Episode 3: Made in the Image of God

Erin Davis: Dementia is a broad-brush term for loss of memory . . . and then loss of other functions. It’s increasing, not decreasing. More than seven million people ages sixty-five or older had dementia in 2020. That’s in the United States alone. And more than nine million Americans by 2030 and twelve million by 2040.

Many of us are going to be among those. Many more of us are going to be the children of those who suffer with dementia. It has come to your people, to God’s people, and we need to know: What does God’s Word say to those of us who are dealing with this?

What is the value of someone who can’t remember their own name anymore? It’s time for God’s people to pay attention.

Dannah Gresh: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Those are some sobering stats, but they may be more than numbers to you. Maybe you have a parent or a grandparent with dementia, or you are getting older and facing the possibility of the disease yourself. 

Sadly, the question of the meaning of life at the end of life isn’t often discussed. We hear a lot about abortion, and choosing life for babies, and that is good and important; but after men and women live full and fruitful lives, they often reach a season of life where they’re not able to do much or anything for themselves. They’re just as valuable as an unborn baby is.

This season of The Deep Well is called “Tippy’s Teaching Me.” Tippy Duncan has been a mentor to both Erin and me. She’s also been a faithful friend to Erin’s mom, even through an extremely difficult season of life. 

Erin: Tippy, our lives have really intersected in a new way around this disease, as my own sweet momma—who has been a dear friend of yours for a really long time—has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. You’ve been a part of walking that journey with us. 

Although I’ve come to you often with my own thoughts and feelings about it, I don’t know that I’ve ever asked you what it’s been like for you to watch a dear friend of yours struggle and deteriorate. So, when you think of my mom and the battle she’s in right now with Alzheimer’s, what comes to mind for you?

Tippy Duncan: Sadness, but I’ve also accepted it; it took awhile. When she first started to change, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. She was acting very different than she always does. So it’s just sad. Your mother is so gifted!

Erin: In her fifties she decided to learn a new hobby. She painted like she was running out of time! She was running out of time; I don’t think she knew that. Now I’m so grateful for the gift of her artwork!

She served in kids’ ministry. She served in women’s ministry. Her husband, my stepdad, is an elder and has been for a very long time. She taught Sunday school. She’s gone on missions trips. She took kids to camp whose parents couldn’t go with them. 

Dannah: How old is she now, Erin?

Erin: She just turned sixty-eight, so still really young for the kinds of things that she’s facing. I can look back and see that in her late fifties, early sixties, some of the personality changes were happening. It’s been really hard to watch, because people think of dementia as being forgetful. That’s been part of it.

Tippy: But it’s been more than that.

Erin: It’s been so much more than that. The personality changes have been really significant. She went from a woman who . . . When I was a kid people would come up to me in the grocery store and be like, “Is your mom always like that!?” I thought that was a weird question.

Dannah: Because she was so happy!

Erin: Yes. That was not an act. It wasn’t fake, that was really who she was. And that’s not who she is while she’s in the grip of this disease. She’s agitated, she’s fearful, she can be angry, she can be hurtful. That’s not the Gini, or Mom, that we’ve always known.

Tippy: Right. No, it isn’t.

Erin: She’s been in a memory care facility for about six months, and that is something that everybody thinks, I won’t have to do that. I’m not going to put my person in a home! And for us that became the best and hardest choice.

Tippy: I visit her every Wednesday and Friday. In the beginning it was Monday and Friday. It’s just been painful to watch, but since I had already watched my mother, it was easier, because she’s not my mother. She’s my friend. So I wasn’t surprised at things. I felt more prepared.

I got over being so sad and just accepting, “This is what it is, and we’re just walking this together.”

Erin: You’ve been so faithful to our family! You’re talking about it like, “Oh, it’s no big deal, I go twice a week.” But it’s a big deal to me! She’s had wonderful friends. There have also been people that as the disease has progressed and as she got harder to deal with—because that’s what the disease does . . . I’m not being dishonoring of her. It’s the disease that makes her like this. She’s not difficult; it’s a difficult disease. I tell myself all the time, “She’s not giving me a hard time; she’s having a hard time.” But there have also been people who have fallen away because it’s difficult to deal with. 

And you have just stayed. I want to press you again. Why? What has given you the fortitude to continue to invest in that friendship when she can’t give back?

Tippy: Oh, because we had so much fun! Now, we can’t do the things we used to do. When I first started picking her up at home, we just sang songs. And then when she stopped singing with me, I was so sad! So now I just sing to her. [A clip of Tippy and Erin singing Jesus Loves Me]

I don’t think she knows my name anymore. 

Dannah: Erin, does your mom know who you are?

Erin: No, she doesn’t. Well, I don’t know. She doesn’t know my name. She hasn’t known my name for a long time. She does on occasion, every once in a while, pop out of wherever she is in her mind, and she’ll look me in the eye and she’ll either say, “I love you,” or “You’re so pretty!” Then she kind of goes back into that state.

That’s been a real source of grief for me as a mother, to think about a day when I wouldn’t know my own children! It’s so heartbreaking! I was so angry at her when she first got sick! I was like, “Get it together, woman!” Because she couldn’t remember anything!

Dannah: Was this before you had a diagnosis?

Erin: It was before we had a diagnosis, but we had a hunch that something was going on. But also, a lot of us responded that way. I think you responded that way with your own mother. 

Tippy: I did.

Erin: Then you feel guilty! Because it’s like here this person is that’s sick, and I’m angry at them. In the grief and the fear and the anger and the frustration with each other and all of those things, we looked at you and said, “Tell us what to do.” And you gave us some really good advice about how to treat her, do you remember?

Tippy: I told you not to correct her, because that’s hurtful and confusing. She’s just saying what she thinks is true. I told you to dignify her.

Erin: The day we took her to the facility, we were all there, and we were just waiting around. They had done the intake forms. And I said to the nurse, “We’ve never done this before. Tell us how to do it well.”

And she said, “Well, it doesn’t go well when the family didn’t tell the person they were dropping them off, and then they just drop them off and leave!”

And my eyeballs did what your eyeballs just did, “Really? That happens?!”

Tippy: That really happens?!

Erin: She said it happens all the time. That’s a dignity decision. This is where theology—if we want to use that big term—has legs and walks around in your life. I can read in Genesis 1 that God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them. It’s repeated there.

That means that people have dignity because we bear God’s image. And people march for that all the time, specifically when it comes to the unborn . . . and we should! We should never stop marching for that.

But I had to face whether or not I believe that’s true when my mom can’t read her Bible anymore, when she can’t pray anymore, when she can’t talk to me about Jesus anymore, when she can’t do anything for herself anymore. But she has dignity because she’s still as made in the image of God as she ever has been.

Tippy, you’ve helped me live that out, and it’s helped the anger dissipate. It hasn’t helped the grief, because it’s so sad to see someone made in the image of God fail! But you’ve helped me dignify her at every step.

For the person listening, can you speak to that dignity piece when it comes to somebody who can’t take care of themselves anymore. What does dignity look like?

Tippy: It looks like acceptance. This is where they are, and we’re going to love them where they are, and they don’t have to be any different. I’s a matter of dealing with your own grief about the sadness of what you’re seeing. And then it’s accepting it.

Erin: There is a cycle of grief with dementia that is very different than other kinds of grief. In my heart, I go to my mom’s funeral every week! 

Tippy: Oh, do you?

Erin: There’s not flowers, it’s not like that. It’s not like I have to feel the grief every time, but that woman’s not my mom! I knew my mom loved me every second of my life! That wasn’t true with my dad. With broken people you have the thought, “Do they really love me?” 

Not my Mom. My mom has loved me my whole life and wanted me my whole life, enjoyed me, wanted to be in my presence. And that woman—who is my mom—but that’s not true. She doesn’t know if I’m there or not. She doesn’t miss me if I’m not there. It’s like watching the brightest light extinguish slowly.

We live in this little town, three thousand people. The town is grieving! Everywhere I go, people find me. This just happened to my oldest son yesterday at a track meet. A woman came up to him and she said, “How’s your Gigi?” 

And Eli said, “She just had a seizure.”

And the woman burst into tears and pulled Eli into her arms and said, “She was my kindergarten teacher! I’m a teacher because your Gigi was a teacher!” And that happens to us over and over and over. So people are going to talk about how much they miss her. 

What do you think you’ll feel when she’s in glory?

Tippy: I’ll feel happy for her and sad. Your mom has always been such a happy person; we’ve laughed so much and had so much fun over the years! She’s just joyful! 

Dannah: Your mom was amazing! She did deserve the love and attention they lavished on her. What about the daughter listening to this who has a mom or a dad who doesn’t deserve it? 

Erin: They’re still made in the image of God, and they still are worthy of dignity and respect. An interesting/hard/good part of this journey for me has been watching the other people in my mom’s unit, and the way their families treat them.

I don’t know their stories, but I just know that all of them flourish under attention and being treated with dignity and being loved on. When we got the diagnosis, I was in the office with the neurologist and I said, “Okay, who does well? We know what the title is now. Tell me which patients do really well.” 

And he said, “The patients that have this.” And he was talking about those of us who were also in the room, and our commitment to walk it with her. My mom . . . I’ve told you the best of her, and it’s all true. The disease has brought out some really horrible parts.

My mom has never been violent towards me even a little bit before she got sick. She has been violent towards me during this. I’ve been hit; I’ve been kicked. My mom never called me a name, and since she got sick she’s called me “Stupid!”

It doesn’t matter if you’re forty years old or four years old. If your parent calls you a name, it lands like a nuclear bomb!

Tippy: Yeah, it really does.

Erin: So, I don’t mean she deserves it because she’s been wonderful; I mean, she deserves it because she’s made in the image of God. She has value. But no matter how your parent has treated you, this is a hard truth to live out. They were made in the image of God, and they have value to God. And because they have value to God, they are worthy of us treating them with some level of dignity.

Dannah: What a beautiful reminder of the value of human life, at the end of life, as well as its beginning. 

Erin Davis and Tippy Duncan have been talking about how this principle plays out in their relationships with Erin’s mom. If you’re facing a similar situation or you know someone who is, would you see how you could put some of the things into practice? 

Now, I’ve been telling you about the video version of this  Deep Well series. I am going to tell you again, because I want you to see how Erin’s mom responded to Erin and Tippy’s singing; it's precious. 

Find the video at ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell.

We would like to help you grow in the way you invest in other women, just like Tippy has invested in Erin and me over the years. There’s a book called Spiritual Mothering by Susan Hunt. I highly recommend it. The book will give you more of a heart to invest in other women and show you how to begin doing that. We’ll put a link in the transcript of this episode so it’s easy to find. 

Again, get a copy of Spiritual Mothering at ReviveOurHearts.com using the link in the transcript.

In this season of The Deep Well, we’ve heard about Tippy Duncan’s sense of adventure and active lifestyle even in her eighties, but she’s aware that changes may be coming. As she visits Erin’s mom, Tippy knows she herself might experience cognitive decline. On the next episode, we will see how Tippy is trusting God, even when the future is uncertain. 

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts family, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

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