Mondays and Fears

I love Monday mornings now. I'm not sure I was so fond of them when I worked, but today I love them because they represent a new week, time to get organized and do the laundry. I really like doing laundry and wish I could hang my clothes outside like in the "good old days." Of course, when I used to have to hang them out in the winter in Amarillo, Plainview, Lubbock and El Paso, I wished for a dryer.
By the time I lived in Beaumont I had a dryer and have never had a clothesline since then.

This morning I filed all the junk that had piled up on the filing cabinet, copied photos for the ancestry albums, read emails and Facebook--all while my clothes are busily washing and drying on their own.

I'm taking an on line class called "Surviving Trauma." One of the lessons has been about cues. Cues come out of the blue after some kind of traumatic event. After 9/11 some people had these cues when they saw American Airlines planes in the air days or months later. Reading about cues gave me pause.

Years ago we went to church three times or more a week. Rather than enjoying the experience, much of the time it was out of legalism and a desire to please. For years since then I have dreaded Sundays, and sometimes still do. I've wondered why and now believe the feeling is a cue based on my past church experience. Knowing why and staring it in the face just may be the way I'll get past this "trauma."

I had another traumatic experience from 1990 until 1993. My mother's dementia made it impossible for her to live alone. She couldn't come live with us because we had our daughter and grandson living there, plus the fact that no one was at home during the day. Not having funds for anything else, I had to put her into a nursing home. She had always said she didn't want to go to one, as we all say, and moving here there was the hardest thing I ever had to do. She'd only been in that place for three months when she fell and broke her hip. She never really recovered and was in a wheel chair thereafter.

Teaching middle school is exhausting on a good day, and on many of those days I'd go see her after school. She hardly recognized me and only wanted to pull herself around in her chair. After standing all day, following her around was more than I could do. Week ends were busy but I managed to go see her then.

I need quiet and solitude to revitalize. However, with a young boy, my daughter and a husband who needed quiet himself, I found that I had no place in my house where I could go to be alone. Many week end days I got into my van and went away, found a place to park and just sat in the quiet of my vehicle.

As my mother grew worse, and my energy lessened, I had more and more guilt about not seeing her as often as I should. What could I do? I was at the end of myself.

When Mother died, I never went back into that nursing home or in any others. Thinking about entering one grabs me in the pit of my stomach and almost makes me sick.

I have known for a long time that fear has been one of my biggest enemies and has kept me from doing some things that I should have. I've prayed, of course, and just last Saturday I told God I wanted him to heal me of these fears that have held me back. Maybe what happened is an answer to that prayer.

My husband was asked to deliver an inspirational message on a Sunday this month at a nursing home. I know I could tell him I won't go because of never wanting to go into a nursing home again. He doesn't need me there and no one will be expecting me, but I imagine he'd like for me to go with him. However, could this be God's way of setting me free from my "nursing home phobia?"

I'm looking at it but haven't made a decision. I've never been a person who wouldn't face a hard place, except in this case. Or maybe in more cases than I know.

I think I'm almost afraid to ask God for his direction for "fear" that he will tell me. One scripture comes to mind, a word that he has given me over and over. "I will never leave you nor forsake you." If I go, I know he'll be with me because he's already there. He'll still be with me if I don't. But if that's my decision, I just might miss a very big blessing.