You Can Carry Your Parents Because You Are Carried

God carries the one who is carrying, which means you can care for an aging parent without carrying it alone. You may be the person in your family who now gets the phone call: an appointment to arrange, a house getting harder to manage, a parent who needs more than they will ask for. Have you ever hung up and felt the weight of a role you did not apply for?

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: The Call That Makes You the Responsible One

At some point the roles quietly reverse. The parent who once handled everything now needs you to read the paperwork, drive to the appointment, or make the call they used to make themselves.

For leaders, this lands on top of a full load. You are used to carrying responsibility, so you pick this up too, often without asking for help, with a mix of love, duty, and a low hum of guilt about what you are not doing well enough.

The possibility worth building toward is caring for a parent from a different place: not as one more weight on your own shoulders, but as someone who is being carried while you carry.

H – Hear: Even to Your Old Age I Am He

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” (Isaiah 62:3-4)

God speaks these words through Isaiah as Babylon’s idols are hauled away. Verses 1-2 picture gods like Bel and Nebo loaded onto weary animals: idols have to be carried. In verse 4 the LORD says the opposite about Himself. He is the one who carries.

Two Hebrew verbs hold the weight. “Carry” is nasa, to lift up. “Bear” is sabal, to carry a heavy load, the verb Isaiah uses when he says the Servant has “carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). And notice the order: “I have made, and I will bear.” The One who made you has already committed to carrying you.

What does this show about God’s love? It does not hand you off when you grow old or weary; it gets under the load. That is true of your parent, and it is true of you as the one doing the carrying. God promised to carry His people to their gray hairs, so the one who is carrying an aging parent is never the last one holding the weight.

E – Exchange: From Carrying Alone to Carrying as the Carried

What needs to be exchanged is the belief that this load rests entirely on you, so every decision is yours to get right and every limit feels like failure. The truth in Isaiah 46:4 is that God’s love carries first, and carries both of you. That does not shrink the work of care, and it does not mean you stop asking siblings, professionals, or friends for help. It means you carry from rest, not from dread.

Because God’s love is like a father who carries a tired child on his shoulders the whole way home, how does that change how I carry the care of my parents?

W – Walk: Say It Aloud, Then Hand One Thing Off

Before your next call, visit, or decision about a parent’s care, take two minutes. Say aloud, “Father, You made them, You carry them, and You are carrying me. Help me carry this well.” Then name one task you can hand to someone else this week, a sibling, a paid helper, a neighbor, or a friend from church, and send them the request.

Closing question: What would your parent notice if you cared for them as someone who is carried by God?