Strength for the Long Road: 40 Short Devotions for Caregivers of Aging Parents

By: Ken Bonnafon

Nobody held a meeting.

There was no vote, no rota, no conversation where somebody asked whether you could take this on. It assembled itself out of a hundred small defaults - you lived closest, you answered the phone - and by the time anyone might reasonably have raised the question, it had been settled for months.

This is a book of forty short readings for people looking after a parent who is failing. Each one takes about four minutes.

What it will not do

It will not tell you that this is a blessing in disguise. It will not tell you to be grateful, or to treasure this season, or that God will not give you more than you can handle.

You have been given more than you can handle. Everybody can see that except the person who said it.

What it does instead

It says the true thing out loud first, and then brings Scripture to it:

The anger you feel toward someone who cannot help it - and why Paul writes be ye angry in the imperative.Grieving a person who is still in the next room - the loss nobody brings a casserole for.The day they did not know you - and the half of Isaiah 49 that nobody quotes, where God concedes that a mother can forget her own child.Prayers that have gone quiet - why that is exhaustion rather than backsliding.The relief you may feel when it ends, and the horror at yourself for feeling it. Almost no book on this shelf will touch that one.

Every reading has a scene, a verse, a prayer short enough to actually pray, and one small thing to do tonight - eat one thing sitting down, write down a date, say one sentence out loud. They are deliberately tiny, because small is what is completable at eleven at night.

There is a page at the front that finds what you need in under a minute. I'm so tired. I lost my temper. They didn't know me today. I'm relieved and it frightens me.

You do not have to read it in order, and you are going to miss days. Nothing here is keeping count.

King James Version throughout. 40 readings, about four minutes each.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HHD57VXY
• ISBN13: 9798171076290
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"