Maybe it was because my mother wasn’t Norwegian. I don’t know. But the reality was that Grandma Reese never thought Mom was good enough for her beloved firstborn son, Bernhard.
No matter what she did, Mom couldn’t cook well enough, keep house well enough, or raise five children well enough to please her mother-in-law. By the time I came along – I was born when my parents were in their forties – Mom and Grandma had managed to achieve a chilly truce. Though she lived only four blocks away from us, they rarely spoke and we socialized as a family with Grandma only on holidays.
So it was rather startling when Mom and Dad announced that Grandma Reese was coming to live with us – as an invalid. Grandma was in her nineties and had grown feeble. She could no longer care for herself and would have to go into a nursing home if we didn’t intervene. Mom, who had a revulsion for nursing homes and had cared for her own mom and dad at home, insisted on taking her in.
One would think that this act of love would have been a turning point in their relationship. Perhaps this would be the moment when they both would come to appreciate and accept each other for the wonderful women they were.
But it wasn’t. Grandma was still the same demanding and critical mother-in-law that she had always been. And yet, day after day, my mother served her without complaint. We took the table out of the breakfast room and had a rented hospital bed placed there instead. I can still see Mom leaning over Grandma’s bed, patiently feeding her.
As I think back on that time, I realize now that my passion for caring for people with long term needs came out of experiences like that. God’s love for us never fails. It’s always patient and kind. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs suffered. Mom showed that kind of godly love to a critical and demanding invalid widow and I got to watch. Her good works live on today.
May your good works for your care receiver – and for all those around you -have the same effect.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org and in Doing Good Well: Thirty Meditations on Developing a Biblical and Focused Discipline of Good Works, by Herb Reese.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
