Some time ago I followed my mother through the crowded isles of a nearby “dollar” store.  She piled dusty candy bars, cookies at two bags for a dollar, yet another throw pillow, a new lampshade, four plastic place mats and assorted knick knacks into her cart.

I kept telling myself that God wanted me to have infinite patience with Mom.  Even though it was a Saturday morning and my own to-do list stretched well past the weekend, I tried to persuade myself nothing on earth was more important than being there with Mom.  Aisle after aisle we crept.  I moved the cart slowly, no more than an inch at the time while she considered the merits of one household goodie over another.

At one point she leaned over close to my ear and whispered, “See how much you could save by shopping here?”

I was in agony.  I wanted to scream, but women over fifty don’t scream in public – at least not out loud.  We smile and wait on our elderly parents.  By this time Jim and I had been caring for my parents for some years.  Mom took multiple medications for a variety of chronic conditions and we counted each day with her as a gift.

In the beginning we had put our lives on hold and often spoke of the time when things would get back to normal.  Gradually, we came to realize that normal would be whatever showed up on our plate for the day.  It took us a long time to arrive at that point of acceptance.  Normal for us became taking care of Mom and Dad as well as our teenage daughter.  Normal meant never having time to pour into the interests we enjoyed the most.  We came to think of life as a wide stream, sometimes bouncing us through perilous rapids and other times letting us drift through back waters.  Through it all we depended on our boat of faith to carry us.  True, sometimes faith carried us kicking and screaming.  Once in a while, we even managed to row a little.  Other times, exhausted, we curled up inside our boat and let us carry it where it would.