You are experiencing more care giver problems.
Each day and night bring new challenges. You can’t rest. You can’t relax.
Your aging parents go to bed and you think you’ve got a few hours to yourself.
Wrong. Your father falls out of bed at 1:30 AM and cuts his head.
Now there’s more worry along with more needed first aid.

You wonder how you will cope the next day or the next week.
You feel alone, because no one comes by and no one calls. They’re all busy with their own lives and careers. There are lots of excuses.
So you simply try to get it all done, the best you can.

Then the mistakes start to happen. Your own business or career begins to falter because you are having to spend more and more time caregiving. You are unable to take care of the details anymore because you don’t have the time. Your aging parents and their needs come first.

Each person deals with the criticisms from relatives and well meaning friends in different ways. You may resent it. It may drive a wedge deeply into the relationships that will never heal. After all, where were they when you needed help?

Folks, I’m going to to tell this like it is.
Caregiving is hard. It may be the biggest challenge many of us have ever faced. It’s our own personal Mt. Everest.
We have to climb daily, hourly, and many of us feel like we are doing it alone. It’s suffocating us and sometimes we can’t breathe.

We’re not sure how to ask for help. Many of us are independent by nature. Even asking for a handicap license plate for my car was an ordeal, as I wrote about a few days ago.
Being told I can’t have one was a blow, but at least they gave me the handicap card, which is a whole lot of trouble to constantly have to put up on the rear view mirror.

Where is the church?
I think the church wants to help and tries to help, but our generation has not been adequately prepared for long lasting caregiving that can go on for years. The church needs to educate its members and others on how to care give and what to expect.
That would be a real community service and if churches would stop spending so much time trying to entertain youngsters they might have time to deal with the real hands on difficulties of this life.

How do you feel about all of this?
Write in and tell us.
After all, we’re in this together.

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