Just to Be With You
In early 2013, Steve Daniel seemed to be confused. His loving wife, Mary, took him to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, for tests. The diagnosis: early-onset Alzheimer’s. Steve was 59 years old.
In the summer of 2019, Steve’s Alzheimer’s had progressed to the point where she couldn’t adequately care for him. After an agonizing decision, Mary placed Steve in the memory care unit at Rosecastle Assisted Living and Memory Care facility at Deerwood in Jacksonville. She cried as she headed home, knowing in her broken heart that it was the right thing to do. Mary visited with Steve regularly. One of the routines that they shared was Mary helping Steve get ready for bed and then for a while she would stroke his hair while he lay on his bed with his head in her lap.
Enter the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March, 2020. Visits had to cease to protect the vulnerable patients at the facility. Mary tried Facetime calls and two visits at his window. Steve found these extremely frustrating. For 114 days, Steve could not embrace his loving wife. "He is a dementia patient,” Mary explains, “and dementia patients need love and care. They need touch. They need companionship. Their brain, without it, will just wither away."
Then Rosewood called Mary with a job offer that would enable her to spend some time with her husband. “They told me that they did have a part-time job available if I was interested,” Mary reported. “I said, ‘I am definitely interested. What is it?’ And, they said it's a dishwasher. So I said, ‘Well, I will be a dishwasher then.’”
It’s not that Mary needed a job. Her full-time job “day job” is working as the chief executive of a small company that helps patients with health care bills. She didn’t need another job; she needed to be with her husband. The part-time job at Rosewood afforded the opportunity.
On July 3, Mary began working 2-nights-a-week as a dishwasher at Rosewood. After her shift, she is able to go to see her husband for a couple of hours. The couple gets ready for bed together “just like [they] used to.”
"Even though it's only two days a week, he now knows I'm there and I’m coming back. And, until that, for 114 days he did not know that; I was not there," Daniels told Fox & Friends host, Steve Doocy. *
We are separated from God. It’s not due to a virus, but it is due to our sins (Isaiah 59:1-2). Because of our sins, we are separated from Him and from wonderful blessings that He longs to give us. Our condition is fatal and has eternal consequences (Romans 6:23), unless something can be done to remedy the situation.
God provided the remedy. He loves us so much that He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him. He loves us so much that He wants each of us to spend an eternity with Him in a beautiful place called heaven.
But sin has to be punished. So how can a loving God save sinful mankind?
Look at what God did just so He could be with us and we with Him: “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).
Jesus, God’s Son, paid the price for our redemption so that we can be reconciled to God and spend eternity with Him in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).
God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Him before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). He will continue to cleanse from sin and keep close to Him those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).
God made this amazing Sacrifice just so He could be with us and we with Him, for an eternity.
Won’t YOU accept His offer on His terms?
-- David A. Sargent
* Information gleaned from “Florida woman gets job washing dishes at nursing home to be close to husband: 'Isolation can kill'” by Julie Musto, www.foxnews.com, and WVTM 13 Rick Karle’s Facebook post of July 14, 2020.
