Turn, turn, turn

 “To everything there is a season” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 NKJV). So wrote King Solomon in the 900s BC. His words inspired a popular song by The Byrds 3000 years later in 1965.

As we age, we understand more fully that life moves in seasons. Change is actually normal and should be expected. According to Derek Kidner, we should “see perpetual change not as something unsettling but as an unfolding pattern, scintillating and God-given.”

In this season, my wife and I find ourselves adjusting to the effects of old age on my mother. For years, a spinal disease caused her mobility to increasingly get worse. The woman I remember seeming strong and indomitable in her 30s and 40s can hardly walk across a room without dragging her feet nor transition by herself from one seat to another. In January, she fell at home, severely breaking her neck.  Medical personnel were amazed she was not instantly paralyzed or killed.

Most of this year she’s stayed in a rehab facility, wearing a neck brace. For my wife and I, caring for her has made this year feel like a blur. Like so many seniors, Mom’s faced with significant changes of losing independence, forced to face what she can and cannot do for herself. And sooner than we wish, the child begins parenting the parent. Like a parent talking to a teenager, we have conservations about, “You cannot keep doing that, or you will harm yourself. I’m not trying to be mean to you – but trying to help you make wise choices.”

As an only child, many times in life I’ve wished for siblings. This season has certainly been one of them. Years ago, an older pastor who was also an only child told me, "There's a loneliness that goes with being an only child that actually increases as you get older." It’s quite a weight feeling the emotional, psychological, physical, and financial responsibility of parenting the parent. 

My wife and I have shared with others who walked through similar waters, figuring out how to help aging parents, it seems that nothing in life quite prepares you for this task.

In making gut-wrenching, difficult decisions, my wife and I realized that in such times, you really don’t see great options. You come down to ones that seem less painful than others. Life forces you to make decisions you would rather not. We move beyond what everybody wants to happen and instead ask for guidance for “what is the wise move here?” And that’s it’s ok, when you’ve gathered the facts, sought counsel, prayed for wisdom, and weighed the evidence, to make a decision, even if it is difficult and not ideal.

Richard Blackaby advises in his book, The Seasons of God, that “understanding our seasons of life requires a vital, open, trusting relationship with God.”

We know the Lord orders our days, goes behind and before us, and as this earthly tent we dwell in temporarily deteriorates, those who know Christ long to be clothed in our heavenly tent – with immortality.

I’m thankful for the many seasons I’ve watched my mother live through, and that "in God’s divine plan, even when you’re experiencing the bitterest winter of your life, there’s another spring on the horizon.”

Sign up for Rhett’s e-newsletter, Faith, Family, and Freedom here

Images used courtesy of Pixabay