Daily Devotions for Caregivers

 One thing I hear from caregivers a lot is that there is often not enough help. Recently, I requested a few hours of respite just because I literally have zero breaks. For many of us, it's a 24-7 deal. Even for those whose loved ones can be left alone for any amount of time, it's still rough. Someday, I'd like to go somewhere and not feel like I have to watch the clock so closely. Even if we are given a few minutes or hours to ourselves, we can't turn "off" all the caregiving switches. Right? Who will admit to running caregiving errands while you are being relieved by a sitter or another caregiver? (We all do.) Anyone who tells you that caregiving is easy - just hasn't done it yet. It is indeed a labor of love. It may be instinctual. It is what we do. But the journey is rocky and rough at best, even if things go smoothly for 10 minutes now and then. (Lol.) So many factors feed into a single day; it's quite overwhelming, at best, even when things are go...

As caregivers we are able to get in there and get things done. It sort of comes with the territory. No matter what our basic personality is, in just a short time of caregiving is good schooling on this topic. We learn rather quickly that in many cases, advocating for our loved one means rolling up our sleeves and getting 'er done. Too bad there's not a Caregivers   University w here we can go to learn the skills needed. We could get a diploma once we learned it all and of course passed our internship  where we learned all the ropes using a hands-on approach. Of course I am speaking tongue-in-cheek as it would be impossible for someone to teach us what we've learned. Of course there is no such school and we are not going to get a diploma for our learning. But we do a lot of learning about a lot of things once we become a caregiver, including things about ourselves. Even though I'm pretty high strung and hyper most of the time I let a lot of things slide as a person...

So many things may have changed when we became caregivers. For me, I had gotten rid of everything and moved to Chicago from the deep south and was working three jobs in preparation for heading to the mission fields in South Africa. But like many, my plans came to a screeching halt with a single phone call informing me my son had been in an automobile accident and had been medi-flighted to a local hospital in Shreveport. From there the changes were astronomical. I booked a flight to Shreveport and lived in the hospital for 4 months as I sat by his side. We then went through a series of nursing homes and rehab facilities until I could get my own apartment and have a place to "bring him home" to. It's an understatement to say that everything changed.  I now work from home as a writer and have a decent little apartment near my family in Oklahoma. Over time we all change, we evolve into different roles as life throws new things at us. We develop character as we embrace l...