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Elderly

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #86: Secret Sisters/Brothers with the Elderly

Posted on April 17, 2026

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 86 of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

This one’s great to do anytime of year, but summertime is prime when the kids are out of school.

Pass out a questionnaire to your elderly members. Ask them about their favorites: home items, snacks, scents, office supplies, shopping venues, colors and hobbies Make sure you ask about birthday and anniversary dates.

Then distribute the completed questionnaires to your young people. (Teens love to do this!) Young people need structure, so assign specifically here. Make sure the young partner is anonymously remembering his/her older “partner” with a card or small gift at least every two weeks. You will need to take five minutes of class time or family Bible time each week to be sure this is getting done. (It’s somewhat easier if you are doing this with your own children, of course, but the “peripheral” kids in the youth group may be the most blessed in the gifting.) Our kids live in a world of largely irresponsible youth, so you will need to help and bolster, at least at first. Sometimes each child will need to take more than one adult. Sometimes each adult will have multiple young people who are “gifting” them. Surpluses on both sides are fine; even great. This is one secret gifting program, though, that is not reciprocal. Those who receive the little gifts are exclusively the elderly.

At the end of the gifting period–perhaps after about three months, plan a meal for the kids to reveal their identities to the elderly partners. This time the gift will be signed and opened in front of the young gift-giver. This day is the most fun of all. There’s lots of encouragement to go around on both sides and, just like that, the congregation becomes less age-segregated and closer.

I’m saying today….do this one! Empathy for the age-related challenges that elderly people face is largely missing in the teens of our world.  Christianity calls our teens to be holy/set apart in the way they view elderly people, particularly their brothers and sisters in Christ.

You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord (Lev.19:32).

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5)

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #68: Elderly Overnight

Posted on April 18, 2024

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 68  of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

Not everyone will be able to do this. You may not know this person or you may have too many younger kids to make it work. But I could not skip this one. It made a profound impact on our family. 

We knew another family who was caring for an aged father in their home. He was no longer able to live on his own because of dementia and other health issues. He had preached the gospel all of his life and he loved to be around people. He loved to sing and he loved to do magic tricks for kids and teens. 

So, on a couple of occasions, when his family, who cared for him, had an out-of-town emergency or just needed a break, he came over to our house for a day or two. I cannot even tell you how impactful this was on young teens. 

They learned patience. They listened to the same jokes and stories over and over. and they learned to laugh again and again. They taught their friends this. 

They learned illustrations that were powerful for the plan of salvation and teaching the lost. They had to learn them because they were presented so many times. 

They learned to spread the joy. They had friends over who sang and sang through the night, because that’s what this wonderful man loved the most. The music in my living room was some of the most beautiful I will hear in this lifetime, and young people were learning to be comfortable around elderly people who were on a different spectrum of thought. 

They learned to respect the hoary head. They watched us and heard us speaking about the many lives who had come to know Christ as a result of this man’s work. They saw, in a practical way, the honor that should be given to those who have sacrificed for the Cause, and, really, to all the elderly among us. They understood the value in keeping the elderly from institutions and caring for them in our homes when it is possible. 

The funniest part was when it got to be midnight, and then two a.m., and the kids were still singing and he was still having so much fun. I said “Okay, now. You have to take your night meds. It’s past time. ”

He replied “Oh no. I take those when I go to bed and I am not going to bed yet.”

The kids just learned a lot. Even if the “ask” is not there, I’d still make this happen if possible for kids growing up in a self-centered world. It’s a little investment for a big return. SO many lessons learned. 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Mama’s K.I.S.S. #64–Sleepovers with Titus 2 Widows

Posted on July 12, 2023

 

As you know, if you’ve been reading, for quite some time, I’ve occasionally been running little installments called “Mama’s K.I.S.S.” I know that lots of readers could give many more and far more creative ideas than I can offer, but these installments are just a few tried and true and mostly old-fashioned ideas for putting service hearts in our kids.  This is number 64  of a list of one hundred ways we train our kids to serve. K.I.S.S. is an acronym for “Kids In Service Suggestions”.

 

Han’s kids several years later with Mrs. Dorothy

Before anyone goes all bonkers about sleep-overs with adults, let me just say that I do know the crazy world in which we live and let me preface by saying that we knew the widows very well and they were Titus two older women. But one of my teen daughter’s favorite things all through the teen years was having spend-the-night parties with great and faithful widows in the church.  She and Mrs. Jo Hicks loved to watch movies into the wee hours of the morning (think the Megan Follows “Anne of Green Gables” and the like). But Hannah also loved to host groups of older and widowed saints in our cabin. She will treasure the memory of Mrs. Dorothy, Mrs. Ruby and Mrs. Carol all bunked-out in the cabin. If you know these women, you know they experienced side-splitting laughter into the early hours. Hannah was in her element and no one in the group was within 50 years of her own age. 

I really don’t know of a better way to put Titus two into action than this one. It took some hospitality prep work. Hannah learned a lot from older saints. But I think they were blessed, too. One of them asked Hannah to be her traveling companion to Paris. That took about .00003 seconds to decide. These friendships serve to pull kids out of peer-dependence and into service. I’d recommend! 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

I Might Need to Go Home…

Posted on July 6, 2017

I think I may need to go home for a bit.  This is my 11th day straight of being here with my sweet nonagenarian. I have three more days to go and then I’m going to have my break down, cat scan and meltdown. But, even while I am having them, I will miss him. I will miss his silliness, his voracious appreciation for Waffle House and his “I-can-try-this” spirit. 

While there’s so much fun at his house, including, this time, a 4th of July visit from the Giselbachs, and a birthday party for my daughter Hannah, there are also some compromises you learn to make—compromises in cleanliness and order, schedules and nutrition. You learn to cut corners. You learn to improvise. You learn that there are some smallish things you just allow to blow away in the big wind of making life the best it can be, even in its decline.

For instance: 

  1. You compromise on the definition of a dirty towel. “This one could hang around for one more bath.”
  2. You’re up for sleeping very late in the morning if the nonagenarian is game (which is a rarity, for sure.)
  3. You give in on your eleventh visit to “the House” and order a waffle at the place that bears the name of that perforated disc of unprofitable calories. 
  4. You find  a lot of entertainment value in watching high school kids that you’ve never heard of playing basketball and you even start rooting for something called “east” in said game. 
  5. Although your husband is a clock repairman, you ask him to disable the striking function of that clock in Dad’s bedroom, just hoping it might be the culprit in the gazillion night time  trips to the bathroom. 
  6. And that dog! What is so good about that ”best dog he has ever had”?? Best is not what I use to describe that flower-digging, trash retrieving, shoe chewing, mud-slinging, child- mauling, yard littering, deer chasing mutt. But I love that dog, anyway. He brings great joy to the one who thinks he is Lassie reincarnated. 
  7. Does it really matter if birthday presents are wrapped in Christmas paper in July? I think not.
  8. Do you have to have swim diapers for babies to get in the pool? They’re nice, but nah. 
  9. And does the P-H level in the pool have to be right on? Do all the leaves have to be swept out? I’ve had a great time in a lot of creeks, so I guess, no. 
  10. Can pants with jelly, coffee, mud and ketchup on them be worn to worship? Sure, just make sure it’s all on the tie, too. You need a match. 
  11. Clean carpet may be overrated anyway.
  12. You can’t worry about money you poured into a pool that’s still cloudy or plants that got dug up, or medicine that got spilled in the dish water, or hearing aids that got microwaved in a bowl of jelly beans. Irretrievable=Forgotten.
  13. Trade-offs are important. Sometimes you trade a few blood pressure points for a great dessert and a happy camper in the ward. 
  14. Sometimes the safest walker is not the coolest one. So you go for cool and stay very close by.
  15. When you’re more tired than you’ve ever been, you go ahead and do those band stretches and can lifts right along with him. You know you need them anyway and he is 94! You know he’s got to be even more tired than you!
  16. Rejoice about the mud in the car. It means he is still going places and that’s why you bought those mud mats anyway.
  17. Don’t fret over contradictions like “Why is a ninety-four-year-old man applying something called ‘Youthair’” ? Fretting uses up brainpower.
  18. Don’t worry that you cannot explain everything to his satisfaction. Sometimes you just have to say “Well, I know it might be better sometimes to do this your way, but today, we are going to have to do it like this.” or “I know you are capable of doing this alone, but we are always going to do this together….That’s just how it is.”
  19. It’s really okay to put the towels in the machine with the dress slacks occasionally. Sometimes you just have to choose between dirty and fuzzy. I pick fuzzy.
  20. It’s okay to use Clorox wipes on everything…really. Remember, what kills a mouse in a laboratory probably won’t kill a man, and this man’s been through World War II already.
  21. Does it really matter if something way back there in the refrigerator is getting moldy? Does it really matter right now… tonight? Probably not. After all, you are here and you are getting out all the food for all the meals and you can probably recognize mold when you open it later.
  22. Does it matter if he wants you to order enough black Pilot pens on eBay to almost certainly outlive him (I mean 100 of them)? no. Someone will use them. 
  23. Does it matter if he wants to engage every stranger who has on an Alabama shirt, hat or even carries an Alabama keychain …I say, does it matter if he wants to engage him about football? No. In fact, people usually even enjoy that. 
  24. Is six eggs a day too many for one person? Well, it’s hard to criticize the diet of somebody who’s made it to 94. 
  25. Is it always just wrong to have the window open in one room while the central AC is running? You have to really think about this one, but when it makes the person who freezes in July comfortable in his little bedroom at night while still making everyone else sleep a little better in those precious hours, I say “God bless it!”  

See, here’s the thing. Contentment is comprised of compromise. If you’re unwilling to compromise the happiness and well-being of the one who provided for you when you were small and extremely dependent, you learn to live with other, smaller compromises. After all, he probably did without a few luxuries, made a few sacrifices, got up a few times at night and expended some energy even in some tired times to be sure I made it to this place of calling more of the shots. It’s all good. 

I’m surely not perfect at this care-giving thing. My sisters are both better than I. I come to the end of the rope sometimes before I’ve tied the knot. I talk in maxed-out decibels sometimes when I’m not sure the hearing aid is really at fault. I sometimes cry and I fall asleep in unusual places. I’m pretty sure my judgment is impaired at times. I can get to a point of poor listening and quick response. And today, I told the doctor, “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.” …and then I totally forgot what that thing was. I think something about Dad being forgetful. 

But I’m hoping the care we can give him is still better than the alternative care by people who do not know him. They might not be willing or able to make all the compromises. They might not even know about the place we are going where there are no necessary compromises, which is really the catalyst for all our decisions for all of life’s challenges.  I know that some good people certainly have to rely on care from outsiders.  I get that. It’s a  difficult compromise we may yet have to make. But for now, it feels right to make other, more insignificant compromises for contentment. Protecting life and nurturing it on both ends of the spectrum, from unborn to elderly, are responsibilities from God. Sometimes compromises: financial, social and practical, are required to try and make sure we do not compromise spiritually. The key is making them with joy. We are still blessed by much joy in the home of this nonagenarian.

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Mama’s K.I.S.S. #41–Cleaning for Elderly

Posted on April 5, 2016

imagesThis one’s fairly obvious, but it has multiple benefits. if you find an elderly person who needs help with housekeeping and then take your children over to clean for a couple of hours, you’re doing several important things at once:

  1. You’re better equipping your kids to clean their own houses. This is training that will save you, their mom, time in the long run because you will have housekeeping helpers.
  2. You are helping the elderly person in a big way. Old bones, eyes, hands  and muscles often aren’t able to even keep a place sanitary, much less neat and orderly.
  3. You are preparing your daughters to be the kind of wives and homemakers that will bless the lives of their husbands one day.
  4. Unlike some of our suggestions, this one will likely be a grungy job—the kind of job that makes for humility and instills the spirit of each esteeming others better than self (I Cor. 10:24).
  5. The influence of elderly Christians is almost always beneficial to children. Just the time spent in that home will have an effect on your kids, for good.
  6. If you invite other children to go clean with you and your own children, you will be impacting those young hearts for the Lord, too.

Don’t forget the March podcast is this Thursday night. Holly Smith will be joining me. Details are on the “Digging Deep in God’s Word” Facebook page. It’s a great study of the weeping prophet and the persecution that discouraged this great man of God.

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Dear Caregiver…

Posted on February 18, 2016

images-2Dear Caregiver,

I saw you trying to talk your mother into wearing that hearing device for worship. Nothing doing, though.  I saw you pick up the song book when she dropped it…and then the Bible.

I saw you shhhhushing your father when he talked out loud during the communion. I saw you discreetly wipe the grape juice spill from his tie.

I saw you holding your child, the one who was born so prematurely…the one who can’t hold his head up and who has that loud congested pattern of breathing. I saw you just look down at him and smile when someone sitting in front of you stared back toward you out of sheer (and rude) curiosity.

I saw you entertaining your Down’s child while all the other children were in their classes.

I saw you marching those six foster children down the aisle to your pew—the pew with all of the coloring books and kids “sermon sheets” scattered everywhere. I saw you apologizing to Sister Jones when she gave you that speech about how we have a cry room for children who are disturbing the service.

I saw you weep a little when your aged mother struggled to reach the notes for “In the Sweet By and By,” but did not miss a syllable of the words in any of its verses.

I saw you unfolding the walker, pushing the wheelchair, and wiping noses and drools. I saw you picking up dropped things– pills, pieces of food, and conversations.

I heard you laughing about old times with people who can well remember those, although they can seldom remember what happened five minutes ago.

Then I saw you at home— washing sheets and sorting socks, changing diapers and crumbling cornbread into glasses of buttermilk. I saw you cleaning toilets, scrubbing dentures, burning trash, raking leaves, carting off fallen branches, and cleaning out gutters. I saw you carry in that new mattress by yourself and I saw you getting out that ladder to change out light bulbs. I watched you wash curtains, patios and cars.

You are one of the few women that I’ve ever seen washing feet in the real “service” sense of washing feet; you were washing them for people who can no longer reach their feet.

I saw you at the ER, the clinic, the pain center and the pediatrician’s office. I saw you in the hospital room, the waiting room, the therapy room, and the nursing home room. I’ve passed you in the retirement center, the trauma center, and the homeless shelter. I’ve seen you feeding, reading, treating and pleading. I’ve seen you laugh because the other alternative is crying and I’ve seen you cry when you are too tired to laugh any more.

I’ve seen you treating pain when your own pain must surely be, at least, comparable and I’ve watched  you clean someone else’s house that was already cleaner than the one you live in.

I know your husband and your children, too. I know that they often miss you, but that someone has taught them to be unselfish, too, and so they are content to support you as you care for others.

I see your suitcase that rarely ever gets put in the closet. I’ve seen your Delta credit card statement and your frequent flyer miles statements. You accumulate them quickly and then use them up going the same route for which you accumulated.

I’ve seen your pocketbook that has your checks and bank statements and someone else’s, too. I’ve seen you file two sets of tax forms, mow two yards, stock two pantries and keep the oil changed in two cars.

I know you sometimes are reimbursed for expenditures, but I also know that’s not always the case. I understand that some expenditures of emotion and time and stress are not reimburse-able. You don’t get reimbursed for the nights of sleep you lost rocking that baby or for the back pain you experienced during and after lifting that elderly gentleman. You don’t get reimbursed for the humiliation you suffered when the dementia kicked in and your mom, who has never used a curse word in her life, yelled obscenities at you in the foyer before worship. You don’t get any payback for sleep lost in the middle of the night when a child is sick or frightened or for the panic that ensues when you can’t reach your elderly parent. You don’t get reimbursed for time lost looking for things lost: hearing aid batteries, telephones, post office box keys, reading glasses, sippy cups, pacifiers, medications…even cars in parking lots.

I’ve noticed that you really do enjoy what you do because you really love that person who is so utterly dependent on you. But I also can’t help but notice that sometimes your job is not pretty. Sometimes it’s embarrassing… sometimes smelly…and always demanding.

I’m proud of you, though, because in all the situations, you keep learning. You’ve learned how to use Pampers or Depends, Orajel or Polident, Gripe Water or Miralax, video monitors or blood pressure monitors, high chairs or lift chairs, developmental therapy or occupational therapy and walkers or…well…walkers. You’re spending your time waiting –praying–for things to develop and grow, or watching–praying–while they fade away and fall out.  It really is a circle of life. Helpless to helpless we go in the natural course of this life.

But sweet and very strong Caregiver, you do what you do, not because you have to do it…not even because you know it may be necessary for someone to do it one day for you. Look around. Not everyone who could be caring for a loved one IS caring. Not everyone who will one day need the care is giving it today. There are many people who ultimately need care before they ever stop to give care. You, on the other hand, are one of many irreplaceable people who gives some of yourself every day to make life happen for people who just can’t go it alone…people who are valuable, people who have eternal souls, many of whom will one day be whole and burden-free on the other shore. You provide necessities, comfort and security for them till that sweet day of release.

You are the light of the world to a life shadowed by disability, the salt of the earth to one who, but for you, faces days of tasteless monotony, the city on a hill for someone who desperately needs a reason to look up. You are spending your time with “the least of these”. You are spending time with the Lord.

And in this precious process, you are happy. There may be some tears and some angst here and there, but you count even those days as blessings. You are doing exactly what you want to do. Continue Reading