Strength for the Weary

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak

(Isaiah 40:28-29).

It seems like the sickbed and wheelchair seldom release prisoners, and when they do, it’s with a warning: You’ll be back. I’ll wait for you.

  “I dreamt I was walking,” Elizabeth tells me. “But when I open my eyes, my wheelchair is right where you left it when you lifted me into bed.”

And it’s there for me to help her return to every morning.

“Give me five minutes to stretch.”

More likely than not, she wants the time to indulge her heavy eyelids before the onslaught of sunlight gives her little choice. Most mornings, her daily schedule begins around 9 a.m., sometimes at 8. So, around 7 a.m., after the alarm wakes me, I’m pulling her covers down and lifting her legs over the edge of the bed. Then she helps me lift her up to a sitting position, ready to slip a transfer board under her so she can pull and scoot herself from the bed to the wheelchair.

We have our routine, what I do, what she does, what we do together. We call it a dance. I help her dress and set out her facial cream and makeup for her to begin the transformation that I insist is not at all necessary.

“But it makes me feel better,” she tells me, as I comb bed tangles from her hair.

She’s a determined woman who refuses to let her disability keep her from meeting online with her Latin students. Whether her first student meets at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., or the first order of the day is her Zoom prayer meeting with a small group of close friends, she leaves little to no time for breakfast. So, it’s usually toast and tea at the computer nearly every morning. By lunchtime, there’s half of a cup of cold tea and a slice of toast with one bite missing left on her desk. 

I help her with her computer and headset and make sure she can reach the textbooks she needs.

About that headset: It’s earphones and microphone with a Bluetooth connection to her computer. It’s not unusual at a minute to class time that the connection fails, and she calls me to come make it work. I have no idea what to do, but with my presence in the room it suddenly connects and she’s greeting her student, sometimes as far away as Japan, but usually somewhere in the United States.

“See, I need you,” she says, as if I want the job security. I tell her I have this electronic techie aura about me that makes it work. We laugh, but only because the time pressure is off. A minute or two before she was in crisis mode, fearing she’d lose a student.

While she’s teaching, it’s my time to make the bed, switch last night’s laundry to the dryer and start a new load, and clean up the kitchen from the night before. I had no desire to do it then. Morning is different. It’s also my time to write, do woodworking or yardwork, but always within reach by text message in case she drops her pen, or her mouse, or her notebook. It’s not unusual for her to have as many as five students throughout the day and evening.

At one time, teaching high school Latin was her identity, until multiple sclerosis took that away. It was then she found that “in Christ” was where she had been all along but didn’t recognize the reality of it. We stand amazed at how God removed her from the classroom and placed her in front of a computer as she learned that lesson.  

The Apostle Paul encourages us not to become weary in doing good, yet weary best describes the condition I slip into when I’m not careful. It’s that highly populated no-man’s-land of groans and complaint where we neither serve God with joy and commitment nor slouch toward the old life without Christ.

As Elizabeth’s caregiver, I’ve been there. Frequently, she wakes me in the night to help her to the bathroom. It’s usually about 30 minutes later that we’re back in bed. Occasionally, she suffers severe facial pain from a condition called trigeminal neuralgia and needs me to bring her a cold washcloth from the refrigerator to hold against her face. I keep refreshing the cold cloth until the pain subsides a bit and she can gingerly lay her head back down on the pillow.

It’s not always the kind of weariness that longs for sleep. It’s also weariness that wears me down with routine devoid of outside-the-house stimulation. That’s why I look for opportunities to steal a few minutes at my favorite coffee shop after picking up a few groceries or dropping a package at the UPS Store. It’s a noisy place with music and conversational chatter all around me. For some reason that Elizabeth can’t understand, it’s a place where I can write.

“You just want to get away from me.”

“Well, yes, but not in the way you’re saying it, or meaning it.”

It’s as difficult for her to ask me to stay nearby in case she needs help, as it is for me to ask if I can carve out a couple hours at the coffee shop. I do have a break each Friday morning when I get together with about dozen other men for breakfast and Bible study at a nearby restaurant. I try to protect those few hours from being hijacked and used up elsewhere.

Sleep-deprived nights and needs-serving days expect some sort of recompense if nothing more than evidence of recovery. A disease that will never be cured and only gets worse offers none.

But God does. In Galatians 6:9, it’s called a harvest to be reaped. It’s God’s promise of reward to the caregiver who “[does] not give up.”

Lord, help me remember. Your power is made perfect in my weariness.