Retirement and Parents

Retirement and Parents

1 Timothy 5:3-4 (NKJV) 3 Honor widows who are really widows.4 But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God.

Leviticus 19:32 (NKJV) 32 'You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the LORD.

Baby boomers are a sandwich generation. Our children are somewhere in the generation X to millennial generation groups, and may or may not be entirely self sufficient. On the other hand, our parents, those who are still living, are in the Greatest Generation. They are very proud and self sufficient; but now are getting to the age where they can no longer be self sufficient. What to do?

On the first item, hundreds of books have been written, and I don't have anything to add. You just have to "train up a child in the way he should go" and be ready to let go and trust God when it's time for them to grow up. That sounds simple, but it's a lot harder that it sounds. Too many of us have been "helicopter parents" and it comes as quite a shock to us when it comes time to let go. That's why it takes faith to be a parent. Only God can keep an eye on those precious ones as they fly off on their own.

Now aging parents are a different case. You look up to them and rely on them for decades, then one day you turn around and everything is different. The can-do dad suddenly becomes the one needing help to get anything done. The forever comforting mom is the one that needs care and comfort. That in itself is hard enough to adjust to, but is made harder when the parents don't realize, or perhaps just don't accept, that they are the ones that need help now. How do you help the one who has always helped you and doesn't realize that they are now the ones needing help?

Paul instructs Timothy to teach the church to take care of parents: "... show piety at home and to repay their parent; for this is good and acceptable before God." This is in accord with the tradition of Moses who taught that "you shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man...". Thus we have it on good authority that taking care of our aging parents is the right thing do do, but this doesn't necessarily give us any guidance on how to do that. 

Maybe there is a key in the way that Moses uses the word "honor". A child in diapers and an incontinent old person need some of the same kind of care, but the elderly one is due a measure of honor and respect that you wouldn't necessary accord to the child. That's where it gets hard, continuing to give honor when it gets difficult to help, and especially when that help doesn't seem to be appreciated. The parents probably will even resent the fact that they need help from the very ones that they have loved and cared for for decades. Growing old can get messy!

As I said earlier, I don't have any answers, I just pray that God gives me the wisdom and patience to be able to render tender care and honor at the same time. It's hard but I think the Lord will reward any efforts we make to take care of our parents... with honor.