A few weeks ago on Wednesday I had to shoot off from College early to help my mum. She’s 92. It’s okay for her to ask for help at short notice.
On Monday two days earlier she had gone to see her doctor around lunchtime, driven as usual by a paid helper, and ushered into the doctor’s room as always in her wheelchair. The doc ordered her to hospital. My brother picked her up and took her straight to Ryde Hospital Emergency Department. I got to the ED after school that day, did a baton handover from my brother and sat with her until about 10pm, at which point she had been admitted to a ward, against her wishes. A long and unhappy day for her.
On the Tuesday morning I spent some time with mum then did the reverse baton handover to my brother. On Wednesday my sister was at the hospital in the morning, but by lunch time, with 92-year-old wisdom(?) mum had decided she knew better than the doctors and wanted to check out against medical advice. So I got to the hospital around mid-afternoon. I gave my patience muscle a good work out on several fronts both with my mum’s rudeness and with medical staff who had lost her medication. Eventually I received discharge papers stating that the hospital was absolved of all responsibility, wheeled mum out to the car, took her home where she lives by herself, settled her in, prepared some food, and headed home myself for a late dinner.
The whole situation got me thinking. Medical staff have knowledge that my mum doesn’t. They see a bigger picture than she can. They have seen other people like mum before. They have seen, as it were, mum’s future before. They know enough to speak intelligently about the implications of her decisions. But mum would not be convinced to stay under their care. I am told I am most like my dad, but there is a bit of mum in me too.
In fact, I venture to suggest that the attitude my mum has towards medical authorities is in each of us in some ways. You might not have as regular contact with medical authorities as my mum does, but your parents might have told you that, like every one else, you were a terrible two-year-old. Two is the age at which we start to realise we are beings independent of our parents and have also learnt enough vocabulary to start insisting that we will “do it my way”. That’s why, when you have a hissy fit about something you don’t like, someone might tell you to “act your age”, not like a two-year-old. Many of us have difficulty, whether 12, 22 or 92 years old, growing out of that insistence that we always know best.
And that puts us in a troubling spot in relation to God. Unsurprisingly, God does know our needs better than we know ourselves. So we want to get better at listening to God than my mum is at listening to hospital staff.
Nearly 3000 years ago Isaiah wrote these words about God’s wisdom being greater than human wisdom: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8).
If you are in your teenage years—that second great growth-spurt period of “I’ll do it my way” mindset—I encourage you to reflect on how you might better listen to God. There is wisdom in listening to someone who has been around a bit longer than even my 92-year-old mum.
