Aging Parents

As a middle aged woman, my parents are now quite elderly. How amazing is the human body - fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet, these two bodies which were once fit, athletic even, and supple are now frail. The eyes and the ears are failing, the legs are unsteady and the mind no longer sharp. Yet how beautiful and how dear are these two to me.

On Saturday, we had a family gathering and it touched me to see my mum and dad surrounded by their seven surviving children, their in-laws, many of their 21 grandchildren and their spouses, most of their great grandchildren, including the 2 yet unborn! What a marvellous dynasty!

This relationship is one of the strongest bonds, and yet at times one of the most difficult. From golden childhood, through rebellious and selfish years (mine not theirs!) through illness, poor decisions, through spiritual seperation, humiliation. Every extreme of human emotion has been shared with these two beloved ones! Thank you Lord for placing me in a family where love was, and still is shown.

And although our paths have divided over religion, I can truly say that in every way moral and practical my parents taught and trained me. I believe their own commitment to God and church lay a good grounding for me in my own relationship with God. Lord, I commit them to you. Draw them to yourself that they might trust in you alone and one day we might all meet again in your presence.



April 2002 I wrote:

My mother


Thankyou Lord for my mother,
I always loved her
but not until I married,
bore and lost a child,
fed babies through the night,
washed endless nappies,
wiped bottoms and runny noses,
mended wounds,
watched anxiously over little sick ones,
experiencd the great joys
and the desperate lows
of motherhood,
that I really appreciated her.

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