The Joy of Caring for Aging Parents

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

Lydia Brownback
I’m so glad so many of you are here. And as I look around this room, I just wish I could talk to everyone. Probably give everyone a hug, knowing that if you’re coming to this session, it’s because you’re either entering a difficult season or in one right now. And it’s really personal, isn’t it? And everyone’s story is a little bit different. So I want to open us with a word of prayer here. Lord, thank you for all the women you have drawn here this afternoon to be encouraged by your word, to know you better, to rest in your care, and to gain some practical wisdom for this season of life. I pray, Lord, that every woman here would have something that you lay on her heart to take away, to encourage her, to help her. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, committing this time to you. Amen. So, as I said, it’s a very personal topic, caring for aging parents, and it’s personal because it’s different for every single one of us. There’s no two stories here that are alike. And I was asked to do this. People in my life know it’s very personal for me. I was very close to my mother. She was my best friend. My mom, I’ll get a grip. She became single again at age 40, and since I’ve never married, she and I-I’ll get past this part. We’ll be good. She and I shared the challenges of walking through life without a man, and we also shared our faith. We’re the only two believers in my family, and we shared a love for reading and writing and going to the beach. And we spent two weeks of every summer there for years and years. And because we were so close, I was always terrified of losing her. During her declining years, my friends, some of them in this room could tell you about my panic when she failed to answer the daily morning phone call. She lived alone, and I lived far, far away. So anxiety about a fall or some other medical emergency was constant white noise during those years. And this is the first time I’ve talked about it since, so that’ll be right. I had never thought much about her aging until one day in her early 70s, I happened to glance at her hands. Those hands suddenly had age spots, bumpy knuckles, those long familiar hands had become those of an old woman, and those to me were the first signs of things to come. And from that day on, I became hyper aware of every gradual change to my mother, my rock, and my friend. The way she started to tire so easily, how her upbeat, cup half full personality turned cup half empty. Maybe some of you can relate to that. Well, that was her 70s, and in her 80s, the filters started to fade. Her emotions now so close to the surface, emotions I never knew she had because she was always so private about personal things. I rarely saw her sad, and I can count on my hands the number of times I ever saw her cry. At about this time, in her 80s, I began all the research. I wanted to know what was happening to her and what to expect. One doctor explained how serotonin levels drop significantly in the elderly, and no doubt this contributed to the anxiety uptick I saw in her and to the downcast moods. But much of what I saw was simply her loss of self mastery. A geriatric nurse explained to me how life goes full circle, the naivete and inhibition that characterizes us as children circles back to us at the end of life. It’s the circle of life, and my mom grew increasingly frail as well, and falls became more frequent, and with them the broken bones. Maybe more of you can relate to that. Elderly falls go beyond the normal, typical slips on the ice that we all have. For the elderly, falls are often about dozing in front of the TV and sliding off the sofa onto the floor. Well, that’s what happened to my mom. And that particular fall was the collarbone break, and the time when her aging life began to significantly alter my life.

Lydia Brownback
Everyone’s situation is different, as I said, and as we’ll talk about again in this session, we’re going to talk about some of these differences. But in my case, it meant several interstate moves, the use of all my vacation time, and a significant portion of. My income, and not until her 90s did my mom’s short-term memory fail her almost completely. And when her beloved brother died two months before my mom did, I debated whether or not to even tell her about the death of her brother, but I did because she had a right to know. And cognitive decline at these later stages often inhibit responses like grief. So she didn’t shed a tear. And the next day, when I went to tell, I brought her the obituary that had been written up, and it was a day later she didn’t even remember that her brother had died. And and this is what we see in our parents. For some of your parents, it’s a whole lot worse than that. The entire mind goes, and the parent you knew as your parent is already gone. But the truth is, our loved one isn’t actually lost, just hidden from view. And what we see in them now at this stage are the effects of the fall all over their aging bodies, including sometimes the retreat of their personhood, that through most of their life gets expressed through the portal of the human brain. But when that starts to get all messed up, the personhood gets hidden. But there’s still them. Your mother is still your mother, and your father is still your father, and whether whether a cognitive deficit or some other infirmity is affecting your parents, caring for them, caring for our aging parents is basically walking along alongside those who have a terminal illness, right? So so we know where it’s headed, and how it’s going to end, and we pour care into our children to launch them out into the world with a happy future in front of them. But care for parents is to usher them out of this life into death. So that takes a toll. It takes a toll on us as caregivers emotionally. So I want to look at this season of caregiving from three angles: the reason for care, the reality of care, and the reward for care. Reason, reality, reward. First, the reason, and the primary overarching reason we care for our aging parents is to please and glorify God. Primary reason: the fifth of the 10 Commandments says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that your Lord, that the Lord your God is giving you. And you know that’s the fifth commandment. It’s a head of murder on the commandment list, and the Lord also, as he said through Moses in Leviticus, he said, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. And then, right after that, he says, “Every one of you shall revere his father and his mother. Came right after the call to holiness. And in the New Testament, in Timothy, to Timothy, Paul instructs him and said, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. So its scripture is crystal clear that honoring our parents is not optional. That’s the number one reason for caring for them. Reason two, caring for our aging parents reflects Jesus, our Savior, and that’s first foreshadowed in King David when when he was on the run from Saul. He made provision for his parents when he was unable to care for them himself. We’re told that David went to the king of Moab and said, “Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me, and He left them with the King of Moab, and they stayed with Him all the time that David was in the stronghold. So there, Kathleen Nielsen points out in her in her helpful book, Making Good Return. That’s a good book I recommend on caring for aging parents. She points out there that King David’s honoring his parents foreshadowed the greater King Jesus, who did the same thing.

Lydia Brownback
In John’s Gospel, we’re told that from the cross, when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved, John, standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother. And from that hour, John took her home to his own house, and imagine he did that when he’s in agony on the cross. He’s caring for his mother, honoring his mother. So, reason three-that’s reason two. Reason three is a powerful way to give back. Sinners, though they are, parents generally sacrifice a lot for their kids, and children. I know I did this. I remember when I was young. I went to my father and I said, “Well, you know, we have Mother’s Day and we have Father’s Day. How come there’s no Kids Day? And of course, you said to me, “Every day is Kids Day. Well, some of us, some of us can’t relate at all to this. In the giving back, maybe your now needy parent abandoned or abused you, and it’s unconscionable for you to think about sacrificing for them now and all that’s involved in that. But the Bible doesn’t put qualifiers on the command. We’re called to honor mother and father, and if for no other reason, we honor them for the fact that they gave us life. So we get a good example of this from Noah, as we’re told in Genesis nine how how he became drunk at one point and he lay uncovered. He got naked. He was in his tent naked, and one of his sons saw the nakedness of his father and went out and told his brothers about it. And we don’t really get all the fleshing out of what happened there, but we know that the point was he treated his father without dignity, and so the two brothers then heard what had happened, what the one brother had done, and they took a covering and they backed up. They wouldn’t look at their father and they put the cover on him, and then crept away. They were honoring their father, and the point of the story here is so so that son who did that was cursed for doing that. And the story isn’t that Noah got drunk and acted stupid. That’s not the point of the story. The point is that he was dishonored, and these sons dishonored him. So it’s a big deal. So honoring honoring them by providing care, showing them dignity, doing that in their in their old age isn’t primarily about pleasing them or about what they deserve. It’s about pleasing the Lord, and that’s what he calls for is honor. So with my mom, it was easy honoring her came naturally to me. It was a bit different with my dad. In my growing up years, he made some choices that devastated our family. But decades later, when he died, a wise older woman told me that I could continue to honor my father by not sharing details of his sins and what he’d done, or if I did share them, being very careful in the way I did it. So again, it’s not about what they deserve; they still are worthy of our honor because it pleases the Lord. So as we think more about what it means to honor our elderly parents, you know, this is one way, and it can be really challenging. One way to honor them is by not taking away their dignity. So when they stubbornly refuse to give up driving, we don’t angrily take away the car keys. We might have to take them away, but we can do it with a listening ear of sympathy as they express their own anger and fear at the loss of their independence. And when they can no longer understand or retain all the medical information that’s being thrown at them, so now we’re the ones talking to the doctors. We include them in the conversation about what’s going on with their Own bodies, we maintain their dignity, and a practical way is to remind them, and you do remind yourself in the process of former times in their life the full picture of who they were and have always been. We actively remember along with them. We can we might think of it as respect through retrospect. One of the ways we did this with my mom.

Lydia Brownback
Maybe some of you have heard of it. I think as we have aging parents, we become familiar with this device called a skylight. You heard of that? Some of them are other have other names now, but they’re like picture frames that you set up and on a table, and they have a dedicated email address that you can email photos to, and it’s just it just takes a picture. You can email someone a picture, and it shows up on this this picture frame. And when there’s a new picture that comes in through this dedicated email address, a heart pops up, and my mother would sit in front of that, and then like the hearts when we’d send new photos. And so it was a way for us to take all of her old photos from before in the past and put them on there. So she’d sit in front of that and watch them scroll by, and she could pause it on one of them. She could look at it. She could remember, and it kept her life in who she was in front of her, and as we would dig out those pictures, it helped us remember, and it was a great way to kind of keep her involved in our lives. We’d be doing little things like I remember one day I was doing something in my kitchen, and I took a picture of something I was cooking, and I just sent it to her skylight, and it just led her into my life a little bit, and we treated her like she was still just as much a part of things. This little device that sat on her table became so much a part of her daily life. So it was a way to keep her dignity going by reminding her of who she was apart from her current elderly condition and all the difficulties with that. So there’s a flyover of the reasons for honor and care. Now I want to talk about the reality, the reality that goes into it. So, of course, there’s a variety of care stages represented in this room. Some of your parents are in early old age, the stage that’s characterized by setting up lawn chairs just inside the garage, sitting on them, and looking out and watching the world go by. And others are at the indoor-only stage, where sitting in front of cable news or the Weather Channel all day is what they do. And others have moved into retirement communities, or assisted living, or memory care facilities. Whatever the case, decline is inevitable, and as the early signs show up, it’s good to assess as much as you can your level of involvement. Now, of course, our role changes with the involvement as our parents change, and we want to stay open to the Lord and be flexible, but certain issues we can begin to think about early on. Your care plan at every stage can be simplified if you evaluate it through the lens of your biblical priorities. So, for example, if it would harm your marriage to bring your parents to live with you, maybe it’s not the best way to go. You know, I wanted my mother to come live with me and to take care of her directly, but my my brother, who was very wise, advised against that, and we looked into having some aides come in, and it was pretty much getting to be around the clock for help, and we discovered that he said, “What happens? What happens if those aides call out sick? Who takes that shift? It would have been me. I was fine with that, but I have a full-time job, and it just wasn’t going to be feasible for me to do that. So it’s assessing these things, and whether what what to do about their care and our involvement in it, and what’s wise. This transition, in terms of their living situation, especially, is one of the most difficult of the realities. The time when your parents have to give up independent living in their own home. I have yet to hear of an elderly person who views it as an exciting new adventure. Now, the loss they face is significant, and not just the the familiarity of home or even all the stuff. It’s it’s their control.

Lydia Brownback
It’s not even actually not even their control over their personal space and their schedule. The biggest underlying issue in their difficulty with that is their perceived loss of identity. Their home reflects years of their life and their personality and and their tastes, everything about them, who they are. Your mom remembers how she loved her family through everything she did in her kitchen, and your dad maybe through woodworking in the basement, maybe that was the way he loved the family. And in in every room, memories were built. So over time, so much of who they are is bound up in their home, and when it’s taken away, when they can’t be there anymore, they feel that they’re taken away too. So so we can we can better help our parents leave home when we understand that the difficulty isn’t primarily about the stuff or resistance to anything new, even if this is the only way they know how to express it. So the question then becomes: Where will they go? Will they live with you? Will they go to assisted living or to a facility that provides more care? There’s no one right way for everyone, as we’re saying. No one size fits all. And certainly, bringing them to live in your home is wonderful and ideal, but it’s not always feasible. So you have to think about the space you have, and the others who live there, and their medical needs are probably going to increase. How is that going to be handled? And again, making priority of your marriage. How will this impact your marriage? But the issue has to be dealt with sooner or later. And while putting it off until things get critical might be a good strategy for some. It’s often not ideal in the long run. Challenging as it is, getting your parents resettled before things get critical enables them to have a say to express their preferences, and it definitely provides more options for them. Some of the more desirable facilities have very long wait lists. Some of you have discovered that view, and and getting on one of these lists before you need it is really good preparation. And and if if you do that, and then your name gets to the top of the list, and you’re not ready, well, you can bump back to the bottom of the list, but you’re still on the list. No, a huge hurdle. In this process of getting them out of their homes, is indeed all the stuff. They don’t want to let go of it, and if your parents are anything like mine, everything is worth keeping. I think even those boxes of of old life magazines up in the attic, everything was a fight to let go of. The way we got my mom into assisted living was after another broken bone, and the care was just getting. She just she couldn’t be alone anymore. It just wasn’t going to work, and so but she didn’t want to leave her home, and so we found a way to say, hey, we have a room for you. One’s come available in this assisted living place. Why don’t we try it on for size for three months? And if you don’t like it, you can come home. Now we knew, of course, that she probably never would, but it was a way for her to make the transition that was comfortable for her. And I mean, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t. She still didn’t like it, but it was doable, and she knew her home was still intact. We didn’t touch it. We didn’t break it down. We left everything where it was, and this also gave her a say in the new place to decide. Oh, please go home and bring this thing in, this chair or this piece of furniture, and take this one back. And over time, in those three months, she adapted and found familiarity in the new place, and was peaceful to stay there. And then we said, “Hey, let’s make this permanent. And she was much more open to the idea because she tried it on for size and found that she could still be her in this place. So that was our strategy, and then we dealt with all the stuff, and she didn’t even notice it missing anymore. Like she was at that point, we’re out of sight, out of mind.

Lydia Brownback
And if she stopped seeing the old Life magazine, she didn’t care about them anymore. It really did make a difference, and she got to be involved in the process of furnishing her new place, so just that was one strategy that worked for us in getting her out of her home. One of it’s just one of the hardest realities any of us face is this change in living quarters. So, so one thing that helped my mom narrow down what to take from her house she lived in for 50 years into this two-room apartment, was we took pictures of all the things that she couldn’t bring, and somehow having pictures of those things made her able to leave them behind. And I don’t even know how often she looked at the pictures, but they were all in a box, and she had them to look at. It was a little thing that helped her psychologically. So another reality are the finances. In our case, my case, conserving my mom’s money was a big priority. She she had some insurance that helped, and her savings, but her medical costs began to add up, and our concern was that she would run out of Medicare, and then have to get to go to Medicaid. And in the area where we lived, there was a huge care difference between facilities that accepted one and not the other. And and so conserving her funds took a lot of time, and it included things like running all over town to every cardiologist I could find who would give me free samples of an expensive heart medication she needed, and I was able to do it every month. I scored these freebies, but it took a lot of time, a lot of phone calls, and a lot of time. But it saved a lot of money. So that’s another reality: the finances and planning ahead for the care increasing, and what’s going to happen, and where is she going to be, he or she. So another reality is sibling dynamics. Caring for parents can either deepen sibling bonds, or it can wreck the ones you have. And whatever you do for your parents, prioritize getting along with your siblings. It’s gonna it’s gonna be what you do together with your parents, or what you don’t do, is going to characterize your sibling relationships for the rest of your life. And when you can’t agree on a course of action, do all you can to compromise your own preferences while not compromising care for your parents. Figure out a way to share the load and prevent resentments. That’s so important. And whatever you do, don’t quarrel over who gets the silverware. It doesn’t matter. You’ll look back later and say that doesn’t matter. So as much as you can, find a way to be a team, and and you know I think about how Paul describes Jesus’ attitude, his whole outlook, not just his attitude, who he was, and I prayed this a lot when I was when I was having to sacrifice. A lot for my mother, and sacrifice a lot of my life. And I’m going to read this passage from Philippians. This is Jesus, and this is when he’s describing Jesus. Is do Paul says to them to the Philippians, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. This applies whether it’s our siblings, our parents, it’s in this stage of life. In humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ. It’s ours. If we’re in Christ, we have this. We have this. We can have this. We can live this out. So Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. And it’s easier said than done, I know. But if we pray this way, are we willing to have this attitude? I think that’s half the battle. It’s a willingness to be a servant in this situation. So I know with my I have one sibling, and he’s my brother, and we had very different responsibilities when it came to caring for our parents.

Lydia Brownback
I was the boots on the ground, you know, and that made sense. He’s not going to help my mother go to the bathroom. He’s not going to sit down and file her nails. That would have taken my mother’s dignity away, and it it would have not been good for their relationship. So so, I did those things, but he did other things. He he wrote checks I could never write. He whenever there was difficulty with an assisted living place, he would make the phone calls. He would solve the problems. So we each did our part, and isn’t that the key thing? It’s what can you do? What servant-hearted thing can you do in this situation? Find the reality of that. That’s what you need to do. Is just find your reality. What works in your context? So that was what worked for us. And maybe some of you don’t have any siblings. Well, this is where having a church is so key. Having fellowship in a church is vitally important, and the help and encouragement you need, you can get from your church, sibling or not, you need the church, especially maybe at this season. So another reality is the toll all this takes on you-the toll of time, money, and energy, both emotional and physical. Burnout is very real, and so plan ahead for it. Build in ways to get a break. This is where sibling support is crucial, and whether you have that or not, again, it’s even more crucial to be part of a healthy church where you’ll find necessary help and encouragement. So, rattle off a few more realities here. Another one is, for many of us, our parents’ personality change. Some of our parents withdraw from social interaction, or they become critical and negative. And it can be hard not to take it personally, especially when you’re exhausting yourself on their behalf. And it helps to remember, though, that lots of these changes are physiological, and and also just a reflection of their own frustration and helplessness, and here’s where we need to remember that life goes full circle. In the same way, our kids whine and complain and demand, our parents get more like that as they become more childlike again. And in some ways, it’s true. This role reversal is real, isn’t it? The children become the parents, and I think everyone who’s caregiving for aging parents knows that that’s true, understands the reality of that. So it’s another reality: the role reversal, and it’s especially hard when our parents have been our lifelong rock, the one we could turn to in every trouble, and find help and compassion. Though it feels like the bottom has fallen out, if you’ve had a mother like I did, that’s really, really painful. It’s really hard, but it’s actually an opportunity to lean more fully on the one true rock, the Lord Jesus, and surely this is one of His good purposes for us as we navigate this season. One of the reasons I think He calls us into this role is to help us to lean on Him more fully. It shows us our dependence on Him. It exposes our neediness. It exposes our fears. It exposes our fear of loss, and we lean on him and find the help and the hope we need, and and he is there for us, and we will not find that if we don’t look to him and lean on him. But he is right there for us, and leaning on him equips us to handle the anticipatory grief, knowing that we’re going to lose them. Knowing that we’re going to lose this parent we’ve relied on, leaning on Jesus enables us to honor our parents even when we’re afraid, even when the roles are reversed, even even when it all gets so overwhelming we don’t think we can do it another day, even when our own finances might be running dry. Lean on the Lord, turn to Him. He provides and helps. He’s pleased when we are caring for our parents. So, one of the final realities I want to mention is the battle with our own frustration. We can get really frustrated. You know, my mom was pretty tech savvy up until her 90 s. She would text and she would use emojis, and that was really fun for us.

Lydia Brownback
And she, one thing though, she did online banking until it became unwise for her to manage her own money, but she stayed involved just long enough to make me crazy. So my mom got a bit of the increased paranoia that hits the elderly, and several times a week she’d go online and change all her passwords, her financial sites, and then she’d promptly forget what she changed them too. So I’d spend countless hours working to regain access to her various accounts over which I had power of attorney to pay her bills, and then two days later, she’d do it all over again. This, more than anything else, tested my patience, and there were times when my frustration leaked out, and that’s a reality too. We’re sinners helping sinners, and there’re going to be times when we fail to honor them the way we should, and those times, sometimes we can we can crush ourselves with guilt and remorse afterward. It can knock us down. I went through that, and and these after some burst of impatience or or some other failure on my part. But God can infuse our failures, and when we sin in these situations, in in all of the circumstances, he can infuse them, and he will infuse them with grace. He’s there to do that. You know, I remember once I went into my mom, weeping over a time I was just unkind to her, this gentle, sweet woman. I was just up to hear, and some of my frustration leaked out. And a couple days later, I went in, and I just was my heart just poured my heart out, and I said, “I’m so sorry. I’ve done that. You’ve done nothing to deserve it, and you can’t help what’s going on. And I’m so sorry. And she, God gave me grace through my mother’s response to me. She said, “You know, don’t cry. She said, “These things happen in families, and I understand, and I’ve carried that with me ever since. It’s helped me on the nights I lie awake and look back, regretting some of the times I got angry, some of the times I got impatient. It helped. That was God was going before me to prepare me to lose my mother, and that was one of those moments. So he covers our failures with grace, and he’ll cover yours with grace. And so we don’t want to sink down with remorse and just let that beat us up. It doesn’t have to. But here’s a related reality: the window is closing on opportunities to heal broken places in the relationship to have conversations that that you and maybe your parent have put off for years because these conversations are hard and uncomfortable. It’s one of the things we want to try to do to pray and ask for the Lord’s help with that. So just one more reality, and that’s the reality of your parents’ faith. Some of your parents know the Lord, others don’t. I had one of each, and God showed up powerfully in both situations. Now, for those of you who are believers, it’s so reassuring that your parents going to be with Jesus soon. But as your parents decline, they can act in ways that make you question whether their faith is real. The complaining, the negativity, the loss of interest in Bible reading, and you wonder, was their faith ever real? But what we’re seeing here is often just the effects of the fall, as death, the last enemy, draws near and destroys the body and its faculties. That loss of serotonin we talked about is real and it manifests in depression and sometimes anger or bitterness. And those TIAs, those little mini strokes, can alter someone’s personality. These are invisible. We don’t even know sometimes when the elderly have them. And as cognitive abilities erode, our parents lose the ability to take in Scripture and to talk about it. So this is where I think if you’re facing that with your parent, one of the things Charles Spurgeon’s words really helped me with this when I was dealing with it. He said, “It is not our grasp of Christ that saves us, but His grasp.” So, if your parents aren’t believers, the reality is, of course, you can’t save them, but Jesus can, and sometimes their weakened condition becomes the fertile soil for His humbling saving work.

Lydia Brownback
So, pray for opportunities and for wisdom to discern when to speak and what to say, and entrust this loved parent to the Lord, who always does what is right. He hears your prayers, and the Lord, who showed compassion for His own mother as He hung on the cross, is able to show compassion to yours. So, wow, we’re getting okay. Let’s hurry through here. The reward, quick. I’m just going to list them. Reward one: the promise of God’s provision. He’s pleased when we honor our parents, and He sees the sacrifices you make. And one way or another, God will take care of everything this costs you. Paul in Ephesians six cites the fifth commandment: honor your father and your mother. And he adds this: he says, “This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. So he’s telling us in no uncertain terms here that God promises to bless those who care for and honor their parents, and we can’t take this as a guarantee of a physically long life, but it does mean that somehow, some way, he’ll bless you for what you do, and I’ve seen it with my friends. I’ve seen it in myself. And whatever you lose in terms of time, money, and opportunities, he will turn to your profit one way or another. Reward two: no regrets. Kind of enough said, right? No regrets. You will never look back regretting what you gave up to care for them now. Reward three. That was no reward three. Your perspective, our perspective, as we face this and walk them toward death, undergoes a permanent shift. It’s a turning point for us, a pivot. It’s actually a reward because it focuses us more on heaven. And if you think about it, until we face the loss of a loved one and have to walk with them toward death, we we kind of brush off the ideas of eternity until another day. It’s not really something we deal with right now, but having to do this, having to care for them, fixes our eyes on eternity, and that’s where Scripture directs us. So this is God helping us to focus where Scripture focuses us. We’re supposed to look forward to eternity. We’re told all through the New Testament, hope, hope, hope in Jesus’ return, hope in the life to come. This sets us there. That’s a reward. Now we have to face the reality that once our parents go, it kind of hits us. We’re next, right? So, following on that is reward four. It prepares us practically to get old ourselves. The 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes has a poem about all the effects of aging on the body and what happens. It’s not a pretty picture, and when we get to there in our Bible reading, sometimes we just have to say, “Yeah, that’s that’s a poem. I see that, and we move right on. But and that’s because we’re not affected by it yet. But once we have to see this reality in our loved one, we’re like, “Oh yeah, I see that in my parents. I see that they can’t chew anymore. I see that they don’t have any pleasure in life anymore. And this was a book, Ecclesiastes. Doug O’Donnell could tell you this. Ecclesiastes is written by to to a younger generation to instruct, to encourage, and what. So this is basically saying to the young, think about what’s going to happen when you get old, and this is what happens in Scripture. So therefore, this is another gift of grace from God to direct us there, and we can find ourselves preparing. And you know, I’ve had to do that as a single woman, thinking about all the care I had to put into my mother, I don’t have a daughter to do that for me. So what am I going to do? And it helps me plan ahead and prepare. So finally, we weren’t originally meant to die, but death-the separation of the soul and the body-comes to all of us because of sin, and since that’s where we’re facing, that’s what we’re all facing first with our parents and later with ourselves. I want to close on one final reality, and it’s also a reward. It’s straight from God’s word.

Lydia Brownback
It’s Paul’s words in First Corinthians 15, says we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and I hope this encourages you. At the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable. And the mortal puts on immortality. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. We pray for us, Lord. Every woman here has her story and what she’s dealing with. I pray that you would take portions of your word, little tidbits from your word, little tidbits from my experience, and maybe they can talk with each other. Maybe they can share their experiences. Lord, encourage them as they go back home into their situations. Empower them to honor their parents, to love their parents. Father, I ask that you equip them with everything they need to care for their parents, and give them wisdom about how to go about it. So we commit them all to you, praying that you comfort them and encourage them in Jesus. Amen.