Daily Devotions for Caregivers

 "In the Sweet By and By" can be found in almost any old hymnal—and maybe new ones, too, I don't know! It's wonderful to have a blissful afterlife to look forward to, isn't it? I'm not making light of it at all. I cannot wait to spend eternity with my Lord! But there are some days when I think I need a little more of Him in my right now.  Galatians 1:3 and 4 says, Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present age , according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen What would deliver us from this present age  even mean? The NLT adds, just like God planned.  From our right now, heaven is a wonderful escape and we all look forward to it! But God planned to rescue our souls from our right now. He planned for us to have peace and grace (verse 3) in our nows. In John 14:1-4, Jesus explained to His disciples that He was "going to p...

  Memories are a wonderful thing. But they can be haunting at times, too. Sometimes, I cherish the good memories I made with my son before his wreck. Other times, I loathe them because of the loss. But if we can look back on our lives and see it as a whole, as a single action, our memories can help us fight the fight of faith today and going forward. In Nehemiah 4, they were working hard to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. But it made others mad, for no apparent reason other than they just didn't want Jerusalem to be blessed and succeed. They were under attack by an enemy who wanted to bring confusion and fear. Why? Because those are crippling. We would be correct in labeling them silent killers.  But in chapter 4, verse 14, Nehemiah empowered the workers by telling them this: Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight.... Don't be afraid - just remember God. That turns out to be powerful instructions. It's pretty simple, isn't it? Yet,...

Caregivers are far too familiar with depression. It pretty much just comes along with the package. That's not to say that every caregiver is depressed, but I think everyone battles with it at some point or another. There are a lot of emotions that go along with the losses caregivers have to process.  Honestly, I never thought it would be one of my biggest battles. But as people disappeared and the life I had known slowly faded away in life's rearview mirror, it seemed to swallow me whole.  I didn't recognize it at first. Survival has a way of blinding us to much of what is going on around us as we struggle just to breathe one more breath. I don't care how many scriptures we quote or prayers we pray, at some point the caregiver's fog will try to overcome us and suck the life that's left right out of us. One day, I woke up and realized I'd been depressed. I was about to lose all that I had worked to build job-wise. I sat on the side of the bed and told myself,...

 I often joke that my family was so religious that I went to church 9 months before I was even born. That's actually very true! One time when I was a teenager, my mom was dragging me to church on a Sunday night, and I really didn't want to go. She stopped, looked at me, and said, "I don't care if you are 40 years old. If YOU live in MY house, you're going to church." I still wonder why I had to go and they did not, but maybe, just maybe, she saw something God put in my heart way back then. When Sundays, midweek services or revivals rolled around, the question wasn't if  we were going, it was what time are we leaving? Lol. This is no exaggeration! I raised my kids the same way. My heritage is ministry, and I believed it was a family affair. When I packed up and moved to Chicago in July 2008, I started my search for a church immediately. By the time the call came on that cold November 8 morning, I was involved with two churches, even though I was working thr...

  The other day, we talked about precocious faith, having faith "too early!" Before things happen our determination is to trust God. Today, another term I spilled out of my pen into a poem is "ferocious faith." I am starting to believe that caregivers must have ferocious faith. We are staring at perhaps the most difficult situations life can throw at us, yet we are still clinging to Him. So what if it's an act of desperation! We're reaching for Him, leaning toward Him, and choosing to trust Him again each day. That's being ferocious in our faith.  I thought I'd share the poem I wrote last week. It was literally a "spontaneous prayer" I wrote in my journal, "just for fun." After I looked back at it, I saw my own desparate reach for His heart. And maybe even my ultimate goal of "just being okay." Spontaneous Morning Prayer (Just for Fun) Lord, today I need direction Fill me with godly discretion So I know which way to walk...

 Life is sometimes like a jigsaw puzzle, which has many pieces. It takes lots of time and effort to decide where each piece goes and how it fits in with the rest of the puzzle to create a whole (hopefully beautiful) image. But for caregivers, it's often even more complicated. I think it's more like someone put all the pieces in a bag. Shook it up real good, then dumped it out and said, "Good luck, have fun!" Maybe for some of us, it's even worse than that. It's more like someone took 3, 4, or 5 puzzles. They mixed all the pieces together and then separated them back out into piles. Now you're left trying to find a picture with mismatched pieces. Some of them might go together, some probably won't. It's more likely that you don't even have a complete picture. Frustrating? Yes. That's the point. I keep asking myself why I'm so frustrated. Why am I so short-tempered at seemingly silly stuff? More likely than not, it's caregiver burnout...