We take care of a loved one with Alzheimers. Let’s call her Sally. You know how your life can be dominated by something for a certain season, like school, or sports, or raising children. This is our dementia season. It is ironic, because we are watching our grandchildren learn to walk and speak and use a fork, and we are watching Sally forget those things. She has taken a liking to Bear (the dog) these days. She will lean over him and whisper into his ear, talking to him as though he understands. I don’t know why this irritates me. I talk to the dog. That’s the kicker. I was alright with this whole thing until the dog got involved. Bear has always been a part of the scenery at our house. We make sure he is fed and groomed. He makes sure the lawn is properly fertilized. When I need to call someone stupid or lazy, he is there. But now, I have to know where the dog is, literally, all hours of the day. I must be concerned with his every possible whim. He might want to ride with us in the car. He might want to taste some of our roast beef dinner or sample a soft drink in his water bowl. He might need to be covered with a blanket. I thought I had a low maintenance pet. I never wanted him to be my life’s focus. Mind you, I don’t dislike the dog. I feel sorry for him. I don’t think he’s used to this much attention, either. I know what this sounds like. Just let me blow off some steam! The other day we were all cooing over our sweet little twenty month old granddaughter. She knew the Spanish word for booger! Imagine that! Sally chuckled,
“Even Bear doesn’t know that!”
I looked at my daughter, and we began to laugh. And we kept laughing . . . and we kept laughing. It felt good. Do you think I am a terrible person? I am OK with that. I am past caring. Last week I was in the adult diaper section at the pharmacy, on FaceTime with my wife, showing her all the labels. Shoppers were struggling to get around me and my diaper selections. I thought I was done shopping in the embarrassing sections of the drug store. No matter. I stopped caring what people think of me long ago.
People tend to say one of two different things. They will say that it is like having a toddler. In one way it is. That is, the woman does all the work and the man talks about how hard it is. As you can see, that is true. In another way, it is exactly the opposite of the truth. Because, with a toddler you are watching life unfold in slow motion. Do I need to say the rest?
The other thing people will say is, “You two are saints.” Speaking for myself, I have never been more aware of my disqualifications for sainthood. I am only telling you this so that you will get a realistic idea of our human limitations (or at least my limitations). This is what I mean:
I listened to a talk that a preacher gave once about “The Good Samaritan.” Do you know the story? A guy gets beaten up and robbed and left for dead on the road. Two religious guys pass by him on the far side to avoid contamination. But along comes this “hated” Samaritan (from the religious standpoint) who helps him. And I don’t mean that he calls an ambulance. He bandages his wounds, carries him to an inn, and commits his own resources to take care of him until he is well. Now, I am listening to this and I start daydreaming of being the Good Samaritan. I am thinking up ministries involving the words, “Good Samaritan.” I am seeing my picture in the news with the headline, “Good Samaritan” over it. But the preacher stopped me cold. The story was not told so that you could fantasize about being the Good Samaritan. The story was told as an answer to the question, “What must I DO to inherit eternal life?” It was a challenge to Jesus from an expert in the Jewish law. Jesus gave the question back to him, asking the religious expert how he understood it, according to the law. The man volunteered the following two commandments:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Jesus agreed with him, “Do this and you will live.” Do you see the problem here? The religious expert saw it. For some reason he thought he could pass the first test. But, the second part was a problem for him. In fact, he saw the problem more clearly than we do. It was not a nice thought to daydream about. It was a command. “Do this” (100% of the time, without fail), “and live” (inherit eternal life). So, he wanted to quibble about words,
”And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to answer that question. Do you think He told the story so you could emulate it? Do you think that is possible? You are not, and never will be the Good Samaritan. Don’t get me wrong. I believe you and I are both capable of helping a stranger on the side of the road. But, all the time, no matter who, and on your own dime? Jesus told the story so that the religious expert would realize that he did not, in fact, love his neighbor. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. Only Him.
If there has been one theme to these little blog posts I write, it is to convince you that God is not impressed with your sacrifice. He is impressed with Jesus’ sacrifice. Your first and most important challenge as a child of God, is to be good at receiving all that He wants to give you. You can never get past that. You can never be too mature for that. If you cannot receive from God, you will never be able to give to the people God has put in your circle.
Am I embarrassed about my lack of patient endurance concerning my loved one. Maybe. But, I keep relearning this lesson:
There is no power in my strength and so-called Christian maturity. The power is in my weakness. Sound crazy?
When I was a teenager, even though my mom and dad were both Believers, I struggled with the Christian life. I wrestled with eternal questions. But mostly I just wanted to do the things that the other teenagers were doing. On the one hand, I had this Sunday school experience which taught me all the Bible stories and helped me to see that God was real. On the other hand, I had enough of a taste of all the temptations that can confront a young person that I wanted more. I will admit that I contemplated “ending it all” for a brief time, in the overly dramatic fashion of a teenager, but that sounded way too hard. What I really wanted to do was have fun. It was the kind of fun that I knew a Christian wasn’t supposed to want to have. But, that was the trouble. I did want to have it. I had this running conversation with God about what I was going to do.
“God, I am going to try to decide if I am going to live for you, or go my own way, and then I will let you know.”
So, I thought about it a little, and I decided that I really did want to go my own way. I told God this.
“God, I don’t really have the strength or desire to live like the Christian I am supposed to be, so I am just going to do my own thing.”
Meanwhile, my parents were church-shopping. They had not found a church they were comfortable with, so they were visiting a different church that weekend. I didn’t know that their struggle to find a church was really about my brothers and me. We all dressed up to go. The thing that I really noticed during the service was the presence of a couple girls my age, sitting a few rows in front of us. One of them stole a look in my direction. Hmm. That evening, my mother informed me that I was going to the church’s “youth group” meeting at a house in the neighborhood. Normally, this was something I would have not wanted to do, at all, but I knew the guy who was hosting it, and I thought about those girls.
I arrived a little late and saw some teenagers sitting in the living room, talking about the Bible. The guys were dressed like me, in the “anti-disco,” anti-style of our day, in jeans and flannel shirts. I noticed some cute girls, including the ones from that morning. Everybody introduced themselves, and they became my high school friends. I still remember, because I knew in that moment that everything had changed. It was like God had played a joke on me. Had I prayed? I wouldn’t have called it a prayer. I had just told God I couldn’t do it, and He had laughed, and said,
“Here, let Me make it easy for you.”