Every day we would take her from the bedroom to the sitting room and place her gently in a chair. Sometimes we would take her outside to get some sun. She would remain motionless until either my wife or I took her back inside for bed rest, or to be fed or bathed.
That was my mother three years ago. She was diagnosed with cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart condition, and the remedy, as described by her physician, was for her to live on medicine throughout her life. The condition made her body swell all over from the toes to the face.
Although I had been praying for her time and again, she was not a Christian Scientist, and we came to respect her path of choice in seeing the physician routinely and taking medications. After one of her visits to the doctor, she told me that she wasn't going to see him again, and she declined to take medicine from that point on. In times past, she and I prayed together daily before she retired to bed, but on this day she didn't even want to pray. She said her body was overtaken by the disease—and that there was nothing more to do. As a Christian Scientist, I found myself replying that she reflects God, and as His idea she could not know anything like giving up on life—because "in him we live, and move" freely (Acts 17:28).
