Family Squeeze (22 page)

The hand of Jesus is the hand which rules our times.
He regulates our life clock. Christ is for us and Christ is in us.
My times are in His hand
.

E. P
AXTON
H
OOD

A
long about the time I conspired to lay this book to rest, my mother sat bolt upright in her hospital bed one evening, smiled widely at me, and asked, “What day is it? Where’s Ramona?” It was like we were in a Sandra Bullock movie and she’d just wakened from a deep coma. I was shocked. Mom, talking in complete sentences.

Thinking it too good to be true, I held up one hand and asked, “How many fingers?”

She laughed. “Seven,” she said. “Call a doctor.”

Pulling a chair close, I leaned forward as she regaled me with stories long forgotten, naming names I hadn’t heard in years. I phoned my brother Dan with the news. “She’s even brighter than I,” I said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he joked.

When I told Mom what he had said, she began laughing and hadn’t the energy to stop.

Nurses arrived to see if they should give her CPR, and she introduced
them to me one by one, without even looking at their nametags. When they left, she whispered, “How much money do I have?”

I told her.

She grinned like she was a child again and was about to dip a schoolmate’s pigtails in an inkwell. “Let’s give it away,” she said.

Months have passed. The blanket near her bed is just a blanket now, no longer her baby. The Bible on her night table lies open; gone is the dust. I am married; no longer am I stealing her money. She grieves her husband’s death at times, knowing exactly when it happened, how many months ago, how many days.

Some nights I find her sitting at an old wooden table, writing notes in shaky handwriting—notes to friends and family, encouraging them with a story or a verse from Scripture. “God takes care of me,” she often says. “The nurses…they pray with me.” And they do. Sometimes I catch them. One whispered, “I’m a Christian. Your mother is such a blessing.”

I asked Mom what she would like, seeing as I hadn’t given away all her money quite yet.

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning like she was working on a math equation.

“What about a TV?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nah. The best years of my life I spent without one.” Then her eyes lit up. “Shoes,” she said. “I need some shoes.”

The next day we decked her in her finest, wedged her into a wheelchair, and went out looking for some. I wish you could have seen her leaving the store with a shoebox on her lap. Her eyes danced, like a four-year-old who has just pulled the wrapping off a Christmas gift she didn’t dare dream of receiving.

“Thank you,” she kept saying. “Thank you.”

I suppose it is the one solitary characteristic that has most endearedher
to her children through the years: thanksgiving. This spirit of thanksgiving ensures that several visitors crouch by her bed each day. Thanksgiving helps her focus not on what is missing but what remains. Not on what has taken place but what is yet to come.

Thankful people seem to remember blessings and forget troubles. They are quicker to accept than to analyze, to compliment than to criticize. Helen Keller thanked God for her handicaps. “Through them,” she wrote, “I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

I don’t know too many people who have more to gripe about than Mom. She has broken both hips in separate falls, lost her husband and her hearing and her freedom, yet she cannot find time in her schedule to gripe. It’s like she has stepped back a little farther than most of us, seeing the bigger picture, thinking not on what is wrong but on what God is making right. Grateful people don’t think less of themselves; they think of themselves less often.

“What are you thankful for today?” I sometimes ask her.

“Oh, so much,” she invariably says. “You. And food. I’m getting fat, you know. The food is much too good here. I’m so fat I don’t have a lap. I have
laps.”

I guess my mother needs so little, but she needs that little so much. She needs my weekly visits and prayers. She needs updates from her grandchildren and Dad’s favorite dog to sit on her laps. She needs a good-night kiss and a kind word and a reminder of the hope we share: the hope of heaven.

These last few years have certainly given me a celestial whiff, a divine desire to count my days, to make the days count. To form each and every decision in light of eternity, mindful that our lives pass quickly but decisions made here last forever.

Thinking on Mom’s life, I have found myself saying a more profound prayer than “Help!” the last few days. It is “Thanks.”

Thank You, Lord, that the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Thank You that You are the God with a history of making all things new, of filling us with hope and joy. And thanks for allowing Your children the last laugh. Verses from Mom’s favorite book now open on her night table say it best:

1.
Tim Stafford,
As Our Years Increase
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1989), 17.

2.
T. J. Matthews, Brady E. Hamilton, “American Women Are Waiting to Begin Families,”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/02news/ameriwomen.htm
(accessed July 29, 2007).

3.
U.S. Census Bureau, “Facts for Features,”
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006560.html
(accessed July 29, 2007).

4.
CDC Press Release, “American Women Waiting to Have Families,”
http://library.adoption.com/parenting-and-families/american-women-waiting-to-begin-families/article/8200/l.html
(accessed July 29, 2007).

5.
“Sandwich Generation,”
Fairlady
magazine, December 2006,
http://www.women24.com/Fairlady/Display/FLYArticle/0,,806_l 1671,00.html
(accessed July 29, 2007).

6.
Equality and Human Rights Web site,
http://www.eoc.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=15440
(accessed July 29, 2007).

7.
Charles R. Swindoll,
Growing Wise in Family Life
(Sisters, OR: Multnomah Press, 1988), 152.

8.
Ann Rowe Seaman,
America’s Most Hated Woman
(Continuum, 2005), 149.

9.
I do not have this watch any longer. The watch I wear I got from my grandfather on his deathbed. For twenty bucks, plus tax.

10.
Figures are from the Office of National Statistics. (I kid you not. I researched this. You can too!)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=353216&in_page_id=1879
(accessed 10/12/2007)

11.
Frederick Buechner,
Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
(New York, Harper & Row, 1972), 2.

12.
Cheri Fuller,
When Couples Pray: The Little Known Secret to Lifelong Happiness in Marriage
(Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2001), 12.

13.
Cynthia Crossen, “Americans Have It All (But All Isn’t Enough),”
The Wall Street Journal
, September 20 1996.

14.
“Marriage Brings Wealth, Divorce Steals It” by LiveScience staff posted at,
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060118_wealth_marriage.html
(accessed October 4, 2007).

15.
“Limousine Liberal Hypocrisy,”
Time
magazine, March 2007,
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1599714,00.html
(accessed October 10, 2007).

16.
Okay, she was not my wife until later, she was my girlfriend…at least, I was hoping she would be.

17.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_J._Harris
(accessed July 29, 2007).

18.
“65 Year Old Woman in India Gives Birth,”
FuturePundit
, April 9, 2003,
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001124.html
(accessed October 4, 2007). The case is made all the more remarkable by the fact that the average life expectancy for a female in India is sixty-three.

Without a doubt, this has been the most difficult writing project of my life, and the one I have savored the most. It’s nice to live long enough to be nostalgic, but sometimes it hurts. I was startled by the potency of these memories and almost abandoned this project seventy-six times. Along came Ramona who said I could do it, prayed for me each day, and served me lip-smacking lasagna whenever I asked. Behind every good man is a surprised woman. Thanks for your companionship these twenty-five years. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat, minus the time I compared your soup to cardboard. I’ve said it before: If I knew it would have been this good, I’d have asked you to marry me in third grade.

My editor, Steffany Woolsey, was so encouraging that I have already requested that she and her husband reside next to us in the nursing home beginning in 2041.

The staff at Multnomah was way too kind to me. I sure hope they keep it up.

Thanks to my faithful soldiers of prayer. And the hundreds who filled out my Middle Ages survey. To those who included their names: Your secrets are safe with me.

My high school English teacher, Mr. Al Bienert, looked past my glaring faults and encouraged me. I doubt I’d be writing were it not for him. Al passed away the day I completed this manuscript. He took me to hockey games when I was a student, thus being the only teacher in world history who wanted to spend time with me outside the classroom and therefore my favorite. Mr. Bienert taught me that it’s okay to be a kid all your life. I miss him.

I am enormously grateful to my siblings for journeying through this
book with me. Only once or twice did we squabble over methods, and once or twice they were right.

God has allowed me to surpass my legal limit in friends, each of whom used more of their shoulders than their mouths during the last few years. I am blessed to know each one, and humbled by several when we golf.

Thanks also to my children, two guys and a girl who travel with me, pray with me, and allow me to write about them. Perhaps they keep thinking I’ll strike it rich. With kids like these, I already have. Come home anytime. Moms making lasagna.

All praise and honor to my Savior Jesus Christ, who loved me and gave Himself for me. A lifetime is far too short to sing Your praise.

Phil Callaway is president of Laugh Again Ministries, an award-winning humorist, best-selling author, and the only one we know who broke his nose dropping barbells in ninth grade. About a hundred times a year, Callaway brings his humor with a message to corporations, conferences, and churches. Phil is the author of
Laughing Matters, It’s Always Darkest Before the Fridge Door Opens
, and
Parenting: Don’t Try This At Home
, and his writings have been translated into languages like Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and English—one of which he speaks fluently. His five-part video series,
The Big Picture
, has been viewed in eighty thousand churches worldwide. Phil is married to his high school sweetheart, Ramona. They live in Canada. For more information on Phil’s other books, CDs, DVDs, or speaking ministry, visit
www.laughagain.org
or write Laugh and Learn, P.O. Box 4576, Three Hills, AB TOM 2N0.

Phil is editor of
Servant
magazine, an award-winning magazine read in 101 countries. A ministry of Prairie Bible College,
Servant
is full of insightful interviews with well-known Christians, helpful articles, world news, and Phil’s trademark humor. For a complimentary one-year subscription, please call 1-800-221-8532, or write:

Servant
Magazine

Box 4000

Three Hills, AB Canada

TOM 2N0