Honor an Elderly or Ailing Mom and Dad
God cares very much how we treat the elderly, and especially how we treat our parents.
Articles within this series
- Overview
- Honor an Elderly or Ailing Mom and Dad
- The Blessing of Caring for Mom and Dad
- A Balancing Act
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).
Sallie Ross didn’t have it easy with her mom. She says of their adversarial relationship, “In her eyes, I was never enough. It’s the one relationship my soul anguished over.” But when Sallie’s father passed away, and her brother was unable to lend a hand, she and her husband Ken assumed her mother’s care and moved her from Kansas City to Colorado Springs.
Though her mother moved into an independent living facility, Sallie felt the burden of tending to a woman with whom she often clashed with. Nonetheless, with the support of her husband, and with an open, prayerful heart, she pushed forward. “I wasn’t virtuous, but I knew it was one of those places that I had to put one foot in front the other. I said, ‘Lord, let me enter into this with a heart that’s real. I just need to do it with you because in my own strength I don’t have it.’”
Honoring a parent in your care can be tough, especially as you seek to juggle the demands on your time, and the often grinding responsibility of caring for a needy, sometimes suffering, sometimes difficult person.
Yet God cares very much how we treat the elderly, and especially how we treat our parents. In addition to the commandment in Exodus, there are other references to our elders including, Mark 7:9-13, 1 Timothy 5:8, Ephesians 6:1-3, and Matthew 15:3-9. In Focus on the Family’s Complete Guide to Caring for Aging Loved Ones (Tyndale House Publishing, 2002) they describe honoring parents in this way: “Honor implies choosing to give great respect and care to our elders – not grudgingly, but from a principle of love for them and their concerns … True honor is placing the highest value on our loved ones regardless of whether or not they deserve it. Once we have decided to honor them, affection for them often follows.”
The Focus resource on aging also notes that most older people measure their personal worth by how well they meet three goals: 1) dependability, 2) the ability to maintain close family ties, and 3) self sufficiency. “The key to honoring aging loved ones is to understand how to encourage them in these three areas,” they say.
Steve Purtell’s dad, once a strong, capable man, now has trouble talking, and is sometimes non-responsive. Yet Steve honors his father by making a point to ask him for advice on important and every day life decisions. “Asking his advice tells him that I still see him as my authority and that I still value his counsel. He doesn’t always respond, but mom tells me says he still hears things and sometimes asks about them the next day.”
The Complete Guide to Caring for Aging Loved Ones suggests several specific ways families can intentionally honor their aging parents:
- Recognize their skills and successes.
- Reminisce with them.
- Record your elders’ stories on audiocassette or videotape. Pass down these legacies.
- Help your elders remember friends and make new ones
- Renew their energy with regular exercise.
- Tell your elders about opportunities for seniors to volunteer in the community.
- Remind them of latent talents such as painting, baking, writing, acting or some other hobby or past time.
More than individual acts, however, honor means taking care of another person’s needs and not necessarily seeing an end in sight or being rewarded for your efforts.
Sallie received a great treasure for honoring her mother. “One morning on my way to see her, God spoke to me — and I don’t usually hear audible words from God!— ‘I want you to tell your mom that you forgive her and I want you to do it today.’ I didn’t feel like forgiving her, but I did. God gave me the courage. When my mom asked, ‘forgive me for what?’ I said, ‘just for things from years ago.’ I was so aware of God’s presence around me. At the time there was excruciating pain going through her legs, but she didn’t complain. I just put my hand on her and prayed. We just sat together in silence. Then over the weeks we read Scripture together and just talked. The day after I asked her forgiveness and prayed for her, there was a visible change – something had happened between her and the Lord. Right before she died, I asked her how she was doing, and she said, ‘I’m doing great. Sallie; I know you love me; I know that my family loves me, but now I know that God really loves me.’
“God is redemptive to the last breath. But sometimes we have to relinquish the right to receive the long-awaited blessing from our parents, and let our heavenly Father give us that tenderness and intimacy.”