My broken toe has almost healed. I broke it when I jumped up early on Labor Day, turned on the light, realized it was Monday (the day after the Bishop works very hard on Sunday), and quickly turned it off to let the Bishop sleep in, and in the ensuing darkness jammed my foot against the TV stand. Jammed it so hard that I grabbed the towel stand in the bathroom and inadvertently pulled it out of the wall to keep from screaming. And waking up the Bishop. Of course, when the towel stand came out of the wall, it woke up the Bishop.
Irony aside, I was looking forward to General Conference when the Bishop gets Sunday off, sort of. Our weekend started Saturday morning at 2:00 a.m. with a call for the Bishop. Not from a member of the ward, but from his sister asking for help with his extremely ill mother. It was another heart attack. Preceded by pneumonia three weeks ago and a serious heart attack two months before that. She has congestive heart failure, leukemia, aggressive diabetes, high blood pressure, and the vestiges of a stroke from eight years ago. Dying, I have decided, it more difficult than I thought.
As the bishop's wife, I have accompanied him many times to the hospital and to homes to visit ill ward members and now his mother. Does the Lord bless bishops with a special bedside manner? Something almost sacred happens when he walks in and takes his mother's hand. Her eyes soften, and she is calm. Her strong, faithful son is close. The worry lifts from his father's eyes for a moment, and he is able to smile. The Bishop knows how to adjust her bed, attach a cup holder so she can reach her water glass, help her sit up to cough. He schedules her nurse four times a day to check her diabetes, the physical therapist, the aide. The disagreeable smells and rows of pills and boxes of syringes don't deter him. He carefully cut the toenails of her diabetic feet when the medical team was too worried about infection to help.
I've seen it before with ward members. It is, perhaps, one of his special gifts. It is seeing Christ in the face of one of his servants.
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