These days, I’m sandwiched between my children and my mother. Watching the beautiful process from birth to growth to maturity in my girls. All the while also watching the painful process of a life diminishing day by day right before my very eyes. The tension and the demand of being present in both events is more strenuous than I would have expected. I often can’t handle the toll and retreat from both altogether.

The kids are discovering life. They are asking questions, learning, seeking, in the most fulfilling way I could imagine a child’s life should be. They have everything a person would want growing up. Parents who love them. A stable, safe home. An environment that encourages following the Lord. Their lives are getting busier and busier with each new passion, discipline and friend. Their increasingly complex social and emotional world demands more and more of us as parents and our presence has now shifted from keeping them safe and alive, to teaching them how to thrive and be wise.

All the while, I also am walking with my mom through the end of her life. Every day and week, her faculties and capabilities grow smaller, weaker, and just plain less in every way. What was once a demanding, intense, opinionated woman is now nothing more than a withered frame staring or sleeping most of the day away. The hardness of her life has now been reduced to mere despair and hopelessness. All that is left is the daily lingering of a soul wishing to go home to Jesus but unable to do so. She is in pain. She is suffering. And my presence in her life is a very real need to prevent any more acute trauma before her time. Each day is an uncertainty. Each day she lives in torment.

I don’t know how to be present for them. I know I’m not enough. So Lord. This is my batsignal. Please help.

Jesus. I know I will look back on this time later and see you in every corner, but right now…I am just fatigued. I cling to you. You’re truly my rock and my fortress. The One this little sandwich is laying on.