“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.” Philippians 4:7 (MSG)
We don’t live in a world defined by peace. Terrorists are attacking, five million Americans are battling Alzheimer’s, 113 people take their own life every 24 hours,[i] and divorce separates 50% of marriages. That’s obviously only the tip of a very large, chaotic iceberg.
To be a peacemaker (the seventh virtue Jesus asked His disciples to possess), we need to understand that there
is a difference between “peace with” and “peace in” and that we need to possess
both kinds of peace.
Peace WITH: Having “peace with” involves
our own internal struggles, both emotional and spiritual. We need to have peace
with God, peace with ourselves, peace with our loved one who is receiving our
care, and peace with the disease called dementia.
Peace with God:
He knew me before I was born. He knew I would sin and
fall short. He knew I could never attain “perfection” status on my own. That’s why He sent Jesus to take on the
punishment I deserved. God takes
imperfect sinners and gives them freedom from the chains holding them hostage
from their pasts.
Picture a buoy on a lake far from shore. It is totally secured to the floor of the
lake; it cannot move. But, it can appear
to move, depending where I am at in relationship to the buoy and how big the
waves are. The bigger the waves, the
more it appears to move. In reality, it
is bobbing up and down, but it is not moving from its position in the
lake. If I’m closer to the buoy, I can
see that it’s not moving; I’m the only one that can move.
God wants to be the buoy in our life, the
peacemaker. He doesn’t move away from me
because He created me. The more time we
spend with Him, the closer we stay to Him because we can see that He is
constant.
Peace with Me:
What is your battle? My Achilles heel is the label of
“failure.” That label has been put on me
by others, as well as myself. It has broken me many times, even recently by
those who don’t understand the Alzheimer’s broken road. However, no one has the right to don that
label on me. I am not a failure before God, and I am not a failure to my
parents, and I am not a failure to my husband and children. I have a firm resolve to keep peace with
myself and not to do any more battles with inappropriate labels, past failures,
or sinful behaviors.
I am creating a beautiful handiwork out of the remnant
pieces of my mom’s life because I’m choosing to be part of her life’s passage. My only “failure” would be to ignore God’s
calling to not let her suffer alone. I am far from perfection, but I am at
peace with myself. Failure? Not me!
Peace with Loved One:
Peace with Loved One:
When I was about 8 years old, I overheard a discussion
between my parents that negatively impacted my life until I was 45 years
old. It was my “root seed of
abandonment” and held me hostage for most of my life.
Both of my parents had one significantly older sibling who, for different
reasons, garnered each of their family’s attention. In addition, for my dad, he was probably no
older than 10 years old when he walked home from school and found his house
completely empty. No parents, no
furniture, no stuff. Literally. His
parents forgot to tell him that they were moving that day. I can only imagine a
young child’s pain of abandonment of returning home to find his parents gone,
along with all of his stuff.
Both of my parents were wounded when they were young. When I was able to recognize that they could
not give what they did not have, I understood at the age of 45 that we all live
our lives with flawed memories and experiences.
In other words, I had finally made peace with my parents, and they
probably never knew I had a painful issue with them. Dad passed away when I was 52. I’m so grateful that I had a little time with him before Alzheimer's had more of him that I did.
Peace with Alzheimer’s Disease:
Peace with Alzheimer’s Disease:
Because I have peace with God, peace with myself, and
peace with my loved ones, I have no choice but to be at peace with the
disease. It is a disease. I hate the disease. I hate that five million Americans currently
have it. I hate that I might have a
greater propensity for getting it because both parents have had it.
But, it allows me to become a better woman, a better daughter, a better wife, a better mother, a better friend. I have great empathy for and can bring encouragement to those who are impacted by the disease.
Most importantly, it allows me to be a better child of God, learning every day how to relinquish more of myself to His will and His blessings for my life.
But, it allows me to become a better woman, a better daughter, a better wife, a better mother, a better friend. I have great empathy for and can bring encouragement to those who are impacted by the disease.
Most importantly, it allows me to be a better child of God, learning every day how to relinquish more of myself to His will and His blessings for my life.
Once we have been able to make peace with God,
ourselves, our loved one and the disease, and have been able to make peace in
the midst of the turbulence of caregiving, we are equipped and called upon to
be a peacemaker. This Beatitude says we
are blessed to be a peacemaker. Going
one step further, we are blessed to be a peacemaker to ourselves as well as for
our loved ones.
Being a peacemaker for yourself means letting go of
your own chaos, not creating additional tension in your life, and letting the
chains of your past be loosed. To
survive and thrive as a caregiver, one of the “Golden Rules” is to never take your
loved one’s actions personally. She doesn’t mean to cuss in church, he doesn’t
mean to be difficult, she doesn’t try to make messes, he doesn’t mean to
exhaust you by staying up all night, she doesn’t mean to tell you she hates
you. Allow all of the tender and loving
moments to fill up your peace reserves to draw upon when the spewing of the
disease flies out at you. Mom has asked
numerous times for me to forgive her for being difficult, not remembering
things, or taking up my time.
Sometimes, it feels like the Twilight Zone, where I
don’t know which dimension of space and time she’s even living in. She called in the early evening; whenever she
does that, we know she will most likely be sundowning. So, when the calls come in, I take a deep
breath and ask God to help me.
So, once again, she called, I breathed, and I
prayed. I answered, “hi Mom!” She said, “This is your mothe . . . . REALLY? I am your mother? You ARE my daughter?!?!?”
“Yes, mom, this is your daughter, Cheryl.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed with a sigh. “That makes me SO happy. I’m so sorry I haven’t been remembering
you. I’m so happy to be your mom.”
My conundrum was this . . . did she only NOT remember
at that moment that she couldn’t remember who I was and now suddenly COULD
remember? Or, did she really not
remember me for the last few months when I called every night and we took her
to church and Sunday School every Sunday?
That’s the sundowning Twilight Zone, the conundrum of not knowing if she
does or does not know who I am.
What would a true peacemaker do? A true peacemaker would just say it doesn’t
matter. As I tell mom to live in the
moment (not the past or the future), I need to do the same. It creates less chaos in my life and, in the
great scheme of things, it truly doesn’t matter. Here my mom was on the phone, with great joy,
because she felt that she had just found her beloved baby girl. That’s more than enough to bring my soul to a
place of peace.
Being a peacemaker for your loved one is helping them
to segregate themselves from the chaos.
Keep the level of overwhelm to a minimum. Tell them
things or offer them instructions one step at a time. Mom is close to no longer being able to do
her laundry in assisted living. She says
she forgets which laundry area she uses, even when she writes it down,
especially if something else comes up before the laundry is done. She says if she puts the laundry in the wash,
comes back to her room and writes down where it is, sits in her room until it’s
done, goes back, puts it in the dryer, returns to her room, sits until it’s
done, and then goes back to get the finished laundry, she’s just fine! Wow, that’s a lot of steps, but she can seem
to do it, and would like to do it, all by herself. However, she said, if anything interrupts
her, she just can’t remember anything about her laundry.
As dementia progresses, there is great difficulty in
abstract thinking and being able to perform familiar tasks. Doing things methodically and one step at a
time helps them to limit the chaos.
Being a peacemaker for them through our caregiving means helping them
stay focused on only one thing at a time.
Our loved ones still would like to do things for themselves for as long
as they can, and we can help them as long as we instruct them only one step at
a time.
Being a peacemaker for them also means validating
their fears. It can be easy for me to
just tell mom to not worry and that we have everything under control. But, when I take the time to tell her that,
yes, mom, it IS scary to be losing your memory, she feels validated and less
afraid.
Mom was very confused when we took her to our home for
Thanksgiving. She just couldn’t remember
where she lived and kept telling us she was so worried about not finding her
way back, even though we kept telling her we would be driving her home. She also kept saying that we’d be bringing
her back “tomorrow.” She had the “deer
in the headlights” look again and was quite distraught.
Instead of telling her not to worry, I validated her,
telling her that it’s scary to not remember things. I told her to take my hand. I led her to my computer room to show her
my manuscript and this blog. She
delighted in seeing pictures of herself and dad on my blog, and she had tears in
her eyes as I described the book I was writing and how I hoped it would help
others through this journey. We had a
very tender moment between us, and her level of overwhelm greatly diminished. I reminded her that she can always trust me to
do right by her. She expressed her
gratitude for everything my husband and I have been doing for her. While she still didn’t understand whether she
was in Minnesota or in Arkansas, she did feel the peace instead of the chaos.
Find peace within yourself and share it every chance
you get with your loved one, which will help both of you, and others involved
in the family and in caregiving. Our
loved ones need us to be a peacemaker for them; they can no longer be it on
their own.
©2015 Regifted Grace Ministry LLC
