Daily Devotions for Caregivers

 Transfers are a huge part of many caregivers' days. When I was caring for my aunt, she used a walker, but I tried to stay close to make sure she didn't fall or have any trouble. My son is total care, which means that I have to move him from chair to bed to recliner to the car and back. All day long. When I first brought him home, I had zero experience at caregiving. (Didn't we all at some point!?) I would get so nervous about transfers. Usually, I'd get nauseous just thinking about the next transfer. Well, I'm over that. Lol. Now, I transfer him numerous times a day without even thinking about it much at all.  The transitioning part of a transfer where our loved one is not in the chair, but not in the bed yet either - is the most vulnerable place to be. It's the most dangerous part of the process. Even if a lift is used to transfer someone, there is that moment when they are hanging out over nothing in between two locations. As we transitioned into caregiving, ...

 I did an obstacle course once back in my racing days. I LOVED it! There were plenty of obstacles to navigate along the race course, but this one was a little unique. It also had puzzles you had to stop and figure out along the way. The problem is that your body pumps you full of adrenaline for the physical challenges of the obstacles. Then, you've got to stop and try to calm all that down so you can think to figure out each puzzle. The unique challenges made it one of my most memorable races. Caregiving can provide some great parallels to a course like that. There are obstacles to navigate all along the way - and that is every day, all day long. Our emotions and adrenaline run high, but we must stop and do some deep thinking along the way as well. We work through financial obstacles. Then, there are physical challenges to caring for another person, especially for loved ones who are total or nearly total care.  There are mental challenges. We must keep our heads clear so we ca...

Do you remember being tricked or trying to trick others as a kid by asking, "Which is heavier, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?" The first time you're asked that question, the impulse is to say bricks, because obviously bricks are heavier than feathers. But a ton is a ton - straight up 2000 pounds, whether it's feathers, bricks, sunglasses, or feeding tubes. Lol.  As caregivers, it can feel like everything is heavy. This morning, I was frustrated by a couple of "small" things. I actually got more upset because I let something so "small" upset me. I think you get that!  We carry so much every single day, all day long. When you are already carrying a huge load, adding any small thing to it is beyond overwhelm, because the caregiver lives in overwhelm. The seemingly smallest thing just adds to our loads and can send us over the edge. In Psalm 31:14, David said But I am trusting You, O Lord. He just went through his list of overwhelms - his enemie...

 I was reading in Psalm 119 this morning when I discovered a jewel. Verse 143 in the New Living Translation (1996) says, As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands. One thing I love about David is that he told it just like it was for him. He did not hold back and often poured out his heart before God in all honesty, realness, and rawness. When I realized that he did that in many of the psalms, it gave me the freedom to do the same. I mean, it's not like God doesn't know - right? Here, David is expressing that not only is he stressed all the way out - but he's also feeling the pressure of the load. But then one of the other things I love about David comes into play. He always ran back to the Word - what God had said - who God was. And those always trumped his circumstances. As these thoughts were racing through my mind, I realized that David knew quite a bit about caregiving. I do not know when he wrote Psalm 119, but I let my run back over his life....

Do you have an "Oh, my gosh!" list? I'm pretty sure everyone has one whether they are a caregiver or not. It's the list of things that are staring you down right now. That can be a lot of things, especially those of us, like caregivers, who are walking through particularly difficult times. The list may grow because things get added to it, and we may even take a thing or two off when the particulars are solved. But the list never goes away. There's always something that brings on that heavy sigh. Things that make us think, Oh, my gosh.  Maybe for you it's a not again  list. Whatever you call it, it's stuff that has just piled up. Maybe it was slowly over time and now you feel the pressure of being underneath the load. Or maybe it's things that you suddenly woke up to this morning. Well, I'm discovering that no matter what we call our list or how many things are on it - God is still in control. He has never  lost a battle. And He is still in the mix....

 I spent a large portion of my personal devotion time this morning in Psalm 19. In the first few verses, David is lost in God's creation. He's taking a look at nature and how it is constantly declaring God's glory. If we miss it - that's on us! I stopped to meditate on the last part of verse 4 which in the New Living (1996) translates it this way: The sun lives in the heavens where God placed it. That's think-worthy! As David is meditating on the wonders of creation, his mind begins to draw the connection between nature and the Word. It's the word that holds everything in place. David couldn't have read Paul's writings in Colossians, where he describes how God created everything and the Son (the Word John 1:1) holds it all together. What a neat thought! David got the connection though! Then, in verse 12, David seems to be repentant. He begins asking God to cleanse him of things he isn't even aware of that might be displeasing to God, the Creator. I...

  Does it ever feel to you that caregivers are like the Energizer Bunny that just keeps going and going? The trouble is the energy doesn't always keep up with the need to keep going. Lol. I wish a battery that would keep me going and doing constantly. But we do wear out! We get up every morning with an overloaded schedule of things that need to be done. It's an ever-growing to-do list but it never really gets any shorter. Even if we mark off today's tasks, they will be on tomorrow's brand new list and we'll do them all over again. And again. And again. We keep going no matter what. Is there really any other choice? It can feel like there isn't. Many caregivers are going it totally alone with no one to help ease the load even a little bit. It can get tough. But we just keep going. Maybe you had numerous people tell you they were going to help you - only to look up later and find that they had disappeared with the rest of the "crowd." But you just kept g...

 I was reading Psalm 33 this morning. In verses 13 to 15, the psalmist says, The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole human race. From His throne, He observes all who live on the earth. He made their hearts , so He understands  everything they do. (NLT) I guess that resonated with me so much because I don't even understand all I do! Lol. But I also found it oddly comforting to know that God gets us. He made our hearts - that's interesting to me because our soul's heartbeat can be a complex thing. For caregivers, our emotions can range from elated to deep grief, to sadness and back again. And all of that in a matter of seconds... milliseconds... nanoseconds. But God won't miss a thing. He sees the silent tears that run down our cheeks long after everyone is tucked into bed and it feels as dark inside as it is outside. He understands when our joys are short-lived because it's misplaced and confusing.  He gets every feeling and emotion behind the deepest sigh...

 Life doesn't always make sense. In fact, it rarely makes any sense at all. I'm pretty sure none of us woke one morning as a child and decided that caregiving is what we wanted to do with our lives. It was just the course life took us on and out of love, we stepped up to the task. This certainly wasn't my "dream." I thought I'd be retired and traveling the world doing missions work by now. In some ways, I am. Not the retired part, lol, traveling the world via the internet and talking about God and His faithfulness.  I started thinking along these lines because I found the lyrics to a song I wrote back in 1999. Now, I can look back on it and see images of what the rest of the year looked like and the major changes that were ahead. When I penned the song, I had no idea we'd move to Louisiana and I'd get to teach school for the next 7 years. I didn't know of all the things that would come down the pipes from then to now. But one thing I knew was that ...

 Our brains have this built-in mechanism that programs the things we do often so we don't have to use brain energy to think about them. Let me prove it to you! Have you ever gotten up to go to another part of the house but discovered that you turned into the kitchen on the way? You're standing there scratching your head trying to figure out why you went that way when your intention was to go somewhere else. Your brain realized you were near the kitchen and since that's a frequent choice it just opted for you to follow out that action. It's a God-given gift, really, and meant to keep our brains from having to think through all the thousands of menial tasks we have to carry out each day. I'm thinking this protection is probably even on overdrive in the caregiver's brain. Lol.  This is on my mind this morning because one of my autopilot tasks failed. I upload videos to YouTube and TikTok every day (consider joining me on TikTok for some caregiving videos! @jeanie.o...

 We understand that David was a keeper of the sheep, a shepherd. When he penned Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, he knew exactly what he was talking about and all that entailed. David understood a depth of God's provision and watching care that we may not ever quite get since we don't have shepherding experience. We don't have any experience at just being a sheep, either. Lol. John 10 reminds us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and constantly watching over His sheep. Jesus also said that His sheep know His voice - and that comes from hanging out with Him! Once you have talked to a person long enough - you know them by just their voice. As a shepherd, David got all that. But there was this one day when someone tried to use it against him. To make it worse, it was his brother who was trying to take him down a notch.  Jesse sent David to check on his brothers, and he did as he was told. But his eye caught the giant, Goliath. And all he could think about was taking the giant d...

 The other day, I was talking with a friend about abandonment. It's easy to get caught up in caregiving responsibilities and look up down the road to realize no one who used to walk with you is with you anymore. Kinda feels like the rest of the world just went on with life and we didn't. Sometimes the feelings  of abandonment are more than just feelings - we really were abandoned. That's an empty, lonely feeling...reality. As caregivers, we may feel forgotten, distanced from life, and unseen. This is why the story of Hagar stands out so much in my mind so often. Hagar was Sarah's servant - she did what she was told. It was a culture WAY different than our own. It was Sarah's idea for Abraham to sleep with Hagar. It never works out when we try to do God's job. But I have to admit that sometimes, waiting on Him to act is hard.  But Hagar had a rotten attitude. She was kind of gloating over Sarah once she became pregnant. They were both wrong and I think we can all...

  Somehow, we have to trust that we are in the right spot right now. That may sound like a funny way to start a devotion for caregivers, but stay with me! I've been looking at several scriptures over the last few days where God used totally normal everyday things to do extraordinary - supernatural miracles.  God has been interacting in the lives of ordinary people all along. We see it all through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from creation to the final vision. And oddly enough (tongue in cheek), He is still working in the lives of ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Maybe we aren't seeing what most would call huge miracles - our loved ones completely restored to health would be nice. But sometimes the most miraculous is that God walks with us through time. He's there in good times, bad times, difficult times, long sleepless nights, and too bright early morning lights. It's easy to discount our lives as mundane. But God walks with us. That makes our lives...