“If your caregiving looks no different from the world’s, what does that say about your belief?”
That question stopped Melissa in her tracks.
She had just spent the morning in a secular dementia support group where the leader recommended lying—“therapeutic lying,” they called it—to help keep her mom calm. The advice was delivered with warmth, and everyone else nodded. But something in Melissa’s spirit felt unsettled.
Later that evening, she replayed those words and compared them to what she’d heard in a recent podcast. “God is not a God of confusion. He is a God of truth and order.”
Melissa wasn’t a theologian. She was just a tired daughter, trying to care for her mother while juggling work, parenting, and her own spiritual fatigue. But in that moment, she realized something: her caregiving could reflect her faith, or it could reflect the world. Not both.
Christian Caregiving Starts With a Different Story
Most caregiving advice today is framed around control and comfort. Keep them calm. Keep them happy. Avoid the hard questions. Avoid the guilt.
But what if the real work isn’t about managing symptoms—it’s about stewarding souls?
Christian caregiving isn’t reactive. It’s relational. It’s not shaped by what’s easiest. It’s shaped by what’s eternally true.
At the heart of this difference are three distinctives. These are the backbone of the DigniCare™ Method—a biblical model for Caregiving Dignity by Design™.
They Still Matter, Even If They Can’t Remember You
The world ties dignity to productivity. But the Bible ties it to being made in God’s image.
When your spouse no longer remembers your name… when your dad doesn’t recognize his grandkids… the temptation is to believe the lie: “They’re not really there anymore.”
But that’s not true.
Their value never came from what they could do. It came from who created them.
Christian caregivers operate from this truth: Cognition is not what makes someone human. God does. That clarity changes how you speak, how you touch, how you show up—especially on the hardest days.
There Is Order in the Chaos
Dementia often feels like a swirling storm. One day is calm. The next, it’s like everything unravels.
But here’s the quiet truth: there is a pattern. There is order.
Through understanding concepts like retrogenesis, we learn that dementia often reverses developmental milestones in a predictable path. It’s not chaos—it’s a descent through previously gained abilities.
That’s why the DigniCare™ Journey begins with “Decide”—choosing to view this season not as random suffering, but as a God-ordained opportunity for faithful stewardship.
It’s not just about knowing what stage your loved one is in—it’s about knowing how to meet them there with dignity and peace.
Peace Built on Lies Won’t Last
Secular caregiving often relies on deception. Tell them their spouse is “at work.” Pretend their parents are still alive. Say whatever keeps them calm.
But lies always cost something- and come from the ruler of darkness, not the Father of Light. God commands us in the 9th commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness”. No lie is well meaning and only accomplishes something in the short term
Truth, delivered with compassion, builds trust.
That’s why we teach Therapeutic Truth-Telling™: validating feelings without violating trust. You don’t have to correct their memory to connect with their heart. You simply need to meet them where they are—without crossing ethical lines God has clearly drawn.
As Ephesians reminds us, “Speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are members one of another.” That includes our loved ones with dementia.
Start With One Simple Shift
You don’t have to overhaul your entire care plan this week. Just start with one small shift.
- Replace a “little white lie” with a validating question.
- Swap a frantic Google search for prayerful reflection on your caregiving values.
- Trade resentment for responsibility by remembering this isn’t random—it’s part of your sanctification.
Clarity doesn’t come from more research. It comes from anchoring yourself in truth.
Caregiving That Reflects Christ
Melissa isn’t perfect. She still has hard days. But she’s stopped pretending her caregiving has to follow the world’s rules.
She’s chosen instead to reflect her faith—through truthful words, peaceful routines, and a caregiving journey that honors both God and her mom.
And you can too.
If you’re craving a space to explore how Christian caregiving can look different—more truthful, more peaceful, and more grounded—I invite you to join us for this month’s Ask the Dementia Coach Q&A session.
Bring your real-life caregiving dilemmas. We’ll think through them together—from a biblical, boots-on-the-ground perspective. No fluff. Just clear next steps and the peace that comes from walking in truth.
Let’s stop caregiving like the world—and start stewarding this season like disciples.
Because caregiving is not just what you do.
It’s how you become more like Christ.
Transcript
[0:00] As a Christian, if your caregiving looks no different from the world’s,
Introduction to Christian Caregiving
[0:07] what does that say about your belief? Because the world says lie if it helps. The world says they are losing their worth. The world says you’re on your own. Figure it out. Dementia is just confusing. but God’s Word tells a different story. Christian caregiving is rooted in truth, dignity, and in God’s design, not because it’s necessarily easy, but because God is faithful.
[0:44] Hey Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians. This is the podcast for Bible-believing Christians who are walking through the often hard but always sanctifying journey of caring for somebody living with dementia and who want to do it in a way that reflects their faith. If you are struggling with burnout, feeling confused, or have decision fatigue, but still believe God has something to say about your caregiving, you are in the right place. Now, if that is you and you feel like you need a little bit more support, I’m inviting you to join me for this month’s Ask the Dementia Coach monthly question and answer session. It is at a new time. It is Saturday, July the 26th at 10 a.m. Eastern. I invite you to bring your real-life questions, and I’ll help you think through them from a Christian perspective.
[1:53] Practically and prayerfully, so you can move forward with clarity and God’s peace.
The Revolutionary Nature of Our Care
[2:00] I invite you to reserve your spot at thinkdifferentdementia.com. Now let’s dig into today’s episode about why our care as a Christian has to look different from the world’s and what that means for you practically this week.
[2:22] This past weekend, I did my monthly workshop, and it was a brand new workshop, and it was such a wonderful time with the people who attended. I love it when people come. I love it when people hang out with me after the workshop. And what really struck me this month in particular, I’ve been doing these workshops going on two years. It feels like it should be a lot shorter than that. I’ve been doing them pretty consistently for the last two years, and it has been a tremendous journey for me in getting where I am today as a woman of faith stepping into the dementia caregiving space in contrast with the world. And so today’s episode 269 is really as a result of this past Saturday’s workshop, because I realized, and I thank the Lord for this realization, that what we are doing here in this particular space is revolutionary.
[3:35] Especially when you contrast it to the world. And I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my business and trying to put
Unique Distinctives in Christian Caregiving
[3:45] together the thought leadership behind what it is that I actually believe and why it is so different. And this workshop this weekend really reminded me of the three principles, the three underlying unique distinctives that if you are a Christian in the world and you’re navigating dementia that makes your dementia caregiving journey different.
[4:16] Different from the world. And somebody actually asked me that the other day. They’re like, why is it different? Why is it different? And I had to stop and I really had to think because I do come out of the medical model. I do come out of the caregiver-centered model. That is how I got to where I am now, teaching relationship-centered dementia care, where it starts with your relationship with Christ, where it starts with your relationship with God, and then everything flows from there. And as a Christian, I’ve always known that. I’ve always believed it. But when you’re thrown into the medical model, and this is related to everything, right? When you do not look at it through God’s lens.
[5:09] Of caregiving, and you look at it through the world’s lens of caregiving, we get it wrong every single time. And so you’ve probably heard it maybe from a doctor or a therapist or somebody that says, your person’s not there anymore. Or you might have heard people say to you, will just tell them a lie to keep them calm, whatever will keep them happy. Or sometimes people will just say to you, we’ll put them in a facility and get on with your life. The world has a very distinctive and very different view of what makes a person valuable, what counts as order, and whether or not to tell the truth. But as Christians, we have to be doing this differently. We have to be caring differently because we come from a different belief system and because we serve a God of truth and order. So today, I’m going to walk you through the three foundational principles that I teach that shape everything about how to care for a person living with dementia
The Value of Being Created in God’s Image
[6:33] and why that makes us different.
[6:36] The first one is, the world tells us your value comes from your ability to think. That is, in essence, exactly what the world is teaching. The world says that your value as a human comes from your ability to think. But as a Christian, we believe our dignity and our value comes from being created in the image of God. So this is why, if you were a believer and you were in these huge big Facebook groups, why you are struggling. Because these Facebook groups, I call them verbal vomit.
[7:20] Teach you that your person’s autonomy is because they think, because they can contribute, because they can remember. But the Bible teaches us that we are created in the image of God, and because of that, we have value, not because of how our brain works, how well we think. Intuitively we know this when a child is born with some sort of a disability for example perhaps down syndrome or something i met people years ago and this is a very unique story they had a daughter who was born with anencephaly which in essence is she was born without a brain she had enough of her brain that would keep her alive, but she had no ability.
[8:24] To have higher-level thinking skills, but she was fully created in the image of God. And nobody doubted that. Nobody doubted that. But when we are dealing with dementia, because the human that we know, the human that we are helping have these cognitive changes from ability where they’re now losing those particular functions, the world tells us Their worth is measured by their independence, their ability to do things, their cognition.
[9:01] And therefore, when that goes, they don’t have dignity or worth anymore. How does this play out? Well, this is when somebody can call your person that you love as they’re just nonverbal or they’re no longer there. The reality is, I believe, and I have seen it time and time again, how a person, even all the way through to the very, very last minutes of their dementia journey, can make eye contact and smile and connect with you. And so, we know this to be true. And Genesis 1 verse 27 says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. And Psalm 139 verse 14 says, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. And I want us to be reminded that any book you read, any podcast you listen to.
[10:16] Any leader in the dementia caregiving space, if they are not founded on this particular principle, everything that flows from that is going to not be as effective. Does it have value? Absolutely. An unbeliever can see things and they can find patterns and they do have the ability to do these kinds of things, but the basis of their caregiving teaching, their techniques, is going to be different than what it is that we believe as a believer. So a person is not a person because they function or they perform. They are a person because God made them to be a person. The second unique distinctive that revolutionizes how a Christian cares for somebody with dementia or without, because it’s being a Christian.
Understanding Order in Dementia
[11:25] Is that the world tells us and treats dementia as confusing, as chaotic, as there is no order to it. But we know as a Christian that we believe that God is a God of order. And because God is a God of order, there is order to dementia. And I guarantee you, I can show you that there is order to dementia.
[11:59] It feels disorienting, but that doesn’t mean that it is. And it’s a very easy thing. It’s called retrogenesis. And if you go look that up, it literally means retro means back and genesis means the beginning. And if you go look up the word retrogenesis, there is a very definitive, distinctive way that most people decline as they are going through their dementia care, as they’re going through their dementia journey. And I will propose to you, if you watch or listen to or read anything about end of life, people going through an end of life process follow the exact same stages as they’re dying.
[12:47] There is a very active, it’s literally called actively dying. The way we develop, the analogy that I use to teach my people is, I used to use a different analogy, but this one really works very well. Our brain, as we are being from conception, as we are growing all the way up until our cognitive abilities are finalized, which is about 25 years old, it’s like our computer is booting up and it has to boot up in a certain sequence in order for the thing to work. And as we develop, as we go, and every human knows, if you are a quote-unquote normal human being, just we develop the same way. We all typically roll, sit up, walk, all of these different developmental milestones. And even though we’re different.
[13:44] Nobody’s confused that a two-year-old acts like a two-year-old. Nobody’s confused that a 16-year-old should not necessarily be doing certain things. We all know this, we intuitively know this, and as a person is changing through their dementia care journey, their changes because their brain is in essence shutting down, it is shutting down in the exact same sequence to a large extent as what it booted up. The difference is the better you know the person and what they experienced because now we’re going backwards.
[14:25] So when you have an 80-year-old who is thinking like a 16-year-old, their 16-year-old self may be in 1960. And you need to know what their story was in 1960 for it to make sense to you. So think about it as an escalator going down. And the escalator going down is the computer switching off, right? It’s landing the plane, throwing in all these analogies today, and I’m sorry. But where that person is, is where they’re standing on that escalator. That’s their story, their unique story, how they grew up, where they lived, who was around them, where they might have lived when they were 16. All of these factors, And the more you know about that particular person at that particular time, the better sense you can make about their dementia caregiving journey. So if you’re one of these people who like to research things.
[15:31] Research retrogenesis. It literally means back to the beginning.
[15:36] And the world’s view tells us that dementia caregiving is a constant crisis. It’s a constant emergency. It’s impossible to manage. You cannot prognosticate what’s going to happen. If you’ve seen one person with dementia, you’ve seen one person with dementia. Well, if you’ve seen one person, you’ve seen one person. We all have our own unique stories, don’t we? And yet we’re the same, because God is a God of order and not a God of confusion. So we know that God is a God of order and not a God of confusion. We know that when we’re working with kids, routine helps them. When we have certain rhythms in our families, the fabric of our lives, consistent mealtimes, all of these things. We know that things are easier, and then we know that we can then steward this journey as a caregiver in a different way. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 33 says, For God is not a God of confusion, but a God of peace. And Proverbs 3 verses 5 through 6 say, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
[17:03] All your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. And then also, we know that God’s works of providence are his wise
The Importance of Truth in Caregiving
[17:16] and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and their actions. So even if it feels confusing, even if it feels unstable at times, God is a God of order, and there is order to your dementia journey.
[17:37] And caregiving can follow a certain pathway, and it can be more predictable. It doesn’t need to be panicked. It can be more proactive. And then the third unique distinctive of what it is that I teach and how I show people to be a dementia caregiver in a different way is that the world justifies lying to the person with dementia to placate them. But I know, and you know, and we all know that God is a God of truth and not a God of lies. And we know intuitively, you know when somebody is lying to you, you know it. And guess what? We are being taught on purpose. It’s called therapeutic lying.
[18:38] We are being taught on purpose the world’s technique teaches you to lie, to keep the peace. And we know that the truth is the only thing that can keep the peace. So God commands us to tell the truth. And that means you can validate using truth. You do not need to lie. You do not need to follow the world’s lie of therapeutic lying. You do not need to do that. I confess, and I have repented of this because it was a sin. I confess that for over 30 years, I did not understand the difference. Thank you. As a Christian, when I was working in the hospitals or home health or nursing homes or whatever, my faith was like a Band-Aid on the medical model.
[19:47] And now, the medical model is like a Band-Aid on my caregiving. God’s truth will prevail. God is a God of truth. The world tells us if telling them the truth will cause them distress, then avoid it and lie. Say whatever it takes to keep that person calm, even if it is a flat-out lie. And in relationships, you know. You know if somebody has betrayed you. You know if somebody has broken your trust. You know how hard it is to trust them again. We all know this. If your husband has committed adultery, you know how hard it is to trust him again. But the world is telling us, lie. Lie to the person. Tell them whatever it takes to keep them happy. Live in their reality. And I’m telling you, you can do both. You do not need to bring them to our reality. And at the same time, you do not need to lie to them and breach their trust.
[21:02] So if your husband, somebody says, where is my husband? And you think that they think that they’re at work and you say, well, they’re at work and it’s a lie. You have broken their trust. So tell them a therapeutic truth. How does that look? It looks like instead of, you know, when the person says, where is my husband? Instead of saying your husband’s at work, you ask a question. You say, well, it sounds like you’re missing your husband. Where do you think your husband is? Or it sounds like you’re missing your husband. Tell me more about your husband. get them to supply the information. It’s not wrong for a person to be missing someone. My mom passed away five months ago, and I miss her terribly, and it’s okay for me to miss her. I had a life with my mom. This person had a life with their husband. Validate that they’re missing their person and ask questions. Don’t lie. Comfort and connect. God is a God of relationship.
[22:22] And we are commanded to be in relationship with one another in truth, not in lies. Ephesians 4 verse 25 says, Therefore, having put away all falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. And Zechariah 8 verse 16 says, these are the things you shall do speak the truth to one another render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace and the ninth commandment requires that we maintain and promote the truth between man and man. So peace is never built on lies. Deception is always going to cause problems.
[23:21] Therapeutic lying is wrong and you can tell the truth as a dementia caregiver.
Recap of Key Principles
[23:28] You can speak with grace. You can maintain the relationship even though this person is changing. So to briefly recap the three things, the three things that make what I teach and show people uniquely different are the following things. The world says our ability defines our value and we know that we are created in the image of God and therefore we have dignity and value. The world says dementia is chaos, but we know we serve a God of order, and we know, therefore, there is order to this journey. The world says to lie.
[24:20] To keep the peace. And we know that you can tell the truth because you, if you’re a Christian, serve a God of truth, and there is truth that you can speak even in their confusion. So caregiving is not just the tasks we perform.
Practical Support for Caregivers
[24:42] Caregiving is a part of your sanctification journey and your stewardship before the Lord. And so as a Christian caregiver, your caregiving should be revolutionary to everything when in contrast to the caregiving of the world. And if you’re not a part of the Facebook group, I have a free Facebook group called Dementia Caregivers Support for Christians. So that was a lot. I know it was a lot. But this is so, so much on my heart and mind right now that we need to look different. We need to be different in our caregiving journey. And if you need more help mapping this out practically, and not theologically, but practically, I can help you with the boots on the ground. I want to ask you to join me at the free monthly Ask the Dementia Code. This is an opportunity for you to feel what it feels like to be in one of my communities.
[25:56] This is exactly how I help and take my community members through their journey.
[26:05] Reminding them of God’s goodness in this dementia caregiving journey. So the next Ask the Dementia Coach monthly question and answer session is July the 26th at a new time at 10 a.m. You can register at thinkdifferentdementia.com forward slash ask. There is exactly where you will find practical help. We will help replace some of these world’s assumptions with biblical stewardship and clarity and help you with a caregiving step that will reflect what you actually believe in your dementia caregiving journey. So I do invite you to join me. And as I end all of my episodes, may the Lord bless you and keep you. And I do pray for you regularly, some of you even by name. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being in my world. And if you like these, share with a friend, share with a family member. And as always, come back to the next episode, which will be another live dementia caregiver support in action episode that comes from participating in the Ask the Dementia Coach.
