[Melanie Campbell] In God’s Timing

This picture…it’s an answered prayer.

A little over a year ago I began writing One Way Home, the second book in my Whispers of Grace series. In the story, Sharon, a recovering alcoholic, lives with her only daughter and granddaughter. Part of the story line is about their relationship. The character of Sharon is inspired a little by my own mom, including her love for music and the ability to play the guitar.

In April of last year (and about a third of the way into the writing of my book) I stopped by my mom’s to drop off some groceries. I found her with one side of her face drooping and slurred speech. I called 9-1-1. My mom had suffered a small stroke. As the EMTs loaded her into the ambulance, she had another.

It was scary. But it was also much more. You see, I’d been praying for more years than I could count that my mom would quit drinking. The book I was in the middle of writing was about overcoming alcoholism. In my heart, it was a prayer to God for my mom. A prayer for her to know the life God longed for her to have. In essence, I was rewriting my mom’s life.

As I followed the ambulance to the hospital, I prayed for God to save her life. I asked God how He could ignore my prayers for all of these years and let my mom die in the condition she was in. I begged Him for one more chance to show her love, to fight for her.

He answered my prayers, but not in the way I had hoped. My mom survived, but she never went back home. Because of the cognitive damage from the stroke and my mom’s physical limitations from her severely arthritic hips, she was discharged from the hospital to a long-term care center.

In the care facility, my mom could no longer drink. She could no longer smoke. I thought to myself, “All of these years of praying for her to quit drinking, and this is how it happens?” It felt like a slap in the face.

My mom’s recovery from the stroke was slow. During the first month at the care facility, she would call me from her cell phone in the middle of the night, having delusions, begging me to come get her because she had been kidnapped. Her memory was terrible. She’d forget not only things we had said but that we had even visited her at all. She became completely dependent on a wheelchair. My mom had a total of three surgeries in nine months: one for the blockage in her neck, and the other two for her hips.

After almost a year in the care facility, it was time for her to be discharged, and I knew what I had to do.

We brought my mom home to live with us. At first, I didn’t know how we’d manage. She could barely walk, and the room we had for her was down a small flight of stairs. Her memory still seemed lacking and managing her medications was almost a full-time job.

But we adapted, and even more importantly, my mom got better. Now she’s going up and down the stairs by herself several times a day. She’s folding laundry and washing dishes. She’s going for walks outside. Yes, she’s still having pain, but she’s pushing through it, living life. Yes, she’s still a little forgetful, but so much better than I thought she would be a year ago.

And she’s teaching her music-loving eleven-year-old granddaughter how to play the guitar.

I think about how many times it seemed God wasn’t hearing my prayers for my mom. I reflect on how I thought God should answer them. But more often than not, He doesn’t answer prayers according to our preconceived notions or timetables. Sometimes the road to those answered prayers are full of potholes that trip us and make us fall. It’s in those times our faith is tested the most. Are we going to get back up and keep fighting in the Spirit, or are we going to give up?

I never would have imagined that my mom would be living with us. I also never imagined I would be homeschooling my daughter because of a pandemic. But God knew. My mom being here now is a gift. We moved her into our home to help her. It turns out she’s helping us.