Maintain Your Spiritual Health

Tips for Caregivers: Maintain Your Spiritual Health

Spirituality means different things to different people. When dealing with a serious illness and death, spiritual issues often arise. In this search for understanding, you may find yourself asking questions like:

Why has God done this to someone I love?
Why am I being punished like this?

What did my loved one or I do to deserve this?

Accept the situation.

Often, there is no reason or logical explanation. Don’t spend too much of your energy trying to understand why bad things happen; instead, try to focus on accepting the situation, coping with it and allowing yourself to learn and grow. Consider ways in which you can explain through whatever beliefs you have.

Be open to what’s next.

You may also be wondering about the existence of an afterlife or what it’s like. You may take comfort in believing your loved one is in a better place with other loved ones.

Continue to practice your faith.

Set time aside to pray, meditate or practice spiritual rituals. If it is important to you, find a way to attend a worship service. If attending worship isn’t feasible, listen to spiritual books, sermons, music or talk to a faith leader or chaplain.

Try to find meaning in your role as a caregiver.

“To be a caregiver means to allow those for whom we care to unveil our own illusions of immortality and to claim a much wider and richer understanding of life. Every time we express our faith through the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we say that we believe in life everlasting. It is precisely this faith in eternal life that can radically change our vision of caregiving.”
(Priest, Henri Nouwen)

To learn more, visit Tabitha.org/Hospice.