The Patience of Job

Ya know I didn't make the connection at first until two separate people commented about how if everything that has happened to my mother had happened to them they would have just cursed God and died by now. And yet my mother continues in her attitude of grateful happiness to have been granted more time on this earth to raise her family and spend time with her grand children.

There's been much speculation about what my mother could possibly have done to deserve this ("whatever it was it must have been bad") or perhaps that she was being punished for sins committed in a past life. Because while she's definitely not perfect, she's also one of the very best people I've ever met and she has only continued to improve as she's aged.

I remember when I was younger and she still had things she was working through. Things she wasn't taught by her family growing up that she should have been taught. But I can give her no higher praise than this: any time it has been brought to her attention that something she does is hurtful or unkind, she apologizes and she never, ever does it again. I can only pray that I can become half the mother that she is.

For those unfamiliar with my family history, my Mom got cancer the first time when I was 8 years old. She was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. She had chemo, radiation and a bone marrow transplant. She just celebrated her 20th transplant anniversary this last August. :)

When I was 15 she was diagnosed with Malignant Melanoma and had to have an outpatient surgery to remove it from her back. And when I was 20 she was diagnosed with Mucal Epidermoid Carcinoma, which is a tumor in a salivary gland in her neck caused by the radiation she was given 11 years prior to cure the Leukemia... She had to have surgery and a 6 week course of radiation to kill that one. As a result of issues from the radiation, Mom was left completely deaf in her left ear.

Life had largely normalized for Mom since then. My Dad was diagnosed with Non-small-cell Carcinoma in his right lung, when I was 23 and had to have the lower third of his right lung removed. But otherwise Mom has been doing very, very well. She's now a nurse in the clinic where she was a patient 20 years ago.

Then my folks came out to see me for Christmas... Somebody on their flight was sick with strep because 2 days after their flight both of my parents came down with strep. Mom's infection went to her ears, which caused her ear drum in her good ear to rupture and went so far as to infect her inner, middle and outter ears. She was stone deaf for weeks and her balance has been severely compromised.

She's been making great strides to regain her hearing and doing physical therapy to regain her balance.

And now this. She's sick again. She's been admitted to the hospital. They think its some rare variety of strep but they're not sure yet.

My Mother, the saint, with the patience of Job is once again in the hospital being poked and prodded. And I'm silently begging my Heavenly Father that she can be well again and soon.