Daily Devotions for Caregivers

 I'm not sure things have ever been this crazy. Of course, I only have a little over 60 years to base my analysis on. (smile!) As if caregiving wasn't enough by itself, we have a pandemic that continues to rage on, political craziness out of hand, and a generation that seems bent on doing evil. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get soul tired.   This morning, I was reading in Lamentations 3 where Jeremiah talks about God's compassions. Funny, it's not compassion  - singular. It's compassions - plural. The prophet says his soul was removed from peace . In our current world situation, that would be easy to do. Our peace can be so disrupted if we watch the news or scroll our Facebook feeds all day, for sure!  Jeremiah goes on to say in verse 18 that his strength and hope had perished. That's how he felt at the time. As caregivers, I think we all have those moments where we feel totally swept away in our responsibilities. On any given day we can feel like ...

I'm still on my journey through the psalms or Songs of Ascents. Today, I'm gleaning from Psalm 130. Honestly, I think I love all the psalms - they are open, raw, and honest. This one starts that way too. The psalmist says, Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! That sounds a bit like yesterday when we were looking at the dark night of the soul and some of the long nights caregivers often endure. One thing I like about many of the psalms is that after the prayer, after the complaint and all the crying out - there is a declaration. This psalm is no different. In verse 5,  the Psalmist says, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope. My loose interpretation is this: I may be calling out to Him for help in a time of desperation, but I still know His word is my hope and I will declare that I am waiting on Him alone. In the next verse, he goes on to say - My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning - I...

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...

This morning I kept thinking about an old song. I like to hear my sister, Kenella sing it. It's called The Anchor Holds.  It talks about a ship that is battered and torn but that it's held sure by the anchor. No matter what the storm does to the ship - the anchor holds secure. Since I had the anchor on my mind, I decided to look it up in a concordance. One scripture stood out to me. It's Hebrews 6:19 and it says this hope we have as an anchor for the soul , a hope both sure and steadfast.  I like to read verses in context, so I backed up and read the entire chapter. It's talking about Abraham and how he hoped against hope and held to the promise of God.If you back up a couple of verses, you'll see that God simply wants to show us the promise of the unchangeableness of His purpose. It can be so easy for His purpose to get lost in caregiving. However, it's only lost to us - we just can't see it. But His purpose is never lost, never wasted and remains eve...

I have to admit this morning that my emotions are all over the place. I'll spare you the details and just say there's a lot going on. We've discussed before that we are not exempt from the rest of life just because we are caregivers. So suffice it to say - I'm on overload....as usual. Yesterday as I started realizing how much was going on around me, my head started spinning with thoughts. I've admitted before I'm an over-thinker. Someone makes one statement and I've worked through 900 scenarios in my head that could possibly happen. Sometimes it's annoying. :-) So with lots and lots of different things making my head swirl, I heard my heart cry out to Him last night. In my mind I'm standing before Him with hands outstretched just waiting for some sort of answer. There's not really one answer that will make everything better and I think I just needed to be reminded that He hears my heart. I just needed to know it one more time. As caregive...

As a caregiver, there are just some things about which we cannot speak. We silently feel each other's pain and have an understanding of what a normal day  may look like. We wipe up drool, pick up spilled (or spit out) food, and perform tasks we cannot speak about to protect the dignity of our loved ones. But we all could share some crazy stories if we were alone! Are you nodding your head?  Even though we don't speak about it, we understand. We really do seem to live in an alternate world from everyone else. On a daily basis we deal with all the normal  stuff - and then our own set of what's normal. That might mean we have learned how to bolus a feeding through a tube, check 02 levels, take blood pressure, give a bed bath and change depends. But even though what we do daily looks a lot different from the rest of the world's normal day - spiritually we are no different at all. This morning I was reading Proverbs 17:3 that says: The refining pot is for silver and th...

Over the last year I had some of my own health problems and was even in the hospital for a few days. It was amazing how many people stepped up to help with my son during that time. You know all too well how miserable it can be to not feel well. It brings a wide range of emotions that are difficult to deal with and you can feel so inadequate. My daughter stepped right up to the plate and others drove in from out of town to give her a hand. And then of course, once I was better they were all gone! (smile) During one visit to the doctor's office she prescribed me some meds for high blood pressure. (Go figure, right?) And she said that they would be good for me since they also helped calm down anxiety. I laughed and said, "You think I'm anxious?" I have always been high strung and being a caregiver hasn't replaced or changed any of that. Actually, I started running as a way to deal with the stress of caregiving and am now training for another marathon. You'd thi...

This week we've been talking about how adversity can offer a door to hope. It's not that hope makes the pain of losses any less, but it does give way to a brighter future no matter what the circumstances are. Today's character is Ruth; it's such a beautiful story. As most stories do, it starts out with conflict and trouble. Ruth had married young and her husband died after about 10 years. To make matters worse, as real life does, there was a famine in the land. Naomi decided to return to Judah to her family since her husband and two sons were dead. Ruth decided that she was going to remain loyal to Naomi and go with her to Judah. Naomi tried to discourage her by telling here there was no hope. She told Ruth, Go for I am too old to have a husband. If I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight and also bear sons would you therefore wait until they were grown?....for the hand of the Lord is against me. (Ruth 1:12-13) The custom of the day would have be...

Yesterday I spent more time thinking about how adversity can open the door of hope. My thoughts led me to Joseph. God had given him dreams when he was a young boy and his family had made fun of him and judged him for it. I am sure he wondered some about those dreams as he was imprisoned for something he did not do. Joseph's situation was dire. First of all, prisons back then were nothing like they are today. While our prisons are not pleasant, they are humane. I figure it had to be a very lonely place for Joseph. His family was far away and they weren't coming to look for him. Did he think back about those childhood dreams?  I wonder if he thought about his brothers and family while he was there. Did he ever think about what it would have been like if he hadn't been betrayed and sold by his brothers? I also wonder if forgiveness and acceptance were daily choices for Joseph. In my situation, someone else caused the accident which injured my son and made me a caregiver. S...

The first couple of chapters of Exodus contains two things that I have found very interesting. In the first chapter  I found it interesting that the midwives were directly blessed by God for disobeying Pharaoh. Verse 21 state that they feared God and He established households for them.   Even though it was a very tough time for them and their people, they continued to trust and fear the Lord rather than caving in to man's evil commands. In chapter 2 we read about the birth of Moses and how his mother protected him until he was found by Pharaoh's daughter in a basket in the Nile. Those who are familiar with scripture know that as the story unfolds, Moses becomes the deliverer who God uses to take His children out of Egypt's bondage and into the promised land. This time of great adversity  became a door of hope  for the Children of Israel. The caregiver's life can be filled with adversity and some days every breath can be a struggle. But there's a scripture in Hos...

Yesterday my mind kept going back to a very familiar passage in Isaiah 40. As a runner, I wish this scripture could be more literal. (smile) Verse 31 says They that wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. (NASB) We are all waiting on God for something . Perhaps we are waiting to have peace over a situation, wisdom for a decision, answers to our questions or hope to arise in our hearts. Waiting is the hard part once we've put it out there before God. Maybe it's because we don't know when  the answer will come, or how He's going to answer us. But we can be assured, that He will answer - even if we miss  it when it comes. In the natural, we do get tired; and we do become weary. It's just part of the caregiving package. There are nights with little or no sleep, big decisions that have to be made concerning someone else's health and comfort, and en...

This morning I had a couple of scriptures on my mind as I puttered about and got my tutoring done early. The one from 1 Thessalonians 5:23 is still fresh on my mind: Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely and may your whole body, soul and spirit be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  There are only about 3 or 4 times when Paul uses the phrase God of peace. He uses it here and in Romans a couple of times. And of course, Isaiah says that He is the Prince of Peace. We have the God of peace  or the Prince of Peace  living right inside of us. Now that hits me as just a little bit funny since the caregiver's daily life can resemble just about anything but peace. I don't know if it's ever not  hectic! I would probably use just about any  word to describe daily activities - except peaceful.  While each caregiver's journey differs, my days are filled with constant activities like laundry, cooking and pureeing foods, strai...

For caregivers, emotions can run on edge. Oh, eventually we adjust to the hectic life and can hold it together through all the basic stuff. We really don't have much of a choice so we get used to aides not showing up, not getting enough supplies, and advocating for our loved one on a daily basis. The daily chores become routine as do all the things we have to get done to care for another person. For some of us that basically means you do everything twice because they need total care. We adjust, figure out we are still alive, and we even learn to laugh again. And then something happens. We get used to the craziness and then a vehicle breaks down, the hot water heater malfunctions or we get sick. It really doesn't take too much because we run on overload . For me personally it can mean the emotions go toward that downward spiral. Even though there are some strategies that I've learned to use to help prevent me from bottoming out - it is a difficult fight and each step ...

It can be the day-to-day grind that is so difficult for the caregiver. Even though each day can bring it's own set of "surprises" and circumstances, the caregiver's life just goes on. There is often no relief or end in sight. If we are honest, no matter how positive we choose to be and how hard we remain focused, there are times when it seems overwhelming. Our situation can be constant and unchanging. Some have hope of a "better" day while others quite frankly, do not. Joni Eareckson Tada says that disability is just so daily . It's the same for the caregiver - there isn't always a break. It's not as much about learning how to "take a break" in the middle of the journey - as it is learning how to walk it out. What I mean by walking it out  is how we handle the day-to-day grind. How do we respond when pressure rises in an already pressure-filled situation? (I won't tell how horrible my responses are if you won't! - or maybe I...

Life can be disappointing at times and the caregiver can find themselves having to constantly pull themselves up by their bootstraps as the old saying goes. Most likely the very reason we had the opportunity to become a caregiver was one of life's huge disappointments. Perhaps it was a tragedy such as a wreck or an accident, or maybe it was a serious diagnosis; no matter what it was it certainly was not the way we had envisioned our lives turning out - and that can be very disappointing. 1 Peter 2:6 is a quote from the Old Testament that says this: Behold I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed. (NASB) When life is full of disappointing news we can start to think that God didn't know what He was talking about. To be completely honest, I was very disappointed in God when my son was seriously injured in an automobile accident. After all weren't we led to believe that since we served God our kids would be sa...

My mentor told me one time that I was ambiguous but I didn't know what it meant at the time and so I had to go look it up. After I discovered what it meant, I realized I had two very different opinions about a lot of things. Over the last few days I've felt sort of divided about how I feel about God too. (It's okay - He understands and isn't mad at all!) On one hand - I love God with all my heart and trust Him fully. On the other hand I really don't understand why bad  or difficult  things have to happen in life; or how come He allows them. I think I found a Psalm to help me sort it all out. It's Psalm 42 and it starts out with the psalmist discussing how they long for God. As the deer pants for water - that's how my soul longs for God.  I feel that way; even wrote a chorus about being thirsty for His presence to invade every part of my life. Verse 4, talks about how the psalmists remembers hanging out with God's people. I recall being very involved...

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...

Back in my real ministry days I did a lot of teaching on waiting on God . As a worship leader I learned that I needed those quiet times to develop intimacy with Him. This morning I was looking at Psalm 62 which starts out with I wait quietly before God, for my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken. (Pslam 62:1,2 NLT) In verses 5 and 6, David repeats almost the same thing except he says,  I wait quietly before God for my hope is in Him. I took some time to meditate on this. Life sometimes throws us a curve and many times, for me it can seem that it disrupted what I was doing! My head can get very busy and move so fast through so many thoughts that sometimes I wonder if I have lost the capacity to be quiet before Him. But David seemed to be in a life or death situation as he penned this particular psalm and he made it a point to quiet himself before the One who could give hope and salvation. Today, I purpose t...

David was a warrior who faced many battles. The warrior side of him is seen even when he was a youth and went out to face Goliath who was many times his own size. In 1 Samuel 17:28, it says that even after Goliath's lofty threats, David ran out to meet him. David would face many battles after that monumental day. But there would also come a day when he would have to encourage himself in the Lord. Sometimes it can seem like the caregiver's day is one battle after another; and like David, we must many times encourage ourselves in the Lord . It takes some kind of warrior to do that, don't you think? I know - most caregivers are not going to think of themselves as warriors! Our M.O. is more along the lines of well, we just do what we do. While that is true and we feel like we just put one foot in front of the other most of the time...we are doing much more than that. Let me explain. As a caregiver I have battled depression and that is not uncommon for us. But how many ti...

Did you ever turn around in the middle of the afternoon and wonder where the day has gone so fast? When everything works like it should, a day can be hectic. Supplies come in, meals get delivered, aides actually show up; the front door just keeps swinging some days. It's a good thing, but it can sure be like a whirlwind sometimes, especially if you factor in all the other daily caregiving that is not optional. If we are not careful a day can get away from us and we are left scratching our heads wondering which way it went. Yesterday was like that around here and so when I found Psalm 131:2 this morning during my morning devotions it brought a quiet in my soul that was much needed. The psalmist said, But I have stilled and quieted myself just as a small child is quiet with his mother... And then he goes on in the last verse to say his hope is in the Lord. What stood out to me here was that the psalmist said he quieted himself ...he quieted his own soul before the Lord by remind...