Strength And Courage For Caregivers

Taking care of a family member who is ill, disabled, or dying requires courage, strength, commitment, and love. The caregiver may feel isolated and misunderstood. The author, who was the primary caregiver for his mother-in-law, has written a thirty-day series of devotions that weave together powerful stories, practical advice, and the restorative promise of Scripture.

Support, respite, and encouragement for those who care for othersTaking care of a family member who is ill, disabled, or dying requires courage, strength, commitment, and love. Now Terry Hargrave, an expert in counseling and caregiving, offers you help with a devotional written with your specific needs in mind. The morning prayers and evening reflections in this book are short and to the point. Strength and Courage for Caregivers weaves together powerful stories, practical advice, and the restorative promises of Scripture, reminding caregivers that they are not alone in this important yet all too often unacknowledged and underappreciated work.

Drawing on the writings and wisdom of Henri J. M. Nouwen's themes of caregiving, Marjorie J. Thompson offers a vulnerable exploration of caregiving intertwined with both her own many years of intimate caregiving of family members and collected stories of caregivers in varied settings and stages of life. While not shying away from the demanding physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of caregiving, Courage for Caregivers also celebrates the gifts of caregiving grounded in the belovedness both caregiver and care receiver share in God's eyes. Practical leader guides and resources make Courage for Caregivers a tool that moves smoothly from individual encouragement to group and congregational ministry to develop support for the universal experience of caregiving.

A moving, intimate, and compassionate book that chronicles the experiences of a group of long-term caregivers—spouses, parents, and friends of the elderly and ill—illuminating critical issues of old age, end-of-life care, medical reform, and social policy—and “providing comfort in the time-honored form of shared experience” (The Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In 2010, journalist Nell Lake began sitting in on the weekly meetings of a local hospital’s caregivers support group. Soon members invited her into their lives. For two years, she brought empathy, insight, and an eye for detail to understanding Penny, a fifty-year-old botanist caring for her aging mother; Daniel, a survivor of Nazi Germany who tends his ailing wife; William, whose wife suffers from Alzheimer’s; and others with whom all caregivers will identify. Witnessing acts of devotion and frustration, lessons in patience and in letting go, Lake illuminates the intimate exchanges of caregiving and care-receiving and considers important and timely social issues: How can we care for the aging, ill, and dying with skill and compassion, even as the costs and labors of care increase? How might the medical profession take into account the needs of caregivers as well as patients? In The Caregivers Nell Lake shares a thoughtful and tenderly reported depiction of the real-life predicaments that evoke these crucial questions. With more and more people spending their late years ill and frail, and 43 million Americans already caring for family members over age fifty, this is an important chronicle of a widely shared experience and a public concern. “The Caregivers is as elegantly constructed as a novel, but more than that, Lake writes about these people with such warmth and vividness that they feel as memorable as our favorite fictional characters. It is a beautifully written account” (The Boston Globe).

Walking a companion home is an old-fashioned custom, often lost in our modern era. But there was a time when walking someone home was a way of offering protection and guidance. Joyce Hutchison and Joyce Rupp capture the spirit of that personal companionship for those who accompany the dying on their final journey. Whether family members, friends, chaplains, or health care workers, caregivers will find here much inspiration and support for their ministry.

Professional caregivers need to replenish their spiritual stock because they are always giving out. Here is a book that offers strength and encouragement from the Bible for lay visitors, nurses, doctors, social workers, clergy and volunteers.

These authors know how everyday life saps the energy of people who are taking care of needy loved ones such as elderly parents, ailing spouses, or chronically ill children. Honest and hopeful, this devotional will encourage and strengthen readers to endure and find joy in the difficult and tremendous work they do.

Caregivers have a front-row seat to suffering. Helping someone (most likely a close loved one) through disease, pain, frailty, and death exacts a tremendous toll. In the midst of caregiving, we often feel inadequate, fatigued, and overwhelmed with despair. The thought of reaching out for help does not occur to many caregivers, but we cannot go it alone-we need to find ways to connect with others. Self-care is also critical to our mental and physical health. Nell Noonan offers 150 honest and authentic devotions from her own experience. Think of these readings as God's embrace. They will encourage you and give you the strength to make it through another day. Understanding caregiving as a spiritual pilgrimage is important in caring for ourselves. "God is with us in the tears and the laughter, the brokenness and the holiness, the exhaustion and the whispers of resurrection," Noonan writes. When you pause daily to listen to your life, you will discover that God is there, and you are not alone.