Down, but not out

Defeat.

If this word threatens you or upsets you, walk away now.

It upsets me.

But it’s a fact of life. Not everything goes to plan.

The gremlins in your laptop decide to play their own games instead of help you pay your Tesco bill, and before you know it, you’re a shaking mass of helpless frustration. You might even lose your cool ever so slightly with the hapless bloke on the help phone at your bank because you can’t remember whatever stupid password you arranged with them last time you forgot your password.

Result: the world, the flesh and the devil 1: our side  -1

I’m always worse on a Friday. You may have noticed.

Last year, every Friday was Dementia Diary day because on Fridays I take my husband, who has dementia, out from his care home for lunch and an outing. The plan was to build up a nice cache of blogposts to use as the meat for my latest book of meditations for others in the same situation.

But I didn’t. When I reread them, I was horrified at what a complaining, whinging misery-guts I was!

But… well, I’m sorry, but that’s kind of how I really am about his dementia. I am defeated by it. I really find it hard to cope.

Am I allowed to say this? Isn’t this letting the side down? Aren’t we supposed to be ‘singing the songs of triumphant Zion’ instead of’sitting weeping by the rivers of Babylon?

Billy Graham’s daughter Ruth wrote a book called In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart. I wasn’t keen on the book but it’s a great title.

I do wonder though: where is the place for the hurting Christian, the feeling-defeated and overwhelmed Christian, the battered by another not-won battle?

We may sit in the pews but I think we hide our hurts, hide our defeats, for fear of judgment – that we’re not making the grade, that there must be something wrong with us, with our commitment to Christ, that we’re letting the side down.

But when we weep our tears of battered, beaten defeat, we are not alone. Oh yes, there are quite a few of us skulking around here. But more than that – this is where our Lord is. He knew grief and sorrow, the agony of Gethsemane, and then on the Cross he bore everything that we are going through. He knows. And He does not judge us. Instead He opens His arms to us.

‘Come,’ He says.’There is room – and understanding and love and support here. More than that,there is healing. And strength for next time. Come.’

And that’s all we have to do.

He’ll see to the rest.

 

 

 

 

Dementia Diary 19: A carer’s tears

I started today in tears.

Not the carer’s kind – that rush of hopelessness, frustration, overwhelming grief. But hot tears pouring down my face all the same.

The cause? Onions.

Today being taking-John-out day, I decided I needed something comforting to come home to, and what can be more comforting than a pot of home-made soup? So on with the apron and start chopping… Remembering my mother-in-law Marjorie’s recipe for leek and potato soup, I prepped the leeks and a couple of cloves of garlic, then set to on an onion.

It was a very fierce onion and in moments, my eyes were weeping, my nose running – and of course with both hands oniony and garlicky, trying to get at my hankie was not easy!

An hour later, the tears are long gone. The soup smells heavenly and will be just perfect with good bread when I get home.

And isn’t this our story? We all have tears, but it’s not the tears that we remember as we look back. Instead we remember the happy times, the good moments. And even at this stage in my husband’s dementia, we can have good outings with smiles and laughter and a soupcon of the old sharing. So that’s what I’m hoping for today.

They say you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Well, you can’t make a pot of leek and potato soup without chopping onions and producing floods of tears! And you can’t get through life without some sorrow and suffering, but we are promised strength to carry on and, at the very end, if we are followers of Christ, a very happy ending where there will be no more tears.

Text: Two today:

‘Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy’ Psalm 126 verse 5

‘The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces’ Isaiah 25 verse 8

Prayer: Lord, give us Your strength and comfort to see us through the sad and difficult times. Help us trust You and know that one day there will be an end to tears, that one day You personally will wipe the tears from our eyes.

Self-care suggestion: My motto tends to be ‘When in doubt/misery etc etc, make soup.’