Article March 1, 1999 Issue

Help for helpers

Three ideas that made me a better caregiver

By Kathleen S. McKown

It is important to take care of ourselves while we care for someone else, but sometimes it's not clear how to do that effectively. Three ideas helped me support my husband through a rough experience that included periods of acute pain. This is how the ideas came to me.

One Wednesday evening my husband felt well enough to attend our church's weekly testimony meeting, and while at church I felt a great sense of peace and security. As I sat there, however, I didn't want to leave and return home to continue dealing with this problem. At church I felt safe and close to God, and the presence of the loving church members sharing their experiences of healing kept me from feeling alone. Yet, I knew that the goodness I was appreciating wasn't dependent on being in a particular building. It was a tangible, conscious feeling of God's presence that I experienced while there.

In that consciousness, the unwillingness to go home was replaced by a willingness to do whatever might be spiritually demanded of me. I reached out to God with the question St. Paul asked on the road to Damascus: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" (Acts 9:6). And in the quiet pauses between the testimonies, I got three answers.

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