back.”
Tidy and comfortable. Worth the risk.
A family member had an infection a year or so ago, and I didn’t go. I didn’t want to bring it home to a person with compromised health. Untidy; uncomfortable.
A family member went to the hospital, but I needed to stay home, because I couldn’t risk bringing COVID to dinner.
I hide away at home, in my safety. Stay home, I’m told.
And I ask myself on the way home: When did helping others become untidy and uncomfortable in your life, Shelli?
But somewhere along the way, things got out of sorts and I got really comfortable in the unforeseeable change. Somewhere … somewhere in the frightening news that my mama was terribly ill. She had MRSA, a staff infection of the blood, C.Diff, as well, which is very contagious. Pneumonia threw itself into the mix for good measure. So much untidy, uncomfortable.
Draped in the gown and gloves and mask, my body moves without thought to be with my mama. She’s so far gone that she can’t even say her name. The invitation slides out of my hands to anything, any disease that could harm me, bidding it to come alongside me, to bask in my tidy and comfortable, because all I care about is how can I keep from hurting her? What does it matter if I’m safe? How can I keep her safe?
On the night at the hospital when I’m told Mama can have no more visitors, after sharing that room when I can for a month with her, I draw near to her and hug her, tears pouring, and I tell her I love her and that I need her to keep fighting, that I need her to pull through this.
“I will,” Mama promises.
Dread seeps into my soul through the wee morning hours … what if in hugging her, I drew too near, I hear … what if you’re carrying COVID, Shelli, and don’t know it? What if you’re sick and don’t know it? What if you give her a virus that kills her in this weakened state? And worry deprives my weary body of sleep.
While each nurse stepped into Mama’s room with caution, when she initially moved to rehab, I wore no protective gear except my mask, and I sit there telling my mama why I won’t lower my mask. “The thought of getting you sick,” I say, through tears, “is more than I can bear.”
“Oh, honey,” Mom says, in that tone that tells me her only concern is my worry.
And as the hour strikes for me to leave, visiting hours coming to a close, I search the flowers on the darkened shelves. Because finding the lovely in the unlovely is how one thrives in survival mode. Unlike the hospital room, the mourning windowsill at rehab is too narrow to hold them, too thin to shower them with light, so empty. My vision lands on the solitary bedside table, which has no remarkable use, only covered in chocolate Ensure. And I know what I need to do.
“I’ll move the table,” I say, with a smile. “Do you think they’ll mind?”
“I don’t see why,” says my mom.
From one side to the other, I move, tugging along the hunk of wood without rollers, inch by inch, over my toe, with barely a flinch from me, trying not to scrape the floor. Because I’ve never had a more brilliant idea. And there the bulk of the three-drawer chunk lands, between the chairs, centered in the window. The arrangements, incredibly still hanging on to life, line up perfectly in Mom’s view from the bed, the bright floral colors backed by her get-well cards.
There.
Mama’s smile overrides mine, as the flowers bask in the sun. “If we’re here long enough, we’ll rearrange the whole room,” she says, and we laugh together. Her face tilts, her thoughts off in another place somewhere. “I wonder if I’ll ever sing again,” she finally shares with me.
“You could sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ “
Slowly, our voices lift, together, until “the Bible tells me so.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
“I’d never want you to,” I say.
And there, moving furniture, my heart glows like it’s been sprayed with everlasting Pledge—and still does as I retrieve Ibuprofen at midnight for my aching shoulder—because it’s there … where the messy and uncomfortable becomes tidy and comfortable.
Are you finding yourself willing to take a risk during difficult days? Love will do it. Love brings courage.
(By the way, that table does have a use. It’s for holding the phone and nurse call button/TV controller when the patient gets out of bed. And we have laughed about this every day since. And Mama is improving daily. She stood up from the bed to the walker for the first time.)
Update: After my mom came home from the hospital, we lost her to a stroke in August 2020.
Have goals and write them down. We all have them. We know we do. Stand back and take it in, think and search the soul. See the big picture. These three sorry points are at least a start, a shaky and feeble vision to something that might take me somewhere. That had the potential to take some sorry or wonderful shape. But it’s real and it’s there.
Write down what you know beneath those goals. I pour out my heart under each sorry point, sideways and crooked, building on the bare stakes I’d placed. Just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. What on earth could come of this?
Write and keep writing. Or work and keep working. By the end of the day, in that coffee shop, after tweaking it here and there, looking closely, line by line, I was amazed at where the article had gone. This connection had turned into that connection. It had turned into something I’m not even capable of writing. I marvel: How did that … yucky start … turn into that? It seems I can’t even take any credit, except that I remained, persevered.
It doesn’t always last, not the way we envision. My grandparents’ beloved home burned years ago, devastating all. But a home was rebuilt in its place, and though nothing can remove the memories of old, it’s a reminder … O Soul Within, don’t put stock in this world or yourself. Our work will and won’t always make the mark. And if it does, it could only last a season, breaking, buckling, or burning.
The days are fleeting, and soon both my girls will be gone from our home. I can’t hold them back, and I wouldn’t if I could. But time is flooring-it, zooming by, and I don’t want to miss a moment.
But today … something is different about today. We have music roaring over the speakers, the windows rolled down, and as we approach the house, my daughter slows the car.
What have we just done? Where did Mom go?
More tiny fingerprints cover the construction paper before the children.
“The teacher is so disrespectful, Mom.”
A two-year-old boy kicks a cardboard block, causing it to land right on two-year-old curly-top baby girl’s leg. Tears spring into baby girl’s eyes as she reaches to comfort the pain.
Where did things go so wrong?
Tears prick my eyes, and I long for my grandmother. I long to sit on her lap, to hear her say that I’ll always be her baby no matter how big I get, to nestle my face into her chest with her arms wrapped around me, to feel the sway of the rocking chair by her precious feet, to feel her welcome without a sound the outcry of words from my heart.
I climb those stairs in the early morning hours, darkness hovering through the hallway and a kitty evaluating my every move. Reaching the top, I move into the dim light. I inch toward her in the quiet … those beautiful eyes are closed. Those once tiny fingers have grown inches. Those once tiny feet nearly reach the bed’s end. Her hair drapes over the pillow.
She startles awake, gasping in terror.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Some things are too big to carry alone. We aren’t strong enough to keep holding the weight ourselves. But we carry each other’s burdens. That’s God’s way. 
I buckle myself into the truck, and we trample gravel and black-top toward the feed store. My stomach knots, tears stinging my eyes. Because I’m so much older than her, if I can’t understand this, how can she? How can I expect her to?
After opening the garage door, I head into the house. Both my girls are sitting at the table, staring over the computer.
Little Bit, daughter #1, pops out the door. She couldn’t stand it any longer. “Can I sit with you, Mama?”
I push out of that chair, grab more popsicles, and nudge the grasshopper off the seat when I return, while begging his pardon. We continue rocking.
We two smile big and unanimously say, “Yes!”
I can’t bear to hear her utter those words. I cover my ears and eyes. “La, la, la …” I love her so.
I can’t begin to imagine what it took, the struggle within her mother-heart, to give her consent … her consent to release something so important to her son. To let go. To say goodbye.
What if … you’re not ruined? What if you were ruined before, and you just didn’t realize it? Maybe what we thought was good was the ruination. Because the tissue was so damaged it was about to fall apart. “One more day, and it would have been a different story,” reported the doctor. One more day, and instead of arranging ostomy bags, they could have been arranging …
But what if when we love God so much, when we’ve given Him our hearts, we change? What if God is making a new thing? What if that’s exactly what He intended? What if the goal is to have the only thing remaining of you be Him, the lifeblood, the foundation that keeps us standing. We hold so tightly to the color of “the way things should be.”
If we reach our arms up, do we think God would lift us up? Would He set us on new, different ground? Safe ground. Good ground. What if that new ground is our testimony? The testimony that makes us beautiful, colorful, whole. New. Healed.
And maybe that’s it. Maybe the stripping away is salvation. Maybe the ruination is our salvation. Maybe it’s God’s method of rescue, His method to rescue others. The old tissue is so damaged, wilting, it cannot remain. It must fall away. Because the truth is … that 10-year-old lifted his arms to his Savior over a year ago, and he’s been rocking with Jesus ever since. He’s waltzing in to his brand new testimony, and in his humorous and warrior-like attitude, he calls that bag “Frances.”
I get one more room key. Bless their hearts. They could tell I was distraught.
I walk to lunch in a daze, sit down at the table, and poke at my salad. I can’t believe … I have an amazing, knowledgeable person to help guide me now …
In the quietness of our room, I ask Jennifer, “Do you want to know about that first night room key mix-up?”
“I had been in the wrong building all along, the one right next door to ours … the men’s building.” It had been dark, you know. I’m new here, you know. “The key allowed me into their building, just not into what I thought was ‘our’ room. A man came out into the hallway because he heard a woman’s voice, and he knew a woman shouldn’t be in there.” I was so embarrassed. He probably heard me crying. “Then he got locked out of his room.” The funniest thing. “And I had to help him get back into his room.”
Shelli Littleton 