I had been meaning to start posting on this blog many many months ago. I just never got around to it. I have spent the last two weeks checking one of my closest friends blogs as she waited for her baby. I kept refreshing and going back and forth, hoping for news of the new life they would have. I even told her more than a few weeks ago to start putting her blog up and updating it every day so she would be sure to have it all recorded. I have always had the best of intentions or doing that myself... Yet I haven't quite made it.
Obviously you see I am posting today. This day, as the last week has been a total roller coaster ride. I was reminded that our futures are uncertain, and we don't know if tomorrow will always come. Be that figuratively or reality.
As I have watched my friend blog about the wonderful journey she has been on to bring precious Allie Beth into the world, the excitement has been building, and my heart has been filling with joy for her and her new family that is just beginning. And as happy as I am for her, my heart was also breaking in another part of my world.
My husband's sister fell into a coma, and has been on a ventilator since Monday morning. My heart breaks for her. It breaks for my mother in law, and my 3 nephews. And my heart not only breaks but aches for my husband and his hurt. He hasn't been particularly close or in the day to day lives of his sister or his nephews for quite some time now. It doesn't mean he doesn't love her, because its his sister, of course he does. Our family was just going in a different direction than hers was, and we just had different goals for where we wanted our families to be. So now, I watch my husband in pain. I want to make it go away, and I can't. Even though he knows he has been right to distance himself from her... he feels guilty for having done so, as if he betrayed her in some way.
Likewise for my Mother-in-Law. It is no secret that there is a pretty substantial divide between her and I, but today, I didn't see the woman that has hurt me or hurt my husband. I saw a woman whose child is about to die, struggling not to melt into the floor. I saw a woman who is trying to hold herself together for 3 grandsons at home about to lose their mother. I can not even begin to imagine how horrific it is for her. I can't even begin to put myself in her shoes. As I do, the enormity of the emotions begins to wash over me and i shrug it off because I can't allow myself to go there and feel it. She doesn't have that choice. Its not going anywhere. She has to face it. That too makes me ache for her.
As she left the hospital today, she came up to me and told me how good a wife I was, and that I was a good mother, much better than she had ever been. She choked up at the end. I am in no place to judge her. I was in no place to say Thank You. I just told her I did the best that I could. She broke down in sobs and walked away.
That's the point tonight. Always do the best that you can. That's all we can ask of ourselves or anyone else. You can't have regrets if you do your best. No matter the situation, and no matter if tomorrow never comes, if you have done your best.... then the best happened.
Tomorrow may be the last for my husband's sister, and it may not. Either way, its a beginning, and I will do my best in everything I do. I don't want to have a tinge of regret in my heart.
Commit to the lord whateverr you do, and your plans will succeed. Proverbs 16:3
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