There’s an art to helping people
without making them feel bad
about needing our help.
“My grandmother had very long hair,” Connie said, “but it was thin, so she usually wore it in a bun with hair combs to keep it tidy. She would often let me take her hair down and brush it, and she always fell asleep. I was only twelve when she died. She’s been gone for many years, but I still can feel the joy she gave me by letting me fix her hair. Since she was a farmwife, I may have been her only hairstylist.”
Accepting help—a gift. Something to note when our turn comes.
My mother’s independent spirit reached epic proportions after she was widowed at sixty-five. Over the course of her long illness, bits of independence fell away like pieces of shale on an unstable cliff. Asking for help didn’t come naturally to her. It often came through gritted teeth after she’d endangered herself trying to manage a project beyond her strength. The times she refused our help or couldn’t wait for assistance added more stressors to an already-stress-heavy situation.
On one level, we understood how important it was for her to stay independent. Removing layers of independence is like ripping dead skin from a severe sunburn. It’s raw and tender underneath.
But our concern for her health and safety made us wish it were easier for her to ask for our help. Her three daughters and a number of grown grandchildren lived within just a few miles. When we’d find out after the fact that she could have used our help in rerouting her apartment full of oxygen tubing or retrieving a heavy box from a shelf in her closet, it was all too easy for our caring to be tinged with resentment that she didn’t ask for help.
A few months ago, I had opportunity to test the theory that asking for help and graciously receiving it can bless all parties involved.
“You won’t have to do a thing,” my daughter said. “We’ll bring all the food.”
The topic was a holiday meal—traditionally held here in our one-hundred-year-old farmhouse, which has been the only homestead our three grown children have ever known. It’s not fancy. It leans a little toward the center chimney. It has a small dining room, which means that once you’re seated on the far side of the table, there’s no moving until everyone peels out in order. But it’s home. And cozy. And familiar. It’s the gathering place, even though our children and grandchildren all live within fifteen miles of us right now. Yes, I know how blessed we are.
I was immersed in a tight deadline and fighting a knee that needed surgery—hence the offer for my children to provide all the holiday meal items. It was so kind of them to suggest it. I would have been a fool to refuse to let them step in and help.
How long will it be before they’re making a similar offer and deadlines aren’t the problem? Will I accept as graciously when their reasons are because I can’t tell the difference between salt and sugar? Because I don’t have the strength to lift the crescent rolls from the oven, much less the turkey? Or because they can’t trust me to remember how many places to set at the table?
Over the years, I’ve witnessed the aging process in my mother and my in-laws, in my aunts and uncles, neighbors, and friends. And one day, I too will join the ranks of the rapidly aging. The aging process starts with life’s first breath, so I more than qualify.
Whether the helper or the helpee, grace is our only hope. Hope is our saving grace. Statisticians tell us that as many as 90 percent of us will serve as a caregiver at least once in our lifetimes. Many of us will also be the recipient of caregivers’ efforts. If we’re graced with long life, we may well hear words like, “Let me do that for you. Let me help you. Please let me help.”
It’s an easy leap from that thought to the lesson handed down from Scripture, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A modern paraphrase words it this way: “Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get” (Matthew 7:12 MSG).
Not “as they did to you,” but “as you want them to do for you.”
When my mother’s needs overwhelmed both of us, I leaned on that verse. It pointed me to a spot in the future where I’d be the one needing help. How would I hope my children would respond to me? With kindness, understanding, patience, joy, thoughtfulness . . . as if inconveniences can be and are always eclipsed by love.
It’s a good thing. Because in caring for an aging adult, both the giving and the receiving are easier to accept if love is calling the shots. It’s a delicate dance—offering and sometimes insisting on our help while maintaining our parents’ desperate need for dignity and an inborn or culturally influenced self-sufficiency. Have you mastered the technique yet? I could use more practice.
“You all would do well to provide for their journey in a way that honors God,” reads 3 John 6 (CEB).
That verse from John’s letter to his friend Gaius—recorded in the Bible as the book of Third John—was intended to encourage Gaius to welcome coworkers for the cause of Christ, even if strangers. But the core principle landed softly on my heart regarding the subject of caring for aging parents.
An aging parent’s journey—through the maze of aging itself and toward the end of life—presents challenges at every turn. The route is rarely smooth and eventless; the ground underfoot is no longer flat and easily navigable. Skin is no longer the armor it once was, sloughing off and bruising with the most minor of injuries. The journey seems dimly lit, and provisions are scarce. But the elder one is compelled to journey forward. Life demands it.
God and heaven are calling.
This is our task—to provide for their journey in a way that honors God. How? What does that mean? And—you might ask—what distinguishes my parents’ journey from others?
What does the sojourner need? Companionship. Understanding. Physical provision. Emotional support. Guidance. Love. Shelter. Practical help with everything from calculating the cost to finding needed tools to a bodyguard to protect from predators to shade from the scorching heat. And the sojourner needs a reason to press on.
It’s an incomplete list, and the degree of need or the specifics—one parent wants time, another wants space—vary widely from family to family, individual to individual, and even moment to moment.
How do we handle it?
If I had it to do over again, I would print this verse and hang it where I could see it every day: “Provide for their journey in a way that honors God.”
“Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah”
Once sounded like
A cry for You
To illuminate my path, God.
Today it leaves my lips
As a plea
For You to guide me
In the best ways
To accompany
My parents
On their journeys
While deftly navigating mine
And conducting myself
In such a way
That they’re grateful
For the company
And I’m grateful
For the privilege.