Carolyn

     Carolyn is complicated. She is also so so easy. She is a child of 77 years old now and has no one related to her that she could call her own. No husband, no mother no father no children no aunts or uncles no cousins. No one. 

     I came into her life 7 years ago at the request of neighbors of hers who were getting ready to call adult protective services. They hadn't really saw her for going on years. I told them to hold off calling until I met her. I am no trained  psychologist. I have no degrees in anything. Except being a mother and raising children. I don't work for a company or the city. I am a mom, a grandmother, an ordinary person with really no high quality traits. I caregive because clients of mine 17 years ago asked me if I would clean their parents home. I did. Then it turned out to be going over there to their home two times a week, then three then all week Monday through Friday. I loved them. They felt like another set of parents and they loved me like a daughter. Anyways, that's how I started caregiving. Thrown into it, in a sense, unknowingly accepting it as only a great job to serve someone. 

     Trust me when I tell you, it is not easy. But the grace just comes to you. With good people set beside you to give you advice. It doesn't feel like a job, it feels like going home. The only difference being that I must leave at some point and go to my real home. 

     Back to Carolyn. When I first met her, her house was so hoarded and in such a disarray that each day was a quest to find something buried under all of that stuff. Her appearance was one of a woman about 120 lb. A 70 year old lady with coke bottle glasses and shoulder length dirty hair stuffed up into her hat and piled on top of her homemade woolen hat. She could not hear, unless you put your mouth right to her ear. Her teeth were rotting and she was 3 months away from having severe glaucoma. She has a cat named Miss Kitty and in every room except the kitchen and the family room, she has dolls of every kind sitting or standing there, looking at your every move. These are  not just ordinary dolls. They are antique baby dolls. Some with porcelain faces, some with high quality plastic faces and they are all dressed with pristine beautiful clothes. I have never felt uncomfortable walking around among them, though I'm sure some people might. It's unusual. But it's completely Carolyn. Her little brain doesn't function like a normal brain. She is severely OCD and she doesn't speak unless she spoken to. She is a Christian Scientist. The bank runs her money and pays her bills. Yet she has no doctor no social security no Medicare no nothing. A neighbor and myself gave her a bath and washed her hair that looked like it hadn't been done in years.I was so afraid. I even brought a lice kit because I thought surely she must have lice. But she didn't and the neighbor being a beautician cut her hair and she looked totally different already. I got on the stick and called the bank and asked why if they were chosen to take care of this little woman didn't she have all of these needs. They hopped to it and got her set up with the necessary benefits of person should be receiving at the age of 65. Thank God!! 

     I think because of her fragile and complicated little brain she was used to this kind of treatment all of her life. Now she was an old woman with no one but a cat and herself. 

     So I started working for her and helped her transform her home back into a home it took us a total of 2 years to complete the upper half of it and partially the basement. With a long ways to go to complete. All along with getting her back to the dentist, seeing an eye doctor, where she had cataract surgery on both eyes. To go in and getting her hearing aids to finding her a doctor. All being a Christian Scientist and allowing me to help her. If you don't already know, Christian Scientists do not believe in any kind of doctor or medicine. They do not get baptized and in their services on Sunday consist of two people standing at podiums reading the same text of the Bible,  but interpreting it on one side as a Christian and the others side being Science. I shudder to think that God's Holy word could ever be defined as Science. Yet Mary Baker Eddy, the founder, seemed to think it was possible, therefore creating this cult of a church called Christian Scientists. She herself training young women and men in her Theology of her interpretations of what she thought was the true definitive of all that was in the bible. Carolyn is definite on believing that if she says, please God, over and over and over again, she is going to see a miracle happen immediately. Not realizing God does not work that way. Many times I've had to say to her , "Carolyn you must help God also and not expect it to happen just because you want it". She is like a child though and understandably stunted with any good reason why God should not want to answer  this angels plea,  could cross one's mind when seeing her earnestly and innocently, ask for God to hear her prayer. I went ahead and baptized her as she ate her cereal. I stood in back of her and closed my eyes asking God to let her into his kingdom with this Baptism administered by a humble imperfect human such as myself for love of her. I felt assured God would let her pass for now till the time would be right for a priest to come and do it himself. 

     Nevertheless, my Carolyn is one of God's Little children who I have had the privilege of knowing and it seems that God only puts the ones that are good before me and weeds out all that would not make me grow. 

     Thank you Carolyn, for helping me to become holy.