Roses from Heaven

As some of my friends know, I have a small rosebush in my front yard that I call my “miracle bush” from God. I have never worked on grooming or pruning this bush (I don’t do yard work at all), but every so often it blooms beautiful dark-pink roses.
Roses are very special to me – I’ve loved them since I was a child and used to get bunches of them from my Great Uncle Benny’s rosebushes (he loved yard work!). My husband Vince had always given me roses on birthdays and other special occasions, as well as sometimes for no reason at all – “just for being me”, he would say.
Since his awful illness struck several years ago, leaving him physically and mentally disabled, there have of course been no more roses from him. But it seems that God in His great love has sent me roses on my little bush. For the past few years, since I started noticing it, roses have bloomed on my birthday, which is in October – not exactly rose-blooming season. On my past two birthdays, the day before there were slightly burgeoning blooms, but there would be rain storms which you might think would have destroyed them. Then on my birthday, there was at least one perfect rose – perfect! At least one rose has also bloomed on Mother’s Days. (And we have a large tree that blooms pink blossoms every year on our Anniversary in April – okay, spring is blossom time, but the tree waits till our anniversary to open!).
Once in the past year, we had a terrible storm, and the next day my rosebush was all bent over on the ground – as it is, half of the bush is buried under a large azalea bush. I believed that God would raise up the bush again – and He did – and roses even bloomed in the darkness under the azalea bush – God shines His light in all the dark places!

Today, Sept. 8, the Catholic Church celebrates the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This morning I read in Presentation Ministries’ “One Bread One Body” that Mary loves to give us gifts on her birthday. Of course, she has given us the greatest gift of all, her son Jesus. In addition, she is the perfect role model of a mother, bearing the grace of perfect love, perfect patience, and perfect goodness.
Yesterday I noticed that there was kind of a rose trying to open at the top of my rosebush, but it was pretty scrawny-looking. I was thinking that maybe somehow it would become a perfect rose for Mother Mary’s birthday today. That is exactly what happened – this morning there was a fully-opened dark pink rose, open to the heavens.

Loser? - Not in God's Eyes

Given my present situation, I sometimes fall into the trap of feeling like a "loser". I'm not earning any money; I have no profession despite intelligence, a college degree, and various work experiences; and I see all the other money-earning, accomplished, professional women around me. And it is way too easy to fall into depression when my husband barely moves or talks.

By the grace of God, I have actually made lots of personal progress in the past years, and am usually not depressed anymore. But in the past few days, the "loser" gloom settled over me. Finally this morning, while helping my husband drink a glass of water, I just listened to God. He told me that what I was doing wrong was measuring myself against the standards of this world - money, prestige, youth, functioning husband, etc. What I need to do is measure myself against God's standards of love, compassion, and self-giving.

So that's what I did: I realized that in God's eyes I am giving my life to caring for my husband; I am devoted to my children and grandchildren; I do some volunteer work for my church and a LOT of volunteer work for the Well Spouse Association (national support org. for spousal caregivers); I say prayers with seniors at a senior daycare center; I support a child in the Philippines; I try to be a reliable friend to my friends and a caring listener. And this in addition to managing my husband's illness and being responsible for EVERYTHING in our lives, without any assistance from and barely any communication with my husband. And then I realized how lucky I was that God has provided me the financial means to not have to work, at least for the near future. We are spending down our savings for the very expensive home health aides that are now totally necessary for my husband's care, but I am trying to trust that when I need to earn money, God will show me a way. In God's eyes, I do not think I'm a "loser." None of us are, because He created and loves all of us.

So God talks to me? you may ask, thinking I'm insane. This has only begun to happen after many years of prayer and looking for answers and looking to see what God does in my life and learning about God's totally loving nature. And amazing things like the following happen: this morning after I heard God tell me to judge myself by His standards and not the world's, I did my daily Bible reading which comprises the daily Mass readings. One of today's passages was Romans 12:2: "Do not model your behaviour on the contemporary world, but let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and mature." So THAT's telling me, right?

Hello out there!

Hello out there! For the past five years, I have been a caregiver for my husband who has a progressive neurodegenerative condition called Fragile-X Tremor Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS). He is physically and cognitively disabled. At the beginning of this ordeal, I felt like we were confined to a "punishment corner", not able to do much of anything together. In the ensuing years, I have become a fervent Catholic (my husband's faith) because I have found that God is real - He is very much involved in our lives if we ask Him to be, and He has kept me sane and aware of my many blessings amidst all my grief and sadness.

I was never one to speak out much, but as my faith increases, so do my convictions and opinions of what is going on in the world. I need an outlet to write, so here it is, for what it's worth......