Category Archives: dementia

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Taking care of our souls…

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Saturday morning with some snowfall, a warm coffee shop and good books. Restoring to the soul.

The last two weekends I have been away from home, and this weekend I find the routine falling back into place. Plans for things to teach the children, books to read for myself and for them, field trips and soccer practices. The business of life.

Part of that routine is the care-taking of our souls. Sometimes I forget that and I try to just plow through the days. Not living, not really embracing but just getting through the day. Finishing the duties to be able to relax. There are days like that, but I do not want them to dominate.

Wednesday night at our homegroup something happened that surprised me. During our time of taking prayer requests I updated everyone on my last trip home and as I was telling about how my Dad sees caring for my mom as his delight and not obligation, I choked up. I don’t cry publicly. I mean, like never. I could feel the well of emotion right there, though, and that awareness that if I began to cry I would not be able to stop.

All the writing of joy in the midst of walking through this season, all the lessons learned, all the things of trying to see God in the midst does not negate that this is my Mom and this is terribly painful to watch. And sometimes I need to weep about that. I’ve written about that before…that this dementia is a long mourning without release and sometimes you have to just be a bit removed or you would find yourself overwhelmed with emotion.

But sometimes we just have to weep.

This world is broken and is filled with so many who are holding that well of emotion just in check as they try to get through the duties of the day. That maybe why they look so angry or distracted. But I wonder if it is partly because we do not spend time in care-taking our souls. Not just talking about having moments of prayer or of Bible reading, although that is part of it….but having moments of weeping and moments of embracing what is our life in this time. That may be joy or grief or fear or hope…or more likely a mixture of it all.

I want to write a bit about how music plays into all of this, because it is an important element for me, but this post is getting long already. Maybe tomorrow…

For now…maybe it is stealing away some time on a snowy morning at a coffee shop to think and read and pray and journal. Or maybe it is weeping in the privacy of the shower. Letting the emotions and the experience of life be felt before they become a tide we can’t hold in check.

It is okay to feel…and sometimes we need to make the space for that in our routines….to take care of our souls.

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Joy. An Act of Defiance…

“I love you, and I want you to know that I think about you and I am so happy that you are my daughter.”

Words that would have been welcomed, but heard casually, just a few years ago are now words that strike a deep chord and make me pause. In the midst of the diminishing of my mother into dementia there are moments of clarity when I know she truly does know who I am and her statement of love is with knowledge. And there is joy in the midst of struggle as I hear in a way I could not hear before.

When she was always able to tell me she loved me I took it for granted and heard it without much thought. Now, when it comes so infrequently I hear it and I grasp and I listen for her voice and for the change that tells me she knows.

There are, honestly, not many moments of joy in walking through this decaying. Simply watching the graphic diminishing of a strong woman who could challenge you intellectually or cook up a masterpiece, who could play the piano or catch you with her wit…there is no joy in seeing her walk aimlessly, clinging to us for security with frightened eyes.

Joy in the midst of sorrow, in the midst of struggle, like this can only happen when there is hope. Without hope we will simply gird ourselves up for the struggle and wait for it to conclude. We will not allow ourselves vulnerability. When we have hope, we have the freedom to be vulnerable and in that vulnerability to find glimpses of joy.

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself.” Phil 3:20,21

The hope and the waiting for that Savior, for that transformation is so deepened in watching someone diminish before our eyes. Dementia is such a specific eroding and it steals the thing that makes us so ourselves…our memories. Our history. Our identity. The hope that our God is able to subject all things to Himself…even this loss…is what gives the foundation for joy.

Honestly, without the knowledge that God will do something through this and will restore all this brokenness…there would be no joy. With the knowledge though, we find ourselves laughing in the midst of sorrow and the laughter is all the sweeter. I find myself in discussions with my family that never could have occurred if Mom had not become who she is now. The struggle makes the moments of clarity she has and the intimacy we have as a family all the stronger and all the sweeter.

The joy is an act of defiance in the midst of the struggle. It sneaks up on us and strengthens us when things are bleak…because the joy is the seeping of the truth that we are held by One who has the power to subject all things to Himself. He sees and He knows and He hears and He will make even this new. 

Whatever the struggle we face, we have to have the courage to face it well. Without hope we will just get through it, endure. With hope, we have the freedom to experience the struggle and we will find joy.