Love Begins at Home: Why Did You Wait?

I saw a friend this week who reminded me with love of that long season when I was mostly homebound caring for Jon.

I hadn’t seen her in some time. She has been navigating her own unexpected journey while raising and launching her own kids, but she was also one of those friends who showed up for us in so many ways during Jon’s illness and after his death.

We stood in the street for a long time talking about all we have both been through, and she reminded me of just how homebound I had been during those years of caring for Jon. It did my heart good to be seen and heard.

I’ve thought about our conversation a lot since. All the caregiving and just how long I was homebound in the act of caring for Jon while he fought brain cancer. If you have been through a long medical journey or were a caregiver ot one who kept you house or hospital bound you likely understand this.

Then, ironically, on the heels of seeing her, I found myself somewhat housebound again these last few days, caring for one of my kiddos after getting their wisdom teeth removed. It was a last-minute, unexpected, we need to get this done now kind of thing, even though the timing wasn’t exactly ideal given our schedules.

What a familiar feeling those first few hours were after returning home from the oral surgeon.

Making soft foods, keeping track of medicine, changing ice packs, checking swelling, watching the clock and sitting nearby when they hurt.

I have done some version of this kind of caring many times before.

And maybe because that conversation with my friend was still so fresh, I found myself revisiting those other moments of caregiving, too.

It reminded me how often, as mothers, we are called to care for our children in different ways and at different stages of their lives—even into adulthood. And how sometimes we are called to love someone through a diagnosis or suffering we never saw coming.

This is only the second of my four kids to have their wisdom teeth removed. One did it last summer, and the other two still need them out, too. Only time will tell when we will fit those in. More than once recently I have heard some version of, “Why did you wait so long?” or “Next time, don’t wait. Do it before they’re 18,” including from the well-meaning surgeon who knows our story.

Sidenote: I guess we know we can’t really go back to when they were 18. Grief has taught me there is no going back to rearrange the things we wish had happened differently.

They are reasonable suggestions I suppose. But they carry a little more weight than anyone asking them could possibly know, even if they have been made aware of our story and the reasons why.

Trust me, I have judged myself enough over all the ways the detours in our lives have challenged us and changed the way things were “supposed” to happen, and how I couldn’t do all that I wanted or needed to do.

There were many unexpected things. There were cochlear implant surgeries. There was helping my mom when my dad was dying and caring for her after he died. There was a broken jaw and weeks of being wired shut. And then, of course, there was caring for my husband as he lived and ultimately died with brain cancer.

Sure, there was a time when my kids were at the more “ideal” age for things like wisdom teeth removal and getting driver’s licenses and all those kinds of things that did not all pan out as typically expected. But we were living through a pandemic. Their dad had brain cancer. Then he had a stroke. Then he died.

We were in survival mode.

I was forced to choose the most pressing things.

Life was already packed with surgeries and treatments, appointments and hospital stays, rehabilitation and caregiving, loss and grieving. There were four kids still being raised and launched in the middle of it all, kids trying to live their own lives and reach their own milestones, including going away to college.

There isn’t always room for everything we need or want to do.

I’ve come to accept that. Even when I look back and see places where I fell short, alongside so many other things that were simply beyond my control.

Believe me, I would have much rather been living the ordinary rhythm of family life, scheduling wisdom teeth removals and driver’s tests “on time” and navigating all the other expected rites of passage of teens and young adults.

I would have much rather been sharing the weight of all of it with their dad, too. There’s no going back to that.

But this life didn’t unfold in the neat and orderly way I would have chosen. I often wonder does it ever really for any of us?

Maybe this is part of the ache of grief that people don’t always see. Sometimes someone asks a perfectly ordinary question about why something wasn’t done sooner, and suddenly you are remembering all the reasons it couldn’t be. You remember how much was outside of your control, how many things had to wait and how much of life was rearranged around caring for and grieving someone you loved. How much you were living in literal survival mode.

Then you are grateful for the friend in your driveway earlier this week, for remembering and noticing all the things that didn’t allow you to live that “normal” life because you were supporting and loving your husband through a terminal diagnosis. I was at home loving my family.

That sure makes you remember how desperately you would have preferred the ordinary problems rather than extraordinary circumstances like fighting a battle.

There has been a weight to caring for my adult kiddos these last few weeks, too, as we settle into a new season and new routines. I know these particular sufferings are temporary. I know they will be okay. But I would be lying if I said tending to someone I love who is hurting, whether from wisdom teeth or matters of the heart, doesn’t take me back a little.

It takes me back to caring for their dad. Loving their dad “home“ to eternal life.

And somehow, caregiving memories seem to blur into one another. I remember caring for my mom as my dad was dying and in the grief that followed. I remember when my daughter’s ability to hear was forever altered and all the care that followed that, too. And I remember when my kiddo who broke her jaw endured seven long weeks unable to eat “normally” while being wired shut.

Those were years when I wanted my kids to be worrying about all the things young people are supposed to be worrying about, rather than grieving their dad and navigating losses and circumstances you hope they won’t have to carry so young.

They say our bodies remember what it was to care and the hard stuff we endure.

I know for sure my heart does too. I know theirs each do as well. But that is a story for another day.

Maybe that is why, on this feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta, I kept thinking about the words hanging in my own kitchen on a tea towel I designed last year for our shop:

“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action.”

It’s such a fitting reminder, especially the second half of that quote when I have doubted so much.

Because there were seasons when I simply couldn’t do it all. But I could love the people God had placed before me. I hope love was shown in my actions.

There were things I wish I had done differently. There were things I simply could not control. And there were things that had to wait because something more urgent required my care.

Maybe I can look back at those years with a little more grace, remembering not only the things that didn’t get done, but how much love was being poured out while those things remained undone.”

Heather Lebano

Maybe I can look back at those years with a little more grace, remembering not only the things that didn’t get done, but how much love was being poured out while those things remained undone. How much love was poured out in the face of so much uncertainty.

No doubt.

Love begins with the people God has put before us, especially those who live within the four walls of our homes, and whatever love asks of us in the present moment. It begins in the ordinary seasons and in the ones that arrive completely out of order, rock our world and then send the walls of the life we knew tumbling down.

Sometimes that love asks extraordinary things of us, like walking a spouse through a terminal diagnosis, accompanying a child through progressive and permanent hearing loss, through the trauma of a broken jaw, or helping our children carry heavy and compounded grief much too young or just to support our young adult kiddos to get their wisdom teeth removed even if it seems so late to others.

Other times it looks remarkably ordinary: an ice pack, Jell-O or a bowl of soup, a medicine schedule, sitting beside someone we love until they feel better, or staying up way too late on the phone listening to all the things that feel so good and complicated when they are what feels like a million miles from home.

Maybe you know something about life happening out of order, too.

Maybe you’ve had a season when there simply wasn’t room for everything, when plans had to wait, priorities shifted and you had to choose what mattered most. Or maybe you are in one now, quietly loving and caring for the person God has entrusted to your care you while the rest of life doesn’t look quite the way you thought it would.

We don’t always get to choose when or how we are called to care or serve others. Life doesn’t always happen according to the timeline we imagined it would.

So maybe we can give ourselves—and one another—a little more grace and patience.

Maybe we can love one another and ourselves a bit better through the unexpected moments, especially when life calls us to be home or housebound even for a moment in time.

We can trust that we did the best we could in the seasons that asked so much of us. We can schedule the wisdom teeth removal when it makes the most sense for our family and our circumstances, without judging ourselves for what we could not do in the seasons before.

And be okay with that, even when we are questioned.

And we can keep loving and serving the people God has put inside our four walls, right in the middle of the life we have actually been given.

And while God’s timing rarely looks the way I would have planned it, I am learning to trust that His ways are better than mine.

Life simply asks us to begin where we are.

At home. With love. Trusting God will meet us there.

Because love doesn’t wait for life to happen in the right order. It meets us right in the middle of the life we have been given.

“Because love doesn’t wait for life to happen in the right order. It meets us right in the middle of the life we have been given.

Heather lebano