Reader Amy left a comment in a previous post, asking for prayers:
I read about your cancer scare last year and was glad to find out that it ended happily. But, I need you to please PRAY for me. My children are 4,3,18 months and I’m 12 wks pregnant. I am to be scheduled for a thyroid biopsy this week or next for suspicious cancer. Please pray that it is benign. I can’t imagine leaving my children behind on this earth without me. I am in deep, deep fear and anguish. Please pray hard for me!
I know all too well what a frightening, dark and lonely place she is in right now. We mothers, who can hardly bear to leave our children for a few hours, feel such anguish at the thought of their being bereft of us altogether. I have dreams almost nightly of being separated from my girls, hearing them crying and not being able to get to them. It is a very hard thing to contemplate that final separation and so very hard to abandon ourselves to God’s providence, trusting that he will provide.
I will pray for a benign result, of course. I hope Amy’s story will turn out like mine, a scare and nothing more. But I also pray that Amy will be filled with the knowledge that God, the good Father, loves all His children and will never abandon any of them, not her and not her children for whom she fears with such motherly anguish. I pray that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, will be with Amy and strengthen her as she walks through this dark night. Please join me in watching and praying so that Amy will not be alone in her time of trial but will be comforted and supported by a cloud of witnesses, and that she will be filled with the sure knowledge of Christ’s love.
Also, please say some prayers for my mother-in-law, Virginia. She’s home recuperating from surgery after her infected knee replacement was removed and has just learned that she’s been “let go” from her job. Not entirely unexpected given that with the various surgeries and bouts of infection she’s been out more that she’s been in; but still a hard blow. We haven’t been able to visit as she’s two hours away in Maine and she’s pretty isolated, home all day by herself.
Mother Mary, please pray for them and for all who are sick, alone and scared.
Hi Melanie—
First, congratulations on the birth of Sophia. I read Dom’s blog and venture over to yours quite often, too!
I loved Danielle’s post on being an introverted parent. I am not introverted, probably the opposite. My “babies” are 23 and 25 now, so I have all of that time to myself that I sometimes yearned for back when they were small. I distinctly remember a time period where my two goals were to #1 pee by myself, and #2 have a drink to myself.
I also wanted to comment on the clean room thing…I fought with my kids for years about their rooms. Then I read a book or an article that, basically, said their rooms are theirs, close the door. It brought so much peace to my life. Unfortunately I didn’t do this until they were in their early teens. Every few months or so I would tell them, usually because we were having some sort of company, that they had to clean their rooms and I wanted to be able to see the floor. Other than that they could keep them how they wished. Today, my son is still pretty slobby but my daughter has turned into a neat freak.