Medical disclaimer: I am not a doctor or licensed mental health professional. This post is for informational and encouragement purposes only and is based on my personal caregiving experience. If you are experiencing serious symptoms of depression, anxiety, or burnout please consult a qualified healthcare provider.
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There was a Sunday I sat in church and felt absolutely nothing. Not peace. Not comfort. Not the presence of God that I have felt in that same room in other seasons of my life. I sat there while the the choir sang and I stared at the back of the pew in front of me and I thought: I don’t know where You are right now, but I need You so badly.
I didn’t say it out loud. I smiled at the people around me. I drove home and helped my mother with her lunch and answered my aunt’s questions and started dinner. And the whole time there was this hollow place inside me where my faith used to feel solid.
That scared me almost as much as the burnout had.
I think a lot of caregivers know that hollow place. I don’t think many of us talk about it.
The thing nobody warns you about
When I said yes to this calling, I expected it to be hard. I expected the physical exhaustion, the grief, the loss of the career I had built for thirty years.
I did not expect to feel spiritually dry in the middle of doing something I believed God asked me to do.
That part caught me off guard. It felt like a contradiction. How do you walk in a calling and feel abandoned inside it at the same time?
Here is what I have learned, slowly and sometimes reluctantly: spiritual dryness in the middle of caregiving is not a sign that God has left. It is a sign that you are being stretched further than your current resources can reach. It is a sign that the ordinary rhythms that used to sustain your faith, the Sunday morning service, the quiet devotional before bed, the casual prayer in the car, are no longer enough for what you are carrying.
It does not mean your faith is broken. It means your faith is being asked to grow. That is not a comfortable thing to hear. But it is a true one.
What faith looks like in the hard seasons
I used to think faith was supposed to feel like something. A warmth. A certainty. A sense that God was close and paying attention.
Caregiving taught me that faith is often just the next step. Not the feeling. The step.
Getting up again. Answering again. Doing the next thing, the next hour, not because you feel sustained but because you choose to keep going anyway. That is not lesser faith. That is the faith the Bible describes in its hardest passages. Not triumphant. Not bright. Just stubbornly present.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9
I used to read that verse as encouragement. A reminder that God fills the gaps. In caregiving, I started reading it differently. His power is made perfect in weakness. Not despite it. In it. The weakness is not the problem to be solved. The weakness is where something real is happening.
When you are too tired to pray
I want to say something honest here, because I think it matters.
There are days when I have nothing to bring to prayer. No words. No energy. Not even the desire to try. I open my mouth and I don’t know what to say to God, because I am too tired to perform even my own faith.
On those days, I have learned to just say that. “I have nothing today. I am here. That’s all.”
The psalms are full of prayers that sound like this. David did not clean himself up before approaching God. He brought the anger, the exhaustion, the sense of abandonment. He said out loud the things we are taught to keep quiet in polished Christian spaces.
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” That is Psalm 13:1. That is Scripture. That is not a failure of faith. That is someone bringing their whole honest self to God and trusting that He can hold it.
You are allowed to do the same.
The faith that survives this
The faith that comes out the other side of caregiving is not the faith that went in.
It is less neat. Less certain about some things. Less interested in the comfortable versions of Christian life that assume everything works out and God rewards the obedient with ease.
But it is also deeper. Harder to shake. Built on something that has actually been tested.
I have watched my mother forget that her granddaughter had stopped by earlier in the day and her ask, “did she come in to see me?”. I have sat in hospital waiting rooms at two in the morning. I have cried in the shower because it was the only place I could be alone.
And I am still here. Still called. Always believing, but stretched to my limit. Not because it has been easy. Because I have seen, in the small moments, evidence of a God who has not actually left. The friend who called at exactly the right time. Listening to Moody Radio and having something on the program just reach out and touch your heart. The morning I woke up with inexplicable peace after a night I expected to destroy me. Small. Specific. Undeniable.
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18
Close to the brokenhearted. Not close to the ones who have it together. Not close to the ones performing their faith correctly. Close to the ones who are broken open by the weight of what they are carrying. That is where He is. That is the promise.
Things that have helped me stay connected
I am not going to tell you to build a two-hour morning routine or start a forty-day Bible study. If you are caregiving full time, you do not have time for that. And the advice that assumes you do will only make you feel more behind and guilty. Here is what actually works in small pieces.
One verse. Just one.
Not a full devotional. Not a chapter. One verse, written on a card and left somewhere you will see it. At the kitchen sink. On the bathroom mirror. Next to wherever you give medications. Let it be there all day. Let it do its quiet work.
The one-sentence prayer
When you have nothing else, you have one sentence. You can say it while you are changing a bed or making a meal or driving to an appointment.
“Lord, I need You today.” “I can’t do this without You.” “Be with her today. Be with me.” Short is not lesser. Honest is not lesser. God is not waiting for you to produce something elaborate before He pays attention.
Let other people’s faith carry you sometimes
There are seasons when you cannot generate your own. When you sit in church and feel nothing. When the words of worship feel like words and not like truth. In those seasons, you do not have to leave. You let the people around you carry what you cannot.
Their faith is real even when yours feels absent. You are still in the room. You are still showing up. That matters more than you know.
Tell God the truth
Not the cleaned-up version. The real version. “I am angry. I am exhausted. I am scared. I don’t understand what You are doing and I need You to show up.” This is not a failure of faith. This is relationship. This is the kind of honesty that goes deeper than performance, deeper than habit, into the actual territory of trust.
You can only say the hard true thing to someone you believe is actually listening.
Faith in the middle of caregiving is not a feeling. It is a direction. Keep facing Him, even on the days you cannot feel Him facing you.
I still have Sundays where I feel hollow. I still have days where God feels far and the work feels endless and the calling feels heavier than I can bear.
But I have not stopped believing that I was put here on purpose. That this is not accidental. That the God who called me into this has not walked away from the middle of it.
That belief is not always warm. Some days it is just a fact I hold onto with both hands. And that is enough. It has been enough. It keeps being enough.
If your faith is dry right now, I want you to hear this: dry is not dead. Dry is a season. And seasons change.
You are still called. Even today. Even in this.
Are you navigating the spiritual side of caregiving? Have you felt that hollow place?
Come find community in the Called to Caregiving Facebook group. We talk about faith in the real, unpolished way. You are welcome there.
With love and faith,
Amy
Called to Caregiving
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