My Time is Not My Own

I believe today is our 4th whole day in Belgium. Quite honestly it feels like it's been an eternity....it has been tres difficile. This is the most rigid schedule we've ever been on and we're hardly getting any sleep because of jet-lag. Last night was the first time Sis and I really had a conversation since we've been here. Since we both have different tasks, or are doing them at the same time, we are hardly alone, and when in our room we're so tired that we're trying our best to sleep.

 We are realizing that our time is not our own. We cannot do whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it. As Katina said, "We have to do only what we have to do". It's a very difficult thing to come to terms with. I must admit, sometimes I"m not happy about it in my heart. I want more sleep, to eat whatever the heck I want (Chick-fil-A y'all) I want to be alone, to be with my sister, I don't always want to get up when I'm called, I want to exercise, I want to go outside and I want to see the city. (Stop complaining, is what the Lord said to me as I was writing this in my journal.)

And yet, the Lord is still with me. He gives grace for every moment. He gives me strength when I am tired and feel like I can't do anything else. He keeps me from fainting, and I mean that quite literally! He's helped me to handle emptying a pee bag, to help change a diaper, to endure the smells, etc. (I've yet to do the actual changing. They're being kind and letting us work up to that.) He's sustained me and given me life and breath, strength enough for each day.

"Why do you say, O Jacob and speak, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God'? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they that wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint."

Isaiah 40:27-31

Ok, let's be frank here. We Americans are very protective of our rights. We have expectations that must be met and our lives, boy, are our lives all about ourselves. But the time we're given on this earth was not meant for our pleasure in of ourselves. That pleasure fades. That pleasure dies and brings about our own death. The Creator of time has given me a small chunk of time on this earth. The time He's given me belongs solely to Him. I am to be about His work. As Jesus' time on earth was for a purpose, just as His words were not His own, but the Father's, so it should be in my own life. This truth is hard to surrender to. This truth makes me sacrifice my own wants and "my" time, in order to do as I'm told. I do serve a master either way and only one Master leads to life. 

Right now, this is what I've been asked to do. It is for my good. 

Father, change me. 

The Circle of Life

My Grandma is dying. We call her Nanny. She chose the name, we didn't. Sounds a little formal, don't you think? Anyway...she's one of the main reasons we moved here from Oklahoma 3 years ago. It's amazing what can happen to a person in 3 years. I've grown and changed in so many ways. So has my Nanny...if you can grow in reverse, so she's not so much grown as she has deteriorated.

Wow, this is actually really hard to write about...

...As I sit here at the desk in the back room with the ping-pong table next to me and my dogs curled up underneath it, my mom and dad are at Nanny's house. They got a call from the neighbor a couple hours ago saying that Nanny had been yelling at her husband, didn't recognize him, had bit him and was trying to break his glasses. This is at least the third incident like this that we know of. She's got Alzheimer's disease as well as cancer that's been spreading throughout her body. Her stomach is now distended and she's got a large tumor outside her body under her arm. I don't want to go into a million details, but to make a long story short, we've done all that we can and we're just trying to make her comfortable until she makes it to the end.

As a granddaughter who hasn't been particularly close to this grandmother (she and her hubby have really pushed people out of their lives) I can say without too much guilt :/  that I haven't been a huge part of taking care of her. That job has fallen on the amazing shoulders of my mom and dad. They've done so much and it's really starting to wear on them. This week they've been over there every single day. It's now gotten to the point where we need to get them into an assisted living home, but believe me, everything's complicated.

I guess I'm writing this for one, to get it out, (writing's therapeutic for me) but also to say that I recognize now why those of the older generation are so looking forward to Heaven. You see, my Nanny can hardly formulate a sentence. She often doesn't know what she's saying. Her face will squinch up and her eyes will kind of glaze over and she'll say "I don't know...I... I just don't know. I don't know how to say this" and you'll have to guess what she's trying to talk about and then she might be able to form her thoughts audibly. The other day though, I read to her from my Bible and her face lit up. She still had a hard time concentrating, I could tell, but she loved to listen to the words. We read from James 1-2, from many Psalms and from Isaiah 52 and 53. Afterward she talked about how great it will be to see Jesus face to face.  With tears in her eyes, she said, "You know if He hadn't [died for our sins] we'd just be, we'd just be..." "Helpless?", I said. "We'd just be soooo helpless."

And it's true. Without Christ spiritually, I'm as helpless as she is physically.

(More to come on this topic later.)