Give me a room full of high school students any day over a single older person.
I know I'm not alone in feeling creeped out going into a nursing home - a lot of people feel that way.
Not my daughter - when she was younger and the Girl Scouts or Youth Group would go to a nursing home, she thought they were all so cute. She never seemed to notice that I was staying on the perimeter and counting the minutes until it was over.
Even when my own mother was in the last stages of her life - I had NO patience with her.
I could not stand to have the same conversation time after time on the rare times I visited.
Not my son - he had a standing Wednesday night visit with her and enjoyed her stories.
And when she was in the hospital and completely non-sensical, he'd redirect her to her socks.
In my head I was screaming, "Just take your pills old woman and we wouldn't be in this hospital."
She was wanting to go look for her own mother (dead already more than a decade) and my son would say, "I like your socks" and she'd pause and look at them and say, "They're yellow" - for the fifth time in half an hour yet it was as if she had just discovered them.
While I am proud of my children and their endless patience with their Grandma, I am certainly not proud of my own impatience. I often think maybe it is a good think if 7/12/17 is my end date and I don't have to grow old because if there is any credence to the concept of Karma, I'm due for a miserable old age.
I know we all have our strengths. To be the Body of Christ on Earth not everyone can be a hand, some have to be a foot. I'm a very logical person, that's how God made me for His purpose. But Logical and Senile just don't pair well together. I'm okay with that. I'm not beating my self up about my weakness, just continuing to keep my screaming thoughts inside me head whenever the need arises and knowing that I am NOT meant to serve God in the old folks home.
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