Watching someone I love decline
For the ones who care for others, and need care themselves.
Also for dementia · alzheimer's · memory loss · doesn't recognize me · declining health · long goodbye · losing them slowly · terminal illness · deteriorating · parkinson's · grieving someone still alive
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you!
Even to old age I am he, and even to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear. Yes, I will carry, and will deliver.
Don’t reject me in my old age. Don’t forsake me when my strength fails.
Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, while we don’t look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
My flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
A prayer
Original writing, not a quotation of Scripture.
Father, I'm losing someone I love a little at a time. Some days they don't know my name, and I grieve a person who is still sitting in front of me. When their memory fails, you still remember them completely.
Nothing can separate them from your love, not even this. Give me grace for the confusing conversations and the hard decisions. Let them feel safe and loved in whatever they can still understand.
In Jesus' name, Amen.