My brother, your prayers help me. I’ve been a follower of Christ since university and am now 76. My husband also the same age is undergoing cognitive decline and it is particularly unsettling because he has been a pastor and was active and a leader responsible in many areas of ministry in the church beyond the local congregation. We are still in the midst of sorting this all out. If I don’t continually bring my anxiety about this before God it almost overwhelms me at times. Your prayers help. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for your note. It found me in the thick of my own vigil, and your words…honest, weary, faithful, were a quiet echo in a room filled with labored breathing.
Your husband. A pastor. A leader. A man who carried the Word to so many, now walking a path where words themselves may fade.
A mind so sharp and a spirit so used to shepherding others, is a weight I can only barely imagine.
You are right to bring the anxiety of it continually before God. That is not a lack of faith; it is the very substance of it. You are holding a holy, heartbreaking tension: loving the man he is, while surrendering the man he was, and trusting the God who holds them both.
Your steadfastness in this is a profound ministry. Perhaps the deepest of your life.
I write this to you from a house holding its breath. My mom is in her bedroom, forty feet away. The oxygen concentrator hums its rhythmic sigh. Earlier today, we gave her morphine. To ease the suffering, to honor the body’s final struggle. She is surrounded by her brother, her sister, her children, nurses…so she will not be alone when she takes her last breath.
They tell me she can hear us. I pray they’re right. I pray she knows she is loved, and that the love in that room is a bridge her spirit can walk across.
I carried her from the living room couch to her bed yesterday afternoon. I think it was the last time. My heart is a stone in my chest. It is a strange, sacred agony to watch a body fail by the hour, to see “imminent” written on a chart, to know the goodbye is measured in breaths.
She looks peaceful now. Asleep. But the waiting is its own kind of labor.
So here we are, you and I. You in the long, slow goodbye of a mind slipping away.
Me in the acute, hushed goodbye of a body giving up. Both of us at a bedside, learning that faith is not a shield from sorrow, but a companion through it.
It pleases me that the prayer was helpful to you too.
I want you to know this: your note helped me. Your perseverance is a light on my own path tonight. It reminds me that this service, this awful, loving, tear-soaked service, is the heart of it all.
Washing feet. Keeping watch. Holding a hand. Whether the decline is of the mind or of the body, the call is the same: Be present. Love to the end.
We are not called to understand it. We are called to endure it, with Him. The “why” is a cliff we may never see the bottom of. The “who” is the only solid ground: Christ, who walks this valley with us.
So I pray for you, Elizabeth. For strength that feels like His when yours is gone. For moments of startling clarity with your husband, where his spirit shines through the fog. For the courage to grieve what is being lost, even as you cherish what remains. And for the deep, abiding knowledge that his pastorship, his service, is a sweet aroma to God that no disease can erase.
And I ask you to pray for me. For a peaceful passage for my mom. For strength for my family. For the faith to believe that the last breath here is the first breath there.
We are in the deep waters. But we are not swimming alone. He is here, in the labored breath, in the fading memory, in the heavy heart. He is here.
My brother, your prayers help me. I’ve been a follower of Christ since university and am now 76. My husband also the same age is undergoing cognitive decline and it is particularly unsettling because he has been a pastor and was active and a leader responsible in many areas of ministry in the church beyond the local congregation. We are still in the midst of sorting this all out. If I don’t continually bring my anxiety about this before God it almost overwhelms me at times. Your prayers help. Thank you for sharing.
Elizabeth,
Thank you for your note. It found me in the thick of my own vigil, and your words…honest, weary, faithful, were a quiet echo in a room filled with labored breathing.
Your husband. A pastor. A leader. A man who carried the Word to so many, now walking a path where words themselves may fade.
A mind so sharp and a spirit so used to shepherding others, is a weight I can only barely imagine.
You are right to bring the anxiety of it continually before God. That is not a lack of faith; it is the very substance of it. You are holding a holy, heartbreaking tension: loving the man he is, while surrendering the man he was, and trusting the God who holds them both.
Your steadfastness in this is a profound ministry. Perhaps the deepest of your life.
I write this to you from a house holding its breath. My mom is in her bedroom, forty feet away. The oxygen concentrator hums its rhythmic sigh. Earlier today, we gave her morphine. To ease the suffering, to honor the body’s final struggle. She is surrounded by her brother, her sister, her children, nurses…so she will not be alone when she takes her last breath.
They tell me she can hear us. I pray they’re right. I pray she knows she is loved, and that the love in that room is a bridge her spirit can walk across.
I carried her from the living room couch to her bed yesterday afternoon. I think it was the last time. My heart is a stone in my chest. It is a strange, sacred agony to watch a body fail by the hour, to see “imminent” written on a chart, to know the goodbye is measured in breaths.
She looks peaceful now. Asleep. But the waiting is its own kind of labor.
So here we are, you and I. You in the long, slow goodbye of a mind slipping away.
Me in the acute, hushed goodbye of a body giving up. Both of us at a bedside, learning that faith is not a shield from sorrow, but a companion through it.
It pleases me that the prayer was helpful to you too.
I want you to know this: your note helped me. Your perseverance is a light on my own path tonight. It reminds me that this service, this awful, loving, tear-soaked service, is the heart of it all.
Washing feet. Keeping watch. Holding a hand. Whether the decline is of the mind or of the body, the call is the same: Be present. Love to the end.
We are not called to understand it. We are called to endure it, with Him. The “why” is a cliff we may never see the bottom of. The “who” is the only solid ground: Christ, who walks this valley with us.
So I pray for you, Elizabeth. For strength that feels like His when yours is gone. For moments of startling clarity with your husband, where his spirit shines through the fog. For the courage to grieve what is being lost, even as you cherish what remains. And for the deep, abiding knowledge that his pastorship, his service, is a sweet aroma to God that no disease can erase.
And I ask you to pray for me. For a peaceful passage for my mom. For strength for my family. For the faith to believe that the last breath here is the first breath there.
We are in the deep waters. But we are not swimming alone. He is here, in the labored breath, in the fading memory, in the heavy heart. He is here.
Holding you in the silence,
♥🙏🏿✝🕊