I lie in bed, looking at each minute go by 1:00 AM, 1:01 AM, 1:02 AM. My mind starts to kick into gear. After all this time. After all these struggles and tears, losses and pain was this how I finally was going to give up on God? I had outlasted friends, family, and peers. I had gone through hell and survived events that would have sent others packing, despising God, yet I survived those moments and came out even stronger, but this seems to have cracked me. Is it my selfishness? My desire to my will? For the treasures of the world? Or am I simply weary?
I imagine many of us have this point in our faith when we are not falling away but driving through a suffering of the cross that causes us to question, wonder, and contemplate our relationship with Christ. It can occur in a split second or over the course of years. It is a process that can break us, but can also nourish us. Each one of us have moments where we are strong in faith when others are weak and weak in faith when others are strong. It is the nature of these things. God’s love remains the same through it all.
Over the course of these last 15 years, I have had many conversations about faith and how life can weave with, alongside, and even at times perpendicular to our faith. We are designed of course, for our faith and life to be woven tightly together, inseparable, strong. God desires to be in relationship with us, and when we separate ourselves from Him we hurt our Father. Sometimes on this dementia journey, we find ourselves distancing our life from the life He desires for us. I am not talking about the dementia itself, but how we live with dementia.
We can curse God for allowing dementia to enter our lives. We can allow the suffering of this disease and the weariness of care to give us an excuse to ignore Christ’s invitation to love Him more. In times when we find ourselves contemplating our relationship with God, may we remember that Christ too suffered on Good Friday. That life does not end at the moment of death. That we can cry out to God, share our frustrations, our pains, our tears with Him and He will be right next to us, crying with us. Don’t allow the trials of our humanity to be cause for the space between you and Christ. Draw closer to Him. Find friends both alive today and in the Saints who can be with you to strengthen you when you are weak in faith.
Know that those 1:00 AM moments are normal. Let them nourish you, strengthen you, and allow you to rejoice even louder when God our Father lifts you up. This Lent, let us extend our hearts to accept Christ’s invitation to draw closer to Him.