Daily Devotions for Caregivers

One of my friends just had a brand new beautiful baby girl. Celebrating new births always makes me think of Psalm 139. It’s definitely one of my most marked-up psalms! I also had Jeremiah 1:5 running through my head. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. I read back through Psalm 139 again, it’s got so many encouraging spots in it if you haven’t read it in a while, it’s a great read for today! This whole psalm is great, but a couple of things stuck out to me this morning in particular. In the first verse, David says O Lord, You have searched me and known me   - and I added a note in my margin – “And it’s okay!” It’s okay that He knows our thoughts, our words before we speak them, when we get up and when we get down. I’m quite alright with Him seeing and knowing every part about me and my days. You see, He sees those parts no one else sees. As a personal example, I maintain a FB page for my son’s progress. I post to it every day or so as he does something notabl...

As a caregiver do you ever feel like you live in a bubble? I sure do. For the most part, if I'm home I don't realize how un-normal my life is. Probably because it's become my new norm. It's a norm filled with lots of visits from case managers, nurses, doctors, and deliveries with a few surprise runs to the ER like yesterday. although each of our stories and days has differences, our norms include changes, dressing an adult, pureeing foods, tube feedings, spoon feedings, transfers, standing frames and range of motion exercises. Most of the time, we probably don't even think about those things - we just do. But when we get outside our comfortable norms, it can seem like we are in a bubble. Many times in public we are ignored. People cut in front of Chris' chair without a second thought. Others let doors go just as I am getting there - which is fine - I CAN do it myself - but it's just rude. Some of it, I'm sure, is my own awkwardness - conversations ar...

Over the weekend, I spent most of my study time reading in Daniel. For this week, he's my favorite Bible character, and I continue to learn from reading about his faith in the midst of his life's trial. Like caregivers, his trial didn't miraculously go away one day; it was a lifelong journey. Actually, the 12 chapters this book contains cover a lifetime of over 70 years. Sometimes we tend to read through it in a matter of a few minutes without realizing the time element. 70 years he was in captivity. He lost his family, his country and his life to become the servant of a king. While there is the good side of things - we can't minimize the losses he went through. He was young when he was carried away to Babylon but we see him develop into a man of God in the midst of extreme circumstances. I literally lived in the ICU waiting room for 3 weeks before my son was moved to the floor of the hospital and during that time I prayed that whatever the outcome would be - I wo...

It seemed as though Philippians 2 was written just for me this morning even though Paul penned it years ago to Christians in very different circumstances. I found a few nuggets to think about today, and a couple of them stung just a bit. I ended up thinking about verse 1 a lot more than the others because these can be very real questions for the caregiver. The NLT reads Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? any fellowship together in the Spirit?  And Paul goes on to talk to the believers at Philippi asking them why they are not getting along. While my focus isn't on getting along with other believers, I did think about these questions as a caregiver. Obviously, believing in Him hasn't kept difficult times from visiting. Knowing Him didn't "protect" us from being caregivers, and it didn't keep us from having to face some very difficult situations in life. Just think about Job - his faith didn't protect him fro...

If there is one thing I have learned since I became a caregiver it is to be open and honest with my feelings. I learned that God is big enough to handle my "real" feelings - there's no need to "protect" Him. People I had more difficulty with because you're never sure how someone is going to take what you say and how it's going to affect them. Over and over I've had people tell me that they appreciate the openness and transparency with which I write. But it didn't come easy for me. Maybe I just figured I didn't have anything to lose; or perhaps I just got too tired to filter everything any more. Who knows? I've been open and honest with God for a lot longer since I figured He already knows what I really think , so why would I try to hide my emotions or thoughts from Him? But being open with people has been another story. I have trust issues for sure - and I'm not denying that. Actually, this openness that I am just discovering is som...