My father has been lethargic since Wednesday. When he gets like this, we have to isolate the variables. Is it another UTI? Is he anemic again? Is he traumatized by the new caregiver? Is there something brewing that we can’t see yet? This is the rhythm of caregiving. You don’t get to panic. You troubleshoot.
He was tired, but he was still there. Perking up when he saw me. Sitting up in bed watching TV. Present enough to reassure me that he was still himself. But by Sunday I hit a low point. Maybe it was the accumulation. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the relentless stream of Instagram astrology about a “2/22 manifestation portal.” At first it felt hopeful, as if relief might be scheduled cosmically. But after dozens of videos promising change, it began to feel cruel. Like being told over and over that things are about to turn around while nothing in real life actually shifts.
I realized how much I wanted things to get better.
And I did something I haven’t done since I was a child.
I prayed.
Not meditation. Not grounding. Not reframing hardship as training. I’ve been very good at those things. I’ve leaned on my Zen training. I’ve leaned on discipline. I’ve leaned on endurance. This was different. It was simple and messy and unpolished. Something like, “Please God, I need help. Make it stop. I need things to get better.” There was no poetry in it. Just desperation.
The next day, after a meeting on campus, I stopped at Starbucks before the caregiver’s shift ended. I was sitting near the pickup counter when a young woman walked over. Pretty, haole, with an indiscernible Midwestern accent. She looked like she might have been driving down from the North Shore, not the usual demographic at my local Starbucks.
“Excuse me?” she said. “I just wanted to tell you how beautiful you are. Like, you’re really beautiful.”
Perfect strangers don’t usually tell me I’m beautiful. I smiled, slightly confused. “Thank you?”
She grabbed her drink. I rubbed my eyes and tried to avoid eye contact to prevent another awkward exchange. She came back anyway.
“Excuse me. Would it be okay if I prayed for you?”
Given that the night before had been my first prayer in years, I said yes.
“What should I pray for?”
“There’s too much to name.”
Her prayer went something like, “Dear Lord, please help her to see her beauty. I pray for the things that are too many to name. Please help her understand your grace and know she is not alone.”
Immediate waterworks.
I don’t know what it all means. But I do know this: I had reached a point where endurance wasn’t enough.
For years I have relied on strength. Discipline. Composure. Viewing everything as spiritual training. I advocate relentlessly for my father. I ask doctors questions. I coordinate caregivers. I isolate variables. I look for answers. I ask everyone I can think of for help for him. But rarely do I ask for help for me. I have allowed myself to feel, but not often to admit that I am the one who needs mercy.
Prayer is an admission of need.
And within twenty-four hours of admitting, “I can’t carry this alone,” someone walked across a café and said, essentially, “You’re not alone.”
Whether that was divine orchestration, coincidence, or simple human intuition, I can’t say.
What I can say is that it felt like my prayer was heard.
Not because my circumstances instantly changed. My father is still medically fragile. Today I stayed home because when I came home yesterday he was even more despondent. Variables still need isolating. The uncertainty hasn’t disappeared. The caregiving continues.
But something shifted.
For a moment, someone else held even one percent of the weight. And I cried because I realized how long I’ve been holding everything without asking for mercy.
I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know if this is a sign of anything grand. But I do know that I crossed a threshold. I stopped trying to optimize the hardship. I stopped waiting for planets to align. I stopped pretending endurance was infinite.
I asked for help.
And the next day, I was seen.
That feels like something.
