Some of you have asked, “What are you [Carole] doing to take care of the caregiver?” I thought I should let you in on one of the things I do. At least once a month I get a message. I don’t take this spousal benefit on Doug’s insurance plan for granted.
This past month the woman I go to moved her studio from the country to the city. If she was not such a good masseuse I would look closer to home for another therapist. The new studio is where I’ve never been before. The issue with that is that I have no sense of direction. None.
I grew up in rural township with no even one stop light. In the years since I’ve moved from my hometown there are now two intersections that have installed one stop light each. That’s a big deal!
After Doug graduated from seminary we moved to Los Angeles. I was in shock. I couldn’t even tell where one city ended and the other began. There were way too many stop lights and, worst of all, freeways leading in all sorts of directions. At the time we didn’t have children so I will admit that I became co-dependent on Doug for transportation.
I’m a visual learner (and that doesn’t include maps!). If you tell me to go North, South, East or West, I have not a clue what to do even when the sun is setting. If you say go 4 miles and turn right by the white church across from McDonalds, I’m with you.
I also learned that I have less anxiety when traveling on side streets rather than on major freeways. I’ve gotten by driving that way everywhere we’ve lived that has required freeway driving. Today we live on the fringe of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. I've managed to avoid freeway driving by staying with the familiar and comfortable for me.
I’ve only had my GPS driving companion since Doug was diagnosed with cancer. I'm still not sure just how much I can really venture out and turst that voice within it. I am still more comfortable with what I'm use to using--a computer map program.
So in preparation for my massage today I used the advanced options for dummies on the computer map program and saw the new studio was accessable via the back roads and was not far from a large shopping mall with which I had geographic familiarity! So map program with turn-by-turn instruction in hand I headed out into areas with which I was familiar.
Using the 'back way' to my massage I did drive past people who probably didn’t have breakfast this morning much less would not have even considered been able to have the healing hands of a massage therapist placed on them. You don't notice people like that as much going 65 mph along a freeway.
On the way home from my appointment (which I made on time and felt better for), I wanted to go the back roads the way I had come. That was wishful thinking on my part. I had not done reverse directions on the map program.
Even though I was probably only a few block from the massage studio I made one wrong turn. One mistake. I was lost.
So I pulled into a parking spot and turned on my GPS. I went into my “favorites” and selected “home”. I knew that, like it or not, I had to do what the voice inside told me to do. It was now a matter of faith and trust in her to get me back home.
Why am I admitting this? Because what I learned today was the need to trust and have faith in a voice of a person that I can not see. It’s a voice of a woman I have never met. She gave me no choice. I had to merge onto a busy freeway. In the end it was a much shorter, direct route.
Doug and I are on a journey. We have never been this way before. Some days it seems we are lost. But we have made a choice to trust and have faith in God’s Precious Son, the ultimate Caregiver whom we can not see but a voice we’ve become familiar with in the past. We believe He is guiding our doctors and the others with whom we are seeking medical counsel. With multiple myeloma there is no other way.
At least that is how we see it from our perspective.
~Carole
