Lifting hands in praise at nursing home

It sounded like a good idea when we talked about initiating the ministry.
I was one of the first to volunteer.
Some weeks I enjoyed talking with the man in his 90s who played championship level checkers, studied math every day just to keep his mind sharp and enjoyed computer chess.
Other times I needed the pat on the hand and hug from the grandmotherly woman as much as she did. One Sunday, the wheel-chair bound middle-aged patient and I exchanged grins when he took off his glasses and hooked them onto the top of his shirt as I had hooked mine on my blouse.
But other times, I slouched in my chair and wondered why I had agreed to go to the nursing home twice a month for Sunday School. I shrank back from the wrap-around reminder of the fragility of the human body, the inevitability of aging, the effects of a stroke or the onset of Alzheimer’s.
As we sang about God’s love for all of his creation, I looked away from the harsh reminders of the vicissitudes of age. I didn’t want to know that I would not always be a healthy young woman. I didn’t want to think about the fact that someday I might be like that lady in the high backed wheel chair who could not even wheel herself into the service. Lost in the confusion of dementia, she did not look at anyone, but stared over our heads.
I shuttered inwardly, looked away and focused on the worship leader preparing to do a special number. She popped in a cassette tape with a simple song. She did not sing. She let the vocalist on the tape sing while she signed the message of the song in a ballet of the hands. I watched fascinated as always, studying the repeated signs, wishing I would remember them later. Lifting hands to worship God in sign language always added a richness to the worship service.
The room of elderly folks watched quietly, politely … except, what was that movement?
I turned.
The wheelchair bound woman, the one who could no longer communicate because Alzheimer’s had robbed her of her speech, was sitting up as straight as she could in her high backed chair. Her eyes lit up with recognition. A small smile creased her face.
She knew this song.
She knew these signs. She lifted her hands in praise and signed in unison with the worship leader.
From one side of the room to the other, the two women looked knowingly in each other’s eyes and performed a hand ballet of worship to God.
My grumps, my complaints, my questions faded.
We brought these folks little that they did not already have. They knew all the songs, they knew all the words and from a life time of living, they had tested the reality of their faith. We had simply come to worship the God of our faith with them.
This woman bound by a wheelchair and a fading mind had forgotten many things: once familiar names and places, the years of life with her husband and how to perform simple tasks. Speech failed her, but she had not forgotten God’s love or how to worship Him in sign language.
She worshiped God that day. And in her worship she ministered to me. She reminded me again that God so loved everyone – even those incapacitated with age and dementia – that he gave His only son that none should perish … if they only would believe and receive God’s gift of love. (John 3:16.)
It was the first and last week I saw her there.
A month or two later I read her obituary in the newspaper and fought back tears as I remembered the smiling, frail elderly woman, trapped in a wheelchair, bound by a fading mind, but still smiling and lifting her hands in praise of her God.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)