#417 Respecting the Trauma

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Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to CritterCampaign.org. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. For those of you who are knowingly, willingly, voluntarily, and sometimes with weary hearts, put in yourself between a vulnerable loved one and even worse, disaster. The family caregiver is an at-risk individual. That individual is beaten down, is struggling, is bombarded with all kinds of pressures and stresses and so forth, and this show is dedicated to that person.

I am Peter Rosenberger. I am your host. Been a caregiver now in my 34th year of dealing with a medical nightmare that my wife has had to endure, all from a trauma that she had back in 1983, a car accident that left her permanently disabled with severe challenges to deal with. A hundred doctors now have treated her in over 12 hospitals.

200 breaks, the surgeon resident later told her prosthetist when she had to lose her legs many years after that, that they stopped counting at 200 breaks. And the reason I'm giving you this litany of things, because that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about trauma, and anybody that's paying attention can look out across the landscape of our country and see that there is such significant trauma going on to us collectively, not just for individuals, but as a nation. And one of the things I've learned over the years with her, she's had 80 surgeries, she gave up both of her legs below the knee, and one of those things I've learned is the reality of what trauma can do to a human being, to the body.

But it can also do things to your heart, to your soul, and that's what we're going to talk about today. If you want to be a part of the show, 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840, our website is hopeforthecaregiver.com, and I am Peter Rosenberger, and I am glad that you're with us. You're the reason I do the show, because I struggled along in this for so long without anybody being able to speak with clarity into my circumstances.

People spoke and they tried and they offered, but it didn't register. A lot of times it would just kind of hit the kind of the sometimes self-protective wall we caregivers put up just to keep from feeling like we're going under all the time, but inwardly we are going under. And so I determined when I decided to do this show many years ago that I was going to speak in a way that caregivers could understand. If you're not a caregiver, you may not grasp what I'm talking about, and I'm really not here for you in that regard. I'm here for that caregiver to help you understand these truths that can get you to safety, to get you to solid ground, because on any given day you're going to feel like you're floundering. In any given hour you're going to feel like you're floundering.

And it's hard to know where safety is, at least for me. And so that's why when we formulated everything about this show is designed to speak in a way that you as a caregiver can understand. And if you want to be a part of that, 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840, and I'm going to start off with a scripture today that I felt like would be appropriate to what we're dealing with as caregivers, what we're dealing with as a nation. It's Psalm 34, 18-19. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Does that sound familiar to you? Does that sound like where you are, that you're brokenhearted and crushed in spirit? The relentless onslaught of crises, of suffering, of challenges can beat you down like very few things can.

It's almost like you're just listening to, if you described it in military terms or combat terms, it would be like just concussive grenades going off. It's deafening, and it's hard to think and process. And yet so many caregivers wake up every day and push themselves through that type of craziness where they are going to just shoulder it up and go, and not pause enough to even catch their breath. This is what we do as caregivers.

And we live on sometimes caffeine and crisis. And so today I want to spend time, and I just want to unpack this, and I want you to weigh in on it and offer your thoughts on it. But I want to spend some time talking about our journey as caregivers and respecting the trauma that is happening to us as we do this. And also, I've postulated for some time that it doesn't end at a grave. I know too many caregivers who took care of somebody for a long period of time, and then once the funeral was over of that loved one, the caregiver still processed what can only be described as some form of PTSD following the death of their loved one that lingered on for a lengthy period of time, if not for the rest of their life.

And I want to share a little bit of what that looks like and why that's important to even have a conversation about. We caregivers become kind of conditioned to a certain type of behavior, certain types of responses, and certain types of stimuli, if you will. I had one lady that called the show, and we talked about this for some time. Her husband had passed away. He'd had Alzheimer's, and she was just on call all the time.

There's always something going on. And then when he passed away, the silence was almost deafening to her. I mean, she didn't know how to function. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do with the free time. She didn't know what to do with the quiet and the peace without the craziness that this disease can wreak on people, the havoc it can wreak on people.

And she had to process out the trauma. It takes time to do those kinds of things. But when you're dealing with it on and on and on and on and it never ends, how do you take the time for that?

How do you process this? And I think really about any combat vet will tell you that when you're on the battlefield, there's not time for mourning. That's M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. There's not time for grieving. You have to put that in a box and keep going on because you're fighting for your life. That takes an enormous toll on you as an individual. Imagine, you know, you're dealing with a special needs child that is relentless in their needs. That is, that you have to monitor all the time because they may stop breathing or that they scream and cry through the night. They have developmental disabilities and physical challenges or one or the other. Imagine, if you will, that you're taking care of someone who is bitter and mean in their dementia and is constantly flinging insults at you and hurling things at you that are just heartbreaking.

And yet you're trying to clean up after them and they seem to be able to do everything except make it to the bathroom. And you're having to deal with this regularly. What does that do to you? Do you respect that level of trauma of what that's doing to you? And then how do you process that to a place where you can have some healing? Catch your breath.

What does that look like? This is what we're going to talk about today. And if this is where you're feeling, I want you to weigh in on this. 888-589-8840 Welcome back to Hope the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the show for you as a family caregiver. And he will give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow.

The question is, do you believe that? And what does that look like? That is my wife, Gracie, singing from her new record, Resilient. You can go see more about that at Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

It's right there on the front page. Take a look at it and see how she's dealt with this. This is what she does through her music to be able to communicate that there is something coming, that there is something available in the midst of this. But it takes time to process that and you have to honestly look at what's happened to you. What is your sorrow? What is your challenge?

What is your heartbreak? In the context of what God provides. Remember our scripture this morning we started off with.

He is keenly aware of these things. The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. And I can't, I've talked to so many caregivers and broken hearted and crushed in spirit defines so many of us.

You do this long enough you understand that verse in a profound way. But what does that look like and how do we respect the trauma? How do we give value to the trauma in order to be able to effectively process and wrap our minds around what has happened to us? And please, please hear me on this. A funeral is not going to solve your problem. What has happened to you as a caregiver, as you have struggled with this and been, every part of your being, your senses and everything else have been assaulted by the constant crisis or the challenges or the stress of it and all those kinds of things. This wears on you.

And so if we don't give this the respect it deserves, respect the trauma, then we're not going to be able to experience the healing that is available to us. 888-589-8840 if you want to be a part of the show. 888-589-8840 and also follow along at HopeForTheCaregiver.com. Our podcast is there as well. We put out the show as a free podcast. Please take advantage of it.

You can subscribe to it, follow today, share it with other people. What I'm trying to do, not what I'm trying to do, what I am doing is putting out as much information as I can in a way that caregivers can understand. And again, if you are not a caregiver, you'll get something out of the show, but I'm not here for you. And I'm not here for your loved one who's going through whatever they're going through.

It's important, but there are lots of shows dedicated for things like that. This show is for you as a caregiver and we speak fluent caregiver here on this show. So whether you're taking care of somebody with autism, a child with autism or an adult with autism, or whether you're involved with somebody who has Alzheimer's, whether it's a family member or loved one or whatever, or maybe you have somebody in your life who has an addiction to alcoholism or substance abuse, whether it's prescription or illicit drugs, it doesn't matter. Whatever the affliction is, there's always a caregiver.

And that caregiver is reeling from the pounding that goes on in your heart and in your senses and your soul. And you won't find necessarily your specific circumstances in scripture. There's nowhere in scripture where there's a guy taking care of his wife through 80 surgeries and both of her legs are amputated. I've looked, so I know that I'm not going to find my particular journey there. What you're going to encounter over and over and over is scripture speaking to the core of what you're feeling inside. The despair, the fear, the heartache, the rage that you'll feel.

All of those things are dealt with in scripture because that's where the battle is for us. And I'm convinced that we as caregivers don't need a lot of instructions. I can't tell you how to take care of your loved one anymore.

You can tell me how to take care of mine. But we do need a lot of reminders. We do need a lot of repetition on what does safety look like. And we build each other up that way. One of the things about being a caregiver is that it isolates you. And in that isolation, those dark thoughts come along that you're the only one that is dealing with this or that you're completely alone or whatever. But that's where the dark thoughts come.

And I'm saying to you that you're not alone. And that's why we're doing this show so that you have clear understanding of how to navigate through this. One of the things I talk about on this show and those of you who are regular listeners will recognize these things that I've talked about is the fog of caregivers, fear, obligation and guilt. And when we get into this fog, we get lost. We get disoriented.

We don't know where we're going. If you're driving down the road and you run into a fog bank, what's the first thing you do? Well, you slow down. That's the first thing you do, slow down.

Because you can't see and you're disoriented. And you deal with the, you turn off your high beam lights on your car and you put it on low beams. Now, what scripture do you think about when you think about that? Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. You didn't see it was a searchlight.

It's not a fog light. I mean, you know, like, oh, help me out here. My mind just went blank. But a lighthouse out there, it is a lamp unto my feet. You just sometimes see the next step. And that's all we get sometimes is the next step. But we have to go with the speed of that next step. That's all we can do. And that fear, obligation and guilt consumes us.

And we don't know which way is up sometimes. And that's what I'm talking about. When the funeral is over, if your loved one has passed away or, you know, I've talked to too many about this. Now, mine has not. I'm still a caregiver.

I'm, like I said, 34 years into this. But I've talked to too many who have validated this thought that when the funeral is over, that doesn't mean that the fear, obligation and guilt, particularly that guilt doesn't consume a caregiver. They think about what they should have done. We should have done this. We should have done this.

We should have done this. And it torments them relentlessly. And their loved one is already in the grave.

And yet the caregiver is still tormented. Are you that way this morning? Do you feel that way right now?

That you're just tormented by what you should have done? Many are. And you're why we do the show. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840.

I'm going to try to squeeze in a few calls here before the bottom of the hour. This is Keith in Kentucky. Keith, good morning. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm great this morning.

Well, tell me what's going on in your mind and heart today. Well, I'm going to name names. I'm going to give some fictional names to people that I'm associated with. Like Donald, he's my landlord. He's the one I take care of. He bedridden me. He started walking in.

He's been in the hospital three times over seven months at a time. Okay. All the skin and muscle of his arm. It messed up his legs.

Okay. His legs. And he right now, he weighs around 500 pounds.

All right. I've been trying to get him to lose weight. He's happy with himself. He stays satisfied. And he's always lonely.

Even when people around him. Keith, we're spending a lot of time talking about your landlord. Tell me about you. Okay, about me? Well, I'm 72 years old. Okay. When I was in second grade, I took business as my major. My minor was math. Okay. And, you know, further on, after I graduated, I graduated in 74. Now, Keith, back up here.

Back up. The show is called Hope for the Caregiver. What are you calling about today to talk about your caregiving challenges or what you're doing through as a caregiver? Yeah, these are challenges. See, I'm physically, I have a short memory problem, which messes me up quite a bit. And like I said, like I talked to you earlier, I've taken care of two of the all-tapes timers patients before.

And they don't really realize that they're missing out. As a matter of fact, he's going at me now. I don't know really how to deal with all this. But he has a friend, Mike, and he's an alcoholic. Literally mad. He's negative drinking vinegar and aftershaves and everything else like that. But he's got family support too.

And I'm not sure if they're going to do that much longer. And there's one of us down here. Keith. Keith, let me back up. Let me back up here. Because we're all over the map here, Keith. What's going on with you right now as a caregiver?

What are you struggling with? Well, okay. I'm going to take my landlord. Okay, he likes to argue.

There's no good reason. Okay. I committed myself to the hospital, sixth floor.

They call it the nut ward. Three times. Because he's arguing. Okay, but it's not like that anymore. But because of his arguing and wanting to just be verbal, you know, with the whole time that he has.

I don't believe he really realizes what he's doing on that point. And I have to pray to the good Lord for help. And I do Jesus' word and I know that's how we understand and learn what the Lord wants us to do. I have faith in the good Lord.

I know the good Lord for the practice. All right. Well, I tell you what. When you get into these arguments with somebody who is impaired, it's never going to go well.

They're not going to be able to process all this. He does have a fair warranty. You know, it's about 45% of the time. I mean, he's got that, well, it's, you know. Well, Keith. Keith, we're up against the bottom of the hour here and I've got to run. We've got to go to a break. And I can't fight the clock on this.

There's a lot of background noises, so it's kind of hard to hear you. But bottom line is, Keith, that I would like for you to hopefully see that maybe arguing with this guy is not the best use of your time. And maybe concentrate on some of the challenges that you're dealing with. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers, Keith.

And it sounds like you're dealing with a lot of health issues yourself. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberg and this is the show for you as a family caregiver. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. If you want to be a part of the show, we'd love to have you. We're talking about respecting the trauma. And we as caregivers deal with massive amounts of trauma. We just don't recognize it as such because it's done over a period of time.

It's done over lengthy weeks, months, years, decades. And all the while it's wreaking havoc on our bodies, on our spirits, on our souls, on our wallets, on our careers. All of those things are happening to us in this slow, stealthy encroachment as we deal with this.

And if we don't respect the trauma, what happens is that we wake up one day and we're lost. We're completely just disoriented. We don't know what to do.

We don't know how to function as a normal human being. And it takes a while to kind of process this out. And it takes time and space and grace to be able to process these things out. And if we don't do that, then we become even more misshapen by this. So these are the things that we're trying to talk about today is learning to respect the trauma that you're enduring.

Give yourself enough time as you walk through these things to at least just catch your breath. If people say, you don't understand, it never is. Well, yes, I do understand.

But we have to carve that out. Somebody asked me one time, how do you find time to do all these things? I don't find time, I make time. Because if you don't take time for stillness, you're going to have to make time for illness.

You cannot live in this kind of stress for this lengthy period of time and not think it doesn't have any kind of effect on your body, on your soul, on your financial decisions, on your ability to make decisions. These are all things that caregivers understand and deal with. And you're why we do the show. Hopeforthecaregiver.com, by the way, is our website.

The book is Hope for the Caregiver and Seven Caregiver Landmines. And also we have our free podcast is out there because we podcast this show and other things that we do. We do a live podcast another part of the week. We also put up bonus materials of different things, just trying to put as much information in your hand so that you don't feel that you're floundering alone in this. And that's really important to have another voice that says, here's what I've learned through this. Here's where I learned to be able to catch my breath.

See, I didn't have that for so many of the years and the decades that I've done this. And so when I set out to do a show like this, I knew that I had to speak fluent caregiver to my fellow caregivers, that I had to speak in a way they could understand, in a way that I wish somebody had spoken to me. And that's all out there at Hopeforthecaregiver.com. And if you are finding this show to be helpful, get involved with it, support it.

There's a button right there. You can support it today, right now. Karen in Arkansas. Karen, good morning. How are you feeling? Oh, good morning. I'm very encouraged.

And thanks to you, I had to work even harder than what I already was. I was explaining to your call screener that we unexpectedly became caregivers to my father. We met out of state. He was visiting my sister. We tapped on a travel with his granddaughter to visit my sister.

And since they were closer, we took our RV up there. And my sister, he had called us before we got there. He was like, Dad's really, really out of breath. I made him use a mobile car at Walmart, you know, and stuff.

We could clearly see he was not getting what he needed at home. And we had probably two weeks after my mom died, he had a much younger woman in the home with her two teenage kids. And anyways, we were kind of thrown to the wayside and everything. But we had hoped well with her being younger, you know, as he gets older, whatever. But anyways, we thought... That didn't work out too well, huh?

No, no. So we really thought, and I just thought, we've got a great cardiologist here. We'll find out what's going on. And we never known that he had CHF.

He never told us that, you know. Well, let me back up. Let me back up for a minute, Karen. How are you feeling?

Yeah. Well, I'm feeling a lot better. And you made me, I mean, I have my own health problems. You know, I've been a long term type one diabetic and some of the complications that goes with it. And I was canceling appointments for myself and, you know, constantly rescheduling it. And your show would address that. And to make a long story short, we've got like three assisted living centers right in the city we live in. But my father could not afford them. He has, you know, a decent retirement coming in each month.

But he still, he could not afford that. And I begged my sister, you've got to come here. You've got to come here. You know, because my husband has said it's either me or him. One of us has to go.

There's no place I can put him. Yeah, well, we're back to your father again. Let's talk about you for a little bit longer.

Okay. Where's your head space and your heart space today? Well, I'm still slowly but surely getting back to having a more active prayer life and reading the word.

That just went to the wayside. It really, really did. I just felt so very, very isolated. Before he came, my girlfriends and I, I mean, we didn't get together all the time. But at least two or three times a month we'd get together. We'd have coffee. We'd go out to lunch.

Have some laughs, you know. Give praise reports on how the Lord was moving in our lives and prayer needs. And I will say I had two very, very dear friends who they did a great job staying in touch just to let me know they were thinking of me. And they had their own stuff going on so they couldn't be more helpful.

But that just encouraged me a lot. And are they still doing that? They are.

They are. But the strange thing is we finally found – and it was right down the road. We never knew it was there. I mean, I reached out to the town that he's in. I called their area agency. And, you know, is there any retirement homes in that area or that county?

And, oh, no, everybody has to go to your city. And so we found this out. We found a home, a group home that he could afford. Let me back up a little bit more here, Karen.

Yes. How important is that to you on a heart level for these friends to reach out to you in your isolation? It was very, very, very – it was very, very important. And especially when I knew they had their own health issues going on. My one friend, she is just about crippled with rheumatoid arthritis.

And she's caregiving for a son with mental health illness. And so her – she's a widow, but she – Do you reach out to her? I do. We do. Good, good. We've pretty much stayed – yeah. And I have encouraged her to listen to your program.

Thank you. But you really encouraged me because, Peter, there would be days it's like, oh, Lord, I can't get out of bed today. But I knew I had to. I knew I had to. And the appointment, oh, my God, Peter, it was like – I felt like I was – what do you call it? I can't think of the term now.

A nurse coordinator. I mean, I was – I mean, there would be some times it was three and four days a week we'd have appointments. And I learned I couldn't relax like on a weekend if it looked like the next week was clear.

I couldn't get excited because by Monday we had three appointments that week. So, you know. If you could say – before we take another call here, what do you feel like – what does relaxing look like to you? Having some time with my husband again and it not being so tense where you could cut the hair with a knife.

And, you know, but what really also that I addressed is – I really liked what you addressed. Why you have to deal with the heart issues. We grew up – my father was an alcoholic, a womanizer. He made our life a living hell at home. We constantly walked on eggshells. We liked it better whenever my mom left and we were broke and only ate bologna because it was peaceful.

It was just so peaceful. And he did later, you know, towards our growing up years, he did become a Christian. And so life got a bit better for my mom. But what really amazed us, Peter, was how all these issues we thought we dealt with and he had forgiveness, it resurfaced.

And, you know, we clearly saw after a few weeks my dad got here. He has dementia. And he's very narcissistic. He just thought the world had to rotate around him, you know. A lot of addicts and alcoholics do. They are the center of their own universe.

Right. And then what made it hard, my husband was helpful but he's an alcoholic. Do you go to any type of 12-step program for family members of alcoholics like Al-Anon or anything like that? I have in the past and I have bought some of their literature and that has helped. But now with the COVID, you know, quarantine, they're not meeting anymore.

They do have them online but that, for me, it just doesn't work because especially I just felt isolated enough as it was. Well, if you can, try to check out some of them online and also keep reading that material. Oh, I have been.

Yeah, I have been. Because those, I think those things will help you. It's like you said, you thought you had dealt with that until it comes back out. And now you've got a husband who's dealing with this and you've got a father who's dealt with this and you have been bombarded by alcoholism. And alcoholism and addiction will destroy the souls of those around it if allowed to.

It is without mercy. And so those are things that I would highly recommend, Karen, because again, the whole theme of today's show is respecting the trauma. And it's not your father's dementia. Your father's dementia is bad enough. But the fact that he brings all this baggage into this is brutal on you and respecting the trauma that this man has inflicted on you.

Because he has. He has inflicted this on me. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but we just thank you for your ministry here. But, oh, hang on, Karen. I've got to go to a break here.

But here's the deal. Here's the good news, Karen. We've got a savior that is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushing spirit.

Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization, Standing with Hope, when my wife Gracie gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager. And she tried to save them for years.

And it just wouldn't work out. And finally, she relinquished them and thought, wow, this is it. I mean, I don't have any legs anymore.

What can God do with that? And then she had this vision for using prosthetic limbs as a means of sharing the gospel, to put legs on her fellow amputees. And that's what we've been doing now since 2005 with Standing with Hope.

We work in the West African country of Ghana. And you can be a part of that through supplies, through supporting team members, through supporting the work that we're doing over there. You could designate a limb. There's all kinds of ways that you could be a part of giving the gift that keeps on walking at standingwithhope.com. But you take a moment to go out to standingwithhope.com and see how you can give.

They go walking and leaping and praising God. You can be a part of that at standingwithhope.com. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I'm Brian Peter Rosenberger. If you want to be a part of the show, 888-589-8840. Also go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com. You can get this show as a podcast as well.

We'll have it out later on this afternoon or tomorrow and usually do a pretty quick turnaround. And you could also see more about what we do. Get involved in what we do.

If you like what you're hearing, if you feel like it has value to you, then support it. And they're right there at hopeforthecaregiver.com. And you could also see that CD from Gracie. And for any amount that you want to support what we're doing, tax-deductible gift, we'll send you a Gracie CD. You'll love what she brings to the table. She is an amazing singer. And she's been through The Ringer. And she's just had so many brutal challenges, lived to tell about it, lived to sing about it. And I think you'll find her music very meaningful. We also have a CD, Songs for the Caregiver. You can download that today. That's available digitally wherever you want to listen to music. It's Songs for the Caregiver.

And we try to put out as much stuff as we can to just strengthen you along the journey. Sue in Mississippi. Sue, good morning. How are you feeling, Sue? Good morning. I'm doing good. All right. Tell me what's on your heart and mind. Well, first I want to tell you how much I enjoy your show.

I'm new to AFR. Thank you. And I've been listening for a few months now. And I'm very impressed with the many great shows. And yours is extremely encouraging for people like me who deal with a lot of my own health issues. And have helped a number of people in my life who have gone through a lot of things and have unfortunately passed on.

And when you said this morning that when it stops the silence is deafening, oh my God, that's so true. Tell me about that. But I want to share if it's okay.

I have found some fabulous doctors on Amazon who have helped me. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Back up just a second, Sue. First off, do you have a radio on? No. Okay. I just hear a little bit of an echo. Tell me about the silence. I can't plug my radio then, but I don't have the sound on. Okay.

That's all right. If you don't have the sound on, don't worry about it. Talk about the silence. For me, it's been a lifetime of dealing with things like a mentally challenged brother or best friend who's seriously ill from diabetes.

Or a 94-year-old mom who just passed away. Or my own things like, you know, a long list of inherited illnesses, falls, auto accidents, lots of pain and injuries and things like that. And I've learned, I've been very blessed with God's help to do the reading and do the researching and do the digging and find the good doctors and find the available insurance and find the solution. Go back to the silence. What happened when you found that, when that silence hit you?

When the silence hit me, thank God, since I'm a Christian and my faith is in God, I found myself spending a lot more time with God, being still and knowing that He's God, reading the Bible, listening to the worship and praise, and just learning to stop and rest. Because what's normal for me is to be a workaholic. What is not normal for me is to stop and be still and spend time with God. So I've been doing a lot more of that.

What does that look like for you? Because a lot of caregivers are in your place, Sue. They're dealing with, you know, they just came home from the funeral. And they're looking at an empty house, there's a hospital bed somewhere in the house, or there's all kinds of medical equipment. And they don't know what to do.

They don't know how to function. What was that like for you? My mom just passed.

She's 94. And that was a long list of issues that you had to deal with every day for a long time. And whether it was emotional or physical or whatever, now for me, it's a tremendous adjustment because I'm not used to having nothing to do. I'm used to being a workaholic, taking care of a mentally challenged brother, helping a baby sister with brain seizures, helping a best friend who's dying from every disease that he can because of diabetes, and a mother who is going through many different health issues until she passed, and to just suddenly stop and do absolutely nothing. And of course, COVID hasn't helped this because you're even more stopped and doing absolutely nothing. And it's a very strange feeling.

So for me, what works is to take it to God. And it has been helping tremendously. When you came to a stop, was it jarring? Almost like slamming on your brakes real quick in a car kind of thing?

Was the stop itself kind of like, you know, just kind of freaked you out a little bit? Yes, but as a person who has always been taught in a large family who were workaholics to always care about other people, I find myself surrounded with neighbors and friends and family and so forth that are also dealing with health issues. And I like to share what I've learned. I've learned so much about health, about how to deal with pain, who's the best physical therapist to read to get fast results. I've learned so many things from reading some great doctors and from reading the Bible and taking it all to God in prayer.

And I find that God is bringing me through with not only all the stuff I'm exhausted from in the past helping other people, but taking it all and applying it to what are my needs now. It's okay to read a book. It's okay to stop. It's okay to rest. It's okay to watch a good movie. It's okay to take a long walk. It's okay to breathe deep. Well, let me ask you about that, Sue.

Let me ask you this. Was it okay to do all those things before they died? Oh yes, it's just that you didn't have as much time before to just stop when you wanted to stop. Was it important for you to do those things before they died?

Oh yes, definitely. I've always done for years. I've been doing the physical therapy, the deep breathing, the praying, the walking, the resting, the stretching, the napping, whatever I needed to do, a hot bath. Whatever I had to do, take supplements, read more health research, learn more on how to get stronger and just not stop and not give up. When you felt like quitting and stopping and giving up, you just put one foot in front of the other and take a deep breath and trust in God and just keep going. Well, and see, this is one of the things I talk about here on the show and I have for some time is that all too many caregivers somehow feel like they will postpone doing the healthy things until their loved one dies or gets better.

And then, okay, then we'll read books, then we'll read scripture, then we'll take a walk, then we'll, and I'm thinking from everything you're telling me, you came to that realization that those things are important a long time before the funeral. Oh yeah, you can't help somebody else unless you're helping yourself too. You have to be strong and healthy in order to do. And of course, God gives us strength other than just nutrition and other than just exercise. He gives us peace. So when I say, like I said at the beginning of the show, as caregivers, we need to respect the trauma of what's going on with us. Our trauma, not just our loved ones' trauma, but our trauma.

What does that say to you? My trauma is tremendous in my life. I mean, I have a history of it seems like the norm in my life is problems. And as a Christian, I'm sure that that's true for a lot of people who are trying to serve God, is that things happen, whether you lose it all in a flood, whether you're losing things because of COVID, whether you're losing things because of falls or accidents or inherited illnesses. I take loss after loss after loss in my life, and I've learned God will be there with me forever.

God will never leave me. God has a plan. God has allowed it for a reason. Sometimes the Bible even says God caused, but he also says it came to pass.

Thank God it doesn't come to stay. Well, I love there's a verse in Lamentations where he says, Whom he causes grief, he also has compassion on. And we don't understand why he does what he does sometimes or why he doesn't do things that we'd like him to do. My father used to actually say this, God's never late, but he misses a lot of great opportunities to be early. Does that resonate with you?

That is so true. I can't tell you how many times I've prayed to God alone and cried alone and said, God, why are you doing this? Why are you allowing this? What do you want from me? How much more do you expect me to give? Remember, I'm made of dust. Count the hairs of my head, bottle my tears. Help me, Jesus.

You know what? He does hear those prayers. He does hear those prayers.

We don't understand how he works all these things out, but we trust him. And this is our journey. This is our journey, Sue, as believers. And this life is filled and fraught with all types of heartache and challenges. And for those of us who are not unaccustomed to lengthy times of having to deal with painful realities, I do think we have a responsibility like you've done this morning to come and say, OK, here's what I learned through it and here's what I'm doing now.

And I think that's how we're going to, by the way, help our country navigate through these things, that our country is kind of going through this collective seizure of trying to figure out where safe ground is for us nationally. But those of us who have cared for people with impairments and all types of things through these things, we have a responsibility to speak into this with clarity and wisdom. And you've done that this morning, Sue. So thank you very much for that. OK. Would you mind me sharing a few titles of some books on Amazon that have helped me tremendously? Give me one, because we're about out of time.

OK. If it's for pain, Dr. Joseph LeCara, I'm sorry, Dr. Joseph Weisberg, he is on Amazon. He's a Ph.D., P.T. He's got a book entitled Three Minutes to a Pain-Free Life. And as a person who has dealt... Well, see, I kind of disagree with the book. That's why I don't like to give out these book titles, because I kind of disagree with the title. Yeah, I do too.

My wife lives with so much pain from her broken body. So his book would be meaningless to her. Or at least the title would be.

The title would be. But I appreciate what it's done for you. But Sue, thank you for taking the time to call. It really means a lot that you listened to the show and you just took time to call. Hey, this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We've got to go. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

If you want to see more information about the show, what we do, what we offer. Thank you for being a part of it with us. Hope for the caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Today's a great day to start being healthy. We'll see you next week.