"Put on your cape, Superwoman! You think you can leap tall buildings in a single bound?" one of my sisters asked sarcastically when the four of us girls were discussing my mother's care after her stroke. As a happily married mother of three teenagers, full-time childcare provider, aspiring author and a volunteer, my life was very full. Yet, I was convinced that having Mom stay with my family was best for her recovery.

To say it had been a difficult year was an understatement. We had pulled together through the death of my brother-in-law, Dad's quadruple-bypass surgery, Mom's spleen-removal surgery and now a major stroke, which had paralyzed the left side of her body. After much prayer, I'd closed a lucrative cake-decorating business in order to pursue God's call to write, and I could hardly believe that within months He'd rewarded me with the sale of the first book I'd ever written. Mingled with many layers of ongoing grief and stress was the excitement each stage of publication brought.

A week after Mom's stroke, she'd come to a rehabilitation center a few miles from my house. Within two months, she had mastered the skills necessary to go home, but the handicap-access renovations at her own house would not be completed for six more weeks. Since I worked at home, my husband, Dave, and I insisted Mom stay with us, even though I was swamped with my child care job and a second book deadline.

"You've lost your mind," one sister warned.

"You aren't Superwoman, you know," the youngest chimed again.

"I can't believe you're going to do this," another said.

Despite my sisters' warnings, my determination never wavered.

We moved Mom into our master bedroom and most of the furniture out to make space for her extra equipment. My family learned to juggle more than ever before, and our lives became a precisely timed chorus. Each day began and ended with making and unmaking the hide-a-bed sofa in the living room, where Dave and I slept. We choreographed fitting Mom's home-healthcare visits and therapy into our schedules, while I continually strived to maintain our usual routine.

Initially, Mom still needed a great deal of assistance dressing, standing and walking. Since watching preschoolers often took me to the other end of the house, I gave Mom a brass bell to ring if she needed help, just as she had done during my childhood when I was sick and she managed our family-owned motel.

Mom loved the company of my preschool charges as well as the opportunity to visit with her children and grandchildren. Despite the physical and emotional demands on my time, I felt comforted knowing she was making progress and growing stronger each day. Yet, niggling in the back of my mind was the contract I'd signed just days before her arrival. Since I still considered selling one book a miracle, telling my editor my work situation never seemed a wise option. I never doubted that I could fit writing another book into my already overwrought routine.

Each afternoon, I helped Mom into bed for a rest then took the children downstairs for quiet time. Day after day as they napped, I anticipated diving into that magical world of fiction. I couldn't wait to escape from the challenges of reality to a world where "happily ever after" would overcome anything I tossed at my characters. I always began the same way - after a short prayer, I turned on music, read the previous scene and tried to write.

It never failed that about the time the children fell asleep and I'd finished reviewing what I'd previously written, the bell rang. Day after day, it rang. Day after day, I ran up the stairs to my mother's side, the writing momentum lost. On a few occasions, I was puzzled to discover her dozing, but more times than not, her eyes popped open, and she began to visit. I hadn't the heart to walk away. I simply hoped I would have energy left at the end of the day, once my kids were in bed and Dave asleep, to escape to my office and write. Instead, I found myself exhausted and craving a few minutes alone with my husband, desperate for a glimpse of normalcy. Instead of staying up to write, I reviewed the kids' events and schedules with Dave, set the alarm to get up with Mom every two hours throughout the night, and drifted into a deep slumber. After several days of this overwhelming frustration, I realized my sisters were right. I wasn't Superwoman. I couldn't do it all.

I finally adjusted my goals to do what was most important. Instead of writing, I devoted the time to Mom, praying fervently that God would help me meet my deadline once she was back home.

Together, we experienced the frightening and humorous first shopping trip with Mom at the controls of an electric wheelchair. Side by side, we celebrated her "first steps." As a family, we returned to "prairie living" when a freak blizzard left us without electricity. And Mom and I even survived patching her delicate skin in the middle of the night when determination to regain her independence ended in calamity. We learned to relinquish our traditional roles as mother and daughter, to rely on more than our own strengths and accept that which we could not change.

Finally, renovations were completed, and my mother returned home. My family moved the furniture back to their proper rooms, we closed up the sofa bed, and my husband and I slept through the night in our own bed for the first time in nearly two months. I opened my doors for the preschoolers on Monday morning, excited to return to my ordinary routine, and I looked forward to writing during naptime.

Joyfully, the kids and I played, ate lunch, read several books and, finally, the lights went out for quiet time. Everything was going just as scheduled. I closed my eyes to pray, turned on the music, reviewed my last chapter and, as regular as clockwork, the bell rang.

It couldn't be! Mom was three hours away.

"My sisters were right! I've lost my mind." I looked around. The kids were asleep. The dogs were quiet.

The bell rang again. Who could be ringing Mom's bell? I ran up the stairs and realized the clanging bell I'd heard everyday wasn't Mom's brass bell at all, but the Noah's ark wind chimes blowing outside my office window. Half-laughing, half-crying, I heard its message.

Today, I sit in my office completing the contract for my eighth book, and listening to the bells that remind me, still, to do what is really important.

By Carol Steward