New Year, New Plans, New Home

Today, I am turning in my notice to end my lease, and move to live with my aging and fragile Mom.

Thank you to those who prayed about this decsion. It was a difficult one to make for personal reasons, but it is necessary. As I have to give sixty days' notice, it won't be an overnight move, but sometime before Mar 1, I will be living at a new address (not all that far away, really).

It is NOT a lack of love for my Mom that this decision was so very difficult for me to make. It took until nearly the end of the year to truly make the decision, at times feeling as though I really have no choice in the matter. But my Mom wants to stay in her home, just as did HER Mom until she died with my then 19 year old mother near by. Mom was then a student nurse.

As I was growing up, I resisted strongly going into nursing, my own rebellion, when Mom felt that it would be a good choice for me. I did not want to be a nurse. Yet my very first job was as a nursing assistant, and I loved it. I then worked in a bobby pin factory and as a waitress, and I hated it... Mom said...go back to school and be a nurse. I said no.

Eventually, after being married, I returned to school, and became... a nurse. Though it has been a very difficult profession, I have loved it since graduating in 72.

Mom was right. I was called to be a nurse.

In asking for prayers during my struggle, I got an email from another nurse that hit me so very hard, because I knew that it was my answer, though I still tried very hard to ignore it. She said simply:

Go, you're being called.
It's a lovely gift for the Infant.
Joan

That was on Dec 17. I struggled internally until just after Christmas. But those words rang through me.

And finally, I surrendered.

I told my mother on Friday. She said... "I didn't think you were going to come, but I am glad that you are".

It is hard to admit when your Mom is right. It is sometimes harder to admit anyone is right. But, I do believe that these two nurses currently in my life... are right.

And so, I have written my notice to my landlord. I am once again facing packing and moving, knowing that it is NOT my final one after all. For when Mom joins Dad, as she will someday, and God calls her Home, I will face one more move.

Life is not always easy, but it does go on. Doing 'the right thing' helps.

The words to this also continue to ring in my heart:

Parents Wish (Single Mother)

God bless!

"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them,
but bend them with gentleness and time."
– St. Francis De Sales

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
~~Thomas H. Huxley

"Right is still right if nobody is right,
and wrong is still wrong if everybody is wrong,"
Archbishop Fulton J Sheen author of The Life of Christ

LIFE IS PRECIOUS FROM
CONCEPTION TO NATURAL DEATH.
CHERISH IT!
PROTECT IT.