In caregiving, we lay down our lives “for our friends” - whether they be spouses, parents, children, or someone as close to us as our own family.  This kind of sacrifice is demanding, often lonely, and always out of public view.  How do you sustain this kind of friendship - the deepest kind - without growing cynical, heartless, depressed, or resentful?  According to Jesus, it’s abiding in His love.  That means a deep friendship with God that isn’t scared or ashamed to take our burdens, fears, and disappointments directly to him first, in raw authenticity.

As caregivers, every day, can be full of its share of the beautiful and the terrible.  Caregiver burden often causes the terrible to eclipse the beautiful in our perception, so much so that depression and hopelessness become residents in our homes… as it turns out, our perception of reality is integral to our soul health.  It’s not simply a matter of naively putting on rose-tainted glasses and “attracting positivity”.  That simply doesn’t work.  It requires a supernatural optic overhaul.  We need to be given spiritual eyes to see things as God sees them, and that is a work of the Holy Spirit - a “gift of grace…if you’ll reach out and take it”.

If you’ve ever listened to the safety presentation at the beginning of an airline trip, you’ll remember that you’re told if you are traveling with a child or dependent and the air masks deploy, you should get your mask in place first, and then see to your child’s mask.  At first, this sounds kind of self-centered, but if you think about it, it’s sound advice.  How can you help your dependents if you’re passed out?!  

It’s exactly the same principle at play with family caregiving.  There are stories (many, in fact) of family caregivers who have died of stroke, heart attack, or other preventable medical crises while in the midst of caring for a loved one.  You must put your health first, for their sake.

Somewhere in all the seasonal retellings of the Nativity, I was re-reading Luke 1 and the story of Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel, and her subsequent encounter with Elizabeth, which prompted the song we’ve come to know through history as “Mary’s Magnificat”, and it hit me - Mary’s story is a caregiver story.

“That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.”

The Lord of the Rings - Book I Chapter 8 - "Fog on the Barrow-Downs"

When you are caregiving for someone with dementia, holidays rarely go as planned. In fact, unplanned meltdowns, medical crises and trips to the ER were more the norm for our holidays for several years. Pentecost weekend in 2023 was no exception…