Tout pour Jésus

There are days, like this Sunday, when caring for my Mum feels utterly overwhelming. While she is becoming more independent at home, there are still things she can't do for herself, like hanging the washing out, shopping, cleaning or going out. On Sunday I did all of these, and took her out for a coffee in a wheelchair. Not easy, as I am quite weak, physically, and she's very overweight!

It all feels too much sometimes, and I struggle with personal tasks such as emptying the commode. Such things never used to bother me, and I was a geriatric nurse for years and coped with all kinds of bodily fluids! But the last few years I have become incredibly squeamish and have no tolerance for bad smells at all, not even BO! But in the midst of all this doing today, I remembered a passage from my favourite book The Nun's Story, and having just read it this last week, it was fresh in my mind...

All for Jesus, Sister William had said in the ward pulling on the rubber gloves. Say it, my dear students, every time you are called upon for what seems an impossible task. Then you can do anything with serenity. Say it for the bed pans you carry, for the old incontinents you bathe, for those sputum cups of the tubercular. Tout pour Jésus, she said briskly, as she bent to change the dressing foul with corruption.

I put this into practise in everything I did. It was no co-incidience that it was a Sunday ~ the Lord's Day!: Tout pour Jésus, and you know what, it made such a difference! It turned chores into blessings in a strange way I can't explain, and it got me through and beyond the utter overwhelmingness of it all. I still struggle with the caring, having not been cared for by my Mum in the past in the way I needed, but I'm getting there slowly, one day at a time.

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