worry

We learn to release in tiny increments, although those steps represent monumental heart blips in life.

When we help our five year-olds zip up their new backpacks, then watch them walk away from us toward the kindergarten room. They feel excitement as they begin the educational journey. With tears, we pray for strength to let them go. We release them to the system, to the process of learning, to embracing social skills and finding their direction in life.

Release continues: the first time they drive alone, first dates, first college visit. Then 18 short years after we push them through the birth canal, we release them as they launch toward college or the workplace.

Release carries with it the stretching grief of necessary growth.

During this season, I work on releasing Mom into the final stages of Alzheimers, knowing what the end result will be – what it must be.

Release for her will result in a glorious heavenly welcome while it spontaneously leaves us missing her and longing for our own release. The hope of a future release and the relief of eternity with God.

Last week, I posted about the prayers I have whispered and my place in God’s waiting room.

For a life-long planner like me, it is difficult to make the plan a reality when I cannot hear the answer and do not know the direction. Waiting requires a type of release – letting God work his miracle timing and trust that he knows – always – the best ending for my questionings.

The prophet Isaiah foreshadowed our need for release. “These things you carry about are loaded as burdens on the weary beasts” (Isaiah 46:1).

We can choose to carry the burdens – to sacrifice peace by loading our hearts with worry and fear.

Or we can release our prayers, visions and dreams into the capable hands of a wise God who knows the end from the beginning.

My task is to speak God’s truth, write his words, then release everything to his care.

His role is to work it all out so that others will be drawn to his love and ultimately find their final release in his home.

Still waiting and staying in hope, but trusting that release will usher in the answers.

We know that Alzheimer’s Disease can teach us several things: patience, the importance of each day and how we should make memories while we can. But another, rather negative lesson also surfaces.

Strongholds endure.

A stronghold is any type of behavior or attitude that has a strong hold on us. Sometimes, it is the result of a lifetime of bad choices. Sometimes it is from a learned behavior and other times, it is based on a lie someone told us. Then we believed that lie and based our lives on it. Sad.

I have observed how strongholds endure, not only in my mother, but in myself as well. As we age, our strongholds may revisit us with a vengeance.

My mother’s propensity to worry has magnified with her Alzheimer’s. She admits it. “I’m a worrier,” she says. “I stew about everything.”

She worries that someone is stealing her money, her house or her car. All of us in the family know this is not true, but Mom’s fear is even stronger now that it is coupled with nightmares and the side effects of some medicines. Although she lives in a beautiful facility where she is perfectly safe, she is still a fearful person.

I don’t want that to happen to me.

So whenever I notice some of the strongholds of my past rearing their ugly heads, I fight against them with scripture and prayer. My favorite passages become fightin’ words that fill me with peace when the cares of this life attack me.

When fear tries to invade my peace, I hit it with Psalm 34:4, “I sought the Lord and He heard me. He delivered me from all my fears.”

When the lie of rejection torments me, I remind it of Hebrews 13:5 as God promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When failure screams at me, I holler right back from the truth of Jeremiah 29:11, “God has a good plan for my life. So there!”

Although strongholds may endure throughout a lifetime, we don’t have to let them torment us forever. The more we fight now, the more victories we’ll have later.

I want victory now so that I can live well and leave well.

RJThesman.net

Author | Coach | Speaker | Editor

What Alzheimer’s Teaches – Part 4