The Deadend Question of Caregiving

Dear Friends,

Imagine a life-long caregiving situation with a child who has CP.  Imagine first of all hearing the news at birth, managing all through the elementary and teen years to find schooling, then figuring out how to get this child through college, then how to find  accommodating employment and finally independent housing.  Imagine being that close to fulfilling this child’s heart desire to live with a caregiver in a condo of her own.  Imagine this…but it’s not fiction!  It is a realitiy for one family I know well.

Just weeks ago amid the web of constant caregiving and the flutter of anticipation for the future, they now discover that their child has stage three breast cancer.  The mother is crying, “Why?” And there is no answer.  It is so unfair.  It is so unnerving.  It is so tragic.  It will be so disruptive and derail the almost attempt at independent living for the wheel-chair-bound daughter who is almost 40 years old.  It is pure insanity.  I am angry, depressed, at a loss as to how to help, what to say, what to think as I process this situation from a distance.

It feels like a one-way journey on a desolate path for everyone involved.

Join with me in lifting up this situation in your thoughts and prayers.  There is a good God.  He just seems far away right now.  The question is not “Why?” but “Where do we go from here?”