How To Be Prepared for The Unexpected Crisis as a Dementia Caregiver
What do you do when the unexpected becomes your reality?
In Episode 239, we hear a deeply personal and emotional reflection on the recent passing of Lizette’s mother.
This episode is not just about grief—it’s about how preparation, emotional clarity, and faith in God’s sovereignty can carry a caregiver through one of the most difficult moments of their life.
Whether you’re early in your caregiving journey or facing a crisis, this episode offers wisdom grounded in faith, experience, and love.
Preparation Is a Gift—For You and Your Loved One
No one likes to think about crisis or death, but preparing ahead of time is one of the greatest gifts you can give. The decisions that need to be made in the moment are easier when they’ve already been thought through.
For this caregiver, years of conversations and planning with her mom meant that when the moment came, she didn’t have to hesitate. There were no family meetings, no confusion, no panic—just clarity.
💬 “We don’t rise to the occasion—we fall back on our training.”
Start now. Think through the hard questions:
What if my loved one falls?
What if they stop breathing?
Do we have paperwork in place?
What are their wishes for end-of-life care?
Keep Your Emotions in Check to Make Wise Decisions
When you’ve prepared, you’re able to step back and respond—not react. Emotions will always be there, but they don’t have to take over.
💬 “Love is not an emotion. Love is a verb. Love is an action.”
Being emotionally steady in a crisis doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling—it means you’re able to choose love through action, even when your heart is breaking.
God’s Sovereignty in the Midst of Grief
The final reflection in this episode is deeply spiritual and comforting: nothing happens outside of God’s will.
Understanding God’s sovereignty and providence brings peace in the middle of pain. Even in death, even in loss, we can trust that He is good.
💬 “This experience is for my good and His glory.”
The Heidelberg Catechism beautifully reminds us that we belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. That truth makes grieving not hopeless, but holy.
Grieve with Faith, Prepare with Purpose
This episode is a sacred reminder: prepare ahead of time, stay grounded in truth, and trust fully in God’s plan. As Christian caregivers, we don’t grieve as those without hope—we grieve while clinging to a Savior who walks with us through every valley.
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“How To Immediately Reduce Dementia Caregiver Overwhelm and Stress In 3 Easy Steps”
Transcript
Introduction to Caregiving Crises
[0:00] Can you be prepared for the unexpected crisis as a caregiver? February the 27th, 2025, I was in a situation where, as a family caregiver, I was in the unexpected but expected crisis. And today’s episode is a very raw and tender reflection on this podcast to share with you, my audience.
[0:32] The experience that I recently went through a little over a month ago with the passing of my mom. And I wanted to share my reflections with you related to what we experienced in order for me to encourage you and in order for you to encourage me. So I hope you listen to this episode where we reflect together on how a dementia caregiver can be prepared for the unexpected. Hey, Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, the podcast where I show Bible-believing Christians, that we serve a God of order and not confusion, and that there is order to dementia.
[1:23] That the way we think about dementia will ultimately determine the outcome of our journey. If you are a Christian spouse, the adult child, or a family member of a person living with dementia and want to have more clarity, less stress, and provide better care, this podcast is for you. Here we provide you with practical solutions, hope, and encouragement for your caregiving journey, but through a biblical lens. Now, if you’re looking for a little more support and want to learn three ways to ease your caregiving journey, I invite you to register for our next free monthly workshop at thinkdifferentdementia.com forward slash WSL. The workshop is Saturday, April the 12th at noon Eastern.
[2:17] It is live and highly interactive. It is two hours and you will walk away knowing exactly what your next step needs to be in order for you to make your caregiving journey easier. So I truly hope you take me up on my invitation to join us for the next free monthly workshop that is my gift to you as my community in helping make this journey easier for you. So let’s step into today’s episode.
Personal Reflections on Grief
[2:51] Now, to be fair, it has been very recent still.
[2:55] Since my mom passed away, and this is the first part of two episodes where we’re going to be talking about this particular way of responding and being prepared during a crisis as a caregiver. This is my solo reflective episode on my personal experience, and the second episode will actually be my private community coming around me and supporting me the way I support them through my own experience and my grief. And so I do hope that you find benefit from today’s episode. If I get a little teary-eyed, forgive me. This is actually kind of ironic because this is the second time I have to re-record this episode because I was having some technical difficulties and it didn’t record. So this is hopefully not the dress rehearsal for the final, but hopefully the only other recording I have to do on this particular topic today. So let us move into the episode.
[4:05] All of us have been in experiences where we see something unusual happen. And I don’t know how many of you guys go into places and look for the exits to see how to get out in case there’s a fire, etc., etc. Well, July 25th, 1993, a young man by the name of Charles von Veik, who is from South Africa, was in a church in Cape Town, South Africa, when terrorists walked into the building and started shooting. He has written a book, it’s called Shooting Back, and if you haven’t read it, I do recommend you read it. It’s a short read. It’s not a topic that when he wrote this book in 1993.
[4:53] You know, this occurred in 1993, so a good 30 years ago now, these kind of occurrences were not common. I believe, and I could be mistaken, that what is now known as the St. James Massacre was actually one of the first church shootings ever. And so what makes this important, and I know you’re thinking.
[5:15] Lizette, how on earth are you going to get from a church shooting to your mom’s passing. Well, I’m going to connect the dots for you here in a second.
[5:23] Charles is or was at that point a retired or had just gotten out of the South African equivalents of the SEALs. And so their training is very similar to the training of the SEALs in the United States, which is you think through every contingency before it happens. And what he had done when he started attending this church was he walked into the building and he would sit down and he pre-planned in his mind’s eye exactly step by step what he would do if somebody walked into the building and started shooting. So on the Sunday that this occurred, when these terrorists walked into the building, he had already planned it out in his mind exactly step by step what he would do in order to protect people in the building.
Preparing for the Unexpected
[6:18] And that is, in essence, exactly what happened the day he started shooting back. So today’s episode, what we’re going to look at is three easy points. Number one, being prepared is a gift to yourself as well as the person that you love who you are helping with dementia. The second thing we’re going to look at is we make better decisions when our emotions are in check, which is logical.
[6:49] And the third thing we’re going to look at is God’s sovereignty and providence in grief. So the first thing, preparation is a gift to yourself as well as your loved one. For many, many years and many months before my mom passed away, my mom passed away after coding during a routine procedure that was designed to improve the quality of her life as well as extend her life for as long as possible related to a severe, severe esophageal stricture. So I want you to imagine in your mind the top part of a bendy part of a straw, which is approximately four centimeters long, and approximately the diameter of the straw. That was the stricture that my mom had. So she was scheduled for a routine EGD to go in to try to stretch her esophagus so that food could actually go down. She was not able to eat hardly anything, and she was losing weight hand over fist week in, week out, and it was not related to the fact that she had vascular changes due to her stroke. So my mom did have some form of vascular dementia that was never diagnosed properly.
[8:11] That was 100% related to a massive aneurysm when she was 42. But I didn’t need a diagnosis. I could see the changes that she was experiencing. But what happened was, because for months and years ahead of time, our family has, and South Africans in general, have a very dry, gallow type of sense of humor. So we’ve been joking for years about, you know, if somebody is on life support, that one of us would go trip over the electrical cable because my mom expressed explicitly she never wanted to be on life support. She did not want to be kept alive. She did not want that. And so for years, we have been talking about this. We had all the paperwork in place. I had been thinking through lots of scenarios over the years about what I would do in a particular situation if my mom ended up in the hospital. So for example, during COVID, you know, if she ended up with COVID and she ended up in the hospital and they put her on a vent, what would I do?
[9:17] All of these things I had been rehearsing for years in my head. And so on the day that this happened, I had already formulated a plan about what it was that I would do and say. Kind of like the SEALs. The SEALs pre-rehearse crisis situations over and over and over and over again until it becomes second nature. So the way the philosophy that the SEALs have is you don’t rise to the occasion you fall back on your training. So when I was sitting in the waiting room and I heard them call the code blue in the EGD. I knew that it was my mom and I knew what I needed to do. And the Lord was good and kind and almost immediately had given me the peace that I needed in order to make the decision. So when they came to take me back and they told me that they were coding my mom, I was able to say to them.
[10:17] Stop the code and not even think about it, not even question the decision because the decision had already been made and I had pre-prepared every single step of the way what I would do in that particular situation. And so it was a tremendous gift that I had unbeknownst given to myself in thinking through all of these different scenarios, as well as a gift to my mom because we didn’t delay. We didn’t have to have family meetings and talk about what would mom want. We didn’t have to, you know, take our time to think through all of the different scenarios because we had already done that before this occurred. And so I encourage you as a family or as a spouse or as the adult child, do not fear thinking through all of these different scenarios. What would you do if they fall and break their hip? What are your options if they need to go to a nursing home for rehab?
[11:20] How do you make the decision if somebody stops breathing at home?
Emotions and Decision-Making
[11:25] Do you have the paperwork in place? Think through and have these conversations early on, because preparation is a gift to you, as well as the person that you love. The second thing I wanted to talk about today is that we make better decisions when our emotions are in check. And when we have prepared and we have our training to go on.
[11:49] That allows us to regulate our emotions. I’ll use this as an example. When nurses and doctors or when they’re going through training, the nurses and doctors have repetitively trained and trained and trained until they get to the point where it is automatic. When they first start training, they have to learn how to separate their emotions away from the situation in trying to take care of the person that they’re helping. And when you trained your brain and when you’ve trained and prepared yourself in thinking through these situations, when they occur, you are able to take a step back or a bird’s eye view or a fly on the wall view of the situation and talk to yourself in the third person and say to yourself, Lizette, Susie, John.
[12:42] Mom, dad, spouse would not want this. Lizette, your mom did not want this. And so it took me out of the situation emotionally and was able to put me back in the situation from a rational perspective in order to make the right decisions on behalf of my mom in that moment in time with clarity and with no regrets. And that is the thing that I walked away from this particular situation was I had no regrets. I do not regret any of the decisions I made to help my mom and to help try to extend both the quality as well as the quantity of her life. I regret nothing. The other thing I wanted you to think through today when we talk about making better decisions when our emotions are in check is that love is not a emotion.
[13:43] Love is an action. Love is a verb. It is a doing word. It is not a passive feeling. It is an active decision to love someone. The same way that God loves us, it is an active decision to love. And love is an action, not an emotion. So when all of this occurred, I was able to love my mom through an action in being prepared to make the decision for her on her behalf without my emotions in play. Because if it were up to my emotions, of course I want my mom here, but it was not what my mom wanted. And so I was actively able to demonstrate my love to my mom by making a better decision and keeping my emotions in check. So it’s just something to consider as you’re walking through this path. We make better decisions when we have.
[14:50] Being prepared is a gift. And when we have our emotions in check because we’ve prepared,
Understanding God’s Sovereignty
[14:58] we can make the right decision and walk away from the situation without regretting what we have decided. And the third point briefly for today is truly, truly, truly understanding God’s sovereignty and God’s providence.
[15:17] And grief has given me such comfort because I truly understand that God is sovereign, it is not up to me, and that God’s providence is good and kind. I know that a good and loving God has decreed this particular situation in a very easy death for my mom, but a harder passing for me because I was the active decision maker means that I know that this too.
[15:51] This specific experience in my life is for my good and for his glory. And I will tell you it has not been an easy journey for me to get to truly understanding and believing with every fiber of my being, God’s sovereignty, and providence. I remember being in boarding school. It was devastating. I grieved, I literally grieved the loss of my parents at the age of 12, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my sister and I were placed in boarding school. It took me decades. It took me probably, not full-on decades.
[16:26] But probably 15 years to work through how could you do this quote-unquote to me. And the way I got through that experience, the way I transformed that particular experience in my life was by truly understanding God’s sovereignty and His providence. And that if I truly understand God’s providence, then that experience was for my good and for His glory and for my sanctification, and therefore I cannot hate the experience. The same thing with the passing of my mom. This too is for my good and his glory, and therefore I cannot grieve as someone who is lost, as one without hope. So as an encouragement for you today, I’m going to read for you the Heidelberg Catechism question and answer number one, which talks about what is your only comfort in life and death? And the answer is that I am not my own, but I belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for my sin with his precious blood, and he has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father.
[17:47] Not one hair can fall from my head. Indeed, all things, including dementia, including the death of my mom, must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him. And because that is what I believe, I have the peace that surpasses all understanding. And I can tell you that the prayers of the people around me that have been upholding me I have felt. I know there are people who are in my community who have been praying for me. My friends and church members have been praying for me, and I know the peace that surpasses all understanding. If you are a Christian and you are struggling with God’s sovereignty or God’s providence, reach out to me. I will have a conversation happily with you about God’s providence and God’s sovereignty and help you along in your journey. If you are struggling as a family caregiver and you’re ready for a little bit more support, hop on a Care Companion success call with me. It will take 20 minutes where you will be able to talk to me.
[19:04] Gain some clarity about your very next step that you need to take in this journey, as well as have a conversation about whether or not it makes sense for both
Recap and Final Thoughts
[19:16] you and for me for us to work together to help you through your dementia caregiving journey.
[19:21] So as an end to this episode, to recap real quick, remember preparation is a gift both to you as well as the person that you love.
[19:31] Seals rehearse and rehearse and rehearse situations over and over again until it becomes second nature. We can do the same thing in our mind. You can think it through in your mind, and then when things happen that are the unexpected crisis in caregiving, you already know what you’re going to do. The second thing is, if you do that and you are prepared, you will make better decisions by keeping because your emotions will be in check. And then lastly, in light of dementia, in the light of death, in the light of our journey together here, God’s sovereignty and God’s providence and understanding that will help you grieve well. So I know that you have found benefit from today’s episode. And if so, I ask you please share this episode with one other person. It means the world to me to grow this podcast because this is my ministry and my help to you as my audience and my desire is to get this message into the hands of people who need to hear the gospel. So as I end or try to end all of my episodes, may the Lord bless you and keep you and I hope to see you soon.
[20:57] And next episode will be my coaching community coming around and supporting me as I am grieving well the recent loss of my mom. I’ll talk to you guys soon.
