A Life After Death

Blogs are so weird. You can kind of be whoever you want to be until people you actually know read your blog and than you start to overanalyze everything on it...

Well, after 100 posts I figure I should post the truth: Taking care of grandmom is easy. Yup, go figure- I am not a saint. I get a lot of glory for taking care of my grandmom. And yeah, there have been some incredibly difficult times these last few years, and I do not want to take any credit away from God- that truly was the whole point of this blog- to show that God is strong enough to take a self centered young adult and to change that girl's heart to give her the love she needs to care for her demented bed ridden grandmother. And truly- God has done that. But I think I got little one sided in my blogging and I would only post the "good things" and things that made me look good...Or the difficult things that also make me look good.

And that just is not fair to everyone else-

So please do not call elder abuse when I show you a real picture of life taking care of grandmom that proves that I am the worst grandmom caretaker ever:

-Lately I've been oversleeping till like 11 and my grandmom (who also sleeps late) lays around in a wet diaper. (I know I am horrible!!!!)
-Since we sleep so late grandmom gets breakfast at 12 and we just skip lunch...(ugh, it just keeps getting worse)
-I rarely brush my grandmom's teeth (all like 12 she has left)
- I also am too lazy to soak her hands and stretch them so they just keep getting more clenched and gross
- Her room is  disaster because I usually hide the rest of the junk from the house in there and try to clean it up nice only when people are going to see her
- I almost never give her her night pills and often just forget to give her her morning meds
-I'm too lazy to call a visiting doctor to come out and see her so she's had no real medical evaluation since last July!
-The kids ate most of her chocolate she got for her birthday
- I feed her frozen meals for dinner more often than not

I'm sure this list could go on forever. Yes, you can judge me. I'm horrible and selfish and a failure. Of course this blog is used mostly to paint a picture of us snuggling all day, having big birthday bashes, and us baking together (I usually do not even take my grandmom out of her room...)
Ugh.
You see, I've been dealing with my own failure  a lot lately. As a daughter, granddaughter, friend, human being, Christian. Ugh. But it just makes me more thankful that God sees all of my failure (even the things I will never be bold enough to share on blog) and loves me the same. His love is unconditional. And I'm washed so beautifully in the blood of the Son.
But I know that doesn't excuse my sins of laziness, selfishness, gluttony, etc.
And so this is the verse the Lord has not just been teaching me knowledge-wise- I'm actually learning that it is true through experience:
"My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" Psalm 73:26
I'm a failure. God is not. And I cannot change myself. As much as I try, I cannot wake up in the morning. And it drives me insane. BUT GOD. Am I going to depend, lean on, cling to His strength? Step out into it. Allow my life to show that God is stronger. And am I going to still struggle and have trouble waking up in the morning? Probably. But daily I'm going to lean on the Lord, for His mercy, His grace, and His strength- because the Lord is working in me and perfecting me and disciplining me, because He loves me and I'm thankful.

So I hope you all now realize I am not perfect. God is. I'm just sinner saved by grace. I'm so thankful.

So once upon a time I went to Africa. I had just graduated highschool and was going with my Sr High youth group- trusted friends, mentors, pastors. Toward the end of our trip we were going to be staying at a Wildlife Resort and going on a safari. I overheard my friend Brianna making a comment to our youth pastor Brian about (what I thought I heard were) the "mechanical animals" we were going to be seeing. This absolutely made so much sense to me because I had already questioned why our leaders would take us to on a dangerous safari with real live dangerous animals- I mean, we were in AFRICA after all= danger! Once my friends heard that I thought that the animals were going to be mechanical (like robotic, if you don't know what I mean by "mechanical"), the new hobby of this "missions trip" team was to play mind games with me. Who do I trust? One minute, "yes, Tif, the animals are mechanical- you seriously thought we'd take you on a safari with real live lions?" and the next minute "Tiffany, honestly, they are real animals!" You can imagine my utter despair as this goes on for hours...anyway, finally at dinner, I get my friend Christa, who I knew I could trust, to tell me the truth- yes, we were going to see REAL lions, elephants, hippos on this safari.

So, the great justice of this whole ordeal came when we were riding in our completely-exposed-to-the-forces-of-nature-jeeps (weaponless, we later found out) and basically stall out in front of two young male lions who were both attempting to woo a young lioness. While everyone else's hearts were beating out of their chest in fear, I was living in some alternative universe- I literally had no fear. Honestly, there wasn't a concern in my mind about being mauled to death in the African savannah. The reality of the situation just was not real to me at all.



And so, I was reading Revelation 4 this morning describing the throne room of Jehovah God  and I was just like- why is this not shaking me to the core? And I realized, its because I have such a dulled sense of reality. I live in an age where special effects and technology have made it possible to have a 3-D Television in my home (if I wanted and could afford it!) and put on a pair of glasses that basically could make a lion jump out of the screen at me. I can see Niagra Falls in the comfort of my own home. I can go down to the Franklin Institute and lay on my back and look at a ceiling and travel through the human body if I really wanted to. And so when I'm truly experiencing Niagra Falls itself, the power of it, the reality of it just isn't what it should be. It should be awe inspiring- and in a sense it is- but ugh, how this technology has dulled me to what it should really produce in me. And that's how I felt when I read Revelation 4- this description- John truly experienced and tried to describe to the best of his ability what He was seeing when he faced the throne room of God. And one day I'm going to experience that. And I want it to stop me right now and make me declare: "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."

You know it's an exciting birthday party when you have to call 911, right?

Anyway, my grandmom turned 81 on Thursday and we celebrated by eating salmon and chocolate cake- a few of my grandmom's favorite things!

So Saturday night we invited over some of my dad's side of the family who, over the last few years, have grown  closer to my grandmom than her side of the family since her daughters and their kids live out of state (very different than my dad's insane Irish-catholic family with the 30 grandkids who are basically over my house every other weekend)...

Anyway we were having a great time partying it up with lunch meat and cheese and crackers (a few of my grandmom's other favorite things!), when we moved onto dessert. I fed her some her famous cream puff cake and had given her a bite of coconut cream pie when I look over and notice her not breathing and her eyes all unfocused and what not.

Well of course my grandmom would choke in the middle of her birthday party!

Anyway, my dad (recalling the incident  a couple of weeks ago) sprang into action and pulled her out of the wheelchair (with my uncle grabbing her legs and getting tangled in her birthday balloon that was tied to her chair!!!) Next thing I know, my aunt is screaming "Oh God no!", my other grandmother is throwing Lourde's Holy Water on her (while her and my grandpop continue to eat dinner), and we're screaming for the kids to leave the room because my grandmom is like dead on the floor and it didn't look like she was coming back this time...
 I, with my intensive medical training from my responding to emergencies class, go to grab my CPR mask (which totally makes sense when someone is choking- not! there are many reasons I am not going for nursing), meanwhile my dad and mom have my grandmom laying on her side on the living room floor while April calls 911. I'm ready for them to bring the body bag when next thing you know my grandmom starts chewing...to wrap up this death defying tale, my grandmom lives on! The paramedics came just to check her out and the party continued (my grandmom did seem to have more life in her after that, though the rest of us were exhausted!)

And so we've learned that my grandmom really knows how to kill a party (que drum and cymbal corniness)

I had a little mental goal of having 100 posts by my grandmom's birthday, but since i'm at like 96 posts or something and today is her birthday...eh, oh well? Maybe I'll pull 100 by 100???

Eighty-one. yup! I never would have imagined her making it another year, especially after this last year we had, but I guess God has some reason that my grandmom is still alive!

So Happy Birthday Lydia Dora Roach! I love you!!!!