Dear friend,
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
I called my mom last week to ask about her doctor's appointment and she changed the subject three times before I gave up. I know she is scared. I know I am scared too, and instead of saying that I just kept asking logistics questions like a checklist could hold the whole thing together. It cannot.
Caring for aging parents is not one hard day. It is a hundred small ones that rearrange your whole sense of who takes care of who. Nobody warns you how disorienting that flip feels, even when you saw it coming for years.
I keep thinking about Ecclesiastes 3 this week, the part about a time to plant and a time to uproot. I used to read that as tidy stages. Now I think it just means seasons overlap messier than we want, and you can be uprooting something with your parents while still trying to plant something else in your own house. Both true at once. Nobody schedules that on purpose.
I am not going to tell you how to manage it. I do not know your parents or your particular exhaustion. What part of this has felt the most impossible to say out loud to anyone?
A prayer
God, she is carrying a shift no one trained her for, watching her parents grow smaller while she grows more responsible for their days. Be near her in the exhaustion tonight. Amen.