maybe this is my epiphany...

but then again, how can it be an epiphany if I have always known it?


So daddy is still sick. Not getting and worse and yet not any better either...
On Saturday the care home sent him up to the hospital to see a doctor and he was admitted and will be there for a few days. The medical staff at both the hospital and the care home are all confused as to why he is on medication, starts to get better then gets sick again. So now he is in the hospital and is getting his medication via IV.
The resident that saw him last night said (after looking at his file) his pneumonia would start to get better in his right lung then his left would get it; then as it got better it would go into his right lung. Totally not making sense. So th hope is that the IV meds will work and wipe it out.
Dennis and I were with him yesterday at the hospital until they got him settled in and the IV inserted - so we could help keep daddy calm-ish and he was ready to go to sleep. Then I arrived this morning and spent a good part of the day with him. He was white, unusually quiet and didn’t eat much... but he DID eat. The nurses suggested to get dad’s chair sent to the hospital so we got it and had him sitting up in it for a few hours in hopes of breaking the chest issues. Time will tell.

I have really been struggling with this bout of sickness with Daddy. He looks so tired and so small. He weighs almost nothing 60.2kg (about 132lbs)and he is 6’2”. He is literally a rack of bones. My daddy was always really thin but not like this. His appetite has decreased so much of late and he is wasting away before my eyes. He doesn’t talk a whole lot but he will sing bits and pieces of old songs that he loved — but only if he is in the right mood it seems. Today was not one of those moods or days. My prayer has been {and always has been} that if it is God’s will to take Daddy home, I can live with that. But there is enormous guilt that has gone along with that prayer. I have had friends tell me to “enjoy every minute with him while I have him.” “Don’t be so selfish to pray like that.” And other things, but I know my dad didn’t want to live like this. He told me about a year and a half before this happened, what i was to do and what he wanted and didn’t want - but that doesn’t stop the guilt.
Then this morningI was spreading my bible and God led me to a devotion by Carol L. Baldwin called “Trust and Confidence” I was based on Matthew 26:39

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” 

It made me think that maybe I am looking at this all wrong. Maybe I am to be rejoicing  in this trial with Daddy and his entire injury (not just the pneumonia) Maybe He is granting me time to appreciate again what I have in the Daddy I have left now... and not mourn the man I lost 22 years ago.
the further readings I read were:
1Peter 1:6-7
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.


1Peter 4:12-13
12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

Not so much that I am ‘suffering’ for being a Christian but in that I need to learn to lean on Him and trust in Him way more than I do. When I look back on the things we have gone through since daddy's accident in 1996 -- right up to recently -- I can see when times that I had viewed as challenges {or even negative issues} occurred actually really helped me in a time later o down the line. Now I have known this and think about it quite frequently of how maybe Daddy 'accident' {choices really} really an truly helped me to get through everything we have gone through with our Sammi. I don't know how I would have even began to grasp the enormity of Sam's accident if I hadn't have had my experiences with Daddy first.

So I will continue to pray for God's will through it all. And try to focus on Him and what I am supposed to be taking away format or learning from it! A daily reminder of this will be in my heart, in my mind and on my fridge:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

 

in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight

Proverbs 3:5-6NIV