I Am The Parent Now

There was no day it started.

That is the part that catches people. Nobody sat you down. There was no conversation where somebody asked whether you were able to do this, and no point at which you agreed to anything. It arrived in pieces, over about three years, and each piece was small enough to absorb, and then one afternoon you were standing in a chemist working out a dosing schedule for a person who taught you to ride a bicycle.

You are the parent now. And nobody asked you whether you were ready, because there is no process by which anybody would have.

Let me say what I am not going to do, because you are surrounded by people doing all three.

I am not going to advise you about the care. Not the medical side, not the arrangements, not what should happen next. That is between you, them and people who are actually qualified, and an article guessing at it would be worse than useless.

I am not going to say anything about whoever is not helping. You have a version of that conversation available and it will not be happening here.

And I am not going to tell you that finding this heavy means you are doing it wrong. It is heavy. That is not a symptom of anything.

Even to your old age I am he

There is a verse in Isaiah where God describes Himself as a carrier, and the timescale in it is the reason it belongs here.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

I have made, and I will bear.

Four times in one verse: bear, carry, carry, deliver. It is repetitive on purpose, the way you repeat something to a person who is not taking it in the first time.

And the whole verse is about God carrying somebody all the way to the end of their life, which is exactly the road you are walking with your parent right now, and it is being described as something God does rather than something He asks of them. Isaiah 46:4 is the one place in Scripture God says it that way, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a carer hear it as a description of Him and not an instruction to her.

That has an obvious application to your mother or your father. It has a less obvious one, and it is the one I actually brought it for: the person being carried in that verse is you as well.

Isaiah 46:4 makes God the carrier through the whole of a life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody who has been the carrier for so long that being carried has stopped occurring to them.

You are being carried while you are carrying, and the carrying has never once been a thing you did alone. Isaiah 46:4 says I have made, and I will bear, four times over in one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts the reader inside the verse rather than only their parent.

Heavy is not failing

Now something I want to say directly, because I suspect nobody has said it to you.

You are exhausted, and you have quietly concluded that the exhaustion is a report on you. That somebody with more patience, or more faith, or a better character would find this less crushing, and that the resentment which arrives on certain evenings is evidence of something wrong in you.

It is not. It is what carrying a weight does to a body. Isaiah 46:4 treats the carrying as effortful enough to repeat four times, and the Holy Spirit is not the origin of that conclusion you have quietly reached.

Isaiah 46:4 has God describing the carrying as effortful enough to need saying four times, and the Holy Spirit is not the source of the accusation that arrives at about eleven at night.

The resentment is not about your parent. It is what a person feels when something has no end date and no relief and they have not been asked. It coexists perfectly well with love, and everybody who has done this has had it, and almost none of them have said so out loud.

You are tired because it is heavy, and the weight of it has never once been a verdict on your character. The written word has God insisting on the carrying four times in a single verse, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes an accusation from somebody who is simply carrying a great deal.

Ask for one thing and let it be done badly

So here is the assignment, and the second half is where the difficulty is.

Ask one other person for one specific thing this week. And let them do it badly.

Specific: can you take her to the Tuesday appointment. Can you do the shopping on Thursday. Can you sit with him for two hours on Saturday afternoon. Not: let me know if you can ever help.

And then let them do it badly. They will do it differently. They will not know the routine, they will get the order wrong, they will let something happen that you would have prevented, and you will hear about it afterwards and have to sit on your hands.

That is the whole exercise. Because the reason you have not delegated anything is not that nobody would do it, it is that nobody does it the way you do it, and after three years you have become the only person who knows how, which is exactly how a person ends up unable to put anything down. Isaiah 46:4 does not put the bearing on the most capable person in the room, and the Holy Spirit is not asking for it to be done perfectly.

A thing done at seventy per cent by somebody else is a thing you did not do.

Isaiah 46:4 has the carrying belonging to God rather than to the strongest person available, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody hands over a Tuesday and does not take it back.

You are able to hand one thing over and leave it handed over, and it has never once had to be done your way to count. Isaiah 46:4 puts the bearing in God's hands rather than in the most capable person's, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds somebody steady while a job gets done at seventy per cent.