..."A guy once told me, 'I don't like my wife anymore.' My response was to tell him, 'Go home and love her.' But he said, 'You don't understand--I have no feelings for her anymore.' I said, 'I wasn't asking how you felt. I was saying, 'Go home and love her.' Then he said, 'But it would be emotionally dishonest for me to treat my wife that way when I don't feel it.'"So I asked, 'Does your mother love you?' That seemed to insult him. He said, 'Yeah, of course.' I said, 'About three weeks after she brought you home from the hospital and you were screaming with dirty diapers and she had to wake up dog tired and put her bare feet on the cold floor, clean up your miserable diapers, and feed you a bottle--did you think she really got a bang out of that?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'Well, then, I think your mother was being emotionally dishonest.'"Here was the point I was making: the measure of her love wasn't that she felt good about changing the diapers, but that she was willing to do it even when she wasn't feeling particularly happy about it."...-an excerpt from Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith, page 325-
Let me be honest here... I posted this because it made me feel good.
Truth is, for the past two weeks I went MIA, I've been in Kuching. And I never told anyone about my real reason for being there. Partly because I don't even know how to drop it in between conversations. And sometimes, I wished it was just a dream.
My grandmother has not much time left yet. For the past one month, she has had 3 TIAs. 0.4 out of 1000 patients with TIA had a major stroke attack that may leave them paralyzed or worse, kill them. And for every attack, there is a 10% risk of this happening.
When a senior doctor looks you in the eyes and tell you this, you can only stand there and nod and ask, "That is still a huge number in medical terms, right?" And you wait for a nod that never came. All that was offered was sympathetic look.
This wasn't my first doctor-informs-patient's-relative-of-major-bad-news. When you stand in my shoes, twice... You'd start thinking you're a jinx. Bad luck.
You don't help take care of sick people so many times in your life, only to lose them, then walk away from that experience being normal. You became complicated. Everything revolves around you, in a negative manner. And you hold onto the belief that 'it will only get a lot worst before it gets better'.
And when you pray to God, you no longer pray for your strength... You'll pray that God will make it easy for the other person.
And sometimes, when your grandmother wakes you up every 2 hours at night for her toilet trip, when you had to stand at the emergency hall for 5 hours straight from 12.30 am till 5.30 am, when you get so worried that you would sit next to her watching her sleep and holding her hand every now and then to remind her to breathe and to remind yourself that she is alive... You just don't get a bang out of it.
Instead, you get so tired that the muscles of your legs felt torn and your spine felt as if it has been broken. And you felt like you could just lay down on the thinnest mattress and still sleep into oblivion. And seriously, you don't feel like doing it anymore.
But you still do it. And that really did make me feel 'emotionally dishonest'.
Why do I still do it? Because frankly, my faith thought me to love.
And that excerpt from 'The Case for Faith' reminded me exactly how to love another.
To love is not to give up on your loved ones. No. To love is to still do it even when you don't want to. Because my grandmother is one person that I won't let go that easily.
I will fight for her and with her. Just like I did with my aunt. My aunt and I 'fought' for three months before she went back to the Lord. My grandmother... who is more than 100 years old and still walking around (albeit she needs aid), who I always perceive as invicible (because seriously, a 100 years old with 3 TIAs, she has a strong heart and ok renal function for a kidney donor)... She will have enough time.
Plus. God will bless her because she did get me THREE free ambulance ride (yes, with the red lights and infamous mi-mo-mi-mo sound) in just ONE week. Haha. And in case you're wondering, I did went 'WHEE!' in the ambulance. Haha, that was indeed the highlight of my week.
Note: Any kind thoughts and prayers would be much appreciated :)
Labels: beloved grandmum, walking in the clouds
