Lovingly Looking After
Grandparents inspire me. There’s a lot of lovingly looking after going on. My fellow small-group grammy praying for her grandchild, my friend at our grandsons’ basketball games, a bestie moving heaven and earth to reduce her full-time hours in order to help with childcare.
Caregiving opportunities abound in our sandwich generation. We look after parents, we look after the wellbeing of adult kids, we look after grandchildren, and, in some cases, even our spouse.
She holds the newborn so Mom can nap, they’re renovating their adult kids’ house, she drives elementary grands to practices, they hold down the fort while the parents are out of town, he coaches their sports teams, they travel a great distance to show up for important events, together, they’re making painstaking care-facility decisions for a failing parent, and on and on it goes—lovingly looking after.
It’s not the trips they take, the amount of their retirement accounts, or the achievement plaques on their walls that encourage me. Rather, it’s the on-going, looking-after-others way of life that nudges me toward a “be there however needed” mindset.
And, for some reason, the stakes seem higher now—in this “Grandparent Watch,” caring for the ones who raised us + our children’s children. The Sandwich Generation job description is not for the faint of heart:
Physical endurance; quick reflexes for toddler chasing; a sharp mind to stay a step ahead of multiple kids; systems for safely getting littles buckled into car seats before they bolt into the parking lot; patience to repeat instructions to both the elderly and the young; and a continual watchful eye over screen time, tiny swallowable objects, or a frail parent attempting to move without their walker are just a few of the must-haves. Oh, and experience helps greatly, although any degree or degrees you hold, likely will bear no advantage. It’s hands-on, on the job training.
Flexibility, though, is imperative, as duties depend on our day’s job placement. Dedication and endurance, likewise, must remain constant.
It’s in holding up my own feeble attempts to these criteria, especially when my strength wanes, and my desire to be interruptible is drastically out of sync with my response, that I marvel at our loving Father who looks after us.
Hosea 14:8 washes over me like a cleansing spring rain, “It is I who answer and look after you, I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit” (ESV, emphasis mine).
God, who formed the stars, created night and day, and every living creature, looks after us.
When the onus feels fully on us and we feel solely responsible, we can recharge and carry on with the knowledge that the One who never slumbers or anxiously stresses, looks after us. He looks after you. He looks after me. He looks after us.
This month we’re praying Ephesians 3:17-21 for our grandchildren—that they will “KNOW the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19, ESV, emphasis mine). There’s no greater truth to sink into their souls. Or into our souls.
Grandparents, may we, too, “have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18, NIV). It is in the grasping of this assurance that we can carry on, knowing that He looks after us, while we look after others. Amen.