Do You Look for the Helpers?

When I look back at my thirty-three years of life, at first glance it seems as though everything I’ve ever wanted has been granted to me: my marriage, my children, my home, my career, and even my friendships. Yet none of these deepest desires of my heart came without a period of waiting and struggle and many heartbreaking years of caregiving, trauma, and loss.

God didn’t just give me a family and a calling to serve others alongside them in our community and beyond; he also equipped me with an entire story of his goodness as he taught me to rely more fully on him and prepared my heart for ministry.

Before my husband and I started dating, we were “just friends” for three years. When we began our relationship, graduated from college, and started our careers, my mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. As we decided to get married and buy our first house, we felt we had to push up the date of our wedding because of my mother’s decline.

Before we had our daughters, we went through a painful miscarriage. As we tried to place my mother in a care facility, my husband lost his job. When I was pregnant with our oldest daughter, my mom entered hospice care. When I was pregnant with our youngest daughter, my mother passed away.

We then lost my stepmom, just as I began managing finances and care for my mother’s elderly parents. I experienced not only grief, but also prolonged periods of anxiety and depression throughout the caregiving process with my mother and grandparents, and as a result, my career and many of my relationships suffered and were effectively put on hold.

Last year, my maternal grandfather passed away right after God fulfilled my longtime dream of publishing a book. I never expected that my first book would be for grieving children in memory of my mom and include some of her artwork, but I now believe that was God’s plan all along.

A few months ago, my husband and I moved my ninety-two-year-old widowed grandmother into a beautiful assisted living facility a few miles from our house. This move was a dream several years in the making, a dream that God told me three years ago would eventually come true. Over and over, in my arrogance, I doubted that I heard him correctly, but the Lord demonstrated his faithfulness when one day, out of the blue, my grandma announced that she had decided to stop living by herself two hours away from us.

Through every roadblock along the way, God shows up in the details. In all my frustration and heartbreak and doubt, he is there. When I think the suffering will never end, he reminds me of his goodness.

Each time a situation seems impossible and I feel defeated, I remember God’s promises and his faithfulness to fulfill them. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12 ESV).

In a tragedy, Mr. Rogers tells us, “Look for the helpers.” Looking back at the journey through my mother’s illness, I can see God in the details. I can see him in the flexible, part-time job I had at the time, in the loving nurses who cared for my mom in the nursing home, in my supportive and patient husband and in-laws, in our family friends and our church family, and in the social workers, attorneys, and credit union employee who helped me sort out legal and financial details along the way.

The journey through my grandparents’ dementia has been much the same. Whenever I feel alone in my grief and responsibility, I always find helpers if I look hard enough.

When we notice God in the details, we see his sovereignty at work. We can find him in the people he places around us and the circumstances and timing he orchestrates daily—even, and especially, in the midst of suffering.

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Lauren Flake writes about her journey as a wife, mom to two little girls and Alzheimer’s daughter in her native Austin, Texas, at For the Love of Dixie. Her first book, Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go? was published in 2016. She thrives on green tea, Tex-Mex and all things turquoise.

Photograph © Caleb Frith, used with permission