“What do I do when Mom refuses to bathe again?”
If you’ve ever walked out of a support group meeting with that question still hanging heavy in your mind, you know the frustration. You may feel lighter for a moment after sharing your story, but then you return home to the same struggles—no plan, no peace, no tools to carry into tomorrow.
I hear this often from Christian caregivers. A wife caring for her husband said to me recently, “I leave my group encouraged, but nothing actually changes at home.” Another daughter whispered through tears, “I thought I just needed to vent. But now I realize I need real direction.”
Friend, if this feels like you, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to stay stuck in the cycle of comfort without clarity.
Comfort Is Good—But Christ-Centered Equipping Is Better
Support groups absolutely offer value. They let you know you’re not alone, and that can soothe the ache of isolation. But comfort without equipping is like giving someone a blanket in a storm when what they really need is shelter.
Ephesians 4:12 reminds us that God gives teachers and shepherds “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” In dementia caregiving, that equipping means:
Practical tools for the daily challenges (bathing, wandering, communication).
Biblical clarity for decision-making.
A Christ-anchored community that strengthens your faith, not just your feelings.
A Christian caregiving community is different because you don’t just leave heard—you leave prepared.
Surviving Isn’t Enough—God Calls You to Stewardship
Most secular support groups normalize survival: “Just get through today.” But God calls you to more than survival. He calls you to stewardship.
1 Peter 4:10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
Stewardship in caregiving means:
Stewarding your skills — learning real techniques that make daily tasks easier.
Stewarding your resources — using time, money, and community wisely.
Stewarding yourself — guarding your health and soul so you can endure this journey.
When you see caregiving through stewardship, it shifts from chaotic reaction to purposeful faithfulness.
Peer Advice Is Limited—Christ-Anchored Guidance Transforms
Many groups run on peer-to-peer advice: “Here’s what worked for me.” That can be helpful, but it is limited to one person’s experience.
In a facilitated Christian caregiving community, you receive:
Experienced coaching rooted in both clinical wisdom and Scripture.
Truth-telling instead of therapeutic lying. Because God is a God of truth, there’s always a way to communicate honestly with dignity.
Order instead of chaos. Because God is a God of order, even dementia care can have structure.
This is what the DigniCare Method™ provides: moving you from confusion to clarity, and from burden to contentment.
Venting Feels Good—But Stewardship Brings Transformation
Let’s be honest. Sometimes you need to vent. I do too. But venting alone can slide into grumbling, and grumbling never brings growth.
James 1:22 warns us, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” Venting might release pressure for the moment, but only stewardship and sanctification will change your tomorrow.
Here’s how to start stewarding today:
Name your role. (Phase 1 of the DigniCare Journey™ — Decide). Say, “Yes, God has entrusted me with this season.”
Clarify your end goal. (Phase 2 — Clarify). Ask, “In three years, what would I want to say about how I walked this caregiving journey?”
Take one faithful step. Not ten. Just one—whether it’s trying a new transfer technique, scheduling a rest break, or asking your church for help.
Friend, Here’s the Truth
Comfort soothes for a moment. But Christ-centered equipping strengthens you for the journey. Peer advice can encourage you, but only truth will transform you. Venting may feel good, but stewardship and sanctification will actually change you.
And here’s the best news: you don’t have to figure this out alone.
Your Next Step
If you’re ready to see the difference for yourself, I invite you to our next Ask the Dementia Coach Q&A.
📅 Saturday, August 23 at 12 p.m. EST
🎟️ Register Here
Come experience what it feels like to leave with clarity, peace, and a faithful action step you can take right away.
Because dementia caregiving isn’t just something to survive. It’s a season to steward—by God’s design, for His glory, and for your good.
Transcript
Not long ago, I had a conversation with someone who called my coaching community
Introduction to Caregiving Support
a support group, and I understand why. It is supportive. We pray together, we share honestly about the hard days. But here’s the difference. It is not a support group in the way most people think of one.
Many caregivers go to a group because they’re desperate not to feel alone. And while there is comfort in being heard, many leave those support groups with the same questions. Okay, but what do I actually do tomorrow when my loved one refuses to bathe? Or what do I do when they start pacing at midnight? That’s where the difference lies. A group that only lets you vent might make you feel lighter for the moment, but it will not prepare you to walk faithfully into tomorrow. In fact, venting without turning back to Christ and to obedience can actually keep us stuck. What most caregivers really need is not just empathy, but wisdom, direction, and discipleship for this season that God has entrusted to them. So today, we’re going to talk about how to know if the group you are a part of is actually helping you, or if it’s only giving you temporary relief without lasting transformation.
The Need for Genuine Help
Hey Christian Care Companion, welcome to Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians, where we tell the truth about dementia care and give you something you can actually use this week. If you’re a weary spouse, an adult child trying to work and hold family together, or the one everybody calls when things fall apart, you are not alone. Here we pray, we think clearly, and we take faithful next steps, not just to feel better for a moment. Today, we’re asking a freeing but necessary question. Is the group you’re attending really helping you or just letting you vent? I’m Lizette Klute, an occupational therapist and fellow believer. And by the end of this episode, you’ll have clarity, peace, and one obedient step you can take forward. And if you’re ready to actually experience the difference for yourself, join me tomorrow, Saturday, August the 23rd at 12 p.m. Eastern for our next Ask the dementia coach, you will see firsthand how live coaching equips you in ways a typical support group simply cannot.
Please register at thinkdifferentdementia.com forward slash ask.
Understanding Support Groups
All right. Many caregivers do join a support group because they are desperate. And this is one of the reasons I’m very cautious to recommending people to just join these large 40, 50,000 people Facebook groups, because sometimes these groups will actually leave you way more discouraged. Because even though you have shared your story or you have expressed your feelings, you haven’t actually left with any tools to use. Today, we’re going to look at the difference between a support group that gives you temporary release and a community that can actually equip you to walk your caregiving journey, particularly your Christian caregiving journey, with clarity and peace. So you guys know I love my points. So we’re going to look at today’s episode in four points. The first one is, getting comfort is good, but being equipped by Christ is better. The second thing is, surviving caregiving is not enough.
God is actually calling you to stewarding caregiving. The third thing we’re going to look at is peer advice has value, but it is limited. Christ-anchored support and guidance will transform your life.
Comfort vs. Equipping
And then lastly, catharsis might feel good in the moment, but stewardship and sanctification will bring transformation in your journey. So the first thing we’re going to look at today, comfort is good, but Christ-centered equipping is better. So what are support groups? Support groups are places, like if you go to the Alzheimer’s Association and you find a support group, they are valuable. I do not want you to not consider being in a support group because they do offer value. They offer listening ears. They give you empathy and they rarely prepare you for the hard moments that come back every single day. A Christian caregiving, specifically dementia caregiving community, will ground you in not only practical, tangible.
Day-to-day caregiving actionable strategies and techniques, but will ground you in a community of other believers who are following Christ and using a Bible-centered way of looking at the world so that you will actually leave every single time stronger than when you came in.
Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 12, and I’m using the ESV, says, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. The difference between a support group and a Christian dementia caregiving community that we are building from the ground up is to equip you as a saint and build you up in the body of Christ.
Because God’s word actually tells us, even though the words caregiving are not used in the Bible. The concept of caregiving is absolutely in the Bible, and it is a part of your stewardship, it’s a part of your sanctification, and it can be a ministry. So when we go to a support group where we get comfort alone.
It will soothe us in that moment. But being equipped will strengthen you for your journey. So that’s a very distinctive difference between a support group and a Christian supportive community. The second thing we’re going to look at is the second point.
Surviving your dementia caregiving journey is not enough. God is calling you to steward in your dementia a caregiving journey. So one of the biggest differences between a support group that focuses on being a support group is it is focused on just getting through,
Stewarding Your Caregiving Journey
just getting through the next thing, just getting through the very next day. It normalizes this feeling of surviving your caregiving journey. It normalizes and validates your emotions. And please understand me and know that they are our emotions. We have these emotions, but it doesn’t show you a way forward. It just shows you how to survive or to get through the next thing. A Christian coaching community. We work on reframing caregiving all the time through the lens of God’s Word, through stewardship.
Of God’s grace, and that it is a season in our life that we can walk through wisely and not chaotically. It is pointing you all the time back to a principle which is God-centered and not me-centered. And I will tell you that this was single-handedly one of the biggest changes for me in my caregiving journey was I did come from the medical model and understanding all of the things about dementia specifically, the techniques and how to modify activities and how to change the environment and while there is a component of that in the coaching community because it is a skills-based stewardship it’s not just a stewardship you know an ethereal word we’re actually learning skills in this community but i had to go through the medical model and into the caregiver-centered model where it became all about me, my stress, my exhaustion.
How am I going to get through this? I can’t do this. All of those thoughts into the final iteration of this specific way of being a caregiver through God’s lens and not through the world’s lens. And the integral difference in that is that what I show people, what we do in this specific community is actually relationship-centered caregiving. And it’s not relationship-centered caregiving between me and the person that I’m providing care to and for, even though that is a component of it for sure, but it is a relationship-centered caregiving starting with my relationship with God and then my relationship with people around me, the people who I’m caring for and caring with. So the community that we are growing shows us how to steward this caregiving season for our good and for God’s glory, which makes it vastly different than just a normal support group.
1 Peter 4 verse 10 says, As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. So God is not calling you, if you are in a caregiving journey, God is not calling you to just hang on. He is calling you to look at your stewardship in the lens of three different things.
How are you stewarding your skills, the actual skills to provide the care so that you can do it easier, better, faster, make it simpler for yourself? How to steward the skills that you bring, how to steward the resources that God has given you in this specific journey, how to steward that, and then lastly, how to steward yourself.
The Limitations of Peer Advice
Because guess what? We are supposed to steward ourselves also through this journey. That brings us to the third point, which is receiving peer-led assistance and advice, which is what most support groups are. They are led by other people who have been through experientially this type of a situation, but their peer-led advice is limited.
And it is limited because they have limited experience. Whereas when you are in a facilitated, Christ-centered community, and I really mean facilitated by somebody who has, and it doesn’t have to only be me. It can certainly be other people, but a facilitated and curated and gate-kept environment where not only you’re getting support from other peers, because there are other Christians just like you in this community, But you’re getting facilitated guidance from somebody with 30 years of experience in dementia and dementia caregiving, as well as somebody who, by the grace of God, has been put in this position to truly bring to you a different view of.
God’s view on caregiving and not the world’s view on caregiving. This group is not about me. What we are building is not about me. It is about Christ and being Christ-centered because that is where the real transformation actually happens. The reality is if your loved one has dementia, they’re going to pass away. The reality is, I’m going to pass away. You are going to pass away, and we are all going to meet our creator. And so the goal of this Christian community is to focus your eyes on Christ, who is the only one who can transform your experience of your caregiving journey. So a support group, the direction comes from peer-led advice. A person who has been a caregiver before or is still in their caregiving journey, yes, they may have taken some additional classes through the Alzheimer’s Association, etc. And the reality is All of the classes.
All of the education that they have gotten has only come from a secular worldview related to the medical diagnosis of dementia. And the reality is, and the more I do this, the more I realize this.
Yes, dementia is a diagnosis, and it 100% has daily application into my heart and my sanctification. And the world the medical model cannot and does not look at that in a support group and even and and this is wonderful I love that hospices have chaplains I have a very good friend who is a chaplain, they do bring the spiritual aspect into it, but they’re limited because they are only able to do it within the medical model.
The Role of a Christ-Centered Community
As long as you stay in the medical model, you’re not going to get anything much different. Yes, the chaplains can pray with you, and I hope they do. They can support you and they absolutely should. They’re going to be the ones who are there with you when your person is passing away. And that is not enough.
The Christian caregiving community that we are growing is typically facilitated by someone. Right now, this is the group that I have started, and I understand dementia and dementia caregiving. The Lord has been kind to show me and help me develop out a caregiving framework that is entirely based solely on a Christian worldview. And we pray with one another. We support each other. And it’s not just the tips and techniques, even though there is that. It is more than that. So Colossians 3 verse 16 says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing all in wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. Because that’s the other thing that this community is. This community is grateful. Grateful to the Lord, even in times of hardship, even in times of difficulty. So I want you to consider that true caregiving wisdom is not good.
Rooted in the medical model. It is not rooted in a caregiver-centric model. It is rooted in Christ and your relationship with Him using scripture, lived experience.
Practical application of skills and techniques that actually bring honor to God. For example, one of the things that this community stands on is we are created in the image of God and therefore we have dignity. There is order because we serve a God of order. There is order in dementia. And lastly, God is a God of truth and therapeutic lying, which is the world’s view of caregiving, is to placate and validate without any truth.
Venting vs. True Transformation
Say whatever you need to say to keep that person from having a responsive episode. And we believe in telling the truth. We can tell the truth in kindness, we can tell the truth in love, but we can still tell the truth to a person living with dementia. And lastly, catharsis, which is a big, fancy word, may feel good, but stewardship and sanctification brings real transformation. So what is catharsis?
Catharsis is when you vent your emotions just to get them out. So I will use myself as an example. This morning, I just, I call the other word I call this is verbally vomited my husband and I are in a season of transition we moved in with my with my dad and our life is in utter turmoil and upheaval and I just don’t feel like I’m catching my breath and so it’s not the caregiving aspect of it that’s pretty easy it’s just all the busyness and the overwhelm with all of the decisions etc and I verbally vomited on my husband I vented out my emotions to get them out because I needed a release in the moment but it really didn’t change anything it didn’t solve the problem and it really was.
Sinful i need to go back and repent to my husband for venting with him and at him about the things that we are experiencing because yes it is hard but scripture does warn us that grumbling and.
Can be a sin, or letting unwholesome talk spill from our mouths. So if venting or verbal vomit becomes the goal, we’re not moving towards Christ. We are simply complaining. And if we’re honest, like I hope you can see that I’m being honest, it did cross over into sin for me this morning. And so I confess both to you and to God that I sinned this morning when I vented, even though I felt good immediately afterwards because I had to get it out. But yes, I confess it was a sin. Catharsis feels good. Venting feels good. But it is not necessarily sanctifying. It’s not necessarily bringing you closer to the Lord. And so when I get off of here, I will confess this to my husband as well. And so stewardship and sanctification, that is where the rubber meets the road. That is where transformation happens.
Embracing Stewardship and Sanctification
Stewardship is bearing one another’s burden, but it’s always pointing us back to Christ. Stewardship says, yes, I know, I recognize this is hard, but God has entrusted me with this season for my good and for his glory. So what can I do today to take a step of faith to be obedient?
Stewardship equips you, It gives you clarity and taking one faithful step is stewarding your journey well, right? And back to the previous point, there are three things that I want you to consider in your stewardship of this journey. Number one, your skills, the actual skills that you need, because it is a skill. It is a skill that you need in order to provide care. You do need to know how to transfer something. you do need to know how to help take them to the bathroom. You do need to know how to manage the challenging behaviors. Those are all skills, and that is what you can learn by taking a course, listening to podcasts, lots of places, reading books. Those are skills. You have to steward your skill set. You also have to steward your resources. Now, resources are your time, your effort, your money, your humans. There’s a reason why it’s called human resources. Your church, how do you ask for help? How do you steward your resources?
And then lastly, how do you steward yourself? You do have to steward yourself. You do need to eat properly. You do need to sleep enough. You do need to go away with your husband by yourself if you’re caregiving your parent and you’re living with them. You do need to steward you in this process. And then as we are doing these tasks, by being faithful, by being obedient, by faithfully stewarding this season, God is sanctifying you. Now, what is sanctification? Sanctification is making you more and more like Christ, making you more and more every single day like your Savior that when you die, you are going to meet.
The Path to Lasting Change
Face-to-face. What a glorious thought that is. And so it stewarding this journey well will not only transform your actual caregiving, both the tasks, etc., but it’s going to make you more like Jesus. And that is what we are striving to be and do when you are a believer. However, James 1 verse 22 says, be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourself.
So catharsis can feel good, but stewardship leads to being faithful, leads to your sanctification. Only talking about your burdens or verbally vomiting your problems eases the pressure for the moment, but when you take action and then actually reframe it through the lens of scripture, your obedience to Christ, it will transform you. You will be different after this journey. You will be different after this journey. Whether you actively take ownership of the role, or if you just survive it, you will be different, and you can be different by taking action. And so, to recap today, comfort soothes us for a moment, but only Christ-centered equipping will strengthen you for your journey. In God’s providence, caregiving is not punishment. It is stewardship.
He has given you this to steward. Advice cannot replace the wisdom of Christ and his word. Inventing can feel good, but sanctification and stewardship is what really brings transformation in your caregiving journey because this is all about how you are going to be.
As a Christian in the future. And so if you listen to the coaching calls that we have on the podcast, you’ll notice I take people through a very structured way of looking at it that is future-focused. Because if you’re a believer, your eyes are on Christ. Your eyes are on the future. Your eyes are on the resurrection and being joined with him forever, whether that be because the Lord comes again today, which I pray he does, Maranatha, Lord, come quickly, or whether it’s because you have passed away and you’ve gone to glory. Our eyes should always be fixed on the future. And so as you’re reflecting on today’s episode, I want you to reflect on where is your focus? Is your focus on here or is your focus on glory? That’s the first thing.
And then secondly is if you’re in a Facebook group, if you are in a support group, if you are anywhere and you leave that group, are you comforted because you were able to share your burden by venting? Or are you actually being challenged to be conformed to Christ and to be equipped to walk faithfully tomorrow? So if you need help with this, I do invite you to actually come tomorrow to
Next Steps for Caregivers
Ask the Dementia Coach because I do this once a month. It is the process that I take all my caregivers through, where I have you start with what will make this easier in six months. And then I ask you to identify what is standing in your way. And then we actually have an opportunity to work through a particular problem and you leave with action steps.
That is what makes what we do differently, and that is how to know if a dementia caregiver’s support is actually helping you or not. Are you leaving there with action steps that you can take? So, dear Christian, thank you for being here today. I appreciate you. I love you. I pray for you frequently. if you’re not in the Facebook group. The Facebook group is Dementia Caregiver Support for Christians. If you’re ready for a next step, I invite you to tomorrow’s Ask the Dementia Coach, and I look forward to serving you there well. And as I end all my episodes, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and I will see you in next week’s coaching call. Episode on Tuesday where you will hear from another caregiver who is in the trenches just like you.
