Whose Hands?

We all know the commercial that ends with, “You’re in good hands with___.” I remember a time when I must have thought my name went in that blank. My mother had gone from eating everything on her plate to eventually barely eating or drinking anything at all. I had been trying everything I knew to get her to eat or drink something even when she would close her lips or clench her teeth.

I was running to the nursing home both before and after work. One evening as I started toward the nursing home again, God seemed to say to me, “Why are you making these heroic efforts? If you trust Me, why are you trying to do all this yourself?” Others were vising my mother as well, so I realized that my extra efforts were just an attempt to control the situation. I was trying to make sure my mother was still alive because I was going to make sure she was eating.

The epiphany I experienced was that it was not God’s desire for me to be a caregiver who was frazzled, stressed out, or sick and still saying, “It’s in God’s hands.”  We sometimes try to keep circumstances and results in our own hands, but the truth is we cannot sustain life. We care for our loved ones the best we can, but we have to realize that everything truly is not just in “good” hands, but in God’s hands. And He gives us the ability to step back and let Him take over.