Day 2 of NaNoWriMo 2015, True Love through Service

I'm currently up to 6120 of 50K and it's only day 2!  And I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy this morning!  Wowzers!  While writing last night I was awaiting my eldest daughter to come home and felt an earthquake... We don't feel many of those in Arizona! 

Hmm, maybe my "end of the world" topic is timely considering the earthquake!  LOL

Still, it's more about love. It's more about the pain, heartache, strength, eternal nature that a man and a woman can experience and have in a family. I haven't gotten to that part, the "romance" but it will get there.

I have the example of seeing my father care for my mother, sleeping on the floor beside her while she was in the post-hospital, but not "ready" for home after a hip replacement then after a knee replacement, in order to get her to the toilet when she needed to go.  My dad had his own physical challenges with his shoulder and a quadruple bypass, but he was committed to my mother in every sense of the word. He sat by her side every day when she was hospitalized for nearly 6 months when renal failure and pneumonia eventually took her life. She was only home for one day/night in all of those six months... When my dad insisted that he (and I) could care for her at home, that she would get better at home. She always had recovered better at home, away from the probing nurses and in her own surroundings. He was willing and able to get her to the bathroom, to suction Mom's stoma after a tracheostomy had to performed on her initial entrance into the hospital with pneumonia, to even clean up her bed if she could not make it to the toilet. Mom had actually chosen to undergo the tracheostomy so she could breathe, something I never imagined she would do! We only got one day/night of Mom being at home, before she had to go back to the hospital. But his willingness to do whatever it took to get her home really made its mark on me.

I didn't mean to get carried away with my mom's illness. It was an opportunity for me to see first hand how much my dad loved my mom. I saw them as human beings, instead of my parents. That service he gave to her is indelibly etched in my mind and heart. It seems that people don't stay together like that anymore. They seem to run at the first sign of trouble. 

My darling husband has cared for me this way, too. I have been quite ill for over a month, though I believe it has been much longer - just the symptoms have been masked by one thing or another - and he has shown his commitment to me. He has gone to work, worked from home, taken on household responsibilities and challenges - and OMGosh when it rains it pours! - , taken on child rearing responsibilities, all kinds of things that had always been MY JOB. Though I have resisted being in bed resting so much, not doing the things that I feel driven to do around the house and with the kids and the things that I have shouldered as a stay-at-home-mother, he has insisted on what is right for me, what will - HOPEFULLY - get me better. I have learned humility, patience, and the difficulty of being the one who is served. This caring, this love, has brought us closer together. Humility is a painful lesson. Holy smokes does it HURT!!  However, I have learned through this process that I have a husband who loves me the same way that my Dad loved my Mom, the way that my grandparents loved each other, eternal love. No doubt I still get frustrated that he does things in his own way, not my way, but that is part of the lesson, too.

The Lord allows us to grow in the way that we need. Apparently I need a harsh dose of humility. I need to trust in God as well as my husband, allowing my husband and children to grow without my interference.

Unfortunately, my characters are going to go through some of this growing process, too. They will learn to trust, to hurt, to regain that strength that is part of an eternal love.

Charity never faileth and is the pure love of Christ. We love those we serve.

Dece - dayzeedesigns - @GlacierWhite