In recent weeks, I\u2019ve found myself struggling\nwith comments or insinuations that I just can\u2019t seem to shake off. These things that have been said or implied\nhave been in reference to the part of our population that is the most\nvulnerable right now\u2014our elders. It\nseems as if some of us might believe that the loss of loved ones who are\nadvanced in years, who are living with one or more illnesses, who have been\nunable to stay in their own homes, might not matter all that much to our society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a nearby facility, where the only\nparent left in our family resides right now, nearly twenty people have moved on\nfrom this realm and many more are still battling the virus our world is trying\nhard to figure out how to defeat. And\neach person who has moved on from there was not just an older person in a\nnursing home; each person there had more titles and served more purposes than I\ncould possibly list. Here are just a few\ndescriptors: the matriarch or patriarch of a family, a living-breathing book of\nhistory, a grand encourager\/exhorter, a giver of \u201creal\u201d unconditional love, a\nfountain of true wisdom, an esteemed expert in this thing called \u201clife,\u201d and a dearly\nbeloved child of God; and each and every one of them deserved to spend their\nfinal moments, on this side of Heaven, surrounded by people they loved most\u2014the\npeople who most loved them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, those lovely men and women who\nreside elsewhere now were not in a nursing facility because they were no longer\nloved and wanted and worthy; they were there because, at some point in time,\nthe decision to be in such a facility was deemed necessary. And their lives and their intrinsic worth\/value\nwere not diminished one single bit by the season they entered into when a\nnursing facility became their \u201chome\u201d here. \nTheir quality of life might have changed but that doesn\u2019t mean that it disappeared\naltogether. And right now, someone is missing\nhearing their voice, seeing their smile, stroking their hand; and someone is thinking\nthat they might have been willing to do most anything for a little more time\nwith them\u2014for just a few more moments here, even if those moments were painful\nones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I don\u2019t believe for one second\nthat God is surprised by any of this, I find myself surprised, surprised that\npeople can think the loss is less when it\u2019s our elders; the shortcomings of our\nhumanity continue to undo me and make me wonder why God ever chose to bother\nwith us at all. But he did, because to\nhim we were\/are worth it. And I must\nkeep reminding myself of this every time I hear or sense someone ranking tragedies\nbased upon length of lifespan or level of physical and\/or mental wellness or even\nmaterial resources. Only God gets to\ndecide what any of us is worth, and he clearly did decide that and then he laid\nit out for us to see\u2014God decided that we\u2019re all, whether younger or older or in\nbetween, worth dying for. Now, it\u2019s up\nto us to treat one another as if we do all matter just that much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo not cast me away when I am old;\ndo not forsake me when my strength is gone.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Psalm 71:9 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent weeks, I\u2019ve found myself struggling with comments or insinuations that I just can\u2019t seem to shake off. These things that have been said or implied have been in reference to the part of our population that is the most vulnerable right now\u2014our elders. It seems as if some of us might believe that […] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VlK3-9h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}