Can you see Him?

As I write this, three immediate family members are facing ‘big deals’ regarding their life. Three health situations that have  become life events and whose outcome rests  ‘out of their hands’… sort-of-speaking. Three ‘focus-pulling’ narratives that have, will, and are growing consequences to their individual way of how they’ve always lived their life, and how that will change (like it or not) going forward.

I wonder this: Our journey with God. Does our odyssey in faith stay or fade as our own physical brain functions age and fade? I mean… when (for whatever reason) you lose control over yourself to a point that you realize you have no control over losing your… control; When our intricate brain functioning breaks down and we are so focused on losing our carefully engineered control… balance; When a moment’s reality takes over and we have no say in it and we are so emerged in panic that some ‘memory’ is scorched and never quite the same in it’s thinking or remembrance… so question… does our brain remember our relationship with God? Does THAT fade too?

I think i’m thinking this enlightened thought… because at (almost) 94 years old I believe i’m being given a God answer. For me. Through my mom. Like, right now!

When I was young my mother, Elaine Marie Smith, born and raise in the suburbs of Philadelphia, told me her story about actually seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like… when she was a kid and standing on her front porch… seeing Mary floating above Spring green grass in Fairmont Park a-ways away. It happened on a grey, rainy afternoon while her older sister and brother were at the movies. Mom described every inch of Mary’s flowing blue garment and peaceful continence… having gazed on the apparition. She also told me another spiritual story – when she was a draftswoman in the Navy, working in a Washington DC aircraft drafting department. While processing classified black & white aerial film, out of no-where… the image of Jesus came up on her photo paper – in a small 2″ by 3″ area. She recognized Jesus’ image right. When she told me this story and showed me the image she had kept ever since that happened, I couldn’t see the image. It took weeks. Eventually I did, and have ever since.

Bottomline: Throughout her life… God, my mom and Mary have had a close and growing relationship.

I say all of this because I’m starting to see something.  My mom is one of my family members facing a big deal. Actually, she’s smack in the middle of an abyss. Called, dementia.  She continues falling into its darkness and to me, my sisters and brother… watching the drop is beyond heartbreaking.  But while it’s mentally and physically happening to her, what i’m seeing is this – although we now have come to a place where I don’t understand her words or ‘where she is mentally’… when I mention God or Mary, she returns. It’s like she comes home to familiar and holy ground. A second later other images in her head will distract her but when I return to the subject of God, of Mary… she’s right back in the same familiar and holy spot. Always smiling. Usually taking a deep cleansing breath. It’s like this spot is a garden brimming with beauty, fragrance and every kind of awesome bird (which she spent her adult life drawing). I know this because her face tells me so. As fast as her brain receptors flicker from here to there, that’s how fast her face returns to a peaceful and resting garden-like God place. When she doesn’t remember a word or happening or time or place, I ask her about God or Mary and her face, her breath, her “yessss” snaps to attention… to there. Wherever in the spiritual universe ‘there’ is.

Truly crazy days come and go but when I tuck her in bed, each day isn’t done until we say our prayers together. As prayers to God, to Mary are said out loud, her face, body, breathing and sounds tell me she’s returning to her ‘that spot…’ that garden of spiritual control and balance, to total familiarity, to a most graceful resting place that ignores her physically mental dying.

In this world my mom may not remember each and every prayer word, but in God’s world sweet peace comes over her at, “Our Father…” and “Hail Mary…”. In this world I see it and hear it. In His world my souI feels it.  It’s the same answer that (again) reminds me how God works within us. How He speaks to us. How He teaches us. It’s an inside ‘core’ learning that man cannot duplicate.

 

Sometimes it just is… the way it is!