Progress Not Perfection

May 26, 2014

“Calvin : There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” Bill Watterson The Complete Calvin and HobbesGuilt will eat you up as a caregiver.  

• You can walk.  They can't.  
• You can easily get showered and dressed, they can't.  
• He's lonely and isolated and want to you to be with the all the time.  You have other commitments. 
• She's in pain.  Your're not.
• We push ourselves to extremes, often out of guilt.  

You can't put that kind of beating on yourself everyday and expect to give quality care to a loved one.Most individuals experience a “slow growth” into maturity and life crises.  But, as caregivers, we often find ourselves in life’s “express lane,” managing crisis after crisis, sometimes dealing with life-and-death issues. The stress from the non-stop barrage dulls our senses, and may even eat away at our moral compass. When we do fail, guilt from the failure gnaws at the soul. So we work even harder, denying ourselves more, thus adding additional pressures to our already-stress-filled lives.But, guilt is not the answer. Guilt doesn’t strengthen relationships; it destroys them. Caregivers can’t effectively live and serve others while bearing so heavy a burden of shame or guilt.  So, we must apply grace to those guilty feelings. By consistently reminding ourselves that God’s grace covers our sins, we discover that guilt no longer whips us into a frenzy. Grace frees us to love and to serve with a clean heart. Sometimes, remembering God’s grace is not day-to-day thing; it’s a minute-to-minute lifeline. -From HOPE FOR THE CAREGIVER ©2014 Peter W. Rosenberger, Worthy Publishers