Daily Devotions for Caregivers

There is no doubt that it takes courage to be a caregiver; it also takes courage to deal with many of life's toughest battles. I like the story in the Bible about Benaiah who chased a lion into a snowy pit to kill him. Now that's courage! He didn't just chase a lion away but chased him down and jumped into the snowy pit with him to attack him.Now I am not into chasing lions, but I do admire his courage. Check out his amazingly courageous story in 2 Samuel 23. There are days when we do not feel courageous at all and it can be very tiring to have to fight with various health related agencies over and over again; it can sap your strength if you're not careful. As believers we know we do not function in our own strength anyway - He gives us strength to face each day and to accomplish our tasks. But there is also a certain amount of want-to on our parts and it even takes self-motivation to follow Him. It will not happen without a conscious decision. Keeping ourselves goin...

This morning as I was reading about some of Paul's hardships in 2 Corinthians 6, I thought about the caregiver. He really nailed a few things on the head for us even though our hardships take very different courses. He talks some about having patience and working to exhaustion and  sleepless nights as well as our sincere love, purity and kindness all through the power of God. Verse 9 says we are close to death, but here we are still alive! Sound familiar? In verse 10 he talks about how our heart aches, but we still have joy and many spiritual riches to share. As I was reading this passage I thought about how much all of this seems to apply to our situations as well. But something else caught my eye - verse 7 says this - God's power has been working in us. We have righteousness as a weapon, both to attack and to defend ourselves. I thought about that a lot and even matched it up with Job and how he had to keep telling his "friends" that he was righteous before God. ...

God is so awesome! Yet sometimes it feels as though He has moved a long way away. Mentally, and in my heart, I know He hasn't; but it can feel like He is not working in the present. He is though. This is one aspect of faith that we forget about in our materialistic culture - it's not about getting stuff - it's about believing He's there and cares whether we can see Him, feel Him, sense Him or not. Yesterday, I was looking for a scripture that would remind me how awesome His is, how majestic He is and how present He is. I found this one in Deuteronomy. It's at the very end of Moses' blessing over the people before he died. This little phrase toward the end of his blessing caught my eye - verse 27 says: The eternal  God is your refuge, and His everlasting arms are under you. (NLT) I stopped and thought about that simple phrase a lot. He is my refuge - but He is an eternal being so that means He has been my refuge, is being my refuge and will continue to be my r...

Every day for the caregiver can be filled with various types of afflictions or discomforts. It's easy to be distracted by the battle because of the intensity with which we must live every single day. Just yesterday evening as I was trying to get ready to retire myself I thought of all the things we had accomplished during the day. There's preparing special foods as well as foods for myself (and they are not even close to being the same!), getting my son up, laying him down, working on mobility, working on cognitive skills, struggling because I am trying to help him get better and he really wants to go back to bed! lol And that just scratches the surface. Add to that these types of activities the fact that on top of working with our loved ones we still have all the "normal" things to accomplish like laundry, dishes, dusting (does anyone do that anymore? lol), and various other sundry household tasks. Plus for some of us we also have jobs. For me it is working at home -...

Maybe it is just Western believers who take scriptures apart and use the sections we like and ignore the rest. Over the last 4 years of caregiving I have "found' pieces of scriptures which have been somewhat ignored. Perhaps because it does not match our own theology. Somewhere along the church-y path it seems we were indirectly (I hope not directly) taught that pain was wrong - even a sin. Maybe no one said it, but various things led me to interpret sermons to mean that pain was not acceptable. When's the last time you heard a sermon on how to handle those pains in your heart? The soul pains that the caregiver suffer are deep and oftentimes unexpressed, because we indirectly are led to believe that they are taboo. We even ignore books of the Bible that don't match our anti-pain theologies. When is the last time you heard a sermon from Lamentations? Right. Because the prophet penned that book when he was in intense pain for the losses he saw his people, God's pe...

One of the things I hear a lot about is social isolation. Most caregivers become such under varying circumstances for me it started with an automobile accident followed by a hospital stay. At first the SICU waiting room was filled with concerned people. As the usual "custom" visitors began to dwindle when it turned into a 4 month hospital stay; and dwindled even more as we moved to the first nursing home. By the time we moved to our first apartment visitors were pretty much nonexistent. This is typically how it goes and it's not that people do not care, it's just that they went on with their lives and somehow had the illusion that since you are "home" yours sort of went on too. That's just the way it is.. no blame.  Caregiving can end up being a lonely place - but you eventually adjust to this social isolation and it finally becomes the norm.  As a general rule, caregivers do not have the freedom that many others have. They cannot decide on the spur o...

Psalm 27 seems to have a little bit of everything. David starts out by pretty much disclosing his crazy emotions. He expresses fear and trembling and tries to console himself by saying he will remain confident even if he is attacked. I think many days, as caregivers we can feel like the world continues to attack in an ongoing battle. Our daily struggles can take many forms which can sometimes feel like we were put here on earth to just get others to do their jobs responsibly. (Those who work with health related agencies will understand that one!) Even as David is consoling himself and working on releasing his fears to God, he begins to think about living in God's house. David states that this is where he is concealed when trouble comes. (NLT) He goes on to say that in God's house he is lifted high above his enemies  and from there he will offer sacrifices, shouts of joy, singing and praise. I am not so sure David is solely talking about the physical temple or tabernacle in Je...

Yesterday I was looking through some old files I had stored on a previous hard drive and came across a recording by Nicole C. Mullen: My Redeemer Lives! I listened to it and thought of how that song is such a wonderful reminder that our God does indeed live. My mind then went to the scripture where the phrase is found  - Job 19:25. Such a wonderful song - why did it have to be Job that said it first? None of us read Job - it's rarely taught in a Sunday School lesson and I cannot recall a single sermon that used Job as the primary character. We are afraid of Job's story because we do not understand it. Much like the church seems to be afraid of those of us who are suffering in our own furnaces because they do not know what to do with us. I suppose we can be thankful that they do not come and park on our doorstep offering such accusations as Job's "friends." (*smile*) Does it seem to you that sometimes well meaning church people want us to feel as though we don...

It can be way too easy to let the pain of each day have our focus; but it does not have to be that way. Starting in the morning we can begin to shift our thoughts to Him and away from our circumstances. I'm not trying to minimize the pain that a day brings as for many caregivers, as well as those who are being cared for because of chronic or serious conditions, the pain of the circumstance can be almost unbearable. Quite honestly, some days we do not have the energy to let pain have our attention as we spend the day taking care of the needs of our loved one. But each day hurts. If we are not careful our thoughts will major on things that we are missing instead of what we have - life. And not just life - but life in Him. We can chose to celebrate that life in Him from any circumstance. As believers we understand the concept of hiding in Him. Psalm 91 talks about hiding in the secret place  of the Most High; and Psalm 46:1 speaks of the Lord being a very present help in trouble a...