As a Mom I often felt like Mary in the year 1985 because many times I had to watch my son suffer. But here is a happy memory from that time. And it's a favorite Christmas memory. Let me know what's yours.
December 25th, 1985 we arrived around nine at Lakeland Nursing Home with song sheets and home-made gifts and cards. It had been our custom for more than ten years, since our children were toddlers, to visit residents in the quiet of Christmas morning even though we didn’t have family there. Wayne and I wanted our four to experience the joy of ministering to others. But in 1985 our eighteen-year-old son David had overslept. He’d been treated for lymphoma since October, was mobile, but fragile. We left him home in bed.
As we worked our way down from the top floor, I’ll never forget stepping from the elevator and seeing David with a semi-circle of silver haired ladies listening attentively to his reading of the Night Before Christmas. He’d driven over late rather than miss. I paused as my mother’s heart took a leap, then closed my eyes and prayed, Lord may our precious son’s life continue. The very next week David was hit by a drunk driver while jogging and his leg was shattered. It would seem our prayers had not been answered, but we clung to faith.
After several leg surgeries with cancer raging through David’s body, a new experimental procedure at UW-Madison Hospital, bone marrow transplant, was suggested and ultimately succeeded.
David and his wife, Kathy and their six-year-old twins, Joshua and Anna, will soon visit us from Florida and Christmas morning we’ll be at another nursing home with his brother Dan and wife, Stephanie, to continue our legacy of bringing Christmas joy to God’s precious elderly. We’ll celebrate Jesus, for in Him, and through Him all things are possible.
Blessed Christmas everyone!
