Sometimes looking through old photo albums makes people cry. Today, looking through old files on my computer made me cry. In 2020, when the entire world closed and everyone was shut away inside their homes, I was desperate to find a way to connect with the nursing home residents in my mother-in-law’s facility where we’d…
Yesterday afternoon I witnessed grace, mercy, and compassion poured out in the most unexpected of places and between the most unexpected of people. For the past several years, we have partnered with the local detention center each fall to bring pumpkins and mums to area nursing homes. A small group of qualifying inmates works a…
Sometimes at the nursing home, after we finish up our little church gathering, a resident will come up to me and say, “I liked your sermon.” Immediately, after saying thank you, I say, “Oh, but it wasn’t a sermon. As a woman, I am not a preacher or a pastor. We just read the Bible…
In 2019, there was a study released that detailed the reasons why people do not go to visit their loved ones in a nursing home. The top reason given was that their job or work hours prevented them from doing so. And the number two reason? It’s too depressing. That’s right, 40% of very honest…
I’m going to be painfully honest– I was totally ready to throw in the towel with our nonprofit. I wasn’t going to stop serving nursing home residents personally, I was just going to put the organization on the back burner for a while. Our family has undergone a lot of personal stress this year, and…
We’ve built walls of convenience, busyness, pleasure, and comfort for ourselves, but we’ve called them walls of safety and care for the frail and vulnerable elderly. We push them outside our walls and behind the locked doors of the nursing home.
A few weeks ago, with the help of some wonderfully talented volunteers, I led a Vacation Bible School for our friends in the nursing home. This was something we first tried last summer, and it was such a huge success that I couldn’t wait to do it again this year. So for three afternoons in…
Dear Church, I’ve spent almost four years serving in the nursing home. In those four years, I’ve wrestled with some “big” issues, not the least of which is why God allows these precious souls to linger on, often in such pain, mental incapacity, and complete physical inability. Not too long ago I read a book…
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