Like so many other people around the\nworld right now, within the past several weeks I got the call I\u2019d been\ndreading\u2014the call notifying me that that villainous virus that has invaded our\nworld had made its way into the long-term nursing\/care facility my mother was\nmoved into last year; and then, after a few more angst-filled days, I received\nthat other dreaded call\u2014the call telling me that Mom had tested positive for\nthe virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m realizing now that I really did\nthink, and foolishly so, that I understood human suffering, that I had accepted\nour lack of control down here, that I had been properly schooled via events\nsuch as my beloved father\u2019s suicide and my own battle with blood cancer. But I was very wrong. I feel like I am learning all over again, and\nperhaps in even more profound ways, about what continues to be the \u201cgreat\u201d\nleveler of humanity\u2014uncontrollable disease and unfathomable suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, I\u2019ve been able to talk to\nmy mother quite often as she battles this virus, along with her other multiple\nlife-threatening conditions; and during several of our talks, as I tried to\nfind the right words to reassure her, I heard her say, \u201cJust get here, Angie,\nplease\u2026get here!\u201d And each time she\u2019s\nsaid this to me, I\u2019ve gently explained to her that I can\u2019t just get there, get\nto her\u2014not yet, not while her facility, like so many others, is on lockdown. \u201cSoon, Mom, really, really soon\u2026\u201d That\u2019s what I keep saying; that\u2019s what I keep\ntrying to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday, after our longest\nconversation yet, I kept hearing Mom\u2019s words to me, \u201cGet here!\u201d And those two words took me back, way back,\nto a love song I used to listen to all the time, a song sung by Oleta Adams. Some of the lyrics are: \u201cYou can jump on a\nspeedy colt, cross the border in a blaze of hope\/I don\u2019t care how you get here,\njust get here if you can\/There are hills and mountains between us\/Always\nsomething to get over\/If I had my way, surely you would be closer\/I need you\ncloser\u201d (\u201cGet Here,\u201d song lyrics written by Brenda Russell).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I so wish that I could get there and\nthat every other loved one in my position could too. I so wish that all it took was a fast colt\nand a bunch of hope. I so wish that\nthere weren\u2019t hills and mountains in our way and that there wasn\u2019t always\nsomething for us to get over. But\nclearly, my wishing it doesn\u2019t make it so. \nYet I can\u2019t stop myself\u2014and I think that\u2019s a good thing. I don\u2019t believe that we should ever let\nourselves stop wishing\/hoping for what everything around us seems to tell us is\nbeyond our grasp. I believe that God\nmade us in a such a way that we cannot help but wish for more than this broken\nworld can offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also believe that Mom is not alone\nand that when she calls out \u201cGet here!\u201d, someone already has\u2014and He will never\nleave her side. He, our great God, does\nnot abandon us when we most need him. \nSome may be wondering how we can ever be sure of such a thing,\nespecially considering how the world looks now. \nWe can be sure because the flesh-and-blood Christ from our history\nbooks, the Bible along with others, painted for us a picture of what God is\ntruly like by loving those whom others didn\u2019t even want to look at, much less\ntouch. Christ loved the widow, the sick and the disabled, the lonely and the\noutcast, the orphan and the poor\u2014the ones with very little to offer materially,\nthe ones more dead than alive, until they met him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, even though I\u2019m having a lot of\ndays now during which my confidence in a happy short-term ending is waning, I\nknow that God\u2019s still here, even in the darkest corners. And I know too that someone, a magnificent someone,\nwill \u201cget here\u201d again when the time is right; and he might even show up on a\nspeedy colt in a blaze of hope. And when\nhe does, any of us who have ever felt invisible or forgotten or alone will know\nwith certainty that, though we might well have felt so, we never really were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like so many other people around the world right now, within the past several weeks I got the call I\u2019d been dreading\u2014the call notifying me that that villainous virus that has invaded our world had made its way into the long-term nursing\/care facility my mother was moved into last year; and then, after a few […] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VlK3-9f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}