Caregivers and the Names for God

A few months back in my church we heard some sermons on the names of God. I found those sermons to be a great blessing and comfort to me in my post caregiving days. I believe thinking about the meaning for some of the many names for God can be a blessing and source of strength for current caregivers as well.

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written in Greek. ELOHIM in Hebrew means the all powerful, all mighty, creator God. YAHWEH is the personal name for God. YAHWEH ELOHIM is your God, dear Christian caregiver! The all powerful God of the universe cares about you, and He is with you in the difficulties and challenges of caregiving!

He is also YAHWEH-yireh which means the Lord will provide. He will provide for you, dear Christian caregiver in all the uncertainties and stresses of caregiving. You do not know the future, but He already has the future under His sovereign control. I remember as a caregiver often succumbing to fear and worry. It was difficult to see my husband’s health deteriorating before my eyes. As I look back, however, I know he was with me each step of the way.

I read somewhere that worrying is trying to carry tomorrow’s load with today’s strength. It is trying to carry two days at once. Worrying as a caregiver will not empty tomorrow of it’s heartaches and challenges. Instead it empties today of it’s strength. The truth of the matter is that we have no strength in ourselves at all, but we have unlimited strength in God. He is in control. He will provide strength as we need it. Trust in YAHWEH-yireh which means the Lord will provide. He is also your YAHWEH-nissi which means the Lord is my banner or miracle. Trust in Him to provide, dear caregiver.

Dear Christian caregiver, the Lord is also YAHWEH-sabaoth which means the Lord of Hosts or the Lord Almighty or the Sovereign Lord. He is Lord over everything. We can not box God in and tell Him what to do. If we submit to Him, however, He who is all powerful and Lord over everything will go before us. He will pave the way for you on the difficult path of caregiving. When you recognize that you can’t do this caregiving thing on your own, He the Lord Almighty is with you, dear caregiver. Trust that He is in control. Rest it with the Lord God, for He also alone is YAHWEH-shalom which means the Lord is peace!

Lean on Him

Dear Caregiver, the heartaches and difficulties of family care-giving can often be very overwhelming.  This time in your life may very well be the most difficult trial that you have faced in your entire life.  It is so very physically, emotionally and spiritually draining to see one's love one deteriorate in his or her health and to know that one is very limited in what one can do to help that loved one.

Care-giving often teaches in a very vivid way that self-dependence does not work.  It certainly made that truth very clear to me when I was a caregiver.  Dear caregiver, God wants you to lean on Him.  He want you to trust in Him and acknowledge Him.  God wants you to have a heart that rests in His promises.  He wants you to believe with absolute certainty that He will teach you and guide you every step of the way down your care-giving path.

Surrender to God's plan for your life right now, dear caregiver, even though it is a very difficult path and a path which you would never have chosen for yourself.  Daily lean on and depend on God by relying on His promises in His Holy Word and by prayer. He is the answer and daily provides for you and your loved one's needs. 

In fact, dear Christian caregiver, God is using the pressures and challenges of care-giving to produce in you a beautiful Christ-likeness.  He is molding you into a precious vessel more suitable for His glory and use.  In the process of doing this He is guiding you step by step, increasing your trust in Him, giving you His strength, and providing for you and your loved one in a way that is beyond what you think or imagine.  We do not always understand or even agree with God's ways, but we can trust His ways, and we can also trust His love.  He loved us enough to send His own Son for us.  Can we not also trust Him to provide for us even in life's most challenging situations?

Dear caregiver, family care-giving is often a difficult road to travel.  Yet God is leading you and is with you all the way.  Lean on Him, dear caregiver.    

A Love Story God's Way

I just finished a book called Joni & Ken An Untold Love Story. This story is about Joni and Ken Tada. It is a story that every caregiver and former caregiver will want to read. It is story which does not gloss over the deep struggles of Ken as Joni's caregiver nor of Joni with her health struggles.

It vividly discusses the drudgery and sometimes disgusting everyday duties of the whole care-giving scenario. It also portrays what Joni and Ken endured with Joni's quadriplegia, her unrelenting and overwhelming pain which began many years after her quadriplegia began, and then her later developing breast cancer and the complicating pneumonia. 

It is a book which shatters the concept of Prince Charming marrying the princess and they living happily ever after free from all pain and misery. Rather is displays the more Biblical concept of two people facing the overwhelming challenges of life together with them as one and also being at one with the Lord.  The book also shatters the dream of Prince Charming being the one who can fulfill all one's needs and expectations, and replaces it with the reminder that only God can do that.

This book had me crying during many moments while reading it. There were tears of identification with the struggles Ken endured but also with what Joni experienced. There were also tears of recognition along with Joni and Ken that God often uses the most difficult of circumstances to give us glimpses of heaven and and also glimpses of God's wonderful presence in our lives now.

Care-giving for a loved one is one of life's most difficult challenges. It is also one of God's noblest tasks in God's kingdom. Cling to that, dear Christian caregiver. Consider ordering the book and reading it. I think you will find it a blessing, dear caregiver. You can order it at Amazon.com and Christianbook.com.

http://www.christianbook.com/joni-ken-an-untold-love-story/ken-tada/9780310314691/pd/314691?product_redirect=1&Ntt=314691&item_code=&Ntk=keywords&event=ESRCP

Personal Reflections

I hope you will forgive me, dear caregiver, as I share a little of my story and feelings today. Seven years ago about this time in late April my husband, Wayne, went in to the doctor for a check-up. This began the process of us knowing something was wrong with my husband. In May of that year Wayne saw a local neurologist, and in August and October of that year we went to Mayo Clinic. He was diagnosed with Multiple Systems Atrophy type c, a rare neurological disease which resembles Parkinson's but moves much more quickly. The next four and a half years were difficult years, as I witnessed Wayne's decline step by step and found that he had passed away during the night on the morning of January 2, 2011.

About a year after Wayne's diagnosis, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had 8 months of treatment including chemotherapy, a mastectomy, and radiation. I had an oncologist appointment this past Friday. This was my first appointment in a year. All looked good, and I will be a 6 year breast cancer survivor in July, the Lord willing!

So these past seven years since Wayne's diagnosis have involved difficult care-giving days, breast cancer treatment, and now nearly 28 months of living my life as a widow. I think difficult times has produced in me a greater desire for a sense of the presence of the Lord in my heart. It has also made me more aware of His presence. My longing for God is deeper and also is my sense that this earth is not my final home even though God still has work for me to do here.

While I was a caregiver for my husband, Wayne, and saw him deteriorate; the words of Psalm 84 became very meaningful to me especially verses 5-7. Check out those verses for yourself, dear caregiver. The valley of Baca referred to in these verses means the Valley of Weeping. So this passage in effect told me that I would be blessed, if I found my strength in the Lord and set my mind on Him even in the difficulties of care-giving. It also told me that as His child I would go from “strength to strength” and victory to victory, as I treaded the difficult path of caring for my husband. The passage reminded me that God would somehow make the trials of my care-giving days into “a place of springs” and blessings. Dear Christian caregiver, these promises are for you as well!

I am thankful to the Lord for His physical and emotional healing in my life. I wonder sometimes though why I am here and why Wayne was taken. It feels like my life should be doing great things for the Lord, because of all He has done for me. Yet it is not about that, and it is not about me. It is about seeking intimacy with the Lord. He will use me as He sees fit. God is infinitely wiser than I am. It is the same for you also, dear caregiver.

Yet I feel so many emotions. I am feeling a thankfulness/joy/awe for my healing and for the good things that God has brought to me as a result of the past years-changes in my character for the good, greater intimacy with the Lord, and even ministry. I am in awe of His grace. Yet I also feel a sadness that somehow Wayne could not still be a part of all this.

The Prayer Helper for the Caregiver

As we have said numerous times caregiving for a loved one with a serious disease is one of life’s greatest challenges. Only those who have been or currently are family caregivers truly understand the emotional and physical difficulties associated with caregiving.

In caregiving responsibilities it is important to focus on the Lord and turn to Him in prayer. Sometimes in the overwhelming moments we do not know how to pray about our situations, however. At such times the Holy Spirit helps us in our prayer life.

Romans 8:26 promises us the following, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."

Have you ever tried to pray about your caregiving situation and felt so overwhelmed with some heartache that you did not know how to pray? Have you ever felt that you could not find the words to express in prayer the depths of your feelings and needs in your heart? God understands our weaknesses and has provided us a helper in our prayer lives. That helper is the Holy Spirit Himself!

The Holy Spirit prays in and through us. He also prays for us especially during those times when we are too overwhelmed with heartache to find the right words to express our pain to the Lord in prayer. The Holy Spirit understands our sorrows and is our prayer helper, and He "intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." The Holy Spirit Himself pleads and intercedes for us before the Heavenly Father! The Holy Spirit is our perfect intercessor before the Heavenly Father, "because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." (Romans 8:27b)

Praise the Lord for His infinite blessings! He is our salvation. He is our source of strength, promise, and hope. He provides for every need in our lives for time and eternity. The Lord provides us the Holy Spirit to help us to live for the Lord and to help us in our weaknesses. Finally, the Lord even provides the Holy Spirit as our prayer helper and advocate! What a glorious God we serve! Praise His name!

The Sun is Still Shining

Some days can be cloudy, dreary, and rainy. That is the way it was last week in the town where I live.  More rain and clouds are predicted in this coming week in my town as well. I think we all prefer days which are sunshiny and bright. I know I felt better when the sun just peeked out a little after days of not seeing the sun. It is so much easier to feel joyful in one’s spirit when one can see the sun shining in all its brilliance. Even on days when we can not see the sun, however, it is still shining. It is just hiding behind the clouds.

Family care-giving is like that also. I remember when I was a caregiver having difficulty seeing the blessings that were all around me because of the difficulties and discouraging moments of my days. There were blessings in both the extra difficult days of care-giving and in the days that went more smoothly. Some days the blessings were just hidden behind the clouds of my discouragement about my husband’s disease.

I think we have to make a conscious effort to look for God's blessings, however; because they are there even on the days when we have a difficult time seeing them. Those blessings are there just as surely as the sun is there even on days when it is hiding behind the clouds.

Look for the blessings, dear caregiver, even if they are sometimes hidden behind the clouds of discouragement and difficulty. Try to write down each day at least three things for which you are thankful that day. As you look for and discover the blessings your spirit will be lifted! The sun is still shining behind the clouds of care-giving difficulties and discouragements!

Simply Trusting

The Lord God is the caregiver's refuge, source of guidance, and assurance in the difficult challenges of family care-giving.  Care-giving is one of the most important avenues of service in the kingdom of God.  It also can be a time of despair, discouragement, and bewilderment as to the next wisest step in dealing with the health of one's loved one for whom one is caring.

Every caregiver needs  to ask the Lord to help and guide him or her through the difficult twists and turns of care-givng.  This involves also TRUSTING that God will guide step by step through this process.  God will not usually let the caregiver see far into the future, but the Lord has promised to lead step by step.  He will always walk alongside the caregiver with His sustaining strength.  He will be the caregiver's refuge each step of the way.

The caregiver needs to choose to rest in the Lord.  A caregiver cannot control the circumstances of their loved one's disease, but they can control their response to the circumstances.  That response has to be one of trust in the Lord.  When one sees one's loved one deteriorating in health it is so easy to become discouraged and to become fearful, but the Lord is the source of hope.  He has everything under His control.  He is worthy of our trust.

There are times when the care-giving situation become increasingly desperate and hopeless.  This can cause the caregiver to feel brokenhearted and want to give up.  Remember, dear caregiver, the Lord is very near to you when you feel this way.   God sees your overwhelming situation, and He hears your cry for help.  He can and will bring you through this storm in your life.  He will hear your every cry and meet your every need.  You may not always understand God's ways with you and with your loved one; but He will never leave you or forsake you, dear caregiver.

The Lord may not heal your loved one on this earth, but the Lord will heal them.  If they are a child of God even if they do not conquer their disease on this earth, they will be completely healed.  No matter what happens the Lord will heal you too, dear Christian caregiver.  He will heal you emotionally and spiritually and teach you valuable lessons about His love and faithfulness in the process.  Trust in Him.  Rest in Him.