The image of God

I have learned a lot about the image of God in my first month as a care assistant for the elderly. Most of the residents suffer from Dementia and are in varying stages of deteroriation. I remember helping to feed some of the residents on my first day, and thinking about what being alive means and what it means to have the image of God. Some of our residents are immobile and don't have the ability to communicate. They are made comfortably in recliner chairs. I remember thinking about how they appeared catatonic, or in a sort of coma. But they had all the bodily functions, and could eat, drink and swallow. They were still very much alive, even though they appeared not to have any mental capacity left.

It made me think about how a human being is still alive after many of the things that we equate with quality of life have left. The ability to speak, to make relationships, to enjoy hobbies, to express one's hopes and dreams. A person stays alive when all of these things that we traditionally equate with personhood fade away. The image of God that is within them - eternal, everlasting - can never be diminished, no matter how much the person is reduced by sickness and old age.

I learned fairly quickly the importance of treating the residents as people with all the glory and worth that they ever had. Everyone has this because of what God has put inside them. So I learned to talk to these residents as though they can hear, as though the characteristics that are so evident in the photos on their bedroom walls, the details of their histories, and stories about how they used to be, are just as evident as they ever were.

A simple but powerful thing.

I see the image of God in people being forgotten here sometimes. All the residents had hopes and dreams and great and ordinary lives. Like you and me. Easy to forget when someone can't hold a conversation and forgets how to walk. But not so easy to forget when you look into their eyes and see the same thing that we all want at the end of the day - to be respected for the light that God has put in each and every one of us. The light that can never be put out.

The fragility of life

On Monday, I started a new job as a care assistant at a care home for the elderly. It has been an exhausting week learning new procedures, faces and names, and realising anew the privilege of being a carer and being part of such a vulnerable and intimate time in individuals' lives.

Today, I also had my first 'episode' in what feels like a very long time. It had been such a long period of stability and contentment that I had wondered whether depression was a distant memory. During these 'episodes', all my thoughts and emotions scramble together like a sudden attack, a chaotic mess of disjointed painful noises overlapping in my mind. I am left wracked and unable to figure out what to do. Lost and alone. Then I come out of it, and have to figure out where to go from there. How to pick myself up again.

The numbness is subsiding as I write. I am now struck by the fragility of life. We go out of our way to ignore it, to pretend it's not there. To go through the motions of life, managing well, self-sufficient and successful. I think it works for the most part. And then something hits. Setbacks. Illness, death, pain. Something happens to throw everything out of kilter, and we realise again that the walls we construct around us are made less of sturdy brick but more of panes of glass, glued together to the best of our abilities, but so easily shattered and torn down by the storms of life. Human beings are so fragile. Our lives are so breakable. I am seeing this more and more every day, especially since returning to nursing and care. I am learning to accept this more and more in myself. Everything could change from one day to the next.

Life is a strange thing. We could lose everything in an instant. Yet we believe and act as though what we have and who we are stands forever. That we are infinite, invincible. An illusion easy to live by.

Many of you will know the Serenity Prayer, famously adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous. The original Serenity Prayer is attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. With no wisdom or conclusions to offer, I end this post with this prayer.

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.