What If We Removed Our Superhero Capes?

A few years back, my mom blacked out and hit the floor in her small-town pharmacy. Her physician couldn’t find anything wrong. “Mom,” I implored, “come stay with us until the doctors can figure this out.” She balked.

But then she blacked out again.

We drove over the mountains and brought her home with us. A 24-hour heart monitor was placed and a couple days later, the cardiologist called me at work. “Her heart is dropping beats. Can you get her to the hospital for surgery this afternoon?”

Oh, dear Father … help! I prayed with anxiety.

Mom weighed in at a whopping 89 pounds. A child-size heart monitor was inserted, and we brought her home. She stayed four-and-a-half years.

She lamented over whether to keep her house. “Should I sell it? Do you think the neighbor boy is mowing the lawn? What should I do?”

After several days of this, my husband said with a twinkle in his eye, “I think you should burn it down and collect the insurance money.”

Mom looked at him horrified, thinking he was serious. “Why, I couldn’t do that! I’d get thrown in jail for arsenic!” (Um, Mom … did you mean arson?)

Nearly every evening after dinner, we walked in our woodsy neighborhood. She delighted in the wildlife scurrying out of our way. Squirrels. Chipmunks. Deer. Tuesday evenings were Girls’ Movie Night. You’ve Got Mail. Anne of Green Gables. Anything with Audrey Hepburn.

One day, my mother went out to check the mail and tripped on the curb. She did a face-plant on the sidewalk. When I came home from work, she was limping, had an angry-looking scrape on her cheekbone, and was holding her arm. She insisted she didn’t need urgent care. “If I’m not better by tomorrow morning, maybe I’ll go.” (I come by my stubbornness quite honestly.)

The next morning, I found her in bed, babbling incoherently. After an ambulance ride to the ER, it was determined that she’d had a brain bleed from the hit to her head (the scrape on her cheekbone). Being on blood thinners, the blood hadn’t coagulated.

Mom survived emergency brain surgery. After several weeks in the hospital and in-patient rehab, she came home for continued rehab work. Miraculously, she bounced back physically. But the blow to her head started the slow march of Alzheimer’s. Needing to work full-time, I put in longer hours Mondays through Thursdays so I could get off early on Fridays to take her to lunch, on errands, and to appointments.

About that time, my husband was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, which meant my caregiving roles overlapped and tangled.

Here is where I slung on my superhero cape. And sometimes my tiara and magic-powered boots. I can do this. I can care for my mom and my husband and hold down a full-time job and do the grocery shopping and cook meals and keep the house clean and the laundry caught up and remember everyone’s birthdays. Thanks for offering to help, but we’re good.

As time passed, my mom became negative and distrustful. She tattled on us to my brothers because she was sure we were stealing her money. This wasn’t the woman who reared us kids with courage and imagination, who gave us a love for books and music, who told us we could be anything God wanted us to be.

One day, I came home from work to find one of our stove burners lit full blast beneath the tea kettle. The spout had fallen off and the shiny copper had morphed into a dull ash gray. We were grateful a kitchen fire hadn’t started.

My cape, tiara, and magic boots didn’t seem to be helping much. The situation was overwhelming and seemed so hopeless. I needed my job because it carried our healthcare coverage for the ongoing march of cancer. But my mom couldn’t be left alone all day.

That’s when my brothers intervened. Mom moved in with my younger brother and his wife, allowing me to focus on caregiving for my husband.

Providing care to our loved ones is a high and holy calling. Oftentimes it’s accompanied by guilt. I could have done a better job, could have been more patient, could have sacrificed more for my mother—especially considering all she’d sacrificed for me.

In time, God worked in my heart and gently helped me remove that tattered, dragging-in-the-mud superhero cape. He taught me to set aside my pride, to accept the offers of help that came our way, and yes, to even go so far as to ask for help.

Yes, it was a challenging season. And yes, I needed the strength of the Lord. Because I wasn’t doing this only for my mom. I was caring for Jesus. I was feeding Jesus. I was taking walks, and watching movies, and spending time with Jesus.

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did it for Me.” – Matthew 25:40

When we consider our limited time on earth, then the opportunities to be stretched beyond our own strength and to love and serve as unto our Savior—these are valuable opportunities we may never get again. No superhero capes required.