Best Laid Plans…

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I truly meant to blog yesterday, mostly because of the irony in the day for me. It would have been my grandmother’s 106th birthday, and my mom went into the hospital for tests. It’s also the birthday of a dear friend. The major test for my mom (an endoscopy) will be this morning at 11. They hope to send her home this afternoon as they wait for results, but it’ll all depend on how she’s handled the rigor of the test. My brother did say she sounded better last night after all day on an IV drip, so that’s good news.

My mom is 81, just two years younger than my grandmother when she died. Mortality is on her mind a lot these days, so we talk about it. One thing I’ve always cherished about my mom is her sense of the practical and her honesty about life. She kept in mind our ages, but she never hid the hard stuff from my brother and me – she just showed us how faith and family can pretty much get you through anything.

I guess that’s why I’m always bewildered by people who want to ignore the darker side of life. They want to turn away and not deal with even some of the bigger issues in our lives that aren’t pleasant. I’ve actually had people say to me that they don’t want to be “corrupted” by certain images.

I’ve never understood this. Images can’t corrupt you, whether it’s a flattened photo on your computer or a scene on the street. It’s your response to them that’s corrupting. And, no, I’m not being naive. I’ve been down the dark paths. I’ve seen things that most people never will. And I’ve been around a lot of people who’ve let themselves become corrupted by things they’ve seen or been asked to do. But that happened because they weren’t prepared; their hearts and minds were caught unaware and unprepared for the harsher sides of life.

In too many ways, I think we’ve sanitized our lives and our surroundings. The danger in this is that we go through life totally unprepared for the hard things that inevitably happen in every life. Too many times, I’ve seen distraught parents on tv after their teen has been hurt or killed in an accident saying, “I just never thought this would happen.” My question is always, “Why not? Do you really think you’re immune?”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a pessimist who walks around thinking about the Four Horsemen all the time. Most days, I go through life like most folks, just hanging on and doing the best I can, working hard, and laughing with my friends. But I know what can happen, and when I turn to God and His Word, I know that what’s there can prepare me for almost anything. God . . . and my mom.

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