Page 31 of Over the Verdant Hills
“Is she okay?” he asked, referring to her grandma.
She nodded. “She admitted everything and agreed that maybe she needed to go back to the doctor. She’s in pain now.”
She closed her eyes and put a hand out to steady herself against the doorpost.
He set his tools down, straightened, and walked up the steps.
“Want to sit down for a minute?” he said, afraid she was going to fall down if she didn’t find a place to rest for a moment.
“I just can’t believe it. My grandma. I mean… I wanted her to be my rock. And now I come here, and she’s just another problem.” She put her head in her hands. “I don’t mean it like that.” She sighed, rubbing her fingers over her forehead, as though she had a headache. “I just mean it like… I wanted to come here and heal, not have more to deal with.”
“Apparently the Lord had other plans,” he said, knowing that she was just as liable to get upset with him for saying it as she was to be comforted by it.
She looked up. “Grandma said that I should be careful not to be offended. She said that my life will be a lot less stressful if I learn to just let things go. Not just the things people do, but situations too. Like Grandma.” She lifted a hand and held it out. “I can’t do anything about it. Worrying isn’t going to solve anything. So I just need to trust God. But you know how much harder it is to do that than it is to say?”
He grinned a little. “Yeah, I’ve had decades of experience with my mom.”
Realization dawned in her eyes, and her head tilted a bit. “I’m sorry. I’m making my problem huge, while you have your own problems.”
“But I’ve dealt with them. I’ve done what you just said. What your grandma told you to do. God’s got it. And yeah, sometimes I look at her and think, ‘Man, I think she’s worse than she used to be,’ or ‘Is that another symptom? Does that mean she’s going downhill faster?’ But then I remember that it’s not up to me to know the times or the seasons. I just have to trust that God’s going to keep her here with me until it’s time for her to go. And of course, I’m going to do everything I can to make her more comfortable, to follow the doctor’s orders, to help hereat healthy and hopefully extend her life. But in the end, God is in control, and I have to pry my fingers off and let it go.”
He’d never really said it that clearly to anyone before, but it seemed like Claire could use a little help. She seemed overwhelmed.
“Thank you for that. I guess that’s what I need to do. But it’s so hard to think of the future without her.”
“Why do you need to think about that now?” he asked. He’d long ago stopped wondering what things would be like when his mom passed. After all, he could sit around worrying about that for years and end up dying first. It was a silly thing to worry about.
“I guess I don’t,” she said after a moment of thought. “I just feel like I have to figure everything out this second.”
“Isn’t that what faith is? Just knowing that God will figure it out. We don’t have to. When the time comes, God’s going to give us grace to get through whatever it is we need to get through, and if we need to figure something out, we’ll figure it out then.”
“That’s such a more relaxed way of looking at it. I want to worry. I feel like Ineedto worry. If I’m not worrying, then I’m not doing my job.”
“The Bible says that worry is sin,” he said, not meaning to argue with her, but he knew he was right. And he knew that she would understand when she heard it, because she’d been talking about it.
“I know. Why do I feel like I need to, when the Bible clearly tells me I don’t?”
“Maybe that’s Satan trying to convince us that what God said isn’t relevant. He does it all the time, you know.”
He thought about how people felt like it was important that they not be doormats, and if someone wasn’t kind to them, they were being a doormat if they were kind in return. So many things the Bible clearly said were not God’s will, and yet Christians quickly did what the world said and hardly ever tried to put the Bible into practice in their life. They read it, and the words went right over their head.
“I think it just feels better to me to be doing what isn’t right sometimes. And that surprises me, because I thought I was very sensitive to sin.”
“Sure. You probably are. Sins like lying and cheating and beingunkind. But sins like worry and fear and treating other people the way they treat us aren’t really on our radar all the time.”
“Or pride. I finally figured out that part of the reason I was offended that you didn’t tell me that my grandma was sick was because I thought I deserved to know. That’s pride. I…have a problem with that. Feeling like I deserve things.”
“I guess we don’t deserve anything but hell. But it’s hard to reconcile that.”
“It is. It is hard to take that a step further and be grateful for every little thing we get, because that isn’t what we deserve.”
“Sometimes we get something, and we feel like we need even more on top of that, rather than being grateful for what we get.”
“Guilty,” she said, smiling at him.
He wanted to ask if she was feeling better. She looked like it. Finally, she took a deep breath and then looked out over the horizon.
“Thank you. I feel better. Maybe not able to handle everything, but at least armed with the knowledge that there’s nothing I can do, and I might as well let go and give God the control that I want to desperately wrestle away from Him. And why?” She laughed. “Because I think I can do so much better? There’s pride again. I don’t think God is handling it well enough, so I need to grab it from Him and take control.”
