Longing & Becoming, Part 1
“Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.”
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version
(Ps 84:4–7). (2016). Crossway Bibles.
An Identity of Becoming
Henri Nouwen once wrote:
“I am convinced that caring for others who are weak or close to death is to support them in fulfilling their deepest vocation, the vocation of becoming more and more fully what they already are: beloved daughters and beloved sons of God.”
(“A Spirituality of Caregiving”. Henri J.M. Nouwen)
I have been ruminating on this ever since I read it. I don’t think that at any moment in my caregiving journey, my perspective on the situation had that kind of clarity. This is hard for us to reconcile I think principally because we exist in a culture and within the restrictions of a Western worldview that promotes “productivity” as the highest marker of human value. When we cease to be “productive” in society, our value begins to wane, and we become a burden to others. This is a tragedy, and is a mindset we all sadly have subscribed to.
The ethic of the Kingdom of God stands in dramatic opposition to this idea, and instead promotes the counter-cultural words of Jesus, that “the last shall be first, and the first last” (Note some wonderful thoughts on this subject by Mary Tutterow, author of “The Heart of the Caregiver”)
It can be difficult to see this identity of “becoming” in the life of someone suffering cognitive and functional decline, when all we see is physical and mental attrition. When you add on emotional and behavioral disturbance, this picture gets even more clouded. Behind what we see on the surface, however, is a spiritual reality and a spiritual identity that calls for us to recognize and engage.
The apostle Paul writes to the Church in Corinth:
”Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version.
(2 Co 3:17–18). (2009). Holman Bible Publishers.
Dementia (and indeed aging, itself) may deteriorate the physical, emotional, and mental capacity of an individual, but dementia cannot diminish the spirit. In fact, for the Christ-follower, there is a sense in which that spirit is enlargening and becoming more “fully what it already is” as it approaches that eternal glory. This is important, because if fully accepted and understood by us caregivers, it can transform how we view our loved ones, and in turn, how we serve them (which we will look into shortly).
But what about our identity as caregivers? Nouwen goes on to state also:
“Before we are caregivers, we are beloved children of God. As we come to claim this identity, we begin to see more and more that all others in our human family are also unconditionally cherished by our loving Creator.”
He goes on to show how this is the foundation for true biblical compassion, the kind that flows from a heart transformed by the love of Christ. This kind of compassion compels us to push past our discomfort and unease and sit in the suffering of others, advocating for them and for their unseen identity of “becoming fully what they already are”.
Have you stopped to think and seriously reflect on that question: “What am I becoming?” Not “who am I?” or “who was I back then?”, but “how is God forming me?”
It can be difficult to see the answer to that question in the life squalls of caregiving, but believe it or not, you are becoming. And this becoming is not dependent on your performance or productivity, but on your yieldedness to the love of Christ. And what I have discovered is that even when you are serving your loved one and not feeling particularly yielded in spirit, God is still working beneath the surface and developing things in you that you cannot see, at least not in the moment.
This morning our pastor preached a message on being commissioned. It’s part of a series entitled “Made for More” (you can catch them all online here: https://prov.church/messages/). I was challenged and inspired. I fervently believe that caregiving is a sacred calling. It’s one that we are called into often without the luxury of contemplation or consent. But it’s sacred nonetheless. If you are a caregiver struggling with those very understandable emotions of frustration, loneliness, and “loss of productivity” in life, there are 3 things you need to hear today:
You are not alone.
You are commissioned.
You are becoming.
What you are becoming, like the one for whom you are providing care, is more fully your ultimate vocation in this world - a beloved daughter or son of God.
As I’ve been wrestling with many thoughts on this subject over the last few weeks (this will be a series of blog posts if you haven’t guessed already!), I keep returning to Psalm 84. I believe it will be a theme song of sorts in this “Longing and Becoming” series for Caregivers. Psalm 84 depicts a pilgrim who is yearning intensely for a season, an experience, a meeting place with Yahweh that makes all the struggle, toil, and pain of this world make sense. As this pilgrim sojourns through life, the psalmist tells us that they make the dry and dead places springs of life and living water. I think if a footnote could be thrown in, it would read “…and they often can’t see it taking place, for it is a silent and beautiful work of God’s Spirit”.
As I reflect on our own caregiving journey, there were many beautiful Spirit-moments that we couldn’t see forming or becoming in us at the time. In God’s grace, He gave us retrospect and reminders of His faithfulness as we looked back, or received kind words of how others “observing” saw an unmistakable peace of God. We were blessed to have professional caregivers at Nola’s memory care later tell us how much they were moved by Nola’s infectious “love for Jesus”. We surely didn’t see that side, since we were mostly mitigating emotional crises, but others did, and it affected them.
I don’t know the specifics of your story, really only Jesus does. And Jesus knows the intimate intricacies of our stories in ways that would simply blow our minds. And that’s the final piece of Good News in this ramble - the work of “becoming” is entirely in Jesus’ hands. He’s got this. He’s got your loved one. He’s got you.
You, and your loved one, are becoming.
