02-24-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
February 24, 2023
One of our church members, Cynthia Pitts, shared the following with the CareGivers Support Group here at the church, and then she shared it with me. It really resonated.

By Heidi Priebe
To Love Someone Long-Term is to Attend a Thousand Funerals of the People They Used to Be.

The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.

But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.

​It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.
Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.
Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.


That first line is powerful, insightful and helpful: “To Love Someone Long-Term is to Attend a Thousand Funerals of the People They Used to Be.”

How often, O God, have I lived as if others were put on this earth to live and act as I want them to? Provide me with both humility and curiosity to truly journey with people as they are in this moment. Amen.