Mother Teresa Hits the Wall???

My dear MIL (Mother-in-Law) brought me this antique gadget when she came to dinner last night. Any guesses what it is?Okay....time is up.....as you can see it is a thread holder. Pretty cool.....I like antiques (she has certified it was over 50 years ago when she stored it in her old sewing machine cabinet). AND I sew so it is perfect! Sometime I will have to show that bowl behind it with the "beaters" in it...it is an antique hand mixer. I use it to put threads and scraps in while sewing.

This is my MIL who will be 94 on March 24th of this year. She has been such a blessing to me. When I married her only child....she took me as the daughter she lost as a baby. And she has treated me as well or better than a daughter. She buys me clothes....and I usually like them. Honey, she babysat my kids for days and weeks....even when I had my three and three foster kids and her elderly mother living with her. SHE is a saint.....there are not enough superlatives in my vocabulary to describe her....but I think you get the gist.

Recently she has begun to slow down....and I do mean recently. She has an eye disease that requires a shot in her eye once a month with a chemo medicine. Fortunately, it IS working and some of her vision in that eye has returned. But she wondered aloud the other night if she should stop driving. She also talked about how she had looked at the seed and bulb catalogs that have come in the mail and put them aside wistfully realizing she was really not able to plant them and care for them like she used to.

I tried to empathize without saying, "I know" because I DON"T know and I won't know until and unless I am almost 94 and cannot do the things I want to do and used to be able to do.

Since my preacher's sermon last Sunday on honoring your father and mother, Hubs and I have been trying to do better where Edith is concerned. We had her to dinner. He took her to the eye appointment and picked up the groceries she needed. She called this morning and asked him to take her to run a few errands today......I can see down the road she is going to need more and more care and we are going to need to be less and less selfish and impatient.

This makes the nunnery look ever more appetizing to me. I am a lousy servant or care giver. (Children keep your traps shut if you want to stay in my will.) I am only telling you dear reader so you can see when and if God manages to make me obedient and submissive. Since I made my plans to become a nun, Hubs has started calling me "Mother Teresa" which makes us both laugh. (I couldn't be less like Mother Teresa if I was a Howard Stern.) While we laugh, we know it means I am having to act unselfishly like she would. Ouch! I am now calling him Father Abraham.....and he is looking into monasteries. Anything to get out of being patient caregivers :)

Today our Bible Study met. We are doing The Prayer of Jabez.....Enlarge my territory....Make me a blessing....we all have aged people we are married to and/or caring for....we look with askance at asking God to do that. God is going to have to move mightily in us......but you know we have already seen him do a lot......He Could Just be In All This.....Stay Tuned.....for Donnamo and The Real Deal.