Dear Friends October 3 2021

Dear Friends

You're Helping 'Masterpieces
of God's Creation'

Week of October 3, 2021
Prayer Requests

Dear Friends,

Let's start with a video!

We've found that many caregivers have a tendency to begin a description of their particular work with "I'm only ... "

As in:

--"I'm only helping with the shopping, laundry, cooking, and housecleaning, and getting my wife to her doctors' appointment, while she recovers from the surgery."

--Or, "I'm only stopping by to see Dad after work three days a week to make sure he's OK and maybe once on the weekend. Sometimes twice."

--Or, "I'm only going to the nursing home at lunch time and most days I'm not there for more than an hour."

Yes, someone is always doing more. Yes, some other family is always facing tougher times than yours. But, it seems obvious from the descriptions we hear, most caregivers are doing a lot more than they realize they're doing. Including being frontline in the pro-life movement.

We think that needs mentioning during Respect Life Month.

In the middle of doing the laundry, the stopping by the pharmacy, the going to the nursing home, the handling the doctors' appointments and all the rest, it can be easy to overlook the fact that, as a caregiver, you're also showing a tremendous respect for human life.

Maybe you'd like to be out with others who are praying the rosary in front of the abortion clinic. Or be able to open your home to a young woman facing a difficult pregnancy. Or be gathering signatures to defeat a state measure legalizing assisted suicide. Or be lobbying Congress about health care reform from a pro-life perspective.

But you can't be. Not now. Not with a primary responsibility to help your care-receiver.

Maybe this never occurred to you but what you're doing as a caregiver plays a central role in helping today's society come to realize what pro-life means.

Your actions speak volumes and have a rippling effect that reaches far beyond that small circle of you and your care-receiver, or you and your family, or you and your friends.

We have no doubt that you aren't tooting your own horn about your caregiving. But we also have no doubt that the seemingly little light that is your personal apostolate shines brightly in an oftentimes dark, dark world.

Thank you for what you're doing.

You remain in my prayers.

Bill

- - -

This week we're so pleased to welcome Theresa H. of Arizona as the newest member of the Friends of St. John the Caregiver. Please keep her and her intentions in your prayers. She has promised to pray for you and yours.

Again this week we cordially invite you to join the Friends of St. John the Caregiver! (FSJC's programs include YourAgingParent.com and CatholicCaregivers.com.) You can find out more about becoming a member here.

No meetings, no dues. All we ask is that you pray for caregivers and those receiving care. Our members include caregivers, care-receivers, and those who support both (including quite a few former caregivers).

You can:

Past "Dear Friends" Letters

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No, you may not be getting to Mass as often as you used to. You can’t make it to the adoration chapel, the retreat, or the mission. Perhaps you haven’t opened your Bible since . . . you don’t know when. And maybe you’re still unable to say even a few decades of the Rosary without nodding off.

But ...

You’re doing God’s will for you right here, right now.

And your life has become a living prayer called “caregiving.”

You remain in my prayers,