When Life Seems Hard: The gift of life in the valley

I went to visit my ailing grandparents on Saturday.

Can I tell you that I didn’t want to?  Can I say that?

Because I didn’t.  I didn’t want to go.

I love my grandparents dearly and it breaks my heart to see them slowly erode and I knew I should go see them because that is what a good granddaughter would do.  In my heart I do really want to honor them in their last days, but truthfully, even when you add that all up, I didn’t want to go.

Early last week my husband and I talked about making Saturday a date day.  We planned to check that tandem bike ride off my brave October list.  I wasn’t kidding when I posted that.  But then the news came.  My grandparents aren’t doing well.  At all.  And I should go see them when I can.  When I can, my Best Yes, was Saturday.

But I didn’t want to go.  Sometimes I’d rather look away from the hard.  I’d rather ride a tandem bike in the sunshine and watch the leaves fall.  I’d rather plug my ears and pretend I can’t hear, can’t see, those tougher parts of life.

Saturday was a change of plans after changes of plans.  A date.  A date and a visit with grandpa and grandma.  No babysitter.  A date with kids, which is no date at all, and a visit with grandparents.

All these years into this parenting gig and I’m still the girl who doesn’t love changing plans.  I am the girl who makes plans.  If I wanted to change them, I would have made them differently in the first place.  So by the time we get to plan C it’s safe to say I’m getting annoyed.  Not at anyone or anything, just annoyed. Because, plans.

I learn lessons at lightning speed, I know.

So by Saturday afternoon I know I need to reset, reset my heart and my mind.  I carve out a little time to run the roads behind my house and mull over some “not my will, but yours be done” thoughts.

I live in the valley.  The soil is rich and agriculture hems me in from every side – hops, grapes, cherries, plums and apples.  As much I love the tastes and smells of where I live.  I love the sights most of all.  I love the signs of life in every direction.  I love the lack of houses, the tangible growth and the seasons.

Every few months the landscape changes out here.  We were just all buds and new shoots, tiny blossoms and vining growth not long ago.  And then limbs and branches sagging with fruit, bushy walls of hops and the most fabulous smelling grapes.  Everything is fruitless now, yet beautiful.  Leaves changing color, falling fast. An ever-changing picture before the land becomes barren; resting and renewing during the bitter cold.  It will all be blanketed in snow before long.  At least that is what we are praying for at this house.

And through it all, this land remains fertile.  The changing seasons are always growth.  Growth that looks different, feels different, but growth.

I’m quickly reminded that all of these seeming challenges – the Plan B and Plan C, it’s all just life.  Life happening right before my eyes.  Sure I’m mama to a handful of little kids that sometimes leave me struggling to come up for air, sure I’m watching my grandparents age hard and it’s painful and heartbreaking, but this is the stuff of life.

Last week I had an older mama contact me and ask if I would pray for her adult daughter.  That very request got my attention.  A different season, different stuff, but still just life happening.

Life in a blessed and fertile valley.  We live in stages that sometimes are barren and cold, but bring rest and renewal and more growth than we even realize.

And I’m reminded where joy comes from.  Life can’t hijack my happy, because I’m rooted in fertile soil.  My eyes are fixed on what is unseen.  Well, mostly anyhow.  That is my prayer.  Lord, help me fix my eyes.

 

 

 

So we visited my grandparents on Saturday evening.  I held my grandpa’s hand, a bursting blood vessel  – life? – has overcome his eyesight and he is unable to see me any longer.  I sat close to my grandma and I soaked in as many memories as I could. My grandma’s mind fails her now.  She is happier than I have ever seen her but minute by minute, the same questions.  How old are my great grandkids?  They are getting so big! How old are they now?  They are growing so fast!

Even with her failing mind she remembered to tell me over and over again how much she loves me.  And when we went to leave, and prayed over her and my grandpa she lifted her little hands in the air and prayed hard, spoke straight to Jesus.  Of all the things she has now forgotten, all the things that are now confused and jumbled in her mind, she still showed me what it looks like to love well, through it all.  What fertile soil she is planted in.

Saturday was a gift for me to see; a gift for my kids to see.  Jesus holding my grandparents in the cleft of the rock even in hard aging.  Aging I don’t get and don’t understand and the weakest parts of me don’t even want to see.  But sometimes, the hard of life is greatest the gift, if we’re brave enough to walk into it, brave enough not to fight it.  I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my Saturday.  In the valley.