When Mommy is Sick

Processing through what to do when the kids come up and ask me one question after another, while the brain fog from chemo is THICK.  I can’t even answer basic questions, and often my mind will completely blank at classic kid questions like “mommy, where’s my flashlight?”

Wondering what this frequent experience is teaching my children and what worldview or perspective this gives them. If it will give them sensitivity towards someone being sick when it’s a constant state for a member of the household. Naturally my first concern is: will it negatively affect my children??

I worry they will view me as frail and sickly. Worst of all I think I worry they will view God as not hearing or answering our prayers. Will they catch the nuance between no and not yet?

Then I started to wonder how I could say in a gracious and loving way “mommy doesn’t feel good, I can’t answer your questions right now” and just gently remind them each time they come up to me, so concerned with their own questions and their own needs in that moment.

How often do I need this reminder? to be sensitive to my surroundings. That call in Philippians 2:4 to “put my brothers needs before my own.”

I think God helped direct my thoughts around this in the moment, as He gently reminded me that He’s the redeemer of all things, situations and circumstances (i.e the message of the entire Bible 😉) and it’s not my fault or my children’s fault that I am sick on the weekly. that it is precisely where He has me as their mother suffering from cancer, and my children like little sponges are watching.

My husband and I get the opportunity to disciple, coach and try to help shape our children around the seemingly conflicting truths of how both a good and a sovereign God (Job 42:2) allows his children to go through suffering (James 1:12). I now have the opportunity to be a vessel and a testament to my own weakness, my inability to help get snacks or help find the remote or get my own water.

Back in June we got to spend some time with our dear friends who are missionaries from Africa who run a center for cancer patients. Something they asked me will stick with me for the rest of my life “have you thought about what it looks like to die in a holy way?” Honestly at first, I was taken aback by the question, and our friend went on to explain “we only get one chance at dying, and we hope and pray that’s a long way off for you, but everyone dies. Have you thought about what that would look like for you?”

I have pondered this question in the weeks and months since that conversation. Through surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy…it turns out my answer is: graciously.

I want this season of my life to be marked by grace. For my children especially, as I sit here on my sick bed, that may by God’s sovereignty one day be my death bed (many, many years from now Lord willing!). I want my actions, my attitudes, my life to be soaked in grace like the wick of an oil lamp. I want my children to know that I am weak, that I can’t help them sometimes, and that it doesn’t mean that I love them any less or that God is any less loving and gracious to me.

2 Cor 11:30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

Love, Rachel