The Many Blessings of Having Dementia!

Christine Bryden shares the blessings she has found through her experience with dementia. Thank you Christine, for sharing your heart and soul with us!! This is what Christine has to say:

I do indeed feel very blessed to have been shocked out of my previous life.  I was a busy 46-year-old divorced mother of three girls aged 10, 14 and 9, and had a successful and demanding career as science advisor to the Prime Minister of Australia.  My brain multi-tasked and was constantly stressed, juggling so many things at once.  I had great hopes for my future, of seeing my daughters married, cradling grandchildren, and furthering my career to become perhaps a Departmental Secretary or a Director of company boards.

But then came the shock of diagnosis in 1995, and the trauma of dealing with the despair and depression that followed.  It was like travelling through the valley of the shadow of death, but my church family stood alongside me, reassuring me of Christ’s presence during this dark time. 

I struggled to write my first book Who will I be when I die? as I went through this time of adjustment to a new and very different future.   I had time to contemplate God’s goodness and presence in my life, and could almost feel his arms around me, upholding me and comforting me.

After almost three years of this bleak time, when I drew close to God for reassurance, I felt able to claim some measure of healing – of my emotions and my spirit – despite still declining cognitively.  I felt more positive about my future, with no real basis for doing so.  Yet I was lonely, and wondered what God wanted for me.  After sharing with friends and my daughters, I finally went to an introductions agency, and met Paul.  He had a wonderful vision of how he was called to love me and stay beside me until my death.  I talk about our love story and this miraculous vision in my second book Dancing with dementia.

So by 1998 I had a wonderful caring person by my side.  We married in 1999, and I began my journey of advocacy in Australia and around the world with Paul as my enabler, my encourager and my cheer-leader.  Together we have been able to touch so many lives, and to give hope to so many people living with dementia, and their families.  It is indeed a calling, and I now feel confident that God brought us together in my time of need so that we could reach out and share with so many others.

God has blessed me richly by snatching me out of my busy life, allowing me a time of despair with a diagnosis of dementia, and then lifting me up through the loving support of Paul.  God has placed upon us both a sacred task of speaking out for all those who do not want to speak out, fear public speaking, or have lost the ability to speak.

I can joyfully say that there is hope in living a new life in the slow lane of dementia!

Watch Christine's video as she shares what you can do to help the person with dementia.