Daily Devotions for Caregivers

This morning during my quiet time, I found myself in John. I read through a few chapters and got lots to think about. I actually started by looking at chapter 7 verses 37-38. Jesus is speaking and says, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in Me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living waters. I thought about that awhile. If I am “thirsty” I can come to Him. And if I believe – there will be living waters flowing through my heart. There are no exclusionary statements, so I took it that it’s for caregivers too! My eyes sort of followed all the red words on the two open pages and I ended up back in chapter 6 and Jesus is talking about believing again. Jesus said there were some among his followers who didn’t believe. In their defense, He had just shared some hard to understand teachings with them about eating His flesh. And as we humans tend to do – when something makes sense we leave. Many left off from following Jesus...

There can be different roles we play as caregivers. For me, I am a sole caregiver for my son and get few breaks. But on a totally different level I am in the beginning stages of caregiving (just offering assistance presently) for my parents who are aging. No matter what specific role we play as a caregiver it can be overwhelming and emotionally exhausting. This morning I was just feeling tired; too tired to start the day. I thought of the verse in Psalm 55 where the psalmist says Oh that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. But then my next thought was No, I'm too tired to fly away! (smile) - I know you relate. Evidently when David penned this psalm he was under a lot of pressure from his enemies. And according to verse 12 even his friends had begun to fight with him. The shift is friendships was one of the biggest shockers of becoming a caregiver. Our BC (before caregiving) friends are not always able to handle the changes we need to make. And some are j...

Caregiving is not an easy task period; and any given day can bring numerous surprises both good and bad. You just never know how a day is going to go. You never know when you are going to run out of steam, or when you'll have a burst of energy. People can surprise you by not showing up, or they can surprise you with an unexpected text asking if you need any help. The emotions can be all over the place for a variety of reasons. In the midst of caregiving - life continues for everyone else and life itself doesn't take a break. As a caregiver, we deal with our personal situation plus all the "normal" stuff life throws at you. We get sick, we read cutoff notices, vehicles break down, friends are diagnosed with serious conditions, and family members pass away. Caregiving doesn't give us a break  from life - life continues just as it would if we were not in the role of caregiving. Sometimes, I would like to find a huge pause  button for life. Can't it stop for jus...

When Jesus came to Gethsemane, His first response was to pray. Then in Mark 14:33 these words stuck out to me this morning: and He began to be very distressed and troubled.  How could that be? Jesus told the disciples repeatedly to not  be troubled, yet we read here that He is in deep distress. Did He contradict Himself? Of course not! He told the disciples that were with Him that He was deeply grieved to the point of death . And then He began to pray. There are a couple more things that stick out to me here. One thing is that He told those close to Him how He felt.  As caregivers, we do not tend to do that very much. For the most part, we are the ones carrying the load and in many cases we are walking it alone. Sometimes there may not be anyone close enough to tell that you're having a difficult time, are depressed or overburdened. Other times, we just cannot admit our weakness as we don't want others to think we cannot carry the load - we have to be strong for those w...

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. ...

In my morning devotions I was reading through Psalm 68. I have always enjoyed this psalm and I think it may be because we taught the first verse to the children's church crowd back in the day. To me this is a very rich psalm and speaks to many areas in our lives. But today I got to verse 19 and stopped.  In the NASB verse 19 says this: Blessed be the Lord who daily bears our burden, The God who is our salvation. But I had a note in my margin that reminded me of how this particular verse is translated in the old KJV: Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits; even the God of our salvation. These two phrases: loads us with benefits and bears our burden  do not really seem close. How could the same phrase be translated two different ways? That I may never know - but ...  In my thinking it sounds like it is to my benefit that He carries my burden ! He not only took my sin to Calvary - but He walks with me through this journey we call life. He is the one who g...