photo by Jimmy Hemphill: flickr.com/photos/jimmah_v

One of the most misquoted verses of the Christian Bible is 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (NRSV) 

Usually only a portion of the verse is cited – “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” This truncation distorts the verse’s meaning, and unfortunately it leads people to remain in impossible situations never even considering that God may be offering them “the way out.” (Some other translations call it “the way of escape.”) 

I have heard this truncated verse used as a reason for a caregiver to reject in-home care, to avoid considering placing a loved one in a care facility, to go without sleep night after night in order to keep a loved one safe, to reject out of hand any kind of help from other people. “I am a Christian,” they say, “and I know that God won’t test me beyond my strength.” I wonder what the response would be to this question, “Yes, but as a Christian you also believe that God will provide the way out, right? Have you looked for that?” 

While some people are prone to find an escape from caregiving too quickly, I doubt that those folks would be looking at this web site. And this meditation isn’t written for them anyway. Its proper audience is the group of which I am a member, the “natural” caregivers who are prone to feel responsible for too many things, to take on too much for too long, and to feel guilty about asking for help. (After years of therapy I have burned my natural caregiver membership card, but sometimes I still visit the clubhouse.) 

The verse actually calls us as Christians to discernment in the midst of trials. We need to pray and seek and be open to possibilities so that we can discern whether God is offering us a “way out” of the difficulty we are experiencing. 

Jesus seems to have taken the way out several times (see the list at the end of this meditation). Yes, in the end he did head directly to Jerusalem, where he knew he would be crucified. But during the three years prior to that, he took escape routes whenever they were needed to continue his ministry and his life, or to rest and renew himself. 

So the question we face as caregivers is: Is this the time to head to Jerusalem? Or is this the time to seek a way out? 

It is not easy to answer this, and each person’s solution will be unique. But the question is worthy of prayer and consultation with other wise people. If Jesus took the way out, we need to be open to doing that too. 

Jesus took the way out

• When the people of his home town of Nazareth were trying to toss him from the brow of a hill, he slipped through the crowd and escaped. (Luke 4:28-30)
• When he was so mobbed by sick people in the towns that he couldn’t preach, he stayed in the countryside. (Mark 1:45)
• When he knew the Pharisees were trying to find a way to kill him he stayed away from the places where he would be vulnerable. He hid from them and moved about in secret; he continued to minister, but in safer places. (Matthew 12:14-15, John 7:1, John 7:10, John 11:53-54)
• He accepted assistance from the women who followed him throughout his ministry. (Luke 8:1-3)
• When a crowd was so massive and eager to touch him that there was a danger they would crush him, he asked his disciples to ready a boat so that he could create a safe distance from the crowd. (Mark 4:1, Luke 5:1-3)
• Jesus withdrew to deserted places to pray after a full day of healing the sick. (Luke 5:15-16) While many caregivers pray, how many can “withdraw to a deserted place” to do it?
• Jesus entrusted his disciples with a share in his responsibility to preach, teach, and heal – sending them out into the towns of Israel when he saw that he alone could not reap the harvest that was ripe (Luke 10:1-2)
• He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water (John 4:7)
• He escaped from the Pharisees when they tried to arrest him, and he went away across the Jordan. (John 10:39-40)

photo by Jimmy Hemphill: flickr.com/photos/jimmah_v

I wrote the following meditation for a Taizé service during Lent 2011. But I think it relates well to the experience of dementia caregiving, so I’m including it here. Being a caregiver is sort of like one long experience of Lent. Through the spiritual discipline of caring for someone with dementia, we are forced to confront our powerlessness. We learn very clearly that we cannot run this show. This powerlessness is the essence of our mortality, our “dust”. We are continually living the song of Lent: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." My hope is that, just as Lent eventually gives way to Easter, our caregiving will one day lead us into a deeper experience of life. 

So keeping that analogy in mind – caregiving as a Lenten discipline, a fast of sorts – read on.

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We are dust, made of earth, of soil – We are mud-men, humans of humus. God creates Adam out of the dust in the second chapter of Genesis. Adam and Eve learn this dirt secret about themselves in the third chapter, after eating of the forbidden tree. They discover that they are naked. Then God tells them it’s worse than that … They are only dust – naked dust. 

Lent is a time to experience the dust of our lives, and it’s hard to make it through the season without getting a little muddy. Through our Lenten disciplines we bump up against the limitations of our knowledge. We face head-on the selfishness in even our highest motives. We feel the brevity and fragility of our lives. 

But we are Christians, and there is good news even here. For God loves our dust, and there is something powerful about our remembering that we are made of it. 

The psalms remind us that God remembers our dust and has mercy on us. In John’s gospel, Jesus writes with his finger in the dust as he forgives the woman caught in adultery. Jesus has said that he does only what he sees the Father doing. And here he re-enacts God writing mercy all over our dusty hearts. 

In John’s story of the man born blind, Jesus again puts his hands in the dust. Here he spits into it first, and then he makes a salve. He puts this muddy concoction into the eyes of the blind man and tells him to go and wash at the pool of Siloam. The man returns seeing for the first time in his life. In the hands of God, mud heals. 

The good news is this: As we experience our dustiness during Lent, we find not only mud but mercy, not only humus but healing. And when the Lenten season nears its close, we can look forward to washing off the dust, even as we abide in the love and mercy we have discovered in it. Easter will come soon enough, and we will return – clean, forgiven and clear-sighted. 

During a retreat in 2004, while reading a book about the cross, I had a mental image of myself making the sign of the cross over someone who was ill ... As my hand moved, the gesture created a cross-shaped shadow on the person. When my hand stopped, the shadow remained.  

Later that day, I wrote this prayer, which is prayed while making the sign of the cross three times - once in each stanza. For example, in the first stanza, cross tips would coincide with 'top,' 'soles,' 'one,' 'other,' returning to the center of the cross on 'May' in the last line.

Adapt the prayer freely to your own use, and if you have the chance please let me know how you use it.

May you abide in the shadow,     
Barbara      

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The wording above is on the back of the prayer card in the image. I especially like this prayer for several reasons:

- It came to me, almost through me, in a way that I would call inspiration. Those experiences don't happen often, at least to me. But when they do, the tokens they leave behind seem to carry within them something of their original creative power. The details - the words, images, ideas - are only a frail attempt to express the eternal in temporal symbols. That's why you can freely adapt the prayer to your use. But the love and goodness behind them, the power that inspired them, is still there.

- It covers all the bases and leaves the outcomes open. Healing can come in a variety of forms - physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and more. Sometimes emotional or spiritual issues manifest in physical illness, and vice versa. We don't have to inform God, who knows our needs before we do. Our understanding of the particulars is always partial anyway, seeing "through a glass, darkly" as we do. But we can acknowledge that we are one, as God is One, that we know our wholeness needs to be restored. We can invite God into all areas of our lives, trusting that where God is welcomed there is health. That's the attitude the prayer expresses, and it makes it particularly useful at times when you don't know how to pray, or when there seems to be no possibility of cure.

- It focuses on the cross. I am not a professional theologian, and I cannot explain a splinter of the meaning of the cross. But I know that St Paul writes that he will know nothing but the cross. St Peter writes, "By his wounds you have been healed." Matthew's gospel says that Jesus fulfills Isaiah's words, "He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases," when he healed people. And for 2000 years the cross has been the central symbol in Christian churches throughout the world.
You may believe the cross is the place of "the great exchange" - where Jesus' death gives us life, where he took upon himself all the sin of the world so that we might be free of its power, where he laid down his life for his friends. ("Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.") Or you may believe that the cross represents the extent of Jesus' love, where he demonstrated his willingness to go to death for the sake of the truth, refusing to hide from his enemies and forgiving them from its ghastly perch. However you see it, the cross is the ultimate symbol of Christian faith, love, forgiveness, and power.

So, I offer this prayer to you and hope you will find places to use it. You can even pray it for someone who isn't present with you. Simply use a photo or other symbol of them instead.

NOTE: More prayers for healing, specifically healing dementia, can be found in the trifold brochure, "Alzheimer's and Dementia Prayers." Click here to view, save, or print the brochure.

 
photo by Jimmy Hemphill: flickr.com/photos/jimmah_v

While they were talking, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him … Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?” (Luke 24:15-16, 31-32; NRSV) 

Most of us remember clearly the first time our mother or father or spouse didn’t recognize us, couldn’t recall our name, or thought we were someone else. This is one of the most painful experiences for a caregiver of someone with dementia. 

It is devastating not because of the experience alone, but because we know it is only the first evidence of an ever-enlarging blind spot. It is a sign of things to come. We realize in that moment that our loved one is losing the ability to recognize us. And a progressive neurological disease is diminishing their capacities to such an extent that they will gradually become unrecognizable to us as the person they were before. We are vanishing from one another’s sight. 

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In the gospel story on the road to Emmaus, the resurrected Jesus walks along with two of his disciples, but they do not recognize him. There is a long conversation that lasts until evening. Finally arriving at their destination, they invite Jesus to stay with them for the night. Only when he blesses and breaks the bread for the evening meal do they recognize who he is. And then he vanishes. 

After that instant of recognition, now alone again, the disciples think back to the conversation along the road. They say, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us? Ah yes! We should have known it was Jesus by that inner sense, that warmth in our hearts!”

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We commonly believe that a conscious, outer-sense recognition of someone causes the inner sense of familiarity — the arising within of affectionate feelings or passion. But this story reminds us that the reverse may also occur. The inner warmth of familiar affection may come first, and it may come alone, without any outward sense of recognition. 

If your loved one with dementia does not recognize you, recall this Emmaus story and be reassured. Though they don’t seem to know you, their hearts may be burning within. And the same Jesus who walked the road to Emmaus walks unrecognized with both of you this day. 

photo by Jimmy Hemphill: flickr.com/photos/jimmah_v

Gracious and loving God,
This is my daily task:
to love and care for someone who has dementia,
who is losing her memory,
her judgment,
her ability to function in ordinary ways. 

You are the God who promises
that even if our father or mother forgets us
you will remember.
We are inscribed on the palms of your hands.
You are the God whose judgments are always true,
and your power is made perfect in our weakness. 

As I move through the duties and difficulties of this day,
enlighten my mind
and lighten my heart
by your grace.
Awaken within me
your wisdom,
your courage,
your strength,
your patience and forgiveness.

Make me worthy of the task to which you have called me.

I have created a trifold brochure with more prayers for those with dementia and their caregivers. Click here to view or download this brochure - it's free! The prayers in the brochure are also available individually on another blog post on this site. Click here to go to that blog entry and read or print a single prayer.