** Edited by
Baha and Margaret Habashy
Meet Margaret
She Never Called Herself a Caregiver. She just called herself a wife.
For three years, Margaret rose before dawn to help her husband get dressed, prepared his medications, drove him to appointments with specialists she could barely keep track of, and fell into bed each night too tired to pray. When her pastor asked how she was doing on Sunday mornings, she said, “Fine, thank you.” Because what else do you say?
She never called herself a caregiver. And her church never thought to ask.
Margaret’s story is not unusual. In fact, it is one of millions unfolding quietly — in your city, in your neighbourhood, and almost certainly in your congregation.
Today, 13.4 million Canadians provide some form of unpaid care to a family member or friend. One in four of us is a caregiver right now. And yet most of them, like Margaret, are invisible. They show up faithfully. They hold things together. And they carry their exhaustion like a private shame, convinced that needing help is somehow a failure of love.
It is not. And the Church needs to say so.
A Wave We Cannot Ignore
We are living through one of the most significant demographic shifts in human history. By 2068, nearly one in three Canadians will be over the age of 65. The baby boom generation is aging rapidly, life expectancy is rising, and the number of people available to provide care is shrinking — even as the demand for that care grows more urgent and more complex every year.
The Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence puts it plainly: a perfect storm is brewing.
And it is already making landfall in our pews.
The people in our congregations are not just facing this as an abstract social problem. They are living it. A husband quietly managing his wife’s dementia. A retired woman driving her neighbour to chemotherapy because there is no one else. An adult son flying in every few weeks to help his aging parents, going home exhausted and guilt-ridden, unsure how much longer he can keep this up.
The numbers behind these stories are sobering. Research shows that 87% of caregivers experience loneliness. Nearly three-quarters report significant anxiety. Most are providing care for years — not weeks — with little support and almost no recognition. By 2035, the unpaid labour of family caregivers will contribute an estimated $128 billion to Canada’s healthcare system annually. They are not supplementing the system. They are the system.
This Is Not Someone Else’s Problem
Here is what makes this moment different from other social challenges the Church might observe from a respectful distance: caregiving is already inside our walls.
It is the woman who slips out of the service early because she cannot leave her husband alone for more than an hour. It is the man who has not slept through the night in two years and does not know how to tell anyone. It is the senior who is caring for her even older friend because there is no family left to help.
A caregiver who is distressed, isolated, and unsupported does not stay well for long. And when they break — physically, emotionally, spiritually — the person they care for breaks with them.
The Church does not need to solve the caregiving crisis. But it does need to show up.
What Showing Up Actually Looks Like
The good news is that the Church has something no government program, no matter how well funded, can replicate: relationship. Research confirms that caregivers often resist formal support services but have a built-in trust with their faith community. They will not call a helpline. They may not join a support group. But they will open the door when someone from their church knocks.
That trust is a gift. And it comes with a responsibility.
Showing up does not require a budget line or a new ministry program. It starts with something much simpler: asking the question. “Are you caring for someone right now? How are you doing — really?”
From there, the possibilities grow. Small caregiver support circles, where people with shared experience gather to pray and listen to one another. Practical mercy teams who bring meals, offer rides, or simply sit with a caregiver for an afternoon so they can rest. Trained seniors who visit other seniors who are caring for a spouse alone. A Sunday service where caregivers are named, prayed for, and told that what they are doing is a sacred act of love.
These are not extraordinary efforts. They are the ordinary work of a community that pays attention.
The Untapped Potential in Our Midst
There is one more piece of this picture that the Church cannot afford to miss.
Within most congregations there is a generation of active, experienced, purposeful seniors who are quietly waiting to be asked. They have navigated illness, grief, and the particular terrain of growing older. Many of them have been caregivers themselves. They know what it costs — and they know what it means to be seen in the middle of it.
These men and women are not simply people the Church ministers to. They are people the Church can minister through.
A retired nurse who spent decades in home care can offer a frightened spouse more in one afternoon than a brochure ever could. A widow who cared for her husband through his final years can sit beside a man who is just beginning that journey and speak truth with a tenderness that only lived experience can carry.
This is what the Bible calls bearing one another’s burdens. And it is one of the most powerful forms of ministry available to the Church today — if we are willing to recognize it and release it.
An Invitation
If you are a caregiver reading this, we want you to hear something clearly: what you are doing matters. It is not invisible to God, even when it feels invisible to everyone around you. You are not failing when you are exhausted. You are human. And you deserve a community that holds you up.
If you are a church leader reading this, we want to ask you something: Who in your congregation is Margaret? Who is carrying something quietly, saying “Fine, thank you” on Sunday mornings, and wondering if anyone will ever notice?
They are there. They are waiting. And the Church — your church — is one of the few places in the world uniquely equipped to reach them.
The wave is here. The question is simply whether we will show up.
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