Today’s Word from Sheila Weidendorf…
Pastor Jim recently preached the good word about Love as the Greatest Commandment—the love of God, the love of neighbor, the love of self. But life and love among we mere mortals can be a tricky business. Human relations are fraught with miscommunication, futile expectations, bruised egos, broken hearts. We don’t always do the right thing, or bring our full selves to the table of relating and loving or even know where to begin sometimes on the path to being fully loving beings. Sometimes we don’t know how to accept love—we don’t always remember that we are always a part of God and, as such, always worthy of love.
My mother, Hope Weidendorf, is dying. Well, sort of. She lives in a dementia care facility in Minnesota and has a host of physical ailments and conditions as well as the faltering of her mind and her identity. While she is not in known imminent danger of demise, she is most definitely on the slippery one-way slope that leads beyond her mortal coil.
She is, in many ways, a miracle. She contracted Covid last year. Already on constant oxygen due to chronic and long-term lung disease and a lifelong heavy smoker, Covid didn’t kill her—though it DID make her stop smoking, (only because her nursing care workers refused to allow her access to her cigarettes any longer). And not only did she survive Covid, but she has also survived a lifetime supply of trauma, lifelong mental illness, AND eight known suicide attempts. Nothing thus far has killed her regardless of the measurable odds NOT being in her favor. At this point, it is almost plausible that my mother is immortal.
Be that as it may, her life is rather a text-book testimony to the pernicious power of shame and self-loathing, and to my attempts in the first (more than) half of my mother-enmeshed life to magically “make” her better. Until I realized I do not possess such super powers, that my mother’s self-concept, well-being, and general happiness are beyond my reach. Until I realized, too—and accepted—that I’ll never have the mother I needed as a child.
And yet…Here I am—whole, intact, generally content within myself and happy in the overall trajectory of my life. And my mother? She is happier than I have ever seen her. Alzheimer’s has somehow bypassed her trauma and she—more often than not—forgets to hate herself. I call her regularly and she always remembers me. She remembers that I play piano and misses it, so I’ve found a way for the staff there to share videos of my playing with her. She cries every time as she watches and listens.
Living so far away from her, there’s not much else I can do for her. I call. I listen. I share my music with her. After all the volumes and volumes of misery that have run with the waters under the family bridge, I now find that all I can really do is just love her. There is no room in our relation for expectation, for counting the hurts or hoping for any tangible sea change in the fabric of our bond or our family history. All that is left now is simply to love her, exactly as she has been and exactly as she is.
Love—true love in its fullest sense—is always a healing force. Always. Ditto kindness, compassion, respect. We can NEVER go wrong by holding ourselves in our highest expression and extending that light to others. This does NOT mean our lovingkindness directly causes others to stop hurting, or to change negative behaviors, etc. Love isn’t a mechanism of control, after all. But it IS a means of transformation—both the messenger and the message, the vehicle and the content of our evolution as spiritual beings here in the world.
The music I’m sharing today is an old country tune favorite—Till Every Tear Becomes a Rose. It was written as a love song in a romantic context, but I think it applies to love of all sorts—including the love our Creator has for all expressions of Creation, including you, including me, including my mother.
Click HERE to listen to my rendition.
Sheila Weidendorf
’Til Every Tear Becomes a Rose
~Music & Lyrics by Bill and Mary Sharon Rice
~First recording released by Leon Everette in 1985
~Covered by Keith Whitley & Lorrie Morgan and,
in 1999—my favorite version by John & Fiona Prine
Darling I can see the clouds around you,
And in your heart I know a sorrow grows,
But if you weep I’ll be right there to hold you
‘Til each tear you cry becomes a rose.
Dearest love, I know your heart is shattered,
And all my words can offer no release,
But my love will heal the pain you suffered,
And I’ll be here if you should turn to me.
Darling I can see the clouds around you,
And in your heart I know a sorrow grows,
But if you weep I’ll be right there to hold you
‘Til each tear you cry becomes a rose.
In deepest nights when memories stand together,
Lay with me and put your fears to sleep,
Cause there’s no pain no dream can put asunder,
All the love that binds you to me.
Darling I can see the clouds around you,
And in your heart I know a sorrow grows,
But if you weep I’ll be right there to hold you
‘Til each tear you cry becomes a rose.
