Embracing Lament: The changes come slowly, so the lament comes daily

“The long good-bye.”

“Death by a thousand papercuts.”

You’ve likely heard attempts like to these to describe what it’s like for an Alzheimer’s caregiver. As true as these phrases are, they only begin to convey the burden of watching the slow slog of deterioration that characterizes this disease.

If you’re caring for an Alzheimer’s patient, or even simply visiting one now and then, you may frankly grow weary of witnessing the changes. Though they may be slight on a day-by-day basis, they’re obvious when you compare today’s situation with what you saw a year or two ago. You’ve lost the person, but they’re still there.

It’s very difficult to cope with an ongoing loss, a loss still in process, a loss that only grows into grief that feels like a constant companion. But you must.

It helps to talk with someone else who’s been through it. And though we know the psalmist’s problem was different than ours, we read his words at the start of Psalm 5 and remember crying something similar ourselves:

“King-God, I need your help.
Every morning you’ll hear me at it again.
Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar.”

Every morning. Day after day after day. You’ve been reordering your life around the demands of an incurable disease for longer than you want to remember. And it seems it will never go away.

Lament is surely a helpful pursuit for the person first facing Alzheimer’s. But those who feel Alzheimer’s has woven itself into the fabric of their lives also do well to remember lament.

If the grief doesn’t go away, neither does the need for lament. If the burden doesn’t lighten, neither should the relief that can come from lament.

The psalmist didn’t give up on God, even though his problems didn’t disappear. Instead, he praised God for his power and anticipated the victory God would bring. Somehow. Someday.

“You’ll welcome us with open arms when we run for cover to you,” he says to God. And he said it again and again as he continued to need and know God’s power morning after morning after morning.

We can follow his example as we face yet another week.

Read: Psalm 5 (The Message)
Play: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” Carrie Underwood with CeCe Winans
Pray: “Lord, I come to you again today with the same needs, the same pleas, perhaps even the same complaints as I’ve brought to you so many times before. ‘I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar.’ Help me see what you’re doing with them today.”