Caregivers Rest

So many people I know are caregivers these days.  Caring for parents. Caring for adult siblings. Caring for adults with special needs. The love which spurs their care is spurred by some mixture of love and duty and a need to meet expectations. Expectations which society places on caregivers, which the caregivers place on themselves, or expectations which the ones they care for place on the caregivers.  Sometimes, then, caregivers need a boundary to manage all of these expectations. Those who set no boundaries on the expectations will never really rest. There is a constant burden, a sense of guilt that there is more to be done; that taking a break will be viewed as failure to meet expectations.  Of course, if one never rests from any task, bad things happen.  Anger, resentment, broken relationships; all of this and more can come to those who fail to build “Sabbath” into their caregiving schedules. The idea of resting from work is important enough to God, after all,  to name a day after the concept. Do we get that?

I know that “a day off” is not possible for some caregivers. The need they care for truly is “24/7/365.” But it is critical that you find at least a part of a day or days to rest; to take a physical/emotional/spiritual break from your duties.  You and the one you care for will both benefit.  So, imagine someone is at your door. Go and answer it:

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it’s been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

(Robert Bly, excerpt from the poem “Things to Think” in “Morning Poems”. Source: inward/outward)

Boundaries provide rest. Physical rest. Emotional rest. Spiritual rest.  Today, if you are a caregiver, decide to set a new boundary which will give you rest from your labor.