My goal for this week is to finish reviewing the proofs for my second book, Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest: Adventures in Hospitality . (My real goal was to finish this task last week, but lots of other things happened instead, including accepting the opportunity to be hospitable to the newest assisted living resident in our home.) Rather than take a couple hours this morning to write a new blog post, I decided to provide a peek at one of the stories in my new book.
The book traces my understanding of what it means to be kind and hospitable to others, as the Bible instructs us, by telling a total of 90 personal stories, spanning the time frame of my childhood up to the present. I firmly believe that one of the key (and most ignored) messages of the Bible is to be kind and hospitable to others. In my book each story begins with a Bible verse that states the principle I learned from the incident, or in some other way relates the story to the overall theme of hospitality.
The story I selected for today’s sneak preview is about when my mom and dad came to Chicago to live with us for the last six weeks of my mom’s life. We had some wonderful moments together during that time. Here’s the story.
Caring for Mom as She Was Dying
Anyone who neglects to care for family members in need repudiates the faith.
That’s worse than refusing to believe in the first place.” [I Timothy 5:8 MSG]
At age 78 my mother was diagnosed with liver cancer. After the diagnosis, Mim and I made weekly trips to Wisconsin to take her to the clinic for chemotherapy. After a few weeks she chose to discontinue the treatments because of how sick they made her feel. Her doctor predicted she would live only two or three months without more treatments, maybe a year or two with treatments.
A couple weeks after my mom stopped receiving chemo Mim and I went to Door County in northeastern Wisconsin for a week-long vacation. We stopped to see my parents on our way up there, mostly to see how my mom was doing. Already she was much weaker.
Mim and I had a wonderful week relaxing in Door County. Little did we know that God was providing a week of rest for us before what would become an intense six-week period of care giving.
On our way back to Chicago we stopped to see my parents again. My mom’s health had deteriorated further and she was quite weak. We offered to get Hospice and some local caregivers lined up to help my dad care for her at home. As an alternative, we invited her and my dad to come to Chicago to live with us, and we (mostly Mim) would take care of her.
We stayed with my parents for the night. The next morning, my mom got up and said she’d made up her mind. She wanted to come home with us to Chicago. We spent the next few hours helping my mom and dad pack up their things – a few clothes, my mom’s crocheting, and their Bibles. We told my brother and sister about the new plan, and they came over to help pack up for the move.
Dad rode with Mim and me in my car. My nephew, Dave, drove Mom in his parents’ van, so that she could be lying down for the two-hour drive. Then Dave carried her up the stairs to our second-floor apartment.
We called Hospice the next day to help us get a hospital bed and a local physician to prescribe pain medication. We also enlisted one of the physicians Mim had worked with to be Mom’s primary care physician.
Mim was teaching nursing at North Park College at the time, and had a flexible schedule. She also had very kind and highly skilled colleagues who volunteered to help care for Mom to give Mim and me a little time off from round-the-clock care giving. I had just left my corporate job and was in the process of starting up my own small business consulting practice, which meant that I also had a flexible schedule.
We turned our living room into Mom’s room. For the first couple weeks she was able to walk around the apartment and eat with us in the dining room. As she got weaker, she spent most of her time in the living room. I played her favorite hymns on the piano, over and over again. I read to her. She really liked The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, a good story that made her smile and laugh. My brother and sister and their families came down to visit her weekly. Her two brothers and their wives came to visit, too.
While Mom lived with us, Mim periodically asked her, “Do you know where you are?” as a means of monitoring her mental well-being and cognitive decline. One day Mom answered, “I know you want me to say I’m in Chicago, but I’m not. I’m at home.” That said to us we were providing the kind of hospitality she needed.
Mom lived with us for six weeks. She was the first of several people we have invited to live with us during their final weeks on earth. There can be many precious moments as the end of a person’s earthly life approaches. We’re thankful for the opportunity to share those special times.
Mom kept crocheting afghans for babies of poor teenage mothers in Chicago until just a few weeks before she died.
Five years ago when we were thinking up a name for our retreat center, one of our Chicago friends suggested that we incorporate the word “wind” to suggest the movement of the Holy Spirit. I wanted to include the word “retreat” to emphasize that we were a retreat center, but I didn’t like the word “center” – which implies something bigger and somewhat impersonal. After trying out dozens of word combinations, my piano tuner helped me settle on “Whispering Winds Retreat Haven.”
The creation of this booklet led to another naming opportunity. I first called it a “Discussion Guide” but I didn’t really like that because it didn’t include the possibility of it being used for individual study. Then I called it “Study Guide” but I didn’t like that either because it sounded too academic. Then I tried “Companion Guide” but those two words are kind of redundant. Then I came up with “Listening Guide.” That’s what I’m leaning toward using. It is the most descriptive of what the booklet is about – a guide to help readers learn to listen for God’s messages. I expect to finish writing the booklet this week, which means I’ll need to settle on the title by the end of the week.
I’m sitting with three books and my Kindle on my desk right now. Within the past few weeks I’ve finished reading the three books. The fourth book is on my Kindle. All four books are excellent, and I want to tell you about them. Maybe you’ll want to read them, too.
This new devotional combines fascinating historical background information about the Bible with practical application that readers can implement in their lives each day. Dianne guides readers on a journey through the Bible from beginning to end, highlighting major events, characters, stories, and teachings. These meditations will bring you deeper into the Scriptures as you deepen your relationship with God.
A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard as when I read this book. But I did more than laugh. I thought about some of the virtues God wants women to possess, based on what the Bible says, what various churches say, and what common sense tells me today. Rachel Held Evans is a young evangelical woman who is a prolific blogger, author, and speaker. For this book, she wanted to dig into the Bible to try to understand how a godly woman should live. After her initial study, she identified twelve topics that she would explore in depth, month by month, as she tried to live out a full year of “Biblical Womanhood.” She started in October with the theme of gentleness. The primary Biblical reference was I Peter 3:3-4:
Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate by Justin Lee. A few years ago I googled “gay Christian” and ended up learning about the Gay Christian Network (
Andrew, You Died Too Soon by Corinne Chilstrom. How would you react if someone who is very close to you committed suicide? How would you grieve? How can you be supportive of others who grieve in this type of situation? Can the Bible give us any comfort? These are some of the questions Corinne Chilstrom deals with in this book. Chilstrom is a Lutheran pastor and a nurse, and her 18-year-old son committed suicide.
What a walk! Sunday afternoon was a time for spring fever. Bright blue sky. Snow-covered fields. Temperatures in the upper 30’s. And no wind. Mim, Abbey, and I walked down country roads for well over an hour. The highlight of a weekend of highlights! After that refreshing walk, Abbey and I were ready for the conversation we meant to have for last week’s blog post.
www.MarianKorth.com
I speak to you continually: through sights, sounds, thoughts, impressions, scriptures. There is no limit to the variety of ways I can communicate with you. Your part is to be attentive to My messages, in whatever form they come… [
On Thursday, I went to the county jail again to play the piano for the women inmate’s worship service. During the testimony time, one of the women talked about how blessed she felt and how thankful she was. She was back in jail because she had been caught drinking while she was out on probation. She had made a dumb mistake, and she was sorry. But what bothered her most was that her daughter who was in college was extremely angry at her for messing up. Her daughter wasn’t about to forgive her for making this mistake. The mother had been praying for her daughter and had been praying that they could be reconciled. The inmate was delighted to report that God had answered her prayer. Her daughter had sent her a wonderful, loving Mother’s Day card. She was ready to forgive her mother. The mother couldn’t be more thankful. God had heard and answered her prayer. Her daughter had forgiven her. And her daughter wanted her to know that she loved her. She was overflowing with thankfulness.
While in the book F is for Fill in the Blank, it is also for Friendship. Marian and I have been friends since our college days and it is a relationship I cherish. One things friends do is Share. I so appreciate her sharing her kind words about my book with you, that I’ll extend the sharing and offer her readers a 20% Friends and Family discount. If you order from the publisher, (www.actapublications.com) simply enter the code BHTL0412 when prompted.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it and that something on the page brings hope to your corner of the world.
Marilyn Huebel