God's Loving Care

This month, my women’s Bible Study group is reading and discussing prayer.  One of the questions in the workbook asked us to discuss a time when we were especially aware of God’s loving care.  While there are a number of times in my life that this was evident, one particular time is above all.

Two years ago, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Before she began treatment, the cancer had metastasised to the brain.  For three and a half months, my siblings and I walked with my mom on her last journey on earth.

I would imagine that the death of a parent is never easy. Not only was I sad to know that I was going to lose her, but I was angry because she had been a lifetime smoker and had not taken care of herself.  For me, this would mean that I would be an orphan, as my dad died in 1986.

Before my first trip back to Michigan, I went to confession.   Entering the confessional, not knowing what I wanted to confess, the Holy Spirit, along with the confessor, led me to understand that it was selfishness that I needed to confess.  So many of my concerns had to do with me (i.e. How was my 12 year old son going to react? How much was this going to cost me in expense and in time? How would this affect my family? ) in spite of the fact that I knew my mom was terribly afraid of death.  This was the first step in God’s loving care for me in those anxious, heartbreaking days.

From the beginning, I reached out to many who knew me and asked for their prayers.  On days when I didn’t think I could hurt any more, I knew that I was being held aloft by the prayers of others.  I made four trips back to Michigan.  Many precious, poignant memories are burnt into my brain from those days between February and June - too many to recount here.

Through God’s loving care, I was able to help my mom come to terms with the end of her life on earth, as I came to understand the beauty of a happy death.  God’s love helped me to be stronger than I ever thought I could be.  As I attend mass in Michigan, it was as if God was speaking to me through the celebrants, showing me his great love for my family and me.

As I was preparing to come home from one visit, I asked my brother to take a picture of my mom and me.  Her hair had begun to fall out from the cancer treatments, and I was certain that this would be the last good photo of us.  He snapped one picture, and then Mom spontaneously leaned over to kiss me on the cheek and I giggled.  That moment, captured digitally, is a visual sign of God’s loving care during those dark months in 2010.