Regard (treat with honor, due obedience, and courtesy) your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God gives you. Exodus 20:12, AMP
As I was thinking about Mother’s Day this year, I thought about how this one would be so much different than all the years of the past. Normally, for Mother’s Day, I would get my Mom and my husband’s Mom a card and maybe flowers and we would take them out to lunch. We will do the same this year for my mom, except it’s a lot more complicated, since she’s now in a wheel chair, after having a stroke. She has been in the hospital and then the nursing home since late January. We take her out and bring her home a couple of times a week. But we are coming up on 100 days in the nursing home and the insurance will not pay the co-pay after that. I found out that her insurance will pay for 28 hours per week of in-home healthcare, so we plan to bring her home on May the 14th. She can’t stay by herself because she is at risk of falling, so that will mean drastic changes for me.
My husband’s Mom is partially blind, very wobbly when she walks and often falls. Her blood pressure tends to be extremely high or extremely low and she has other problems besides that. She usually doesn’t like to leave the house, except for doctor appointments and she gets very upset if you try to talk to her about going into a nursing home. So, we go back and forth between my husband’s sister and us going over to help and visit with Tim’s mom and taking care of my Mom. This is the season of life that we are in, so we have had to put other thoughts of ministry pretty much on hold until things change.
Our parents laid down their lives, so to speak, to take care of us when we were young and now it’s our turn to lay down our lives for them. I could’ve got Mom on Medicaid/Medicare and kept her in the nursing home, but I know she wouldn’t be happy. She wants to be home and I want her to be happy, so I’m doing what I feel is best for her. Our family is our first ministry and this is part of honoring my Mom and Tim’s Mom at this stage of their lives. It makes me think of the scripture in Philippians which says:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Phil. 2:5-8, AMP).
We are called to take up our cross and follow Christ and serve others, in whatever form that takes, so this is how we are honoring our Mothers. Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.
In Christ ~Kelly Rowe
A Deeper Walk 