Discovering My New Calling

My last interim pastorate was cut short when my wife Candy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after wandering from home in the middle of the night. For a while I did some fill-in preaching. The last time I preached I used the same sermon for three congregations in one weekend. Candy only heard one and told me, “I hardly talked to you all week while you prepared, and I couldn’t appreciate listening to your sermon. I felt left out, and I need you.” For years I had taught that anything done with God’s love was as important and valuable as the most public ministry. I did take joy and satisfaction in my new routines: laundry and mending, menu planning and cooking, housekeeping and yard work. I had always celebrated Candy’s special ministries well beyond family manager and pastor’s assistant. Perhaps most notably, she was the founding director of an ecumenical caring center that provided food and clothing for needy people. Now both of us would have less visible roles. I know God called me to be Candy’s caregiver just as God had called me to be a pastor. I am learning caregiving just as Candy did in caring for me and our family for all those years. I am still awakening to recognizing that this Alzheimer’s journey is a reciprocal partnership in which God prospers the work of the hands of both of us.