For over twenty years, I was my mother’s hands. I fed her, drove her to appointments, managed her medications, sat up with her on the hard nights. I got good at it. I got good at fixing things — at showing up, solving problems, making sure she was okay because I was the one making her okay.
This year, that changed. My mom moved into a long-term care facility. And if I’m honest with you, the hardest part wasn’t the paperwork or the logistics. It was the moment I realized I couldn’t be the one holding it all together anymore. Somebody else was going to be in the room when she needed something at 2 a.m. Somebody else was going to be the hands.
I’ve spent thirty years telling other people that God is trustworthy even when life doesn’t make sense. I’ve said it in devotionals, in counseling sessions, standing next to people at their lowest moments. But there’s a difference between believing something and having to live inside of it with no way out but through.
Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” I used to read that verse as comfort. Lately I’ve had to read it as instruction. Because being still isn’t peaceful when you’ve spent two decades being the one who moves, who fixes, who does. Being still, for me, has felt more like surrender than rest.
Here’s what I don’t want to do — I don’t want to hand you a clean bow on this. I’m not fully there. Some days I trust God with my mother’s care and some days I call the facility twice just to make sure she ate lunch. That’s the truth of it. Faith and worry can live in the same day, sometimes the same hour, and God doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to shame me out of either one.
But here’s what I do know. Twenty years of being her caregiver taught me how to love her with my hands. This season is teaching me how to love her with my trust — trusting the people caring for her, trusting the God who was watching over her long before I ever showed up, and trusting that my worth isn’t tied to being indispensable.
Philippians 4:6-7 doesn’t tell us to stop feeling the weight of a hard season. It tells us what to do with it: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Not peace that makes sense of everything. Peace that guards you while things still don’t make sense.
If you’re in a season like this — watching someone you love move into a place you can’t control, handing off a role you’ve carried for years — I want you to hear this from someone still walking through it, not someone who’s already got it figured out: you’re not failing by grieving the role you used to play. You’re not failing by checking in twice. You’re not failing because stillness doesn’t feel peaceful yet.
God doesn’t need you to be her hands anymore. He never actually did. He just used you for a season, and now He’s asking you to trust Him for the next one.
If you’re walking through something similar with a parent, I’ve written more about it here — Trusting God When Your Parent Is in a Nursing Home and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay: A Caregiver’s Faith Journey. And if you’re standing in a season that feels impossible, I wrote about that too, a few years back, when it was my mom’s heart instead of her housing — Trusting and Believing God for the Impossible.
I bless this day in Jesus’ name.