So you're now a carer. Your elderly parents need you as never before. Nobody's ever trained you for what comes next, yet you re the unofficial project manager.

Emily Ackerman looks at practical and emotional issues like finding time, coping with pressure, the sandwich generation, cutting apron-strings, memory loss and caring from a distance. Underpinning it all is helpful advice from the Bible, for isn't it God who calls us to honour and care for our parents?

The author shares generously and sometimes humorously from her own experience, acting as a wise, sure-footed and sensitive guide. This book will be useful to all who care for elderly relatives.

You are not alone!

Emily Ackerman

A Time To Care

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

A path for real people

1. Who, me? Called to care

God's take on parent-care

Introducing your instant network

Sowing and reaping

To ponder

2. But I don’t have time: Finding room for caring in your life plan

Whose life is it anyway?

Real people, real pressures

A time of preparation

People skills

Technical and practical skills

Character development

3. Some days I want to scream: Dealing with pressure

Dealing with emotions

Sharing the care

Adapt and survive

I need help NOW!

Who's the boss?

4. The sandwich generation: Extended family caring

Time to share

Please listen to me

Where did I put my Bible anyway?

5. Cutting the apron strings: Being a grown-up around your parents

Seeing clearly who I am

God-given boundaries

Updating family relationships

Understanding sour attitudes in old age

Handling privacy

Boundaries that set us free

6. Why do I feel this way? Working with difficult emotions

Handling embarrassment

Handling guilt

Handling worry

Unmasking the lies

God with us

7. Hi Mum, it’s your daughter: Coping with memory loss

Where have they gone?

But is it dementia?

The challenge of dementia care

Give me strength!

8. More needs, changing needs: Finding new ways to care

God's perspective

Handling money

Living at home

Residential care

Caring alongside residential care

9. Oh, but I’ve tried: Sharing the gospel with elderly parents

Offering life

Fostering faith in old age

Bring your needs to God

10. But I’m so far away! Honouring from afar

A time to serve

A short but useful visit

11. Freed by the truth: Dealing confidently with decline and death

God's eternal perspective

What we can (and can't) do

Getting the most from medical care

When a parent is dying

Keeping company with the saints

Afterword

In the centre of God's will

Appendix

Books

Online resources

Telephone support and information

Notes

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

'A liberating and personal guide to facing one of life's big challenges.' - Ruth Coffey  
   
 'Relevant, realistic, faithful to the Bible and hugely practical.' - Peter Hicks  
   
 'One of the most touching and challenging books I have read in the last three years ... I warmly recommend this book as an excellent example of how we can sanctify every situation in life.' - Pablo Martinez  
   
 'A timely and warmly-written book about the emotional, practical and spiritual aspects of caring for parents ... A must-read for Christians with elderly parents.' - Louise Morse  
   
 'Honest, down-to-earth, spiritually sensitive, encouraging and realistic.' - John Wyatt

Eden Customer

Having just made the decision with God to make seeing my parents more often a priority in my life, as they are now needing a bit more support, I heard an interview with Emily Ackerman (on Premier radio online), was impressed and bought her book. It is excellent, warm, encouraging, godly, honest, helpful, practical and positive. I feel I will be referring back to it often as the journey with my parents progresses, and have already lent my copy, recommended it to friends, and bought a second copy to lend to others. If you are of the generation whose parents are aging and needing extra help, read this book - it may transform your outlook - that here is an opportunity to honour your parents, honour God, and to take a journey that is unlikely to be easy but can be precious.

Loving your parents

The Good Book Stall

Regardless of who we are, we all have parents and they will at some stage face their lives shrinking as they get older and possibly suffering from ill health. At what point do we become more involved in their lives, taking on the caring role for them that they will be needing in the last few years of their life?  
Emily Ackerman is a doctor who has seen the caring from both perspectives – looking after her own aging parents and then becoming a parent in need of care herself due to physical ill-health. This is no dry list of what we should and shouldn’t do as Christians for our parents when they become frail. It is inherently a practical book dealing with most aspects of an aging parent’s life and current health problems. She strives to encourage us not to feel guilty that we can’t be in several places at the same time, with our own work and family commitments and then on top with a parent or two that we have chosen to care for.   
 She deals practically with some of the issues facing carers, and also looks spiritually at how we can best honour our parents when they have become less independent and the parent/child relationship appears to have become reversed. What makes this a very authentic book is that the author is coming from a place of ‘really knowing’ what it’s like to be in the carer’s position and to then have had the roles reversed, and she has been able to consider and learn from her own situation, writing with compassion and depth.

A Time to Care

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