A reporter once asked me, “What’s the toughest challenge you’ve faced as a caregiver?”
“Knowing what’s mine and not mine to carry,” I replied without hesitation.
He expected a different answer. Caregiving is usually described in terms of health care, insurance, exhaustion, sacrifice, or resilience. All of that is real, but none of it gets to the heart of the problem.
As a caregiver, I don’t need an ‘A for effort.’ I need to know whether what I’m doing actually helps.
I see this challenge most clearly in exam rooms. My wife needs space to speak for herself, even when pain makes it slow or difficult. Knowing when to step in and when to stay silent is a daily test of restraint. I’m her husband, advocate, and caregiver. She often asks for my voice, but I must also know when to withhold it.
Her car accident happened before I met her. I did not cause it, and I cannot undo it. Forty years into our marriage and this caregiving journey, I still haven’t managed to slow its effects, much less resolve them. Time has given me experience, but not control.
We live in a culture that treats effort as virtue and control as responsibility.
Paramedics, doctors, and first responders are compelled to act because they are trained and authorized.
Those outside those roles are often driven by something else. Someone else’s suffering agitates us. The urge to relieve that discomfort gets mistaken for a moral obligation. Action becomes a way to quiet ourselves rather than to help.
That reflex doesn’t stay confined to caregiving. When situations grow heated, the instinct is almost always the same: escalate, push harder, do more. Stopping feels irresponsible.
RELATED: When you’re carrying the love alone on Valentine’s Day
kckate16 / Getty Images
But effort is not the same as efficacy.
As a caregiver, I don’t need an “A for effort.” I need to know whether what I’m doing actually helps. And to know that, I have to stop and ask tough questions.
What is my responsibility? What are my capabilities?
I cannot make my wife’s legs grow back or eliminate her pain. I cannot undo the accident.
If those are my metrics, no amount of effort will ever succeed.
For years, fear convinced me that if I stayed more vigilant, sacrificed more, and tried harder, I could outrun reality. I mistook effort for faithfulness and exhaustion for love. In the process, I didn’t just wear myself down; I made things harder for the person I was trying to help.
Living with this over decades eventually forced me to exchange action for stewardship. When panic told me I had to solve everything immediately, a simpler question surfaced.
What is actually mine to do in this moment?
Care, not cure. Faithfulness, not outcomes.
Over time, it became clear that this struggle is not unique to caregiving. Powerlessness is terrifying, and unexamined fear often leads to recklessness or rage.
We see the results daily. People insert themselves into situations they do not understand, interfere where they have no authority, and escalate conflicts rather than resolve them.
Those thoughts don’t just whisper, they accuse. And when they go unchecked, they drive people, individually and collectively, to destructive extremes in the name of responsibility.
I’ve learned to pay attention to the language that accompanies overreach. It often arrives like a whip: I’ve got to. I must. I have to. I’m supposed to. Those phrases feel like responsibility, but they are often fear speaking in the grammar of duty. They leave no room for limits, no space for discernment, and no acknowledgment of jurisdiction.
This is where the harder question emerges.
Who actually has jurisdiction?
Not every situation improves when I insert myself into it. Not every wrong becomes mine to right. Sometimes the most faithful response is counterintuitive.
Sometimes I should just stand there. Not indifferent or in moral retreat.
I need to recognize that stepping outside my jurisdiction can damage the responsibilities already entrusted to me.
RELATED: The reform every society needs: Stop mistaking shock for success
Cienpies via iStock/Getty Images
This is where clarity matters most. God holds ultimate jurisdiction over my wife’s condition. My role is not to replace Him or compete with Him. My role is to care steadily and responsibly, trusting that restraint is not neglect and limits are not abandonment.
I once heard a story about Joni Mitchell telling a bassist working with her, “You have a marvelous use of space.” The bassist still had notes to play, but he understood the song was not his to dominate. Respecting the artist and the music itself required restraint. His understanding of limits did not diminish the song. It allowed it to become what it was meant to be.
I still struggle with the line between intervention and restraint. If someone is harming himself or others, is there a responsibility to step in — and at what cost?
Nothing resolves those questions neatly. But refusing to ask them guarantees damage.
Overreach often disguises itself as virtue. But good intentions do not protect from bad outcomes. And sometimes what we call virtue is little more than performance.
When that temptation returns, I am steadied by words a wise friend once spoke to me. “She has a Savior. You are not that Savior.”
That distinction does not diminish love. It protects it. It keeps care from turning into control, responsibility from turning into ruin, and effort from becoming its own justification.
Knowing what isn’t mine to carry remains one of the hardest lessons of my life.
It is also one of the most necessary.
Caregiving, Responsibility, Limits, Faithfulness, Companionship, Opinion & analysis