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Amy Julia Becker: 00:06
When caregiving makes your days unpredictable, how do you make room for spiritual rhythms that actually fit your life? I’m Amy Julia Becker, and this is Take the Next Step, a podcast for families experiencing disability. We’re part of the Hope Heals Network, bringing you weekly encouragement and practical next steps to help your family thrive. Your family matters, your child matters. We need you among us. Today I’m talking with Jen Pollock Michelle about how parents and caregivers of people with disabilities can create a simple rule of life that brings meaning, connection, and spiritual grounding to days that rarely go according to plan. Drawing from Jen’s recent book, A Rule for the Rest of Us, we talk about receiving life as it is, receiving help from others, and taking a realistic first step towards a spiritual rhythm that works for you, even in the most unpredictable days. Here’s my conversation with Jen Pollock Michelle. I am here today with my friend Jen Pollock Michelle. Jen, thank you so much for being here. This is gonna be fun, Amy Julia. Thank you. Well, you have been teaching for many years. We’ve been talking for many years about how to create a rule of life. And whenever I hear those words, even though because of being friends with you and reading some other books, including yours, about this topic, I still sometimes hear the words rule of life and feel a little bit intimidated. So I thought maybe we could start there. What is a rule of life? Is there any way for me not to experience that as like an intimidating something I’m supposed to do?
Jen Pollock Michel: 01:49
Yeah, a lot of people think, oh, rule, okay, this is gonna be like something really stringent and aspirational, and I’m already tired. Like, am I now going to write my list of New Year’s resolutions and it’s all gonna be like things that I, you know, just these like stretching goals that I’m just can’t even imagine that I’d be capable of. And I think that if we just think about the Latin word for rule, because rule is a very ancient practice, the Latin word is regula, and we hear our English word regular. So a rule are is just really a set of the regular habits and practices that lead to um formation and transformation. And I would say as a Christian rule, um, which, you know, has often been most often been understood as something communal. It’s like, okay, who are we? How are we living? How are we living into the great commands to love God, love our neighbor, and properly love ourselves? So I that’s how I define it is a set of regular habits and practices that sustain, and I think sustain is a good word, especially for this podcast, sustain creative, faithful response to God’s loving voice. And so I really initially I just said God’s voice, but I was like, no, we gotta put loving in there because um then that also gives you some margin to believe that the invitations of God in our everyday lives are really good.
Amy Julia Becker: 03:10
Oh, I love that so much. And I already kind of feel my shoulders going down a little bit, like just that idea of like regular habits that actually, yeah, sustain um a life before a loving God. Like what I want that. I very much want that. Um the book that you have recently written is called A Rule for the Rest of Us. And I really appreciate the idea that what we’re talking about is a rule for the rest of us. And let’s talk about why you titled it that in just a minute. Um, but I will add that you come to this with an understanding as a mother of five children, as well as a caregiver with a lot of demands on your time of a mom who has been experiencing dementia for a while, that you are someone who kind of knows what it’s like to be the rest of us and wanting to live according to spiritual rhythms that nevertheless, again, kind of um acknowledge our regular, our ordinary lives, um, especially those of us who are in a caregiving role. So I’m curious if you could just speak to that idea of kind of being a part of the rest of us and also maybe some of the distinct challenges that caregivers face in thinking about creating a rule of life.
Jen Pollock Michel: 04:21
I remember this conversation that I had with my husband that I actually tell this story in my last book, but I’ll tell it here because it’s really relevant. When we were considering a move from Toronto back to the United States, because we realized that my mom was facing cognitive decline. She didn’t have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis at the time. But I was just sharing with my husband, I said, you know, it’s just, it’s hard to be a woman. It’s hard to be a woman because often the caregiving responsibilities fall to us. And I think one of the challenges of caregiving are all the contingencies that come with caregiving. I mean, if caregiving just came according to this like wonderful planned schedule, like at 3 p.m. today, you know, you will be caregiving. Um, but caregiving doesn’t is is so extemporaneous. It just happens in these moments. It it visits us. Um, for me, you know, it was um all of a sudden just facing my mom is uh yeah, can’t can’t, she’s not functioning. I need to take over her financial affairs. I need to um now kind of once we moved to the states and moved her to be close to us, realizing that I need to help her get to her medical appointments and medical appointments, you know, or just it’s in it’s all the interruptions and the unplanned contingencies of caregiving that I think I was sort of complaining about to my husband when I was saying, you know, it’s just hard. It’s hard to be a woman, kind of feels like sometimes, and I’ll just this is a huge generalization, I know, but you know, I feel like that, you know, there there’s this class of people, many of them men, who get to, you know, protect their time, you know, they get to have this like ideal schedule. And then the rest of us are the ones who have to absorb the sick days, the things that um just don’t go according to plan. And I think that’s a huge frustration. But I think I finally had to receive that either I was gonna kick against those um those contingencies, or I was gonna have to find a new attitude toward them. I was gonna have to embrace them and I was actually gonna have to plan for them, you know, create some margin for them. So the rest of us are people like like that who don’t get the ideal day to just, you know, sail through life um according to plan, I guess.
Amy Julia Becker: 06:44
I constantly am like um writing down, I have a planner that asks me for an ideal week, and I’m constantly writing down that my ideal week would include all the appointments in this chunk of time, and nobody ever has appointments according to my schedule. Like it’s like somehow the hairdresser and the doctor and the vet and the you know social security person, like they’re all going to have appointments available in this two-hour window, which theoretically would be possible and it never happens. So yeah, um, what does that look like for you to plan for margin or to embrace contingency? Like, are there like yeah, I mean, because again, even that idea of like planning for the I was even thinking about the word regular, the irregularity of caregiving. Um, are there things that you do to address that or to acknowledge that?
Jen Pollock Michel: 07:32
I had to take um like a a second look um and then like a third look and a fourth look at just my work schedule. I, you know, you and I have um flexible work and not everybody can do this. And I’ve talked to people whose parents um, you know, they need to caregive for their parents and they’re hemmed in by you know full-time work and um caring for their children too. But I had a degree of flexibility where I could say, okay, you know, I could just take on some fewer, I could take on fewer projects. Um I was in kind of a sweet spot, honestly, when we moved back to the States because I had another book coming out, but not for another maybe eight months, um, and six to eight months. So it was a little bit of a lull um before the, you know, two months before the book launched, but it gave me a window of time to um just say I’m not gonna say no as much as I can to the other things to absorb um the transition for our entire family, but also for my mom and all the things that just like that initial setup of caregiving, like we need all new doctors. I need to find you. She did not live with us. Um, I have to be really honest, like, I’m sure there are people listening to this podcast, like they have the person they’re caregiving in their home. I did not have that, um, but I had to find her a place to live. And then I was still the one person, even though she had a place to live, still the one person driving her to appointments, visiting her. Um, my brother died in our 20s. So there wasn’t really anybody else to look to. She doesn’t have siblings, she doesn’t, she has cousins that are like far away. Obviously, she doesn’t have parents. So it was really all the extraneous stuff was falling to me. So I I I got realistic. I I got realistic about my work. Um, I got realistic about volunteering. I didn’t. I have been an active volunteer in my church and in my community. And when we moved, I said, I’m not volunteering for this this initial season. I’m going to because I am I am taking the real measure of this role and responsibility. And I don’t think I did that. Um, I don’t think I did that as easily, even when I was a young mom. I was just like, oh, well, you know, I have five kids, but you know, everybody else, I can’t complain about it and just, you know, do the hard thing. Instead of saying, like, oh, five kids, that’s a lot. Maybe I should, you know, tamp down some of my expectations in other areas. So I think I got very realistic in some ways.
Amy Julia Becker: 10:01
Well, and I’m wondering because there’s a whole section in the book about receiving our lives as they are, and and to some another way of saying that might be to say living within our own limits. Um, will you just speak to some of the ways that you guide people through whatever your circumstances are, receiving our lives?
Jen Pollock Michel: 10:19
Yeah. I think we so often think that there’s like some ideal template that our lives should um mirror or imitate, you know. So instead of saying, you know, what are the unique kind of dimensions of my life, the limits, the opportunities, the gifts, the temperament. Um, instead of kind of taking that personal assessment, we sort of imagine like there’s this universal template, and then I should conform my life to that. And I think especially as Christians, um, maybe we think of it, you know, we idealize some saints’ life, you know, but we don’t, um, or, you know, the life of somebody in our church, or I don’t know, some author that we’ve read, Amy Julia Becker. And instead of saying, you know, maybe I just have um unique uh limits, um, like I said, limits, opportunities, but I if I don’t take stock of that, I’m probably gonna start to get really frustrated. Probably, and I’ve lived my life so much like that. I I didn’t even identify the resentments that I was living with because I wasn’t being realistic about my life. I wasn’t saying, you know, I can’t do X. Instead, I was trying to do X and then often looking at other people like, well, why don’t you work as hard as me? Um, and not accepting invitations to rest. And so the way that I lead people through the process is just a very simple, like, look at your life, you know, what kind of emotional things are you you carrying? What are the physical limitations of your body? You know, do you have a chronic illness? Are you caregiving for somebody who has um has a particular disability? Are you um are you know, what about the financial stress of your family? What about if you’re married, what about the givens of your partner? Do they travel all of the time? So that means that more of the caregiving falls upon you, or they, or maybe, or maybe not. Maybe that they have a great deal of flexibility and you can share the load. I think just paying attention to that starts to give us kind of the signpost to how we discern our own responsibilities in a given season. And one of the things, you know, I share, for example, in the book that I’ve gone through seasons of grief that I just didn’t grapple with. I didn’t say when my brother committed suicide, um, my first year of full-time teaching out of out of college, I didn’t say, I wonder, I think I should probably take a step back for some things. I should let myself, I should give myself some space to just be with friends and rest and care for my body and be in nature. Instead, when the principal and athletic director came to me and said, Can you coach the sport? I was like, ooh, I really, I don’t have tenure, and yes, I probably I should. Instead of saying no and trusting that a good no in that season probably would have been a lot healthier response. But we live with, you know, we live with a sense of, I guess it’s obligation, or I think it’s comparison. It’s it’s I would say it’s in hospitality to our our given lives um as they are. Um I I I think the scripture that always um speaks to me is like sol, why are you kicking against the goads? We kick against the goads of our own lives all the time.
Amy Julia Becker: 13:50
Yeah, I actually just had a friend um teach me what it means to kick against the goads. Ooh, tell me, because I don’t really know. Well, what she said was that it um was something that an ox would um be in being trained not to kick against kind of where they needed to be going to plow a field. There was a goad, so that the owner didn’t receive the kick. But the ox in kicking the goad would essentially hurt himself, like not, you know, in a debilitating way, but in a like, oh, I don’t want to do that again. And so that sense of like running up against your own um like resisting your own life is kind of what kicking against the goads is, right? Like resisting the reality of what is asked or required of you right now and hurting yourself in the process. So anyway, I think it speaks really well to just this idea that we um and with our res noticing our resentment again um can be a way of actually stepping into some freedom and making some decisions more clearly about limits and time and asking for help um of getting other people involved in in what we need. I’m curious for your own rule of life, which as you said, does not how everybody else should do it. I think that’s one of the, again, real beauties of this book and of your process is that sense of like, you know, your husband’s rule of life is very different from yours, not only because you have different responsibilities in the world, but because you are different people. And so it’s just it it’s going to take into account who you are. I’m still curious though, if there are aspects of your rule that do relate to your role as a caregiver that you might be willing to share, just um, for people who are listening who are in that position right now.
Jen Pollock Michel: 15:32
Yes. Um, initially when we moved and I was revising my rule at that time, I think it was very practical. You know, it was just like, okay, um, showing up to do the practical things and just sort of also quantifying it a little bit for myself because I I think again, for me, my mom wasn’t in my home. So I could have just, you know, ignored the responsibilities, I guess, in in some way, except for, you know, there’s so many things you can’t ignore. But I just thought if I write these things down, you know, that I’m that I’m gonna be administrating my mom’s finances, that I’m gonna be care taking her to medical appointments, that I’m going to be buying the things that she needs, you know, making sure that she has the clothes that she needs, getting her to church on Sunday. Just having it written down helped me to see these are my commitments. And when I feel that I’m frustrated with them, maybe how they interrupt my life or take too much time, that I just have to seek God’s help in that, like in the very practical things. And that that for me is very much how my rule functions. Like it’s this written document that I’m really prayerfully often just talking to God about. Like, God, I don’t want to take my mom to uh, I don’t know, to the doctor today. I have a gazillion other things to do. And and um, so that was initially how it started. Um, pretty quickly though, I realized like that was not that was not all God was inviting me into that I really needed some like vision pieces of of my rule. So one that I added in is from Every Moment Holy. And there it is the second volume, uh, and it sounds incredibly depressing, but it’s like grief, death, and dying or something, and hope. I think hope must hop hopefully be there in some some degree. Um, but it has this wonderful prayer that I wrote into my rule. Let me love well this one who suffers. Let me again and again choose love so that in every moment the practice of care and mercy become a liturgy and a habit by which compassion will be formed in me no other way except in the long-giving of myself to another. Something like that. Um, I wrote that in my I wrote that in my rule and I just started to pray it. And I was just like, let me love well this one who suffers. It completely has changed the way that I think about my mom because truthfully my relationship with her was very strained. I came a little bit kicking, I was kicking against the goads of God’s call um to to be present for her, and I knew that I needed a change of heart toward her, so that prayer was a part of it. Um, I would also say the practical things started to become different kinds of habits. I felt pretty soon that God was inviting me to um hug my mom. Just like every time I saw her to hug her, every time that I would say goodbye. And I I have to be so honest that I at even just the way that our relationship was at the time, like I didn’t really want to touch her. Um, it’s just like I can do the practical things, but like physical affection, I don’t really want to do that. And God’s like, just just give her a hug. And so it’d be like kind of perfunctory and performative a little bit at the beginning, like, okay, goodbye, mom. And then I just give her a little hug. And then, but I don’t know, it got easier. And then I was don’t just hug her, speak tenderly to her. So the tenderness of like speaking, um, to speaking to my mom tenderly and like just being gentle with her. Um, I think with dementia, there’s a lot of repetition, there’s a lot of obviously confusion. There’s a way in which you have to like move slowly. She’s moving, she walks very slowly now. Her spatial awareness is very challenged. And so she’s just she’s kind of like shuffling her feet. Um, like one way that I’m just can speak tenderly and be tender toward my mom is to walk alongside her in these, um, just slowly and speak tenderly. Don’t get frustrated with her. I do. I mean, just because I wrote it down doesn’t mean that I never say, Mom, you know, I did tell you that, you know, two seconds ago. Um, but to have it written down, to have it as something that I come to God with and say, Lord, uh help me, Jesus, let your spirit be in me, let your tender spirit be in me, that I might speak tenderly to my mom. And then I I think the last thing was just um saying thank you. Um that became a new part of of of the practice, of the regularity of like not just hug, not just the practical, not just the hugs, not just the speaking and tenderly and being tender and walking slowly, but could I just say thank you? Thank you for being my mom. Thank you. You know, thank you for loving me, thank you for believing in me. I have the gift of walking alongside a mom who is not experiencing as much of the anxiety and agitation that many dementia patients do. So she’s very sweet, she’s very childlike, and she’s very grateful. Um, and so it became easier to just say, thank you. You know, thank you for being thankful. Thank you for being so pleasant. Thank you for being my mom.
Amy Julia Becker: 20:48
That’s beautiful. And it just strikes me as you’re speaking that um this rule that you’ve had has not only allowed you to like show up faithfully, going back to the what um I guess what you started with in terms of loving God, loving others, and also loving yourself properly. Yeah. But I just can hear that sense of an increased tenderness, gentleness, slowness, gratitude that is coming back to you, right? Like it’s not just what you are giving to your mom, but it’s this awareness that this is what God has for us, but also what we can have for ourselves in these seasons. So I really appreciate that as kind of a just um, again, like a lived example. It’s not going to be the same for everyone, but a lived example of the types of things that can happen when we say, I don’t feel like I want to hug my mom or I don’t feel gratitude, but I can start um again praying this prayer and then entering into these um yeah, into these rhythms and practices that might eventually actually become and form my soul, like who who I am and who I am becoming. Um, I have one last question before we kind of do a little wrap up, which is just um for caregivers who are listening to this. Podcast right now, who just feel that irregular rhythm to their days? Um, lots of demands and lots of unpredictable like the unpredictability is the only predictable thing, you know, that like someone’s gonna fall or you know, someone’s gonna be sick, or like something is going to disrupt the regular rhythm that you want to have. How would you advise um beginning to like starting a rule of life or some sort of um yeah, sense of regular spiritual practice amidst a really irregular um day? Mm-hmm.
Jen Pollock Michel: 22:35
Well, I think one of the things you might be able to do is think about like that first waking moment of the day, generally. Um, I mean, sometimes we’re awoken to a caregiving responsibility. Um, and but the first first thing out of your heart, I guess, you know, in the morning is it could be a prayer, you know, it could be I talk about Psalm 100, you know, know that the Lord, He is God, it is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. I mean, even if all you did was wake up in the morning and say, We I am I am your sheep. I don’t know, you know, your caregiving for me. Like, what if you began your day, Lord? I receive your caregiving. I receive you as my great caregiver. Um, and and your care and compassion for me. So I think that waking moment, I think maybe identifying also the moments, like even there if they’re not planned, but you know kind of the regular habits that you do in caregiving. Like one of I started to say that prayer actually, you know, let me love well, this one who suffers every time I zip my mom’s coat because in the winter she just she can’t zip her own coat. Um, and so very early on, I was like, okay, every time I kneel down, because you gotta kneel down to to zip someone’s coat, um, I’ll say this prayer. And it would just be like, I could identify almost like a rhythm or a habit of my caregiving that I could attach to prayer. Um scripture memory has been an important part of this last season too, because I feel that if you just get a get something inside of you, you can recall it whenever, you know, whenever the moment um invites you to. Um I also just think like I think about hands a lot. I think hands are like the body part that so often are it’s they’re involved in caregiving, like, you know, you’re zipping a coat. Now I’m actually like sometimes when I take my mom to church, like I’m doing other bodily things for her. And so it’s like at the end of Psalm 90, it says, you know, Lord, establish the work of our hands. Yes, establish the work of our hands. That could be like a little refrain. So what I’m I think singing and songs, you know, I started to play music for my mom um whenever we were in the car. And I played the music that she liked, um, which was like 1980s, very like euphoric Christians, um, like Sandy Patty and Bill Gigger. I don’t know if anybody’s like will recognize some of those names. Um, but I wouldn’t be a masochist. I would try to choose the things like I would choose the hymns that I recognize. I was like, we can listen to Sandy Patty, but I’m gonna like put on her like hymn album because I love hymns. And so I could, I could, and I just would be like, well, this is good for me too. Um so music is such a beautiful way to experience the presence of God. You know, Augustine says, if you if you sing, you pray twice, I think. Um so um infusing, you know, your moments there. But the last thing I would say is um just a prayer, and I talk about this in the book too, is like the very simple prayer, and you can pray it for a season and you can pray it for a moment, is whatever you give God, I embrace. Whatever you give God, I embrace. And I don’t mean to say that God gives, you know, gives us hard things just to teach us, you know, the hard and necessary lessons, but if we just believe like God is sovereign and you know, the day is like coming to me somehow, um, through God’s sovereignty, like I can just say, okay, this moment that I didn’t expect, that I didn’t necessarily want, um, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna embrace it, whatever you have for me, whatever good is in it. Um, that’s been a really helpful prayer for me.
Amy Julia Becker: 26:35
I love all of those. Thank you so much. And I just want to, um, as I always do at the end of these episodes, just name a few things that I’ve heard that would be in the next step category, the one next thing I might be able to do if I’m listening to this. And if you want to add anything, I’ll give you that opportunity at the end. But, you know, one is just the saying no, like assessing what am I um being asked to do outside of the caregiving and saying no to some of those things, especially in dur during certain seasons. Um and I liked just the way you said it, like taking the real measure of the role, writing down what are the responsibilities that come with this. I think sometimes that can be overwhelming, but it also can be really freeing to be like, oh, well, no wonder I don’t have time for these other things. So um just that degree of kind of um identifying, I loved you said identify resentments. That is a good one for me. Um just uh so there is some degree of like when you have a moment, just take five minutes and write down what are the responsibilities, what are the resentments, um, what are the commitments you’ve made. But then I also love this other piece of things, which is what’s the vision for where you might be headed that could involve um prayer or scripture and and that sense of there, I loved pairing the prayer with zipping the coat. Where again, you don’t know if that’s gonna happen at 3.02 or at 557, right? Like there’s no set time for it. And yet there also is a set time for it that allows you to be um getting some regularity to the spiritual rhythm, even if it’s not a regularity to like the time um itself. So um there’s so much in there, and I really appreciate all of those as just little ways to invite um the presence of God’s uh spirit of peace and love into what can feel like tedium and sometimes even like like the chaos of caregiving um to bring some order and some peace to that. Is there anything you want to say just as we come to the end of this time together?
Jen Pollock Michel: 28:31
I think you said it and I probably didn’t say it well enough, but um looking for help, you know, if people offer you help, um take them, say yes, you know, um believe that it is offered in good faith, and maybe if it is even isn’t, you’re you know, I had people I was traveling some this summer because we do have five kids and they have things going on too. And um, somebody from my church put together a visit list um for my mom, you know, just to make that sure that she continued to get regularly visited. And she asked me if I she could do that, and I said, Yes, please. Um, sometimes you don’t even know what to ask for. But if someone says, I’d love to help, and you’re like, How would you love to help? Let them get creative and offer something specific, um, even if you’re not exactly sure. But it’s hard to do, but so necessary. Awesome.
Amy Julia Becker: 29:25
Uh well, Jen, thank you so much again just for the work that you’ve done over many years in this area. Um, but also just for sharing some of your own story. I think it’s gonna be really helpful to a lot of people.
Jen Pollock Michel: 29:34
Thanks, Amy Julia. I hope so.
Amy Julia Becker: 29:41
Thank you for listening. If this episode was helpful, we’d love for you to share it with another parent or caregiver who might need to hear it. This podcast, Take the Next Step, is a resource from the Hope Heels Network, a collective of thought leaders offering honest and hopeful wisdom to help people flourish in the good and hard part of their stories. To learn more about the work of Hope Heels, visit Hope Heels.com. And to conclude, I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this episode. I want to say thank you to Amber Beery, my director of content, for producing the show, and thank you for being here. I hope you leave this time with encouragement. To start with delight, connect to community, and take the next small step toward a good future for your family.
