Embodiment in Caregiving

Hospital Ashes and adventures in getting spiritually unstuck

Every once in a while, hospital rooms are eerily quiet. Strangely peaceful. But all too often, just as one begins to doze off, the screeching of the IV pump is quick to sober anyone in the room back to reality. It’s happened to me more times than I can count. But on this particular day several years ago, I couldn’t shake the numbness. My young daughter was resting, sedated on a ventilator in the PICU, but my caregiving brain fog was thick. I vividly remember attempting to remain in that psychologically numb state in an effort to avoid an overwhelming wave of emotion. My solution was to venture downstairs for a quick caffeinated pick me up. Now, our kids are frequent fliers at our local children’s hospital. We regularly navigate a variety of complex medical needs. But just because this dynamic is familiar doesn’t make it easier, and I regularly find myself oscillating between fight mode and exhaustion. This day was no different.

The elevator opened, and upon noticing a chalkboard sign next to the piano, I remembered it was in fact Ash Wednesday. I stopped in my tracks, paused for a breath, and tilted my head. You see, I grew up in a methodist household and had a long stint in Pentecostal spaces, but at this point in time I was pretty solidly Baptist. I had dismissed the practice of receiving ashes as reductive and performative, “outside of scripture”- I had a million reasons. But standing there that morning, feeling so outside of myself and out of touch with my body, those ashes felt like a strange invitation to feel something real. So, I did. And I can’t explain how, but the feeling of the brush of fingertips and powdered ash gave me my humanity back in a moment where I desperately needed resist that spiritual frostbite that I was fighting.

But now, years later, as I transition back and forth between my role as a parent of a patient and my role as a chaplaincy student, I've come to realize that the same numbness I’ve often felt is a shared experience among caregivers. It's not an isolated emotion but a common response to the taxing demands of caring for loved ones in critical conditions.

For caregivers, a very common trauma response is to attempt to compartmentalize outside of ourselves. It’s not just a coping mechanism, it’s a survival skill. We have to get through the hard thing, often at the expense of ourselves. We bulldoze through the emotion of it because the suffering person we’re caring for is the priority. And listen, if this feels too familiar, I get it. If it stings, I feel stung too. But the question I’ve wrestled with time and time again is: how can we caregivers retain our humanity, without falling apart?

Whether you’re caring for disabled and chronically kids like I am, you’re caring for aging parents, or you’re in a caregiving profession- a nurse, a chaplain, a social worker, etc.- my suggestions are to lean into communion, community, and liturgy.

Let’s talk about it.

Simply put, none of us were ever designed to suffer alone, especially we caregivers who are often suffering on behalf of our loved ones. So many of us wish we could trade places. We punish ourselves because we feel more deserving of suffering than our small children. In our anguish, we attempt to rationalize situations that make no sense, but what we really crave is to be cared for ourselves because we require care too. We want to be with someone who understands, who isn’t offput by the brashness and reality of the situation.

So, when I think about who God is and what God is like, and I remember that God in scripture suggests lovingly that we cast our burdens towards him, it’s not a test. He wants our burdens because he knows good and well that they’re too heavy, and most of us can’t cast heavy things far distances. Casting our burdens towards our humble king involves acknowledging his closeness, and removing the heaviness weighing us down so that we might draw even closer. And you know what? I don’t think Jesus holds onto those burdens. I imagine Jesus setting down that burden that we can’t carry, so that He can hold us. How willing would we be to hand those worries over to him if we realized that he’s not just there to be the ringbearer for the heavy things we won’t let go of? God with us is who God is, and there’s no length that God won’t go to to care for and comfort his children that he so deeply loves.

This imagery of being held by God undergirds my next thought here which is to say: Anyone can concoct a makeshift answer that reinforces an independent and individualistic copycat of what our faith is supposed to be. But in crisis, only the real thing will do. And even the most carefully crafted answers do not hold a candle to God’s closeness and commitment to compassion. Communing with God while in crisis doesn’t have to be complicated. “Help” is a whole prayer. “This is too much” is honest. “Reveal your nearness” is real. But it’s God’s with-ness in suffering that gets us through.

Now, I know when you saw the word community, some of you gulped. Because you know all too well that too often in crisis situations, when you are the caregiver, the community can feel like one more thing to manage. But community helps us to remain rooted in our inherent interconnectedness. In the same way that we need to avoid getting lost in ourselves or lost from ourselves, we must resist detaching from one another in seasons of diminished capacity. This is why I chose to receive the ashes that day at the hospital chapel. The ashes were my lifeline back. I needed to feel safe fingers. I needed breath that I could trust. I needed to hear a prayer for me that was digestible. Put simply, we can’t feel fully human, without other humans To be human is to belong to one another, so if you find yourself feeling like less than a person in long seasons of caregiving, practice being a person with people. Remain mindful of what you can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear when you are with others. This practice connects our bodies to our need to be human with other people, and our reliance on one another to receive the hands and feet of Christ in a physical way.

And this last suggestion is an invitation to feel like a participant in your own life and faith journey. Liturgies are habits that form us. From scrolling on our phones and dissociating, to thanking God for our hospital tray of chicken tenders, we have agency over these forming habits. Remembering that all of life can be liturgical, all of life is an opportunity to worship, can help us caregivers remember our dependence on God, and his aiding us in surviving every small moment as a whole human. Each small act of caregiving can become a little liturgy if we let it. Every blood sugar check. Every bed change. Every bath. Every medication dose. Every therapy appointment. Every held hand. This isn’t an effort to hyper spiritualize the ordinary, but an invitation back into our own bodies and rhythms for the cord that connects us, when we’re feeling outside of ourselves, isolated from others, and far from God.  So, when I think about those hospital ashes as a liturgy of worship, and a deeply incarnational practice of remembering my own humanity in a place that is defined by life’s fragility, I am able to take small breaths, and small steps, in remembering to allow myself to be cared for beyond quick fixes and coping mechanisms.

When I returned to my daughter’s hospital room, nothing was magically different. Nothing changed. But my spirit felt tethered, not flailing. I could feel my fingers. My breath wasn’t shaking. And I realized that most of the advice I’d received about caregiving was from people who hadn’t done it very much. In reality, making it through those moments isn’t about praying harder, reading the bible more, or exerting additional energy. It’s about the spiritual significance of personhood and presence in caregiving and healing. Amidst the challenges of hospital life and caregiving, I’d encourage you from one caregiver to another to remember this: embracing communion, community, and liturgy isn't just a survival strategy—it's a way to remain connected to the fullness of our own humanity. Not only does this allow us to care for our loved ones well but prevents us from losing ourselves in the process.

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I confess, when I wrote these words, I didn’t think we’d be getting ready for another big surgery so soon, but my child has another big procedure scheduled for later in the month. I’d be lying if I didn’t anticipate fighting off the numbness in advance. Would you pray for us? For a safe surgery, and a smooth hospital stay? I’ll likely be quiet in this space over the next month or so, but I do hope that you’ll keep in touch on threads and Instagram @lizadaye. I also hope you’ll check out Kate Boyd’s Untidy Faith podcast where I’ll be a regular contributor this season as we dive into II Samuel, and Jon Pyle’s latest episode of Better on the Inside where He, Kate, and I have such a phenomenal conversation about soul care and loving one another well.

Be blessed friends.

Liz