Where We Struggle
We struggle best in community. Read that again, slowly. It is an unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless. One reason it is unpopular is that it seems counterintuitive to everything we feel when we struggle. If I was in a season of struggle I wanted to withdraw because I did not want people to see me struggle. I thought something was wrong with me and I needed to get my act together. I just needed to be more disciplined, more patient, more compassionate, more, more, more…I felt like I was broken and deeply flawed. This was my wife, why was I so short tempered with her? These are dementia patients, do I, of all people, not understand they are doing the best they can? What is wrong with me. Nothing.
In Exodus 17 is the story of Moses and the Children Of Isreal during a highly contested battle. Moses stood on a hill overlooking the battle and held the staff of the Lord over his head. As long as his hands were up, the Isrealites were winning. If he lowered them, they began losing. He held them up as long as he could and when his arms grew too weary to continue, “Aaron and Hur held his hands up-0ne on one side, one on the other-so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.” (verses 12 and 13).
During my time as a family caregiver for my wife she spent two extended time frames in a local rehabilitation hospital for physical and occupational therapy. During one of these stays, my father passed away and I was needed to take care of many of the details including officiating his service since I was the only version of a pastor he had ever known. I was always reluctant to leave my wife alone for long periods of time so two of my dearest friends would come and stay with her at the hospital so I could do what needed to be done. They were not looking for pats on the back or attention or any other motive then to bless us. They held my hands up when I was too weary to continue. They were Aaron and Hur to my Moses.
If your calling includes caregiving, professional of family, you will grow weary. It is an honor to be a caregiver, and yet it is also a heavy burden to carry. That is why we must never endeavor to carry it alone. You will have days of resentment, of feeling unappreciated, of have a short temper and just wanting out by any means. Nothing is wrong with you, you are fine exactly the way God has created you. But we are human and humans are messy temperamental creatures on our very best days.
Saying we struggle best in community is not to say if you are invested in a community you won’t struggle. Even with Aaron and Hur the Children of Isreal still had to win a battle. We are created to be interdependent creatures and are taught to be independent creatures. If you are a caregiver of any kind I cannot encourage you enough to invest your life in a community of other people. I am a man of faith and highly recommend a local body of Christian people. I will be the first to say there is a lot wrong with the church today, however I will also add there is much more right with the church today than there is wrong. We all tell horror stories of how a church or believer mistreated us or our loved ones. We never talk about all the ways they have blessed us as well. They are people and they are messy too. I would have never made it through my wife’s sickness and death had it not been for my connection to the Body of Christ. We all need to have our people.