By now Mom had finished quarantine and a family friend who is also a nurse said she believed it would be safe for me to visit. So I left my boys and husband safe at home and traveled the 6 ½ hours to be with Mom. She had been alone too long and I needed to be with her for at least part of the journey. My husband cautioned me that Dad probably had many months ahead of him before he could come home so I shouldn't go too early in the process, but I felt that God really wanted me to go then. I drove our car, which gets great gas mileage, making it on one tank of gas so that I only had to stop about a mile away from Mom’s fill up the car with gas and then be ready to drive home the next week. I didn’t plan on stepping off of Mom’s property until it was time to get back in the car and drive home!
The first part of my drive was filled with a lot of praying and thinking and some crying. In His graciousness, God had me find and bring a CD of Easter songs. As I listened to them and thought about Jesus, they ministered to my soul in a way I can’t really describe. Sometime during those songs I felt that God was telling me to just emotionally rest and worship Him; I didn't need to keep praying for Dad because He had other people praying!
Dad’s tracheostomy was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. that day, so I spent a lot of time praying for it to be successful. Although I sang the worship songs, I couldn’t shake my earlier fear that I would walk into Mom and Dad’s house and have Mom tell me that Dad had died during the surgery. A tracheostomy isn't necessarily a dangerous procedure for the patient, but I had prayed that if God wanted to take Dad to Heaven, He would do it instead of making us choose. This seemed like the best way for God to do that.
But when I arrived, I found out that the surgery hadn’t even happened yet. Finally, at 4:30, they successfully put in the tracheostomy. What a relief it was to have that done with. And it was so good to see Mom and be there for her.
At dinner that night (which had been graciously made by a church friend), Mom told me that she’d really wrestled with God the night before, but she’d finally been able to say “Not my will but Yours be done.” I knew that took a lot of courage for her to say, and when she said it, part of me hoped that this was all God was waiting for. I wanted to tell Him, “OK, God, Mom said ‘Your will be done.’ Did she pass the test? Can Dad be healed and come home now?”
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