Daily Devotions for Caregivers

  I love the Psalms, maybe it's because the psalmists were so raw and real with their emotions and feelings. They didn't hold back, especially David! They told it like it was. It was finding Psalm 13 anew that helped me start processing the emotions of caregiving. I felt lost. It seemed like God had pushed a "cancel" button on my life, and He wasn't even listening to me. When I found those thoughts and feelings mirrored in Psalm 13, it was like I found a license to hurt. It's okay to grieve; it's not a sin.  I return to the Psalms a lot for my private devotions and use them often in my writings. This morning, I found myself in a very familiar place: Psalm 91. I'm sure you are familiar with it too! But there's this one verse that caught my eye. In the KJV, NASB, and the ESV, verse 4 says something like this: He will cover you with His pinions  (what is that, anyway?) and under His wings you will find refuge;  His faithfulness is a shield and buckler...

One thing I love about my apartment is the bay windows stretching across the living room. As I was sitting here yesterday writing the blog post, I noticed two young men (kids, really) running down the sidewalk across the street. The older, taller boy was running out ahead of a smaller boy. I smiled, and thought about how tall the younger one was going to be when he grows into his long legs. Lol. Shortly after the two went out of view, a couple more kids came running by. Just happened to be a boy and a girl, mid-teens at least. But what caught my eye was that, even though he was taller and older than his female running partner, they were at the same pace. His legs were obviously much longer than hers, but they were running side-by-side. I realized he had slowed down to keep pace with her, even though he could have run far ahead!  I think God does that with us. He adjusts His pace to match our day and the way we are able to handle it. Some days go smoothly. We can clip along emotiona...

I could make a long list of the things caregiving has taught me. One thing I think I'd want to put at the top of the list is that God is a safe place. He doesn't respond in anger, even when I'm mad at Him. But He does listen to my cries, so intently that He hears all the emotions behind every tear that falls and every deep sigh that escapes. He gets it.  As I was walking back through Psalm 91 this morning, I had a deluge of thoughts. I thought about what it means to live in the shelter of the Most High. And how often I've found rest in His shadow. Oh, how I know this is true, even on the roughest of days. It's comforting just to know we have a place we can hide. And even though we don't physically hide in Him, we have that safe place for our raw emotions. He won't condemn us or kick us out. He won't give us that blank stare  either! As caregivers, we get it a lot. People we don't know stare at us blankly. Like, maybe they have tons of questions, but ...

 This week, I was thinking about Abraham and Sarah. They are our "faith" parents. Scriptures call Abraham the father of our faith. He believed what God told him beyond possibility and beyond hope. Don't we love to share the story of the promise of Isaac? He would be the one to continue to carry the promise to generations to come. Generations we are literally a part of by faith. We love a good ending, right? Especially one we get to live out! But it wasn't without human flaws. A story that looked like it might have failed due to the actions of mere humans, Sarah and Abraham. We love our Bible heroes, don't we? But it's easy to forget that they were human just like us. They dealt with emotions, thoughts, fears, and struggles every single day, too. But God gave them a promise. The thing about God's promises is that they don't always make sense in our heads. We can't always figure them out or imagine how in the world He is going to do what He promised....

  As caregivers, we deal with a lot every single day. Many things we don't (or can't ) even talk to others about. Some things, we don't share out of fear; we can't let them think we are incompetent or incapable of providing care for our loved ones. Other things are just not cool to share, I know you know what I mean! We can have so much going on in our heads and our emotions, but we keep it tucked away inside. Society doesn't allow brutal honesty. Sometimes, it's because hearing one's deepest emotional struggles makes others feel like they need  to do something, but we don't need anyone to do anything - we just need for them to hear us. But we keep things to ourselves in silence, mostly because others just won't "get" it. This open and raw honesty is one of the things I've loved about the Psalms. I was reading Psalm 13, where David was pouring all his honest thoughts out before God. He was speaking some of the unmentionables caregivers ...

 You know that scripture that says, casting all your cares on Him, for He cares for you ? Yeah, that one. It's 1 Peter 2:7. We've probably read it what feels like a million times. It's the execution that is difficult, not the reading. What is it that makes it so hard to give Him all our cares? I have a few ideas. But first, let's break it down a little bit. There are at least two ways to look at this highly memorized verse. And it's a good one to memorize, but totally useless if we can't actually do it! He cares for us can be interpreted to mean that He is an all-loving, all-caring God who is concerned about every detail of our lives. He cares. This is true. But another way to look at it is that He is doing all the caring for us, so we don't have to. Either way, He's helping us and caring for us! For caregivers who are often operating from a state of overwhelm, it's a constant all-day-long battle to keep rolling our cares over onto Him so He can do t...