This year feels a lot different. I have always loved the future...anticipated it, planned for it, schemed to influence it, believed it would be better, connected it with the past as a "flow through" of progressive growth, improvement, and abundance of life.
A sea change has occurred within me. I have never faced the future like this. It has become almost an afterthought. The present dominates. The immediate. The now. The future is overshadowed with a cloud of darkness and uncertainty...so it is not the place to linger. If I can find a sunny moment in the now, I allow myself to be touched by its warmth. If the now is bleak and overcast, I just steel myself to pass through and look for another moment to embrace.
I have not thought of this before, but living with Alzheimer's Disease that is taking over my wife, has some parallels with people I know who live in conflict. So many of them live in the moment. In Sudan the majority of the southern population had never known a time of peace in their entire lives. There was little sense of hope for the future. It was tough to work on any development project that would contribute toward a better future. There just was not the inner belief that a better future would come. So they lived in the moment. And they learned to be resilient. A future peace was out of their hands...they would wait and let someone else...some unknown entity usher in the peace. And if it entered the present...they would embrace it. If it did not...they would not be disappointed because they had not built up their expectations.
I am in a battle now like my Sudanese friends, and those I know in Palestine, in northeast Uganda, in Sri Lanka, in Zimbabwe, in Mindanao, in Indonesia. It is a battle too big for one individual to control. No amount of scheming will dramatically change its outcome. So subtly, without realizing the metamorphous has occurred, today has become more important than tomorrow.
A verse comes to mind. "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118:24).
So there are no resolutions this year except to live in this day and be glad in it. It doesn't matter that this is January 8th...more than a week into the New Year before I write. New Day seems more important than New Year. Happy New Day to anyone who reads this!
6 comments:
Dear Dad,
I am so proud of you and Mom and how the two of you are facing this disease. I have always known that we have a special family, but in the past 3 years I have come to understand that we have an amazing family.
I too am learning to live in the moment through this disease. The future has hope and opportunity, but also worry and hardship. For today I am thankful for my two beautiful children, a husband that loves me and God, siblings that I cherish and a mom and dad that I am so proud of. I am so thankful everyday that mom continues to remember the things that are most dear and to hold them in her heart even when her mind struggles to hold on to what happened 5 minutes ago.
You and mom have always been a wonderful example of what marriage is to be like and now we are seeing that lived out in sickness. I am proud to be your daughter and to stand with you and mom in this fight against a disease we can not control.
I love you.
Happy New Day!
Bethany
Thank you, Bethany. That means the world to me.
Love,
Dad
Bill,
Thank you again, for your cogent thoughts. For so many of us who do live in the future, we also need to be reminded that the present moment is all that any of us have. Perhaps this is what the 'sacrament of the moment' is all about?!?!? You remain one of my heros!!!
Alice
Bill,
This is my first time to view your blog, or anyone else's for that matter. I'm not one for talk radio, and my expectation of what I'd find in the average blog was a lot of opinion that I wouldn't care much about.
I am touched by your situation and what you have written. I had a small taste of being a caregiver to a dementia sufferer with my mother who died just this past October. I experienced the wrenching discovery that there is only the moment and some shreds of the past. It is difficult to learn to look for what gives the person a lack of stress and how that is often different than what we would want. I used to take Mom out "to get the stink blown off" and to give her a change of scenery. Eventually I figured out that this caused more problems than it solved. I wanted to do what I wanted without understanding what was best for her. Thank God for others who can help us learn these things.
I am struck by your observation that people who live in long term uncertainty have to learn to live in the moment also. That makes me wonder about the promise of a future that we so take for granted. Did people with a much shorter life expectancy and not much hope for better times experience that same thing. I'm thinking of serfs in medieval times. When in history did a longer, more optimistic view become something that the average person could experience?
Happy New Day to you, brother, and my God lavish His peace on you both as you travel this road.
Barry Stare
Bill,
Thanks for writing. The generational gifts of your daddy still shine through as you describe the pain and pleasure of loving Linda and the family through the valley.
I have prayed for you as God and events brought you to mind. The blog will help me stay in touch.
Gary
Barry and Gary,
What a wonderful surprise to see your comments when I got back from my trip.
Barry, those are deep reflections...on your own experience with your Mom and on the poor serfs of earlier centuries. I wish we had blogs from them so the past would instruct us out of their wisdom.
Gary, I too pray for you and your work and your health. Thanks for your comment about my Dad. When I write, I do feel the connection with him.
Blessings to both of you,
Bill
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