After Twenty-Two Years, My Father Could Rest!

September 3, 2026, was a special day for my family. For the first time in twenty-two years, my father did not have to stretch my body that morning. It may sound like a small change. Someone else stretched my legs. Yet that ordinary act meant that my father could step away from one responsibility he had faithfully carried every day for more than two decades.

Twenty-two years ago, a snowboarding accident left me with a spinal cord injury. Since then, my father has been one of my primary caregivers. He has helped me get out of bed, shower, dress, and manage many ordinary tasks that I cannot perform independently. One of the most important things he has done is stretch my body each morning.

For a person with a spinal cord injury, stretching is not a minor part of daily care. Without regular movement, muscles and joints can gradually stiffen and develop contractures. Over the years, I have seen people whose ankles and feet became so rigid that they could no longer move through their normal range of motion. I am deeply grateful that this has not happened to me. Several factors have contributed to that, but one of them is remarkably simple: my father kept stretching my body.

Day after day. Year after year.

His body has paid a price for caring for mine. Years of physically assisting me have contributed to problems with his hands, including carpal tunnel syndrome. He has grown older while continuing to care for me. Yet his work became such an ordinary part of our family’s life that it was sometimes easy to overlook the sacrifice involved.

While I was living in the United States, the daily caregiving assistance I needed was not realistically available to our family because of my circumstances. After moving to South Korea, I became eligible for caregiving assistance through the Korean support system. Now, for the first time, someone else can share responsibilities that my father has carried for many years. That morning, I understood that God’s provision of caregiving assistance was not only a gift of help to me; it was also a gift of rest to my father after years of faithful sacrifice.

I am profoundly grateful. I am thankful for the assistance I now receive, but I am even more thankful that my father can rest. I do not want to take this provision for granted. I want to recognize God’s providence through it.

Everything I receive is grace. Even what I do not receive must ultimately be entrusted to the God who knows me completely. He knows what I desire, what I need, what my family has carried, and what remains beyond my understanding. I cannot explain why some provisions come and others do not. But on that particular morning, God’s kindness felt remarkably tangible.

So I praise him.

At the same time, this experience has led me to think about families around the world for whom no caregiver is coming. Parents care for adult children. Children care for aging parents. Spouses care for one another. Siblings, relatives, and friends quietly reorganize their lives around the needs of someone they love. When public assistance and community resources are insufficient, families often become the caregiving system.

Caregiving can be a weighty responsibility. Calling it weighty does not mean that the person receiving care is a burden. It means that genuine care costs something. It requires time, physical strength, patience, sacrifice, and the repeated decision to remain present. Love may motivate caregiving, but love does not make the work effortless.

To family members, friends, professional caregivers, and everyone who cares for someone they love, I want to say thank you. Thank you for the mornings no one sees, the physical work, interrupted schedules, tired hands, difficult decisions, and ordinary acts of care that may never receive public recognition. What you do matters.

My family’s experience has reminded me that those who provide care also need to be cared for. Families may care for one another, but they should not be left to carry every responsibility alone. My prayer is that more families will receive the practical support they need from their communities and societies.

September 3 was special because someone came to help me. But the greater gift was this: my father could finally rest.

For that grace, I thank God.