Caregiving Husband Angry At Wife Who Smoked For Years

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Call 866-WINASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to CritterCampaign.org. Bob in Oklahoma. Bob, how are you feeling? Yeah, I'm sorry. I had to dig you out of my pocket.

Well, that's the first time I've heard that one, but that's alright. How are you feeling, Bob? I just made a grocery run to Wal-Mart.

I had put my cell phone in my pocket so I could start carrying stuff in. I didn't know you could get to me so quick. Well, I guess I'm doing better than I deserve, huh? This is COPD and I want to shout out to everybody that smokes, please stop right now.

You don't know how bad you're hurting yourself. She smoked for many, many, many, many years and she's reaping the quote-unquote benefits of it and it's just they prescribed her. For a while they put her on steroids and apparently it caused her cortisol output to stop or slow down drastically and now she has problems with her cortisol.

It's just been a snowball and it's just gotten worse and worse. Well now, what's an average day with you like on this as her caregiver? Well, I get up and I work at home, but anyway, I try to get her stuff to eat and try and get her, if there's anything she needs, she spends a good portion of the time in bed because she just doesn't have any energy.

She just can't hardly get up and move. I try to do. So, are you doing all the housework and cooking and the laundry and everything else? Well, I will give her her credit. I mean, when she feels good, she gets up and she does something too. I mean, she doesn't want to. She doesn't want me to have to do everything or anything like that and I certainly don't. I mean, she does quite a bit considering her health and how she feels. But it is just trying on both of us. I mean, with this COVID junk, we can't go visit kids or anything like that.

No. Well, hang on. We're going to go to break.

Just hang on through the break, if you don't mind. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We're dealing with the topic today. It is kind of a caregiver tip of the season is if you don't make it worse, that counts as a win. That counts as a win. All right. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope as a Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you holding up? How are you doing? 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. We're talking with Bob in Oklahoma. He's taking care of his wife. She has COPD. She smoked and has limited abilities. She tries to do the best she can with what she has.

Bob, let me ask you this. If there's one issue that kind of nags at your heart, what would it be? Well, I guess I'm angry with her because she would not quit smoking. I used to smoke myself many years ago, but I quit. I've been smoking, gosh, 20 years or more.

But anyway, I tried to encourage her to not smoke and try to do everything I could, and she never would quit. I'm angry with her because she cheated herself and us and her family out of a lot of good times, out of a big portion of life. And I hate to say that, but it's... There's no wrong answer here. This is how you feel. This is how you feel. It's however ugly it may look or whatever, and it is what it is. So what do you do with that anger, Bob? I probably more than anything just stuff it and go on. How's that working? It is what it is.

How's that working for you? Oh, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Talk to somebody about it and kind of work through some of those things.

Probably not to this extent, I guess. Well, and sometimes it just takes one caregiver to another just to ask maybe the question in a way that's going to make sense to you. I mean, I speak fluent caregiver, so I get it. Anger is a part of what we live with, and it stems from a lot of hurt. When a wound is angry, it's red and it's inflamed, but at the core of it, it's still a wound.

It's something that hurts. This hurts you, and because you hurt, you're angry. When you get fearful, we get angry. This is one of our go-to defense mechanisms. We get angry because it makes us feel a little bit more powerful, and it feels... You feel pretty powerless when you're dealing with a situation, particularly when someone did something self-inflicted. And I have found that most of our challenges that we live with are self-inflicted on some level.

Our sin is self-inflicted. But it's something that needs to be addressed honestly with maybe a trained professional. Bob, have you considered maybe just sitting down with somebody who's got some good sense about him, been around the block a bit, maybe it's a professional counselor, maybe it's a wise pastor, but somebody that you can trust to go and just kind of let them hold your hair while you puke a bit.

I know that sounds graphic, but that's kind of what has to happen. I don't know how much hair you got to hold, but you got somebody that could look at it, splatter it all over the table and not be freaked out about it and give you some good insights. You obviously have some understanding of Scripture, but sometimes it takes somebody to walk through it that can see it from a little different viewpoint.

And that might be a good Christmas present to give to yourself and to your wife is for you to go to someone else, a trained professional of some kind, and maybe sit down and have a conversation about your anger and how you can better process that out and work that through, particularly in the context of Scripture and the grace of Christ. Is that valuable? Yeah, that is valuable. I will think about that.

I will consider that, and I want to thank you. I have never heard your program. It's the first time I ever listened to it, but I keyed in on the caregiver part.

Well, this is interesting. I listen to AFR all the time, but I had never heard your program, and I guess God put me here, had me to turn the radio on this morning and listen to you, and I appreciate it. Well, I am very grateful that you did, and this is why we did the show, because you never know who's listening, you never know who's out there. Caregivers, as a rule, are usually often overlooked. If you were the first person, if you were the first caregiver that's ever stuffed your anger, I would be concerned, Bob, but you're not. You're not the first person that's done this. You're not the first caregiver that's done this. You're not the first caregiving husband. I am the crash test dummy of caregivers, Bob.

If you could fail at it, I failed at it, okay? But it's not healthy for you to do this. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers, and part of being healthy is, let's deal with this, okay? So start with your pastor. Maybe he can recommend somebody that you can talk to that would be a person, not somebody right out of school.

I mean, somebody that's been around the block a little bit, okay? And sit down with him. Maybe there's a support group that you can go and just listen to how other people have done it.

There are a lot of 12-step kind of groups out there for people who live with people with afflictions. And you learn what you can and cannot control. Your wife made her own grown woman decisions.

Now, you can be bitter at her, mad at her, or you can learn to make peace with the fact that this is her decision, and you're going to do the best you can to live a life of healthiness in the midst of it and reflect the grace of Christ that is extended to you as you make your own self-inflicted decisions. Right. And that's kind of the way we have to look at it, I think, for us to be able to navigate this a little bit more peacefully. But give it a shot. It might be a great Christmas present to give to yourself. I'm going to try to zip through a lot of the phones as best as I can. But, Bob, I thank you for listening. I hope you'll keep listening. Well, thank you very much, and Merry Christmas. All right. Don't put the phone back in your pocket and lose it, okay? All right. I'll see you. Thank you.