That's me, painting the living room of the Main Street house, one of four rooms I had to complete within a six-week period in the spring of 2012 in preparation for moving my furniture and belongings from Brookline.
Has there been a time when I wished God would pick someone other than me to do some act of service? How does this relate to my journey through Lent? (In relation to God's having chosen Moses to go to Pharoah to ask him to free the Hebrews, and Moses responds, No way, Jose.)
My mother has been gone twenty-one years; my brother, thirteen years; my husband, eight years. Many times I have wondered why it is that I have been left to manage every detail of my family - past, present, and future - by myself. Everything, from parenting and (now) grandparenting to maintaining two houses, including a 200 year-old house (my childhood home), as well as my children's childhood home. And when I say maintain, I mean with my own hands: painting, repairing, furnishing, cleaning, yard work, rental turn-overs - the whole ball of wax; I do everything except climb on the roof, tear down chimneys, and repair furnaces. "Why, oh why," I have asked many times over the years, "has everyone gone and abandoned me and left me to take care of everything by myself? Why am I the only one who is not dead? Why am I the one who is left with the responsibility of figuring everything out on my own? Help!"
It's not that I don't want the job (okay, occasionally I feel overwhelmed and wish I could bail out, but not too often) - and luckily, I know how to do lots of things with my hands - I just can't figure out, from an existential point of view, why everything has been left for me to do; why am I even alive when everyone else in my family is dead?
As my children become more settled in their lives, I do foresee a time when more responsibilities will be delegated to them - it's hard to believe, but there may come a time when I'll unable to climb up on scaffolding to clean and repair gutters, ha ha - but for now, it's me, and there's stuff to get done, so I do it. And truth be told, I consider it a joy and an honor to be caring, lovingly, for my grandparents' old home, as well as for the house in which I raised my children, the house of many happy memories in which one of my children was even born.
God, please grant me the strength, courage, and wisdom, to do all that I have been asked to do.
