I knew the look in her face. I had seen it many times in the eyes of the caretakers of my hospice patients. Exhaustion.
When Mom gets sick, you take off time from work to take her to the doctor. There are the tests, the follow-up visits, the referrals to specialists, a new round of appointments and tests, and a new round of follow-up visits before a treatment plan is established.
Then, there’s the treatment process. The trips to Dallas or Houston, the recovery time from the treatments, and then the follow-up visits with the specialist to see whether the body responded to the treatments.
From there, Mom may have gotten better, or she may have gotten worse.
If she’s gotten better, there is a season when things go back to normal, until the disease flares up again. Then, this whole process starts over.
It becomes a vicious cycle. Mom gets sick, treatments, Mom gets better, but not quite as strong as before.
At some point, Mom loses her independence. The daughter may move Mom in with her, or the daughter may place Mom in assisted living or in a nursing home. Either way, she is caring for Mom daily and spending a lot of time with her at the expense of her family, her career, and her own self-care.
Then, the doctors finally tell her, “There’s nothing more we can do. We can’t beat this disease, we can only manage its symptoms moving forward.” As a hospice chaplain, that’s usually when my organization was engaged, and when I got to meet the family.
Each story is as unique and precious as it is common. The people, places, diagnoses and struggles are different, but the story arc is the same.
Daughter is tired.
Often, the family has been devout in their faith, and they turned to the Lord and the church for help. They prayed constantly, yet things didn’t get better.
As the Bellamy Brothers famously sang, “And behind each wave of tragedy, they waited for the joy.”
But the joy never came.
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Yet, the morning hasn’t come, and we’re not even seeing the first light.
I don’t believe in the “too blessed to be stressed” Christianity. My faith cannot fit on a bumper sticker, and it won’t sell many t-shirts. I’ve seen the real world.
The real world is brutal, heart-breaking, devastating, and at times, merciless.
But God is good! All the time! And the heartbreak He allows to touch our lives serves His purpose, and serves our good. It’s just hard to see through the tears, sometimes.
In Psalm 13, King David asked, “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? 2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?”
You get the idea from these verses that King David, too, experienced times when the world was overwhelming, and he was unsure of how he could survive. King David also prayed, consistently, over long periods of time, only to hear no answer back from the Lord.
Just as our storm often continues to rage, King David also saw his storms rage violently and bitterly over long periods of time. There were times when, like us, King David felt as if God were hiding His face from him.
This is when you find out what you truly believe.
This is when you find out if your religion were a cultural exercise, the right thing to say, or whether it was something you truly believed to the point that it shaped your core.
For King David, his faith shaped his core, because even in these desperate situations, David continued to express his unmovable faith toward God.
He went on to say in Psalm 13:3, “Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;”
Even though it appeared as if his prayers were going unanswered, David continued to pray to the Lord, pleading with him to “consider” him, meaning to observe him, be attentive to him, and see his plight. David asked God to hear him, to hear his prayer, his words, his heart and his pain.
David went on to express his faith once again.
“But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. 6 I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13:5-6)”
David trusts in God’s mercy because mercy is at the heart of who God is, and being confident, David knows that the salvation is coming, and will rejoice in that salvation.
Despite the storms of his present time David remembered how God had been good to him before, and he understood that all of life, the good and the bad, are amazing gifts from God.
Therefore, even in the midst of his suffering, David not only trusted God for deliverance, but praised God for His goodness.
And when we reach that level of Spiritual maturity, we are truly becoming the person God intended on us being.
For my hospice patients and families, this meant accepting the fact that the patient’s time on this earth was coming to a close, and that the family’s time with that patient was fleeting.
My job as chaplain was to help them manage the grief of that reality, regain their hope and trust in the Lord, approach that day with hope and purpose, and be at peace when the time came.
That job was accomplished by opening God’s word and demonstrating to them God’s goodness and love even in the midst of this trying time.
Are you in that place right now? If not hospice, maybe financial? Or is there a family situation?
And you’ve prayed over that situation, but the storm continues to rage?
Don’t give up. Remember how good God is. Keep praying, because the morning comes, and with it, the joy of the Spiritual victory God will give.
Leland Acker 