Some Helpful Advice For God?

I’ve been spending most of my days and nights in the fashionable yet functional furniture at the hospital room with my mother. AKA The Hotel California

It’s almost like they read the playbook from the folks who make RVs. Everything seems to fold out into something that you can sleep on. It’s sort of institutional but with the color schemes like one of those Trading Spaces kinds of shows might choose. Nothing too gaudy, but nothing you would do to your own home given the choice.

She’s got one of those beds like the Craftmatic Ajdustible beds on steroids. More accurately it’s like the Optimus Prime of beds. I keep waiting for it to start unfolding into a giant bed looking robot ready to fight the crime that is sweeping the streets of Grand Island, Nebraska. Which incidentally is neither grand nor an island.

And so it was that I sat with my mom for a few hours yesterday evening. It was I on the folodmatic couch table and her on Optimus Prime. She slept there for hours; which is something that she hasn’t done much of this past week. The pain that she is experiencing is so extreme that it requires what can best be described as a buffet of drugs. Almost enough to constitute an appetizer.

The upside is that she can exist without excruciating pain for those moments. The cruel twist is that even though she is here, she is not. When she is most “here” she’s in so much pain that she’s not here either.

The cancer spread to the lymph nodes in her spinal area and so she cannot for any reason lay flat on her back without agonizing pain. There is exactly one position that she can be in that gives her comfort. It requires somewhat of a team effort to get the bed adjusted into just the right position and then a series of pillows placed in just the right spots. It’s more art than science, and sometimes requires a few shots before getting it just right.

The worst times are when we get her situated perfectly to only realize she needs to go to the bathroom and the production starts all over again. She dreads this so much, and it breaks my heart every time because it’s so painful. I’ve been in hospitals where you can hear someone screaming in pain down the hall and you wonder what is going on. Now I know.

As I sat and watched her sleep last night, I realized that I had never done that before. I wondered if she had ever done that to me when I was younger like I do my children from time to time. I wondered what she was dreaming about, if at all. As much as I wanted to talk to her, she wasn’t there.

She was breathing really heavily. Deep, slow breaths. She didn’t seem strained. She almost seemed peaceful. She doesn’t get much in the form of peace right now, so it was kind of nice to see her like that. Each breath was a reminder that she was still here. She was still alive.

I watched her for quite a while. I was talking to God and giving him some suggestions on how to run the planet starting with my mother. It’s a situation like this when I could certainly see how God could show Himself. One of the people that stopped by this week said: “if it were possible then it wouldn’t be a miracle.” That really stuck with me. It really seemed to make sense. I wondered if God might find it helpful as well.

Bottom line is that this is a stage 5 Malignant Mullerian Tumor. I have heard the terms “futile”, “hopeless”, and “too far gone” over and over again this week. If I were God this would seem like such a great time to show up, do one of those big miracles that He did in the Bible, get it on the news and let everyone know how amazing I am.

There are those folks who don’t believe that He is good. Why not defend yourself God? You did it in the Old Testament from time to time. Instead of one of those dubious healings of a back ache or a leg shorter than the other, how about a big ticket item like a Stage 5 cancer with no hope. That would certainly prove something. Mom could go on Fox News and we could give you some great PR.

I prayed there that God would allow her to wake up and heal her right there.

She kept sleeping.