Cowbells in the Night

March 29, 2011

The handheld cowbell goes off at 8AM. I am in a deep sleep, exhausted and dead to this world. My short gig as a home health nurse is over. I cannot do another bathroom call, another "1-2-3 lift" for my big man, or another fruitless discussion about how he must eat food. He is anorexic. He has eaten almost nothing in two weeks time.   Everyday it gets less and less. He is also irrational about food. He only wants to eat cold-pressed orange juice. They don't make cold pressed orange juice to my knowledge. His usual diet of flax seeds and cottage cheese is down to one bite a day. 

Two days ago his feet were icy cold. This morning so are his hands. His first words are "I am weaker than yesterday." We gave him a sleeping pill last night that knocked him out. In moving him from his chair to the bed he accused us of trying to murder him. "You're trying to murder me" he said. Then he looked directly at me and said, "Do you even know what you're doing?" I finally broke down and played the old nurse role, "Yes Mr. Weerstra, we know what we're doing... you have to get in bed now Mr. Weerstra." He obeyed. I hated using that deeply impersonal "Mr. Weerstra" routine. It brought back so many bad memories of the nurses calling my Dad, "Mr. Thomas, you have to open your mouth, Mr. Thomas." At the most intimate and painful times of life, do you really want someone to be calling you, Mr. Weerstra? Mr. Thomas? But here I was calling him Mr. I should have at least called him, "Reverent Doctor Mr. Weerstra."  To call him Mr. is to depersonalize him and rob him of his human persona—turning him into  just a  man among a thousand other men. I reject this. His real name is Brother Hans, the abbot, caretaker of souls, servant of God and even more precious, Honey, Dad, Grandpa.  I resolve that next time I shall say, "Servant of God, you must eat your food" or "O most useful servant of the Most High, you must get in bed now" or even "Grandfather of many... you must take your meds." 

Today he asks me, "So what do you think of what is happening." I say to him, "You are dying." He shakes his head. "No, this is the effect of the radiation, it will wear off soon." I pray that he is right. Meanwhile, to me, he is dying. He has all the signs of imminent death. It is so peaceful...just a gradual decline. Very little pain to speak of. Unlike my daughter's friend, whose mother died in agony. My prayer has been answered—there  is no fear, no anxiety, no worry. Just a wonderful recognition that God has been good to us and that great has been His faithfulness to us. How?

By taking us off the beaten path and forcing us to live the hidden life of the Christ. We were so ambitious, wanting to build the house of God, wanting to call down fire from heaven, but He wanted to build us as His house! All those who have been gripped by the spirit of ambition and earthly zeal have been shipwrecked in their ministries and in their personal lives. "Better to live as a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord...."  No one willingly picks obscurity, God must call them to this and here is where His sovereignty is displayed, there is no breaking through it. All of his servants will learn this lesson, one way or another. We just did it first. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." And so it is. We have been both broken and weaned...and are just now fit for service. Ha!

Thanks be to God, as the whiskypalians say, that the wilderness ends here at the Jordan. The waters will be parted and we will pass through and we will have sown much seed. Now God must water. 

For my part, I am glad to hear cowbells in the middle of the night, for it means that he still needs me, and that he is still alive.