Rock On!

     Long ago, my parents rocked me in their arms. I grew, and then I was holding my own babies in a mahogany rocking chair inherited from my mother’s grandmother. Just this morning I sat in that time-stained chair considering the beautiful rhythms of life and love as the runners beneath me rocked, gently rocked.

     For more than a decade, I have believed myself to be in a life cycle that began with much optimistic feathering, only to end very, very emptily: Youth is fabulous, old age is an affliction. Like many parents of my culture, the potential of my own children is thrilling, and its underlying love hypnotic. And, even though my kids moved into adulthood long ago, I still lean toward open doorways remembering their footsteps and I still plan favorite meals only to reluctantly reduce them by two. Sometimes, I must shake off (and hope no one notices) the desire to reach out and hug or tousle or cheer or clean up after what (or who!) just isn’t there. 

     Yes, I’ve spent eleven years trying to fill an empty nest with projects and jobs and hobbies and travel, but underlying every wonderful diversion has been the shadow life of loving and living with my babies that I miss.

     Until, that is, the other evening, an evening that followed a normal busy day in my parents’ home: I had made beds, processed laundry, prepared meals, withstood outbursts, helped with paperwork, distributed medicine, and cautiously advised (which is always the hardest for me to do!). So, by the time I returned to my home, I fully expected to be tired, cranky, and, quite possibly, self-pitying. However, on this particular evening, I felt satisfied. Completely satisfied. Surprisingly satisfied. Could it be that God is using the tasks I’d always loved to do on behalf of my children (and now must do for my parents) to fill, fully fill, my innate need to nurture? In utmost joy, I praised the Lord for my delight.

     Now, after the joy has receded a bit and blessed contentment has taken its place, I find myself wondering if my generation is missing a chunk of life intended for our good when we resist, avoid, constrict, distantly manage, and dread providing care to our aging parents and their equally elderly peers. I wonder if God, in His mercy, is showing me that our life cycle is actually a cycle of care – a cycle meant to be very real, very intentional, very beautiful, and very redemptive. Perhaps we are not supposed to stop nurturing when our babies fly away, turning all our newly available time to our own indulgences. Maybe, instead, we are free because it is at that point in the life cycle when the generation before us needs respectful care born from a tenderness that can only develop through time – our unselfish, unstinting time.

     Yesterday I was rocked as a baby and then I rocked my own babies. Today I sit by my parents as they rest and rock. And, perhaps, in some not-too-distant tomorrow (Lord willing!) I will sit and rock my own aching bones as a younger person keeps me company. For, in the truth of Psalm 145, 

The Lord is good to all;

He has compassion on all He has made …

and [His] dominion endures through all generations … 

Asking Myself

     Few baby boomers can forget President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural charge: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country ...." Despite being electrified by it, however, I have lived constantly juxtaposed to its famous and beautifully unselfish philosophy. I don't ask what I can do for others. Instead, my beggar's heart asks, "What are they doing for me?"
     I ask if my adult children are living like me even though my modeling is errant. I ask if my husband is serving me even though I am too proud to serve him. And, as a daughter whose current focus is to assist aging parents struggling through their last days, I find myself asking if their needfulness could be, of all things, more convenient.
     But, with thanksgiving I proclaim a God who shows me that care-giving is a giving process, not a matter of questions. This most pure Care-Giver is teaching me that tending to the needs of my mom and dad is the releasing of a love that knows no bounds. I am learning that with Him there is no need to muck around in mud trying to establish boundaries when I can be on the high places experiencing moments of glory, the glory of His pleasure. For it is His pleasure I feel when I sit with my parents in a darkened room, when I rub ointment onto an arthritic back, or even when I find one of their 'lost' computer files for the hundredth time .... 
     So who am I, the most self-indulged person on the planet, to write of caring? Well, I am a child, a child walking near God's garden ..... 

"... And the Lord shall guide you continually and satisfy your desire in a scorched place and make your bones strong; And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail." 

 Isaiah 58:11