Grace - I don't have enough

Imagine taking someone you really have a hard time spending time with and bringing them to your place of peace. That's what's going on in my life right now!

I have elected to bring someone I know to church who I just don't get along with. I try to, and I do pray about it - but not enough. This person says a lot of careless things in public and if you try to set the record straight you end up going down a very convoluted garden path. At the end I am usually more frustrated then when I started and still nothing is acknowleged.

Today for instance. After asking this person many times if they wanted to go to church with us and being given reasons for not going she tells people today that she is so happy to be back and has missed coming for a long time. Since she can't get to church without us, this ends up sounding like we have been keeping her from coming. Later she tells one of the pastoral workers that she had a beautiful cross that she got years ago which she no longer has and that she has wanted a new cross for soooo long. The person winked at me and said that maybe for a birthday or Christmas a little bird will whisper this to someone. Okay, how about for the last 20 birthdays and Christmases and Mother's Days. I have never heard her wish for a cross, ever. Then she indicates how she has asked her daughter to take her to Chinatown but she can "ask and ask" but she still doesn't get to go. Chinatown? Since when? Apparently she wants to go to Chinatown to get the cross. I still have not determined why Chinatown and could see that I wasn't going to find out why. Maybe she wants a jade one. Anyhow, I suggested over lunch that perhaps Chinatown would not be that fun of a trip for her as there is no parking and getting around the street and in the tightly packed stores might be difficult with a walker. She has a hard time negotiating getting to and from the bathroom in the restaurant so I can't imagine us joslting around in the crowd. We offered to drive through Chinatown to see if she would like to try it out some time but she didn't want to bother.

So, it is impossible to meet her needs because she never tells you what she needs. I end up getting helpful advice from parishioners who think after talking to her that we need a little push to bring her to church or to take her to get groceries.

My husband has learned to ignore all of this. I still haven't learned how to and I noticed today he lost his cool before I did. As she is waiting for us in the car to get her walker out of the back seat she lit up a cigarette. I stared in disbelief. We have told her in no uncertain terms that we can not stand the smell of cigarette smoke. For the first time in a long time I couldn't think of what to say I was so dumbfounded. My husband told her that this was unacceptable and she claimed that since her legs are partway out of the car that she considered herself to be out of the car.

I'm at a loss. I can try to ignore her behaviour but am having a hard time doing this. It took 5 tries for the waiter to take her meal order because she couldn't decide. She wanted something with fries. We suggested about 10 options - she didn't want the fish and chips because it isn't made with shark like it is in Australia. I suggested to her that she has had fish and chips plenty of times in Canada since moving here and the lack of shark was never an issue at that time. See, I should not say anything. My husband blanks out during these conversations. But I am stubborn and want to have a relationship other than blanking out and ignoring. So I need to learn a lot of grace. I think this is probably the hardest person for me to get along with (it didn't help that her attitude towards me sucked when we first got engaged) and she isn't going to change. So I have to learn to stop caring what other people think of us when they talk to her. If she wants to tell the care worker that we are too busy to take her shopping then I just have to let it go. Somehow. Or figure out why she does that.