That is my granddaughter in the picture! Isn't she beautiful?
My wife and I saw her for the first time while we were travelling last week. It was love at first sight, and we did not just love the idea of having a granddaughter. We loved the granddaughter we had--little Maddy!
After visiting our daughter and her growing family we took the next leg of our 3000+ mile road trip to visit my wife's elderly father. He will soon be 90.
That is when it dawned on me in a new way. We come into this life needing care and in the final chapter of life, we need care again.
Both the young and the old have value for who they are, not what they do. Caring for them helps them feel the love they need and, even though it can be exhausting (3:00 am feedings for example), it helps us feel the purpose we desire.
Caring for someone is love in action.
Between the bookends of life there are countless and diverse opportunities to care for people. Often, it is the care given and received, that defines the quality of life, even more than the comfort, pain or pleasure that comes from an event we experience.
In an unexpected and unplanned conversation, I sat with my wife, her siblings and her dad. The topic turned to the one missing--their Mom, his wife--and the trauma of her death thirty-four years earlier.
Remaining a family member, not defaulting to my familiar role of a care pastor or chaplain, I did remember the key ingredients of care ministry. Being present with this precious family that has never been the same since the matriarch died of cancer at age 52, I asked them about her and how they grieved her death and their loss. Then I listened, and they listened to each other, as they shared their stories of grief and grieving.
"Grief was hot as lava, cold as ice, thick as mortar and thin as vellum; it was everything and nothing. It choked me and brought my life to its knees." (From the novel, Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan) My wife shared these words from the book she was reading to describe the crushing weight of grief on the survivors or her mother's untimely death.
A couple of days after the family time, my wife and I visited her mother's grave and placed flowers on it.
More than ever before I felt the wounds her family had experienced and continues to feel.
She appreciated my expression of care. So did they.
The days we visited were also accompanied by laughter, great food and too much dessert. We all felt that it was a special time together, valuable beyond measure. Maybe the best time we ever had. Certainly the most meaningful.
We planned it as a road trip to be together and see loved ones. We were blessed with much more!
When we express care for others, through action and words, love is experienced and life becomes more of what God intended it to be.
When you care for people, set the example of care, train people and build a ministry that cares; what you are doing matters!
Your life matters,
Chaplain Dan
Rev. Daniel R. Hettinger
303.905.0478
