Try Not To Blame the Victim

With the 20/20 hindsight that comes with time, I know I was unfair to my mother when she began to show signs of dementia.  

Adult children are commonly resentful and fearful when aging parents give way to infirmity.  The first response is often, “If they would try harder, if they loved me enough to do what they should, if they weren’t lazy, then they could avoid decline.”  We always want to believe that we can avoid our own decline and death through valiant effort, because we are afraid.  To see a parent’s decline is most fear-inducing of all, because we are related to them by blood, by love and by need.  We feel betrayed when they begin to leave us via the introspection of pain or the finality of approaching death.  

I'm not sure whether I read this quote somewhere: "Don't believe everything you think," or if I came up with it myself during the years I was coping with my mother's Alzheimer's disease.  When we feel resentment and anger toward an aging parent, we need to proceed with caution.  Chances are the emotions of coping with a loved one's decline have more to do with the caregiver's sorrows over losing the support they need than it has to do with any failure of the patient to try harder.  

It's hard.  As always, in our dealings with everyone, it is important to be grounded in Scripture and to let love cover a host of real and perceived sins in the precious ones who are leaving us sooner than we thought and in more emotionally wrenching ways than we wish.  

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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

God Is With You and Me

 

Awhile back I read a book -- I've forgotten which book--with a quote that caught my eye.  I'll paraphrase and personalize that quote here:  "Slowly, with many lost days, I am recovering."  

"That's me," I thought. "I am recovering."

In January of 2020, my mother died after a 16 year journey through Alzheimer's disease. After Mom's death, I thought I would be ok.  After all, one of the first comforting words I heard from the Lord following Mom's diagnosis was this: "There will be life for you following your mother's Alzheimer's disease."  

Instead, I've navigated what is probably post traumatic stress from the turmoil of Mom's nursing home years. After 12 years of caring for her in our home, I was forced to advocate for her on an almost daily basis at the nursing home because she was a difficult patient.  Toward the end of her life, she became verbally abusive and, infrequently, combative.  The staff was young and inexperienced, but no one responds well to screamed accusations or to having to step out of the range of flailing fists (to my knowledge, the flailing fists occurance was a one time event-- but it made a deep impression on her caregivers).  Their solution would have been to medicate her and put her to bed.  I objected and offered instead a host of alternative interventions that were, for the most part, successful but hard won.  

And then she died.  I sat by her while she died.  The Lord was with us.  She had a comforting vision of Jesus as she passed.  She didn't suffer; she was not in pain.  Being the longtime Christian I am, one would think I would be just fine with the manner of her dying. 

Not so much.    

I'm damaged goods.  

I've continued to function adequately but my traitorous body, not having received the memo that all is well, began to break down. I have a bunch of weird auto-immune conditions that it would be too wearying for me (and certainly for you) to enumerate.  

And then I fell down. Literally.  Icy steps, lack of reasonable caution and ka-boom. Down I went.  I have suffered intermittent hip pain and what is probably bursitis instigated by the blow to the joint ever since. 

I haven't written about this season of recovery because, in the first place, I haven't recovered; I'm only recovering.  There has been an urge to just wait until I'm ok to analyze the process and then perhaps to write messages of comfort and hope to those still in the throes of caregiving. 

Instead, I do indeed have abundant comfort and hope, not from a place of wholeness and well being, but from a place of brokenness.  

The Lord has comforted me every day. Every single day. Through the wakefulness of the night watches, He has been with me.  Occasionally, ok, frequently, I've given way to fear.  At those times I have had to have the support of praying friends and, rarely, medication to see me through.  

All the bad things you hear about fear are true.  Satan lies us into a panic and the resultant fear blocks our ability to hear the Lord's voice. Panic attacks are no joke, and they do not come from a personal failure of faith but, I'm convinced, from a carefully orchestrated plan by the enemy. He loves to catch us alone. At times like that, one has to reach out for help, and it is no disgrace to ask one's friends to pray.  Pride has to go in order to make such a request, but...the exit of pride is a good thing.   

The comfort I have to offer is that God is with us and that He will lead us through whatever struggle we face.  It is important to continually reaffirm our love and trust in Him, even when, especially when, circumstances are uncertain and in our own understanding, we can see no particular reason that things should turn out well.  

Last night at about 3 am, the Lord personalized Jeremiah 29:11 for me.  This is a verse I've revisited so often that I am prone to miss the comfort of God's kindness and good intentions toward us that are woven into these words: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

I obediently looked up the passage despite its familiarity, and I smiled, and reaffirmed my love and trust for the God who has not and will not leave me, not ever.  

And then my eyes fell on the verse just prior: "This is what the Lord says: 'When seventy years are completed...I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back...'"

I am seventy years old! I have received the promise. I reaffirm my trust in the Lord.  God is with me.  I am healing but not healed, recovering but not recovered, and the Lord is with me.  

And He is with you. He will never leave us or abandon us.  He will bring us through.  

A Tribute for My Friend

This photo is from our 40th class reunion 12 years ago.  Diana is at far left.  

I want to pay tribute to my friend, Diana, who has passed away. "Gone to glory," as my grandma would've said. 

I didn’t know Diana well.  We were friends and classmates in our high school class of 1972, but I came to our small town late, in my junior year of high school, and so did not have the lifelong connection and friendship with her that the other 20 members of our class may have enjoyed. However, when you graduate high school with a group of people, the tie can remain close, as it has done for our class.  My connection with Diana remained through class reunions and occasional conversations over the years.  

When Diana moved back to our hometown and then had to endure cancer treatments, I had the opportunity to get to know her better.  I can only say that her calm acceptance of her multiple cancer diagnoses was an inspiration to me.  I was offering my support to her one day when she said very matter-of-factly, “I know the Lord, I know where I’m going, and if I die, I die. Cancer is really no big deal.”  She threw around that “C-word,” cancer, without flinching.  And often, in my interactions with her during the past year especially, she would end up encouraging me.  You know how when you decide to reach out in Christian love and charity toward someone and when you get home you realize you were the one who was helped?  Diana was a calm and encouraging counselor for me regarding my fears of medical procedures.  “It’s really not so bad,” she said, when I confided my fears of having an MRI.  “You’ll be fine.”  

 

We can have peace regarding Diana, because she is now resting safe at home with the Lord she loved. We can feel happy for her while we reserve the right to be sad for ourselves, and we will continue to lift her sweet mom in prayer, along with her brothers and their families.  We pray for them in their grief.  I would encourage Diana's mother to continue to enjoy her life, the taste of good food, the camaraderie of friends, and the activities she so enjoys, at peace in the knowledge that Diana is safe at home and that she will see her beloved daughter again.  That assurance belongs to those of us who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior; we don’t grieve as those who haven’t placed their trust in Him do.  

 

The idea of death is frightening to most of us and the death of a beloved friend or relative brings us uncomfortably close to the awareness of our own limited lifespans. But when we waste time fearing how we might die or when we are leaving out an important truth.  I believe it was Charles Spurgeon who said that we aren’t given dying grace until we are actually dying.  All other imaginings about death are made apart from the grace we will be given when it’s actually our turn to walk through the Valley of the Shadow.  I was privileged to see that wonderful peace and grace in Diana, to understand that she had been given dying grace on the journey she made through sickness and finally, on Wednesday afternoon the 27^th of May, to the release of her mortal flesh as her spirit flew home.  As Christians, death is not a location but a passage; we only pass through the shadow and immediately into life again.  For those who have professed belief in Christ as Savior, God has set His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing the life to come.  

 

Diana, I am grateful to have known you and am happy that I will see you again.  So glad you made it home safe!  

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God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Thoughts on Not Getting Out Much

I woke up today feeling upset about the seclusion of infirmity. 

I am so crippled by profound exhaustion and various  conditions that ebb and flow with uncomfortable symptoms, that something so mundane as a routine eye appointment becomes a trial, a dental appointment is an ordeal requiring intercessory prayer, and the prospect of something like a vacation is an impossibility.  Vacations take so much energy that I do not have.  

It comes to me that sometimes, the solution is to wait upon the Lord.  This entails living with the uncertainty and unease of all that has happened to me and seeking medical treatment when appropriate without going on a grand quest for answers doctors probably can't provide. I trust that my times are in God’s hands, and that He will give me, as Matthew Henry says, not the expectations of my fears, but the expectations of faith.  

The solitude of infirmity is disheartening.  And yet I’m equipped for it, enabled, and for the most part I have peace with it.  

I am not unwilling to take risks, in fact, I’ve been aware that the Lord goes ahead of me to spring the traps of foolhardiness.  I am too prone to give way either to the judgments of human beings or, at times, to my own restlessness, and thus I become vulnerable to paths of action not of God’s choosing for me.  His word to me has been an assignment to keep my heart content in Him in this solitude that is not of my choosing.  The battles are with loneliness and self-discipline, the rewards are intimacy with God as I seek His face and an increasing ability to follow the Holy Spirit’s direction.  When other voices are silenced, God’s voice has the opportunity to be heard more clearly.  This has been a blessing, a great blessing of this time.  

God is my advocate, healer, and provider: my comfort and help in every heartache.  He is the Lord, my healer, and I pray for healing.  

I will trust Him for the timing of the healing I believe He has promised.  

The Don Moen song says, “I am the Lord that healeth thee…” But sometimes, ahead of the healing, He is the God who sustains us through suffering.  Resting in His goodness even in the uncertainty of infirmity is a step on the healing path…I confess I am healed, in the name of Jesus.  I can rest in not knowing the timing of my restoration because I am resting in Him.  Some wounds aren't healed until Heaven--and isn't that something to anticipate with joy? But others are healed while we are still here, and I do hope to "...yet see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage, and wait for the Lord" (Psalm 27:14).  

“But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord, I say, “You are my God” My times are in Your hand…”  (Psalm 31:14-15a).

Past, Present, and Future

 

Surrender Your Schedule

 

Love God Love Others