Here during Christmas time, my dearest canine friend died. Trudy was over 15 and one half years old and with me all those years. As I shared here before, she brought me through my own battle with cancer years ago and in turn I brought her through hers – God I miss her. The grief is almost as deep as when I lost mom and dad and brother John.

Bearing loss has been a dark pit of despair – so painful. How to dig out of that hole, especially at Christmas time? The Lord has been at work on me. Recently at our church, it occurred to me to start a support group for caregivers of loved ones. Since Trudy’s passing I find myself immersed in the Lord’s work for that small group. Pastor shared with our new group some caregiver literature and among the books was a small neatly written book called “Self Care for Caregivers – A 12 Step Approach.” It really hit a profound chord in me as I knew it was important to base the support group on those 12 spiritual steps and self care for spiritual healing.

Self Care = I am a precious child of the most loving God. This is truly the underlying message of our support group and our Christian faith. To be self caring is a gift of God’s unconditional love to be learned. The vine of Christ inside our support group teaches us how to become more self caring and thus self compassionate but through each other; not in isolation. We share lessons of life, experience strength and hope. It says in the Bible to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’. We humans often get that confused and leave off the ‘thyself’ part. Thus it is through compassionate care for others and their reflection back to me in the Vine of Christ that I relearn how to love myself even through painful times such as deep loss. I relearn that I am a precious child of God each time we meet and my heart fills with love as we compassionately help one other through our difficult times of life. In those meetings I can see and feel and taste the pain of life and suffering others are experiencing. In sharing support, love, compassion and kindness with one another we each experience healing and receive God’s love in that work. When there, I am reminded I am not alone in my own human suffering and condition. Compassion for another starts with self care and self compassion blossoms. This is the enigma of life and I find I must relearn this over and over again. The Lord shows me such comfort to seek Him by giving aid to others as we are all connected in Him; all One. He says: I am the One and we are one in Him and He is the vine. By loving one another we love Him and He loves us and we each heal. And in that spiritual circle of life there is great healing for all of us even in our most profound loss. I feel God at work in each meeting. It is the bread of life to support others. “I wonder as I wander out under the sky, how Jesus our savior was born for to die; for poor lonely sinners like you and like I – I wonder as I wander; out under the sky.” It is truly wondrous the birth of our Savior and His gift of unconditional love for us reflected in one another as the Vine of Christ. Merry Christmas.

Doris