Care Giving Contest Entry

About a month back, I came across a flyer for a writing contest inside an industrial-sized box of diapers at my work. I decided to enter the contest, which had a theme of, "What Makes Caregiving Rewarding." It has passed the date that they were going to announce winners, and no one called my phone or sent me an email, so I am going to post it here. I hope someone finds it enjoyable. 

Michael

My Reward

For the past five years my wife and I have moved up and down the state of California— up to the northern coastline and old growth redwoods of Humboldt County where my wife studied for her master's degree, and down to the heartland of the state in the San Joaquin Valley to be near our families—and never have I had trouble finding work as a caregiver. When I was twenty-two, a fourth-year community college student taking his first job as a caregiver, I couldn't believe that there was actually a job where I would tend to all of the bodily needs of individuals, work the worst shifts you could imagine (“Yes I'd love to do another split graveyard shift, thanks!”), get spit on and chased by frying-pan-wielding, potted-meat throwing people, and make minimum wage. I signed up thinking that it was temporary, thinking that I would transfer to a university and get my degree in English, and then wipe my hands of the messy business of caregiving. But it didn't work out that way, not because I didn't finish college—I received my B.A. in English in June of 2006—it wasn't that at all. The problem was that I found I actually liked doing it. But it was more than that; it was good work, honest work, and the most rewarding thing I had ever done in my life.

I am a caregiver in an adult crisis home for people with developmental delays , and as a Christian, I see my placement there as an opportunity to test my faith. I get to try and walk out some of Christ's teachings—to love my neighbor as myself, to bless those who curse me and try to hit me with canned food. Love is an action, the cooking and the cleaning, the bathing and the shaving, the wiping and the changing of diapers are not done because I feel like doing it. They are willfully and purposely done to show my care for those in need of my assistance, to provide them with as much love and honor and dignity as I can. When love is acted out in this way, especially towards those who are sometimes hostile toward that love, I am able to grasp more fully God's love for me. It is in their hostility toward my care that I recognize the hostility I have often had toward the One who cares for me. God's love, like the love I am trying to apply as a caregiver, is not theoretical; it is practically applied to my life in my daily breath and bread. It is love that sustains me, love that keeps my heart beating, and keeps providing for my needs regardless (and often in spite) of my attitude toward it.

After a particularly hard time at work a few months ago, when I had been assaulted several times in the span of a few days and witnessed a young man I cared for get wheeled out of the house on a gurney after a prolonged violent episode in which the police were involved, I began to wonder if I was really cut out for caregiving. All I seemed to be making were the smallest of advances, and those were made only in the face of tremendous struggle. It was at that time when I read about a woman who was caring for her father who was suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's. In the article, the woman said that, as a caregiver, you needed to remember that you are in a marathon, not a sprint. This helped me to remember that it was wrong for me to look for gigantic leaps and bounds of progress as a measure of my success and the meaningfulness of my caregiving. My successes were small and incremental, slowly and daily providing a safer, higher quality of life for those in my care.

There is something rewarding and humbling about being able to serve people in this way, especially when you love them long enough to see those small changes in them. Over time, they begin to trust you, begin to see you not as an adversary but as a helper, a friend. They recognize your love, and they stop using the contents of the pantry as ammunition to hurl at you, stop balling their fists every time you walk past them in the hallway. They start to laugh with you, smiling the big unabashed smiles of those who never learned to be inhibited or to hide their feelings. When this happens, you sense the triumph of love, you sense its changing power, and you begin to understand and be grateful that your labor bears such a a great reward.