Monday meditation: Remembering the love you first felt many years ago
Do you remember the first time you saw the person you’re caring for today?
The question comes to mind when we see this depiction of Isaac’s first glance at Rebekah. The artist seems to think it was love at first sight!
Maybe that’s how it was for you and your spouse. And even if not, even if interest grew slowly, pause a moment to reflect on those first flutters of attraction you felt for this person. Infatuation is a warm, wonderful experience: the compulsion to be together, the delight in discovering each new facet of this person’s past and preferences and dreams and fears.
It doesn’t last, of course. Probably it’s not supposed to. But if you’re caring for a spouse, remembering what drew you to him or her might help you cope with all the disability they’re experiencing now.
And if you’re caring for someone besides a spouse, there’s still something to think about here. Is it a parent? Try to remember how he or she cared for you, sacrificed for you, made a path possible for you. Is it some other relative or a friend or even a client? Try to discover parts of their past hidden by the fog of today’s disease. Every caregiver is helped by reflecting on the core goodness and capability of the person declining before them.
Read today’s text and you may feel strangely disconnected from the customs of marriage in a different culture so long ago. And few of us would claim the intervention by God they experienced to arrange their union.
But each of us can reflect and remember and recommit to the person before us who had so much to commend them before Alzheimer’s began peeling it away.
Read: Genesis 24:2-4, 10-19, 54-55, 59-67
Pray: Help me remember, Lord, the person I loved before we ever thought about the sickness I’m seeing today. Help me remember that today’s troubling symptoms are caused by the disease, not chosen by this person. Help me, each moment, to decide to love—even if sometimes I can’t muster the feelings of love.
Illustration Copyright Classic Bible Art. For more information and to see more art in this series, click here.