About a year ago, I was keeping vigil at my mother’s bedside, watching and waiting, and pondering end of life issues.

Today, I am sitting at another bedside with my father, wondering what the next days/weeks/months will hold. He is in the hospital for the third time this year, having fluid drained from his system (IV Lasix) and attempting to control his severe congestive heart failure with medications.

It is a tightrope walk between stressing his heart and stressing his kidneys and so far the balancing act has been a bit wobbly.

We are pretty sure that he can’t go back to his independent living apartment so we will have to be making decisions in the next few days if he is released from the hospital.

He really just wants to go “home” to heaven, but he also–with us–wants to trust God’s timing in the details.

It is a quiet, in-between time. It is restful and sweet and yet, unsettling because we can’t peak around the corner and know what’s up ahead. In the big picture, we do know. He is going to die and we are absolutely confident that he will be at home with his Lord and Savior. But in the meantime, there are a million questions while we wait.

He is not suffering. He is mostly sleeping and quiet. We talk but we don’t really have conversations. We ask and answer each others’ questions.

But every night, he and I pray together, trusting God for the night ahead and the steps ahead of us.

It’s kind of a sweet time in the midst of a usually frantic holiday season. I am grateful to my co-workers for allowing me to be away from work and for my family (husband) for giving me the freedom to be away from home.

But it is a little strange to be in the same hospital, in similar straits wondering how the next days will unfold.

Déjà vu.

God’s grace carried us through the events of last year and He will carry us through whatever lies ahead. That’s a good thing about déjà vu, which literally translates “already seen.” We have already seen God in the midst of death and we know that we will experience similar graces this time too.

Please pray for rest, peace, and grace in these days.