Thursday 4 August 2011

Why!!??!!!?!

This summer I have been staying with my grandparents in Saskatchewan, helping them clean up the yard. It all started that I needed a job and they needed the help, so out I came. I have to say that I have had so much fun this summer, but it has also had some trying moments.

For example, my grandpa has Alzheimer's and Vascular Dementia. If any of you don't know what that means, well, in short form, you forget memories and you forget the purpose for something. People with dementia have problems with memories, perception, emotion issues, cognitive skills, and speech. The sad thing is, for both of these there is nothing that can be done to help, just wait and hope that the pills you are taking are helping.

Everyday I see him fall further and further down the rabbit hole. He wont know what some tool is for, or how to say something. Often times you are left standing there while he struggles with his words and you just want to push them out. Yesterday we were cleaning the garden and I was picking all of the Fat Hen, which is a weed that can reproduce off of a single leaf. My grandpa was attempting to assist me but he was trying to pull them out with a huge spade and was therefore loosing them and covering up other ones at the same time. It took half an hour to convince him to let me do it by myself, but then he insisted on helping me find them. He would point at the weeds and I would pull them out. Only he didn't know which ones were Fat Han. He has been weeding this particular weed since he was a little kid and at the age of 86 he didn't know which one it was. The day before this he said he was 96 and that his wife was 33, which is completely inaccurate.

The thing that saddens me the most is that he used to be so smart. My grandma cries a lot because she misses him. It almost never is him anymore.

I keep asking myself why him? Why should he be the one that looses almost everything he holds dear? It is almost never fair in life, and everyone knows that, but still we ask that most important question. Why. So often people wonder and wonder, and I think that to find the answer people have to turn to God for the answers. Yes bad things happen, but that doesn't mean that God caused them to happen, our bad choices did. When it wasn't our choices or even any one elses, it just shows the frailty of life. Our human bodies are not made to last forever, and this is due to our sin in the Garden of Eden. We are fragile. We break down. Just because someone gets a disease, doesn't mean that it is because they did something bad to deserve it. It could be caused by the bad air due to pollution, or just nature. God allows stuff to happen to teach us a lesson, but that doesn't mean that he wants us to get hurt.

He loves us dearly, and I have found that in the hardest trials, that the stories of Job and to Lamentations are a great help. They are the stories of sorrow and sadness. Of suffering and pain. There are in the bible for a reason. To give us hope, and to let us not feel like God is cruel or that it is all our fault. Lean on God, even in the hard times and you will find strength.


"Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will rund and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary." - Isaiah 40:31

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