Caregiving and Honoring Aging Parents: A Biblical Look with Dr. Bill Davis (Episode 270)

[00:00:02] Number one principle from all the pastors and professionals that I've talked to is affirm, don't reject, and pursue comfort within whatever instructions you have from them. But maintaining peace is going to be an important part of honoring them. Second piece of advice is don't delay asking for help. Third piece of advice, enlist the voices of

[00:00:32] your parents, pastors and friends, people who knew them, to help to understand them.

[00:00:46] Hello and welcome to Candid where we never settle for less than the truth. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Youssef. Each week we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions, and take a candid look at the Christian faith.

[00:00:59] The Bible tells us to honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

[00:01:07] Now we may understand that as it relates to little children obeying mom and dad, but what about when it comes to when your parents are aging, when there's cognitive failure, where there is physical limitations, where there is emotional issues?

[00:01:23] Well, today we have one of our special return guests, Dr. Bill Davis from Covenant College and from Reformed Theological Seminary to help us think through this as we've had conversations on this in the past.

[00:01:37] Some more of his research has come to light and he wants to take the opportunity to share with us.

[00:01:44] And we're always thankful for his time to come and join us and be a help to the church, to our listeners.

[00:01:52] And so, Dr. Bill Davis, thank you so much for being on Candid Conversations.

[00:01:56] It's great to be here, Jonathan.

[00:01:57] Well, Dr. Davis, as you were just sharing with me, you've been spending a lot of time in research around this area, trying to understand what does it look like to honor mother and father towards an end-of-life understanding.

[00:02:13] But it seems like some new feedback has come your way as you've begun that research.

[00:02:19] So, tell us a little bit about the trajectory you were on and what shifted that and kind of where you're landing now.

[00:02:26] Sure.

[00:02:27] In talking with churches about making decisions in the hospital about continuing or discontinuing life-sustaining medical treatment,

[00:02:35] the people who came to the events did not have loved ones in the hospital.

[00:02:40] They had loved ones at home who were putting pressures on the family.

[00:02:45] Some of them welcome pressures, but some of them not.

[00:02:48] But hard questions about what it means to honor your mother when she doesn't recognize you every day,

[00:02:57] when you've taken over control of her finances and you have to make decisions about what you're going to provide for her.

[00:03:05] Questions about how to handle it when she's abusive, maybe knows what she's doing, but maybe doesn't know what she's doing.

[00:03:13] Yeah.

[00:03:13] Yeah.

[00:03:14] Or to care for your father when he's just angry because the world doesn't make sense to him anymore.

[00:03:20] Maybe he's angry because your mother has died and he's retired and all of the things that gave his life joy are gone.

[00:03:30] Yeah.

[00:03:31] And yet, he wants to be close to you and yet he's angry.

[00:03:36] Yeah.

[00:03:36] So what does it mean to honor your parents when they become dependent on you?

[00:03:40] That's where the work has been focusing, driven by questions being asked by people who came to events that weren't supposed to be about that.

[00:03:50] Slight shift.

[00:03:50] Yeah.

[00:03:52] Right.

[00:03:52] And so I took an early run at it.

[00:03:55] The last time we talked, I had conducted a seminar for a large church gathering.

[00:04:00] And part of the event was that we talked through some cases and I gave them the opportunity to write questions they had anonymously.

[00:04:10] Just describe what's going on.

[00:04:12] Yeah.

[00:04:12] And those ended up being heartbreaking.

[00:04:16] Yeah.

[00:04:17] The one that I'm remembering best begins, I hate my mother.

[00:04:22] And these were church leaders in the room.

[00:04:25] But being given the opportunity to tell the story anonymously, they didn't have to clean it up.

[00:04:31] Sure.

[00:04:32] It's, I hate my mother.

[00:04:33] She never says anything positive.

[00:04:36] She's never happy with anything that I provide.

[00:04:39] She can't afford to live anywhere else.

[00:04:41] I don't like the thoughts I have about her.

[00:04:44] What does it mean to honor my mother when she's impossible?

[00:04:48] So that was the question.

[00:04:49] So I thought, I probably should try to answer that.

[00:04:52] But I realized that the picture that I put together of what the fifth commandment calls for, I only focused on the specific task of honoring their reputation, of protecting them from being misunderstood.

[00:05:09] And I didn't think about what it meant when they were being really demanding or in a way that seemed inappropriate.

[00:05:17] And is it just sin, selfish sin, that makes a child say, no, mom, I know what you want, but I'm not going to do it.

[00:05:26] Because the standard picture of the fifth commandment focuses on the way children should respond, which is they should look for a way to obey.

[00:05:35] So the question was, is that how it's supposed to continue, even when your parents are making unreasonable, not sinful, but really, really difficult demands.

[00:05:46] So the work on the fifth commandment, this meant as an academic, I thought, surely somebody has written an answer to this.

[00:05:54] And so I went looking and I read commentaries on the fifth commandment.

[00:05:59] The commentaries on the fifth commandment say almost nothing about what happens when your parents are cognitively impaired or their mood has changed because of emotional challenges in their life.

[00:06:12] And they're no longer themselves.

[00:06:15] It says very little, partly because the Bible says almost nothing.

[00:06:20] There's one reference in the scripture to when your parents are confused and then Noah gets drunk.

[00:06:29] But that's not permanent confusion.

[00:06:32] The most needy, dependent parent in the Bible is Naomi in the book of Ruth.

[00:06:38] Interesting.

[00:06:39] The book of Ruth is in many ways a love song to the fifth commandment.

[00:06:45] Interesting.

[00:06:46] Yes.

[00:06:46] Because Ruth is the non-Israelite daughter-in-law who honors her mother.

[00:06:55] She respects Naomi.

[00:06:57] She takes her advice.

[00:06:59] She defends Naomi by going out and looking for food for the both of them.

[00:07:04] Right.

[00:07:04] Provide.

[00:07:04] And she advocates for her.

[00:07:07] She encourages her.

[00:07:09] She fills her with courage by speaking for her in the town, looking for the kinsman redeemer.

[00:07:15] So, she does all three parts of what I think the Bible teaches about the fifth commandment to respect, defend, and encourage Naomi, who is emotionally destroyed by the loss of everybody.

[00:07:29] Yeah.

[00:07:30] And Ruth does it because of her love for Naomi's God.

[00:07:35] Yeah.

[00:07:36] This is the perfect picture.

[00:07:37] Yeah.

[00:07:38] And the book makes it really clear that God rewards this because she's the great-grandmother of David.

[00:07:46] So, keeping the fifth commandment when your mother is dependent is something that the scriptures call us to, and the most beautiful picture of it is Ruth.

[00:07:58] So, there we have a picture.

[00:08:01] And is that all that the Bible says?

[00:08:04] No.

[00:08:04] In 1 Timothy 5, Paul is dealing with the problem of true widows.

[00:08:11] Women over 60 who have been faithful in prayer.

[00:08:15] And Paul says, who have no family who can care for them.

[00:08:19] And then he says, because even the pagans know.

[00:08:24] You're little better than an unbeliever if you're not caring for the older dependent parents in your family.

[00:08:35] So, this is a part of the picture that I hadn't worked out the last time I talked to you about this.

[00:08:40] But then that led to the question, what exactly is the expectation?

[00:08:44] And then I have to draw a distinction between honoring your parents with regards to the use of their resources,

[00:08:52] the energy that they have left, the friendships that they have, the time they have, their money, their property, their remaining abilities.

[00:09:03] Those are their resources.

[00:09:04] And when they become dependent, you're going to have to make decisions about what happens with those things.

[00:09:10] It could be that you control their finances directly.

[00:09:13] And in that case, I think we honor them by making the choice that they would make if they could be restored to the powers they had before they became dependent.

[00:09:24] You don't make them perfectly rational.

[00:09:26] We're not exactly sure what that means.

[00:09:28] And we don't just make them like us.

[00:09:32] Right.

[00:09:33] Yeah.

[00:09:33] The goal is the tendency.

[00:09:35] Yeah.

[00:09:36] So, in the book that I'm writing, I'm hoping to give families a way to have conversations so that the children can come to understand their parents' values

[00:09:45] and what they're hoping to accomplish with their resources, with their time, with their energy.

[00:09:51] So, there's going to be a series of little stories that the family would read together.

[00:09:59] And then the parents would say, here's what I think should happen next.

[00:10:03] And the children can say, wow, that surprises us.

[00:10:07] We're surprised that you would want to stop driving for that reason.

[00:10:11] Yeah.

[00:10:12] Or we're surprised that you would want to continue to giving to that ministry, even though it would mean your standard of living would go down.

[00:10:22] You'd have to stop taking vacations.

[00:10:24] In hearing some of this, there's this sort of underlying thread of knowing your parents well.

[00:10:31] Yeah.

[00:10:32] That sort of creates the foundation of dealing with these issues when they come about.

[00:10:40] And if you don't know your parents well, or you think you understand them, but, you know, to your example,

[00:10:47] wow, we were really surprised that mom or dad said this about that particular issue.

[00:10:52] Right.

[00:10:53] You know, there's something to that that I think that's important that we could just so easily kind of slide by.

[00:10:59] Right.

[00:11:00] I think that the responsibility for this should be embraced by people my age.

[00:11:11] I'm 64.

[00:11:12] My children are between 27 and 36.

[00:11:16] It's a very strange conversation when my 36-year-old son says, so, dad, when do you want us to take the car keys away from you?

[00:11:27] That's.

[00:11:28] Excuse me.

[00:11:29] That's.

[00:11:29] Well, so that's a little offensive to me because it means it's occurred to him.

[00:11:34] And what happened?

[00:11:36] Or if my one of my 29-year-old daughters, I have twins, if they said, so, dad, if you lost the ability to appreciate books, can we just give all your books away?

[00:11:48] That's.

[00:11:49] I'm not going to take that well.

[00:11:51] And I'm used to this.

[00:11:52] Right.

[00:11:52] So those are.

[00:11:54] It's much better that I'm starting the conversation.

[00:11:57] So I've been interviewing people who've gone through this transition.

[00:12:01] I've been interviewing children, adult children, whose parents have declined to the point that they became dependent on their children for financial management or medical management or bullying them into seeing a doctor.

[00:12:19] Right.

[00:12:20] That's a really common problem is that the parents, you have to get their permission to take them to the physician because the physician's office really cares whether you're here of your own volition.

[00:12:31] Right.

[00:12:31] So I've been interviewing people.

[00:12:34] At first, I interviewed my friends, which meant like mostly wealthy people whose relationship with their parents was really good before their parents started to decline.

[00:12:46] Right.

[00:12:46] And I realized that's not everybody.

[00:12:49] No.

[00:12:49] So for the last four or five months, I've been seeking out pastors to get their input on what patterns they see.

[00:13:00] Because you can't walk up to people you don't know and say, tell me about your massive relationship with the parent that you hate.

[00:13:07] That doesn't work.

[00:13:09] So the pastors have been very helpful without giving me names.

[00:13:13] They say, here's a problem that we see over and over again.

[00:13:17] What do we do with mom's collection of Hummel figurines?

[00:13:23] She probably won't notice if we get rid of all of them.

[00:13:26] What should we do with them?

[00:13:28] But she might.

[00:13:30] And then the children disagree about what to do with this enormous collection of craft art.

[00:13:37] Right.

[00:13:38] So now there's a new layer of strife added to this already stressful situation.

[00:13:44] Right.

[00:13:44] Often, one of the most helpful pieces of advice that I can give to people is to say, would your mom, what would she care more about?

[00:13:53] The fate of her Hummel figurines or you being at peace with each other?

[00:14:00] And they say, well, I mean, it would kill her to know that we were fighting about this.

[00:14:04] I said, I think, why don't we just flip a coin or put all the possible ways to deal with the Hummel figurines in a basket and pull one of them out and do it?

[00:14:14] Because if she would choose for you to be at peace, no matter what it took, then let's pursue what she would want.

[00:14:23] Yeah.

[00:14:23] Yeah.

[00:14:23] So the challenge of understanding your parents, it works far better for the parents to say, there's a couple of things I'd like to talk to you about in case we reach the point that I can't tell you what I want.

[00:14:39] And so I'm hoping that the book will provide them with a short list of about 10 conversations worth having.

[00:14:46] There's probably a conversation about your stuff.

[00:14:48] There's probably a conversation about what you want to happen to your giving pattern.

[00:14:54] Like you've been giving out of your resources this way.

[00:14:58] It will occur to your children that maybe all of the money should be spent on keeping you comfortable.

[00:15:04] Is that what you want?

[00:15:05] If you start the conversation, then nobody feels that, oh, if they start the conversation, they're eyeing yourself.

[00:15:12] But if you start the conversation, you really just want to bless them with information.

[00:15:18] So for you, the pastoral problem is what can you be doing to help the older but not yet declining adults reach out to their children and say, here's some things that will help you make decisions if you need to.

[00:15:36] And medicine is only going to get better at keeping our bodies alive as our brains spiral.

[00:15:44] So that's probably why nothing was written in the Bible about this.

[00:15:48] Right.

[00:15:49] So there's one person.

[00:15:50] Right.

[00:15:51] There was nothing happening.

[00:15:52] They were just dying.

[00:15:53] If you became demented in the way that we would describe it now in biblical times, you died pretty quickly.

[00:16:00] You fell into the fire.

[00:16:03] You wandered off and were beaten to death or eaten by animals.

[00:16:09] You just didn't live very long.

[00:16:11] Harsh days.

[00:16:12] Or you contracted pneumonia.

[00:16:14] Something happened.

[00:16:15] So this is a problem that is no more than 150 years old if it's that.

[00:16:21] Right.

[00:16:22] So we have 19th century accounts of the mad woman in the attic kind of thing.

[00:16:26] But it's not a lot.

[00:16:28] And there's very little in scripture about this specific problem for two reasons.

[00:16:35] One, mostly you died.

[00:16:36] But the other is that everybody in biblical times took for granted that when the parents became dependent, they would live with their children.

[00:16:45] Yeah.

[00:16:45] They were probably already living with them beforehand anyway.

[00:16:48] Right.

[00:16:48] They were probably the whole family in one place.

[00:16:51] And it was a pretty gradual handoff from the parents calling the shots in the house to the children calling the shots in the house.

[00:17:01] Yeah.

[00:17:01] So making it even more complicated for us, complicated in what turns out to be a good way, is because we, at least in the United States and in many other countries as well, I think it's true in Australia, we've developed government programs that will provide a safety net.

[00:17:22] Right.

[00:17:23] So let's suppose, I think the Bible, I think it's consistent with the Bible.

[00:17:28] I can't, I can't build it out of verses from the Bible.

[00:17:31] But I think it's consistent with what the Bible assumes, that the children will ensure, it doesn't mean they're going to be the one providing all the resources, but the children will ensure that the parents' standard of living is what it would be if they lived with them.

[00:17:47] That means that it could be, that it means that you're going to spend a lot of time making sure that the government provided care is all that it can be.

[00:17:58] There's a big difference between where you end up if you have no person who's zealously navigating the Medicare-Medicaid system for you.

[00:18:09] If no one's advocating for you, you end up here.

[00:18:12] And if someone knows just how to ask the questions.

[00:18:15] Yeah.

[00:18:15] You just have to know that there's somebody at the church who knows how to navigate the system.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:21] So that you're going to get the attention that you need, that you're going to end up in the nicest facility that you qualify for.

[00:18:26] And beyond that, let's suppose you ended up in the least funded government program for someone who is dependent, who's going to need assistance, somebody to cook for them, someone to keep them safe.

[00:18:42] Suppose you end up there.

[00:18:44] Well, let's suppose that's all your parents can afford.

[00:18:49] They have no savings.

[00:18:51] And the only place they can afford to live is in the minimum place that the government can provide.

[00:18:56] And you look at the way you live and you realize that living with you would be better than that.

[00:19:04] Does that mean that are you obligated honoring them?

[00:19:07] Does that mean taking them into your house?

[00:19:09] Maybe not.

[00:19:11] It might mean that you're going to lower your standard of living a little to pay for them to have Internet service in their room at the government facility.

[00:19:21] It could be that you're going to spend some of your own money to visit them more often or to take them food that they're not going to get in that facility.

[00:19:31] But it's probably going to take more time than money.

[00:19:36] Yeah.

[00:19:37] It's going to mean.

[00:19:37] So one of the most beautiful stories that I heard when I was interviewing pastors is there was there was a church that was where the people in the church who had jobs had minimum wage jobs.

[00:19:50] It was a really, really economically sin church.

[00:19:57] Beautiful church in many ways, spiritually, but not economically.

[00:20:01] And there was a woman in the church who had no family at all and she couldn't live alone any longer.

[00:20:10] She needed to move somewhere.

[00:20:12] The church said, this is a true widow.

[00:20:15] Do we have the resources to help her?

[00:20:19] They didn't have any.

[00:20:20] So they set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to pay for her to live in assisted living facility.

[00:20:27] And they raised $123.

[00:20:32] They're looking at no money.

[00:20:33] And so with lament, they helped her move into the lowest level government facility in town, you know, 100% Medicaid supported.

[00:20:44] And what they realized is that her life could be rich, certainly richer than anyone else there.

[00:20:51] If somebody in the church visited her twice a week and someone in the church came and sat with her to watch the live stream of the worship service.

[00:21:02] Wow.

[00:21:02] So she was still able to worship with her people because some family from the church, they just rotated the families through to go and sit.

[00:21:11] And they're still doing this.

[00:21:12] They go and they sit with her so that she's not worshiping alone.

[00:21:17] Well, this was a church that had no money, but what they had was love and time.

[00:21:22] Yeah.

[00:21:22] And when they visit her, so somebody visits her in the middle of the week and somebody else goes to sit and worship with her.

[00:21:30] And everybody that goes to take something, just something small, a little piece of child's art.

[00:21:35] So her room is covered in artwork done by the kids in the church or little pieces of candy that she likes.

[00:21:43] It didn't take money.

[00:21:45] And her life is as rich as it would be if she'd moved in with any member of the congregation.

[00:21:53] Yeah.

[00:21:53] And I like this model in thinking about what biological children can do to honor their parents.

[00:22:02] It's probably going to take time and a certain amount of creativity.

[00:22:07] But it may not take any money, which is a problem for Americans because we would rather just spend money than spend time.

[00:22:18] But I had thought when I first started working on this, I thought it was just going to be an almost horrible kind of message is that you owe half of your income to care for your parents.

[00:22:31] But at least in the system that we have now, we've been paying taxes so that there would be opportunities available that probably could be afforded using the parents' resources.

[00:22:42] And when it comes to what the children do with their resources to defend and encourage their parents, they take, again, they need to know what their parents value.

[00:22:54] They're going to take into account what their parents would recommend the children do with the children's stuff.

[00:23:02] Your parents almost certainly have ideas about what you might be doing with your time and your money.

[00:23:07] Right.

[00:23:08] And when they tell you about it, what it means to honor them is that you show them that you heard.

[00:23:16] It doesn't mean that you do exactly what they said.

[00:23:20] Honoring means heeding in the sense that you take it seriously and then you reflect back that you understand.

[00:23:29] But you might not follow their advice, but you honor them by hearing it.

[00:23:35] And when your parents become dependent, you continue to think through what would their advice be about how I would use my time and money to care for them.

[00:23:47] Yeah.

[00:23:47] And with godly parents, often that's far less than you would have thought.

[00:23:54] Because godly parents, I know my mother's 89 and she still lives by herself in a house with stairs.

[00:24:01] And she plays the piano for her church in the evening.

[00:24:05] She's fine.

[00:24:07] And my father died 10 years ago.

[00:24:09] So for me, this is not an existential problem.

[00:24:13] But I have very close friends whose parents are in all kinds of different situations of dependence.

[00:24:20] And to watch them lovingly figure out what would my mom want me to do to care for her.

[00:24:29] And often they think, she wouldn't want me to spend longer than this amount of time caring for her when she knows the other things that I might do.

[00:24:46] But it's a matter of understanding your parents.

[00:24:49] And we're back to people my age in their 60s need to be explaining to their children, this is what I'd like you to do.

[00:24:58] Yeah.

[00:24:58] I'm trying to explain these things to my children.

[00:25:01] I'm going to be happy listening to For King and Country and doing crossword puzzles.

[00:25:09] And old episodes of Candid Conversations.

[00:25:14] Right.

[00:25:14] And listening to old episodes of Candid Conversations.

[00:25:17] And then remembering how much fun I have with my friend John.

[00:25:23] Dr. Davis, I know that there were sort of these three areas that you were describing to me in terms of cognitive limitations, physical limitations, and then emotional.

[00:25:35] Can you walk us through those three areas?

[00:25:38] Yes.

[00:25:40] Yes.

[00:25:40] When I first started working on this, I had thought that the only real problems were when the parents became cognitively diminished to the point that they couldn't make decisions for themselves.

[00:25:52] Or they didn't recognize their children.

[00:25:54] Or their children had to take over for things.

[00:25:56] And those problems are big.

[00:25:59] But they are also among the most widely discussed in, like, on podcasts and in books.

[00:26:07] The Mayo Clinic has a very good book on dealing with Alzheimer's disease.

[00:26:11] So you can find resources.

[00:26:13] And when your parents have a diagnosis, the diagnosis gives you pretty clear guidelines about what the progression is going to be, about how long it's going to take.

[00:26:25] And so there's not, even though it's extremely difficult to watch your parents become less and less able, at least it makes sense.

[00:26:35] It's according to a pattern.

[00:26:37] It's somewhat predictable.

[00:26:38] And so a lot of the anguish involved in your parents becoming more and more dependent is just how unpredictable everything is.

[00:26:46] And a sense of just no control over how it's going.

[00:26:51] And then I also discovered that lots of people just resist getting diagnosed at all.

[00:26:58] And so then you have cognitive decline, less and less able to make sound judgments, less like yourself in the kinds of choices that you make.

[00:27:08] You recognize some people, you don't recognize other people.

[00:27:11] But it's happening gradually and in unpredictable drops from time to time.

[00:27:16] And then you don't have a pattern to call upon.

[00:27:19] And you almost certainly don't have a dedicated medical professional who's helping you understand this kind of decline.

[00:27:27] And then that merges with just physical limitations.

[00:27:31] You fall and you, or you have knee problems.

[00:27:34] You get knee replacement surgery and the rehab doesn't go terribly well, so you can't use stairs anymore.

[00:27:39] Or you become limited to a wheelchair.

[00:27:41] And until you're limited by a wheelchair, until you actually can't get out of the wheelchair, you aren't aware of how many places you can no longer go.

[00:27:49] So, yeah, I mean, it would be a fun thing for your church to do is just put everybody in a wheelchair and say, all right, let's spend a day where nobody gets out of the, not a whole 24 hours.

[00:27:58] Let's spend an afternoon where we try to use our facility.

[00:28:02] Right.

[00:28:02] Yeah.

[00:28:02] Where's your ADA compliance, et cetera.

[00:28:05] Yeah.

[00:28:06] Yeah.

[00:28:06] ADA compliance is a minimum standard.

[00:28:08] Right.

[00:28:09] So your parents become limited to a wheelchair.

[00:28:13] That's a, they might be cognitively 100%.

[00:28:17] And yet they're limited to a wheelchair.

[00:28:19] Which means they can't live in their house anymore.

[00:28:21] Now what?

[00:28:23] Now we're back to, with their resources, you make the choices that they would make.

[00:28:28] With your resources, you listen carefully to what they are asking for.

[00:28:33] So if they're just physically limited, you're not wondering, you're not imagining what they would ask for.

[00:28:38] They're asking for.

[00:28:39] Right.

[00:28:39] Because there's cognitive, high cognitive function.

[00:28:42] They're able to express themselves.

[00:28:44] Yeah.

[00:28:44] And then I think it's permissible for children to say, I know that this is what you really, really want.

[00:28:52] Right.

[00:28:54] I've heard you.

[00:28:55] Here's, I'm going to show you that I've heard how desperately you want these things.

[00:29:00] Here's why I can't do all that you're asking for.

[00:29:03] Here are the other parts of my life.

[00:29:06] But here's what I am going to do.

[00:29:07] So it's not just rebellion.

[00:29:11] You're not saying no to your parents, but it's a conversation.

[00:29:14] So that's with physical limitations, but not cognitive limitations.

[00:29:19] And then there are just straight up emotional changes.

[00:29:24] Because of life changes.

[00:29:27] Retirement is a big one where most of the way you thought of what made you lovable is gone.

[00:29:32] Or made you valuable or made you worth listening to.

[00:29:36] And now every time the child doesn't hear what the father said, it's a catastrophe because nobody listens to me anymore.

[00:29:46] Well, it's helpful for the parents to be talking to their children about how they want help getting through that kind of transition.

[00:29:54] And then also how they want their children to treat them when they're being a jerk.

[00:30:03] It would be helpful if people who aren't yet retired and aren't yet frustrated by what's happening in their life were to say, here's how I'd like you to treat me when I'm mistreating you later.

[00:30:15] Yeah.

[00:30:16] So some of these things I've written out for my children.

[00:30:19] When it comes to the car, I've told my children, when I become a threat to other people, I want you to take the car keys away from me.

[00:30:27] I don't want you to pretend that you've lost the keys or disabled the car.

[00:30:31] You get this advice all over the internet, by the way.

[00:30:33] I'm sure.

[00:30:34] I want you to come to me and hold up what I've written here.

[00:30:36] See what I've written?

[00:30:37] I've written, when I become a threat to other people, take away the car keys.

[00:30:42] I don't want to hurt people.

[00:30:45] Yeah.

[00:30:45] So you can defend my reputation.

[00:30:47] That's a common one.

[00:30:48] Yeah.

[00:30:48] I've got it recorded actually now.

[00:30:51] That's right.

[00:30:51] I hear this one a lot, especially because it's about, as you know, it's a loss of independence.

[00:30:57] Yeah.

[00:30:58] There's a sense of now being dependent on others for mobility just to get around town to run errands.

[00:31:06] And I can understand why that would be such a difficult conversation and situation to navigate.

[00:31:16] Right.

[00:31:17] They were surprised.

[00:31:17] But I started the conversation.

[00:31:20] So my children and my wife and I have a, we're still on Skype.

[00:31:26] Look, we've never stopped.

[00:31:28] But for the last eight years, every Sunday afternoon, we spend a couple hours on Skype talking to each other.

[00:31:35] They all live somewhere else now.

[00:31:36] Well, so we get together.

[00:31:38] And so I said, so there's some things I'd like to talk to you about today.

[00:31:41] So I've written some things out and I'm sending you copies of these things.

[00:31:46] So you can hold them up to me on the Skype call and say, Dad, you wrote this.

[00:31:51] Well, when I brought it up, it's not a problem.

[00:31:54] If they had brought it up, I would have been offended.

[00:31:58] Yeah.

[00:31:58] And I do this for a living.

[00:31:59] But I would have thought, where do you get off?

[00:32:03] I taught you to drive.

[00:32:05] Right.

[00:32:06] So.

[00:32:07] Right.

[00:32:07] I'm trying to get ahead of these conversations.

[00:32:10] I've been gathering kinds of conversations from pastors who've described, like you just did.

[00:32:18] Here's what we hear a lot of.

[00:32:19] Yeah.

[00:32:20] Putting these together.

[00:32:21] And I'm thinking that this would make, I mean, I would love your feedback on this.

[00:32:25] I think this would make a pretty, I don't know, lively Sunday school class.

[00:32:31] If for about 15 minutes, you talked about what the scriptures say about honoring your parents.

[00:32:36] And then you just put people in groups and said, here, talk about what you want done when this happens to you.

[00:32:43] And they'll share.

[00:32:44] And then you're going to discover that you disagree.

[00:32:46] Here's godly people in the same church who have different ideas about how they want their money spent when they can't make the decisions anymore about supporting the missions program.

[00:32:58] They might just disagree.

[00:32:59] And then what does that mean?

[00:33:00] Yeah.

[00:33:01] Well, I think there are ranges of options, and it would be a really good thing for the church to be talking about it.

[00:33:07] If nothing else, if somebody hasn't explained things to their children, but the children know that this Sunday school class happened, they might, 10 years later, they may say, like, who was in the Sunday school class and who heard my dad talking about this?

[00:33:22] Fill in the picture.

[00:33:23] This is what my dad wanted.

[00:33:25] Dr. Davis, in your research, you've obviously taken the time to sit down and ask good questions and get a great deal of feedback.

[00:33:37] What are some of the things that they are handling?

[00:33:39] What are the questions that they're coming up with?

[00:33:41] What are you seeing in that research?

[00:33:44] What are some of the things that they're coming up with?

[00:34:16] What are some of the things that they're coming up with?

[00:34:17] What are some of the things that they're looking up with?

[00:34:18] What am I seeing in this situation?

[00:34:19] What are some of the people that they're talking about?

[00:34:20] The people that they're looking up with is there will make the difference of their concern.

[00:34:25] What are some of the things that they're coming up with?

[00:34:25] And what do you see?

[00:34:25] So, one of the most common problems that people face, especially when the dependence is cognitive, is either quickly or slowly, they lose the ability to understand exactly what's happening.

[00:34:40] So, it's very common.

[00:34:43] your father's is now a widower your mom died three years ago he doesn't remember that

[00:34:51] right and he will say is mom coming home today yeah and the first time he he asked that you say

[00:34:59] dad mom died three years ago and he said she died and he falls apart because it's the first

[00:35:06] time he's heard of it right because he's lost the ability to connect to grieving right he's forgotten

[00:35:13] that his wife is dead so and then he comes back the next day and says is mom coming home today

[00:35:21] now the standard advice that you'll get from this the world these are not people who are

[00:35:27] aggressively anti-christian sure they're just looking for keeping doing the best they can

[00:35:31] right they're doing the best they can and the standard advice is just lie yeah right he's not

[00:35:36] save yourself the having to navigate all the emotional that's right yeah so just say whatever

[00:35:42] you need to to keep him comfortable i think that pursuing his comfort is important what i've told

[00:35:51] my children is don't say false things i'm a professional philosopher when i have moments of

[00:35:57] clarity it's going to occur to me that you're lying to me and i'll be offended so because the one of the

[00:36:03] few things i can do is detect inconsistency so don't say false things but you don't have to tell me

[00:36:10] everything so if i say is mom coming home today my children are supposed to say not today dad but

[00:36:18] you'll see her soon that's true that's true i'm gonna see her in heaven so that will comfort me

[00:36:27] in my limited capacity i think that's really an important part because one of the hardest parts

[00:36:34] of being an adult child of a dependent parent is its relentlessness and it's not going to end

[00:36:42] until they die it's only going to get more difficult yeah and you make it much much worse

[00:36:47] by sticking to a principle like i'm always going to tell you every last detail of the truth because

[00:36:54] that's what it means to honor you if you stick to that principle you're just going to have i think

[00:37:00] biblically unnecessary levels of grief and tension but i also think that it's permissible

[00:37:07] uh to say to your children it's all right to say false things to keep me comfortable

[00:37:14] the biblical commandment is not is is not to bear false witness there's nothing about you

[00:37:20] telling me what you think will keep me at peace even if it's false like yes mom will be here later

[00:37:28] today knowing that my my memory is up for three hours at a time right like fine that's false mom's not

[00:37:36] coming home today but so i've had godly seminary ethics professors say they've already told their

[00:37:42] kids lie if you have to keep me comfortable right and i think that that's i think that's consistent

[00:37:49] with what the bible teaches uh that's not my instruction to my children but i do think that's

[00:37:55] among the options it's another reason to have a conversation with your kids so help give them

[00:38:01] the help they need to honor you number one principle from all the pastors and professionals that i've

[00:38:09] talked to is affirm don't reject and pursue comfort within whatever instructions you have from them

[00:38:19] but maintaining peace is going to be an important part of honoring them second piece of advice is

[00:38:27] don't delay asking for help it could be that all you're going to do is go to i don't know the pastor

[00:38:36] of adult life my parents have declined to the point that i don't know how to i don't know how to honor

[00:38:43] them yeah go get help and then the director of ministries will connect you with people who know how to

[00:38:48] navigate the system that's right can help them get medical attention from someone who's an expert in that

[00:38:55] kind of dependence so don't delay it's like hospice yeah everybody waits too long to enroll their loved

[00:39:05] one in hospice care getting professional and pastoral help through this transition and into a new way of

[00:39:15] relating is going to make an enormous difference in how large the burden is that you're carrying yeah

[00:39:21] third piece of advice enlist the voices of your parents pastors and friends people who knew them

[00:39:33] to help to understand them so even if they've done a good job of talking to you about what how they think

[00:39:38] they want things to go they're not going to anticipate everything they might get it completely wrong

[00:39:44] but their friends who are still able to to communicate for them and especially the the people who've been

[00:39:52] overseeing them spiritually pastors elders ministry directors those are going to people who are going to

[00:40:01] be able to say this is what i know your mother would have wanted here and that can give you comfort

[00:40:08] that you are you're doing what she would choose would she want to live with you no she knows that you've got

[00:40:16] three little ones at home and it's uh it's almost as much as your wife can handle just to have three

[00:40:24] children adding mom mom wouldn't want to do that right okay so and her friends may know that

[00:40:31] in a way that you're going to be slow to believe you might think oh no that's just my selfish heart

[00:40:37] no you can get really good advice from people who knew your parents so listen to them seek them out and

[00:40:47] listen to them fourth piece of advice when you're talking to people who have a professional obligation

[00:40:54] to care for your parents physicians assisted living facility directors nursing home staff

[00:41:02] anybody who has a legal obligation to protect them you want to be careful to explain what they would want

[00:41:10] as what your parents would choose i went to a professional conference on caring for dependent parents

[00:41:19] well it was a secular conference and so the the there was a session where the the person who was

[00:41:26] supposed to make the presentation didn't show up so there were 25 of us sitting around what are we

[00:41:30] going to talk about and so we just started telling stories and i didn't have any stories because i was

[00:41:34] there to learn but these were professionals and what they ended up they wanted to talk about how you

[00:41:40] handle new romantic romantic relationships in a memory care unit in a nursing home

[00:41:49] so what do you do when a man whose wife is still alive but he's his alzheimer's means he doesn't

[00:41:56] remember who he is let alone that he has a wife right but he becomes physically intimate with a woman

[00:42:01] who also doesn't remember that her husband is alive so this is you're a staff member and you see them

[00:42:09] being physically intimate what do you do and all 24 other people in this big circle this

[00:42:17] utterly ad hoc session agreed that no no you don't stop them because that's because this is the last

[00:42:29] chance they have to have fun so you don't stop and i and so i finally uh joined the conversation i said but

[00:42:37] but what if you're real sure that's not what that man would want that he was a faithful husband

[00:42:43] his whole life who never would have been dallying physically with another woman uh he said look uptight

[00:42:53] people they should just get over themselves this is a chance for him to have some fun you should let

[00:42:59] him i said well what if the what if the children saw this happening what would happen they said well it's

[00:43:07] going to depend what they say if they say no you have to stop that we don't like what's happening

[00:43:14] we don't have to do anything but if they say he would not choose that he would want you to stop them

[00:43:24] then we have to because if the children are reporting what their parents would want interesting the

[00:43:32] legally obligated people have to follow that so be very careful how you express what you want it's not

[00:43:40] what you want it's what they would want yeah so um it was a really funny session just to finish that

[00:43:48] story because it's too funny so someone else in the group said well but what if the woman was

[00:43:53] uh was a kosher jew all her life but now she really wants to eat bacon and everybody in the room said

[00:44:01] you keep her from eating the bacon oh yeah of course right yeah because you know that would violate her

[00:44:07] sense of self it's a fun session to be a part of no sex should be maximized but eating bacon we can

[00:44:19] limit that uh the last piece of advice and this is going to be kind of maybe obvious and that is not

[00:44:27] to give in to despair uh there's a lot of advice that you will meet if you look for books or podcasts

[00:44:35] on this topic for adult children with dependent parents that really amounts to your number one

[00:44:44] goal is not to let your your now dependent parent ruin your life establish boundaries develop a kind of

[00:44:52] stoic lack of emotion about the whole thing harden yourself so that their decline is not making you

[00:45:03] a wreck and that's not the gospel story that's not jesus jesus doesn't harden himself against the

[00:45:12] brokenness of the world he's at the tomb of lazarus he is angry he knows he's going to raise lazarus from

[00:45:18] the dead right and yet he is emotionally torn up over what is happening here to these people he's all in

[00:45:28] he's not protecting himself and i think that's part of what the holy spirit does now it's not you alone

[00:45:38] finding a way to love your difficult parent it's the body of christ together yeah praying for you

[00:45:47] hearing you hearing you telling your story providing relief care a time for you to go

[00:45:54] spend some time while someone else watches your dependent parent watches your mother

[00:46:02] so it's not something that we bear all by ourselves with soft hearts it's something we collectively

[00:46:11] bear with soft hearts and we look for ways so this is something for the church to be doing

[00:46:18] is looking for people who are moving into this role or have been playing this role for years

[00:46:25] and you look for ways that you can pour yourself out for them to give them some relief to pray for them

[00:46:32] just to hear them process and not to not to fix things not to judge just to hear because satan loves to

[00:46:41] tell you no one cares that this is hard yeah you're just obeying because god's going to crush you if you

[00:46:49] don't obey that's a lie yeah so that's the last piece of practical advice is uh not to despair

[00:46:57] just one thing as you brought that up what if your parents are unbelieving and you're part of a faith

[00:47:06] community well this all operates on the church body of the parents will come and care and support and

[00:47:17] support oh no i'm thinking i'm thinking that the church body of of the children alongside the children

[00:47:22] right they're coming alongside the children and we don't know how god works in the hearts so people

[00:47:29] who are let's start with the cognitively impaired ones we don't know uh how god changes their hearts

[00:47:36] we know that god is not limited he doesn't only travel through our ability to reason through the beauty of

[00:47:44] the gospel so when our hearts become hearts of flesh and we're able to hear the gospel as the glorious

[00:47:52] thing that it is it's not that we reason our way then it's that it's obviously beautiful and i think

[00:48:00] the gospel can be obviously beautiful for people who are no longer reasoning carefully and it might

[00:48:06] become especially beautiful to see that if you're cognitively impaired and you don't know the lord

[00:48:11] and your children are being loved to death by the members of their church that might be the most

[00:48:19] powerful gospel proclamation that they're going to hear yeah and they're going to hear it through feels

[00:48:25] yeah actions yeah so when your parents aren't believers you are especially careful to respect them

[00:48:34] not to let your frustration and your anger because you've been forgiven for everything and so you want

[00:48:42] to be careful not to give let's suppose your parents are just physically limited or just angry

[00:48:46] you're going to go out of your way to show them the fruit of the spirit you're going to be gentle

[00:48:53] you're going to be kind you're going to be patient and when they finally say why are you so

[00:49:00] consistently nice to me i am being terrible to you because eventually they will just want to know

[00:49:05] what's going on i'm treating you abysmally and you're not fighting back i thought i raised a fighter

[00:49:12] something like that right um and then and then it can just be as brief as jesus calls me to love you

[00:49:20] and to care for you and i owe him everything it can be as simple as that it doesn't have to be a long

[00:49:26] now let's go do a bible study together it's just that's your that's your reason your reason is i look

[00:49:34] called me to care for you as a blessing to me and also to you it pleases god and it's good for me

[00:49:43] to care for you and they're not going to know that you don't know that by thinking hard you know that

[00:49:51] because your heart was opened to the truth of the word of god and so you know that and they're not

[00:49:56] going to know it until you tell them so when your parents aren't believers it is i will grant harder

[00:50:03] your unbelieving parents are not going to thank you for doing what's pleasing to god and good for

[00:50:11] everyone they're going to act like this is what they deserve right and they're probably going to be

[00:50:17] disappointed that what they think they deserve isn't everything that you're going to do because

[00:50:25] sometimes there will be other things more important than giving them exactly what they're demanding

[00:50:29] yeah well we've uh turned over a number of stones here and um i'm just so thankful for you dr davis

[00:50:38] and in all of your work in this area and i know there are many who are listening to this there may

[00:50:43] be many who are listening to this who thought oh i'm not really dealing with that quite yet uh but

[00:50:48] they certainly know of somebody uh who is and would benefit from hearing this and so we recommend that

[00:50:55] you pass this episode along and um as always we thank the lord for you and we thank you for taking

[00:51:03] the time to share with us thanks john candid is a podcast from leading the way with dr michael

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