My Personal Testimony

I moved to Florida for five years, having eventually moved back home to Colorado in 2018, so that my elderly mother could move in with me and not have to live alone in the last phase of her life. This eventually became my strongest testimony of God’s grace and love to His children. Last year, at the end of March, 2024 we found out she was in stage 4 heart failure and would be going home soon. That moment was our greatest heartbreak – knowing we would be separated soon and there was nothing else we could do (she had a great many health issues in the last two years of her life we tried to navigate through together). We just looked at one another and cried…not knowing what to say. Once she came home in hospice care after five days in the hospital, I provided all her care, along with the assistance of hospice coming in every few days at first and eventually, every day as she declined. Watching her decline so rapidly was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually – and the most rewarding, as it was the greatest gift I could have ever given her…to pass from her earthly home to her eternal Home in Heaven with Jesus from home and not a care facility. I was her only child out of the four still living that could give her this gift. I not only cared for her physical needs, while she was bed-ridden, I read the Psalms to her every day, we listened to her favorite gospel songs and hymns, and we forgave one another during those trials we faced in our lives with one another. One week prior to her passing she woke up the morning of April 24^th, beaming with the widest and brightest smile I’d seen in months, saying she was so excited to go Home! I will never forget the look on her little face. She said that she was with Jesus in the clouds and that He loves her so much! She was adamant and convinced she was going Home that night and wanted me to make preparations. Her decline physically and mentally rapidly increased right after this conversation, at which point she stopped speaking and began refusing her medications, after having stopped eating approximately 1-1/2 weeks prior. I know this encounter eased her fears of death and that she was ready. I made the difficult, but loving and humane decision to finally turn her oxygen off six days after this happened. I think she was still holding on for me, but I had to let her go…she gave me this responsibility prior to coming home and I promised I would make the right decision for her, when she couldn’t.