Today's Blessings

By Belinda


I'm sorry for not writing about anything but Mum right now. There are many things I would love to write about and ideas that percolate on the edges of my brain, but I find I'm too distracted to settle on them. I'm not worrying about Mum, I know she's safe and being well cared for (I'm so very grateful for that,) but at the same time, I have this low level anxiety that shows itself in an inability to focus on doing much. Usually I put anxiety to good use by cleaning. Maybe tomorrow! :)


These are the blessings of today:
 Rob spent a couple of hours with Mum. She still can't speak but a speech therapist has been working with her. Those of you who read here regularly, can you imagine how even much more precious those prayers she said for me when I was with her in January are now?


Before she had her first stroke in 2003, the last thing she did was post a letter to me in which she had recorded my birth story, then having put it in the post box, she collapsed. God gave me such a precious gift in that letter, her last written words. 


Now, he has given me a similar gift to cherish, words of prayer which I wrote down and shared here, the essence of her great love, distilled into a few words that came with vast effort and vaster depth of feeling.


Rob sat with her today and held her hands. He said to her, "Look at those beautiful hands that worked so hard and took such good care of us." (I took this photo of those hands in 2009 when she was in hospital.)

His back was turned to the door, and he was facing Mum, looking into her face, when a voice called out, "Are you Robert? Do you have a sister named Belinda?"


He turned to see a pretty dark haired woman in the door, who said, "I was one of the paramedics who came to take your mum to hospital in 2009."


Liz, (on the left in this photo) and I have remained friends since then, and kept in touch by email and on Face Book. She lost her own mum the year after we first met and I prayed for her through that time of grief and loss, knowing how dearly she loved her.

How she would come to be on the ward where Rob sat with Mum today, I don't know, but it made me feel as though God had her there, our own special angel!


A note waited for me in my email box tonight, with the subject line stating simply, "Prayer?" It was from my friend Janet Sketchley, the lead for The Word Guild Prayer Team, asking if she could ask them to pray. The great The Word Guild Prayer Team is made up of over 60 faithful prayer warriors. Of course I gratefully said, "Yes, please!" Another blessing to add to the many others, including the many friends who assure me here of prayer. 


"Thank you," doesn't come close to expressing my gratitude, but it's all I've got, so thank you. :)