Respect The Trauma

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling?

How are you doing? Glad to have you with us here on American Family Radio and all of our affiliates that carry this program as well. Hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want some more information. Hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want to be a part of the show. If you got something you want to talk about. If you got something you want us to address on the program or maybe even want a call from the program. We'll be glad to do that. Hopeforthecaregiver.com there's a little form there you can fill out and while you're there look around at some of the other things that we have for you as a caregiver. From books, music, to articles we've written. Just there's so many things out there that we put as resources for you.

Please take advantage of it at Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hey let's face it, most people don't know what to say when they're encountering someone struggling with a you know a tough time, a divorce, a broken relationship, a tragedy, or other painful realities. You ever heard that? You know I don't know what to say. I just don't know what to say. And then if you are struggling with something and you run into those individuals they kind of try to box it up to say things like you know maybe just put it behind you or don't look in the rearview mirror or that's in the past. You know that kind of sounds like good advice you know to keep moving forward.

But is it? As a caregiver have you ever felt like there are times when you need to just look at it for what it is? I believe that there are times when we need to acknowledge the magnitude of someone's heartache and that it's appropriate to do so. And for lack of better words sifting through the mess and assessing the destruction is required. You know recovery takes time and part of the process is meticulously inspecting the damage.

Now that doesn't mean we have to obsess over things but it is okay to take a proper inventory. You know any insurance adjuster, how many of you all are insurance adjusters or have ever worked with one? And you've had an event that happened at your house. You know a tornado, a fire, some kind of damage, property damage, whatever. And that insurance adjuster comes out and they've got a clipboard and they kind of go through a list of things to see what's happened here.

And they give a ballpark estimate or sometimes a very detailed estimate of what it's going to take to fix this, if it's a total loss, if it can be repaired, all of those things. Well what about doing that in our lives? Do we ever do that in our lives? Through our own challenges? You know we live with a lot of loss as caregivers. We live with a lot of damage and carnage along the way. It takes a toll on us. And a lot of times caregivers mistakenly think well all right we're just gonna get to this point and if we can just get them to stop doing this then we'll be happy. If we can just get them to behave differently then we'll be okay.

If we can just contain this situation then we can take it from there. Does that work? Has that ever worked for you? What about when we say okay we're just gonna get mama to Jesus you know and we get to the cemetery and our work as caregiver is done and we're able to go live our life now happily.

Does that work? You know a lot of caregivers painfully discover that the journey doesn't end for them as a caregiver at the cemetery. It's a hard reality and all too many caregivers are now able to attest to the lasting impact of caring for an impaired loved one long after they're gone. And I personally this is just me my personal opinion this is not my experience as such because I'm still a caregiver I'm 36 years into this I haven't had post caregiving experiences. I firmly believe that caregivers struggle with some form of PTSD.

How many of you are nodding your head on that one and you still stay in those wounds and you can't get out of them. Does that resonate with you all? If it does I'd really like to hear it because I can't I mean I'm not a statistician so I can't come up with all kinds of reports and so forth but I do think that there needs to be some investigative work on this that we discover if indeed this is happening because I believe it is. We caregivers are ignored by and large in our society we're an invisible army of 65 million and the the symptoms of PTSD and caregivers are gonna be just as ignored as the caregiver is. So I'm calling attention to this because I believe it's there and I've talked to enough health professionals that I feel like we got a case for it. So I think there's something worth exploring but in the meantime we got to live with this whether we can document it or not with healthcare professionals we still got to live with it. So what do we do? Well there are trained professionals along with loving family and friends that can help us navigate a path to healing.

We can do this there are people who can help us with this and we have to be very selective on who we choose for that. A lot of times it starts with your family physician your primary care physician just checking your blood pressure. You know how is your blood pressure?

As a caregiver I'd be curious to know. I've struggled with mine not hugely but enough that you know what I'm gonna have to do something about this and so I take a blood pressure medicine. Don't like it but because I don't like them to take I'm in pretty good health otherwise but you know I'm gonna try to work on that with exercise and diet and so forth but in the meantime something I had to I had to deal with.

How's yours? Do you respect the stress that you're under? Do you respect if you're no longer a caregiver do you respect the stress that you were under and the long-term implications of that on your body and that is what the whole point of this opening monologue here is is that the first step towards healing for us as caregivers always involves thoroughly inspecting and respecting the trauma.

We as caregivers endure relentless trauma over our ten years caregivers there's this crisis after crisis after crisis. You know we were we were designed to have these spikes of adrenaline and and so forth as human beings but that was to kill tigers you know fight off a bear. We're killing tigers every day as caregivers have you noticed that the stress levels that we deal with?

How many tigers have you already faced today or do you anticipate facing today? Are you inspecting that trauma? Are you taking an inventory of this? Stem to stern your physical health? Your emotional health? Your financial health? Are you respecting the trauma of what it's done to you and your wallet? Have you taken an honest assessment of what this has done to you spiritually?

The kind of questions that you've asked about your faith about God? Have you sat down with somebody who's been able to kind of work through with those things who doesn't judge you for asking those things and take an honest assessment and getting folks that you can trust to give you some good counsel of this and sometimes yes it's a counselor okay sometimes it's a professional counselor who's got some real seasoning to them but sometimes it's a good financial person a good business person who can help you kind of sort through the craziness and come up with a plan to rebuild. Tony Snow said and I love Tony's I miss him terribly we've got to rebuild human hearts and persuade people that hope isn't just possible but it's essential. How's your heart?

Does it need to be rebuilt? This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

We'll be right back. Hey this is Peter Rosenberger and in my three and a half decades as a caregiver I have spent my share of nights in a hospital sleeping in waiting rooms on fold-out cots chairs even the floor sometimes on sofas and a few times in the doghouse but let's don't talk about that. As caregivers we have to sleep at uncomfortable places but we don't have to be miserable. We use pillows for MyPillow.com.

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This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com that is Gary Chapman and that is one of my all-time favorite songs period. I just love that song. I've told you many times those of you who listen to the program for a while know I mean I remember the where I was sitting the first time I heard it for some reason that song just nailed me and 40 something years later I still just love hearing it every time. We're talking about respecting the trauma.

We talked about this in the last block and I wanted just to kind of build on that a little bit. We just finished the Easter season and I want to go back and read something marked 16-7. Mark 16-7.

Let me back up to four. But when they looked up they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled away and as they entered the tomb they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side and they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed he said you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified he has risen he's not here see the place where they laid him but go tell his disciples and Peter he is going ahead of you into Galilee there you will see him just as he told you. Now I want to just stop with just two words and Peter and Peter. Now certainly my name is Peter and so therefore I've always resonated with that particular verse and Peter.

Why did he single Peter out? These angels were messengers from God and this is a clear to me indication that God was very much interested in Peter's trauma. God recognized the heartache that Peter was enduring after denying Jesus three times and to me that's extraordinary and let me read a couple more verses here just to give to paint this picture. Matthew 9 seeing the people he Jesus felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd then he said to his disciples the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. If you read that in the that was the I believe the New American standard if you read that in the message here's the same thing in the message then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and village he's taught in their their meeting places reported kingdom news and healed their diseased bodies healed their bruised and hurt lives when he looked out over the crowds his heart broke so confused and aimless they were like sheep with no shepherd what a huge harvest he said to his disciples how few workers on your knees and pray for harvest hands.

Listen to Hebrews 4 15 for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet not without sin. And you can look through the Psalms and you see multiple references lengthy references on how the Lord is near to the broken hearted. And you get a picture of God that says he does respect the trauma he respects our trauma that our distress moves him and you see this over and over and over.

So my question is why are we not doing this for ourselves and for those around us respecting their trauma. Romans 12 15 says rejoice with those who rejoice mourn with those who mourn do we do that do we genuinely rejoice with people when they have wonderful blessings in their lives or do we envy them or do we feel bitterness because we're not having those things as caregivers a lot of things are elusive to us but do we rejoice with those who are having wonderful things in their lives. I'll give you an example this may be a bit personal but I don't think she'll mind me sharing it. I watched Johnny Erickson Tada I posted a video of Gracie standing in the hospital after the surgery and she's walking down the hallway and it's taken an enormous amount of effort to do it and this huge surgery she's put it on her prosthetic legs and she's walking down the hallway and Johnny texted me and and and called me on facetime and so forth we talked and she genuinely rejoiced that Gracie was able to do this. Genuinely rejoiced that Gracie was able to do this but Johnny can't stand but she rejoiced that Gracie could and there's a song that Gary Chapman wrote for Gracie and I can't wait for you all to hear it I alluded to this a couple of weeks ago and Johnny and Gracie were singing in the hospital with my friend Stephen on the guitar and there's this sense of great excitement for both of them and this song reflects what's going to happen to them in eternity. But right now they're rejoicing together but I watched Johnny do this and I thought wow she was genuinely rejoicing not envious not feeling sorry for herself but rejoicing and what was going on with Gracie and respecting her trauma and do we mourn with those who mourn?

Do we know what that means? Do we know what it means to sit with somebody in the mess that has befallen them and just to sit with them and respect the trauma and accept the reality of what has happened? It's hard to do these things. It takes something out of us. It takes a humility to rejoice with those who rejoice and to mourn with those who mourn. I think it takes a great humility. I think it takes a great humility and our Savior has demonstrated this over and over and over again throughout all of scripture and that he is seeing these things and Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this quote, I love this quote, we must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do and more in the light of what they suffer. Do we regard each other in the light of what we suffer? And I look at this as caregivers and I think we sometimes become so myopic about our own suffering it becomes so up front to us.

It's like holding your hand in front of your face and it obscures everything else that we can't see what's going on around us. And when we step back and we look at each other and we look at each what's going on around us and when we step back away from that when we allow the Holy Spirit to help us step back away from that and detach just a hair to gain a better perspective it allows us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn in a much more healthier manner like scripture is asking us to do. He was a man of sorrow acquainted with grief. Scripture talks about the Messiah. Back in Isaiah he said this 700 years before Christ was born and he looked out at the masses and he saw them and his heart was moved. And then you see this past passage in scripture where it says in the Gospel of Mark where many think that the Gospel of Mark was dictated to John Mark by Peter. Many scholars believe that.

You have to go talk to some scholars about that but that's what they seem to believe but how much more important than those two words if that is indeed the case where Peter was dictating this account to Mark when he said go and tell his disciples and Peter. And so how about us understanding that our names can be inserted in that just as much for those of those of us who feel like we have dropped the ball we have let God down we have messed this thing up so badly. Do you understand that the God we serve says go and tell his disciples and you and me and each one of us we're after that and does that does that resonate with you?

Does that connect with you? Do you understand that he knows you by name and he sees your trauma and once you understand that the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the great I Am, the Alpha and the Omega sees and respects your trauma. Then take that next step of faith, respect it yourself and then export that to respecting other people's trauma. That is what I believe these scriptures all point towards, bear one another's burdens. Paul says in Corinthians, comfort one another with the same comfort that we ourselves have received from the God of all comfort. It's the same comfort that we have received from the God of all comfort. It starts with him and flows through us into each other. This is what I believe that has happened to our society in this great disconnect that we have in our society where the the mask and the isolation and the COVID everything else pulled us all apart from each other and we we were struggling along in isolation and we've got to be communal in this. We've got to corporately come together and worship and and build each other up, bind us together, Lord bind us together.

You know that that tune and and and or bless be the tie that binds. These are these are songs that mean something, that we are connected with this and that we are connected by a savior who understands and respects our trauma. Just as we tried to grasp during Easter week the trauma he endured but we can't we can't even grasp it but he condescends to us to respect ours. Ask caregivers. Ask caregivers, not just your loved ones trauma, not just Gracie's trauma, Peter's trauma, and Peter and you. He sees this and I felt that some of you may need to hear that this morning and be strengthened by the fact that you have a God who knows your heartbreak and speaks to it. That's hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

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If you don't need any of those, don't select it. Check out and be protected starting today. That's caregiverlegal.com. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. We're so glad that you're with us. Go to hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want to see some more information about the program, about the podcast, about the book, about the music from Gracie and me, the articles that I write. I've got quite a few out there.

I'll take a moment here. I've got Tribune Media picked up another one of my commentaries and you can see that in multiple papers. If you go out to right now onto the Hope for the Caregiver site, just click on the about where it says media.

Just click on media and you'll see all the stuff that I've written on there. Just go to hopeforthecaregiver.com slash media and you'll see the various commentaries that I've put out there in places such as Fox News, Tribune Media content, which distributes to all the Tribune Media family of papers and publications and so forth. Washington Times has a new article that I wrote about politicians who don't retire when cognitively they should. And there's some things in there that I make a point on and also the trap that people fall into as enablers. You see the celebrities and these political figures and so forth, they have an industry around them and that industry is fueled by that celebrity remaining on stage, that politician remaining in office.

And all too often, once they get out there, they don't want to let that go and nor does their team or their family or whatever. And I led off with the story of Woodrow Wilson, who was very, very sick and had a stroke and he was in pretty bad shape. And his wife Edith covered extensively for him and the public didn't know it.

And she, by her own definition in her book called My Memoir, she basically threw herself into making sure that anything that got to him, she'd already filtered through what was important, what needed to go to him to have his actual signature on and things such as that, even though he was very impaired. And she declares that she never made a single decision regarding the disposition of public affairs, but she failed to recognize that she was making those decisions every day by deciding what went to her husband who was struggling from the after effects of a stroke and other issues that he had. And the American people didn't elect her. They elected Woodrow Wilson, but they wouldn't let him step aside. And that's one of the reasons that the 25th amendment was put in place. When a president is impaired, the 25th amendment is there to make that transition smoother, smoothly, and hopefully, and the vice president steps in at that point. If the vice president can't step in, then the speaker of the house steps in. If the speaker of the house can't step in, then the speaker pro tem. And in this particular article that's in the Washington Times right now, I referenced a story about Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, my home state, who was the speaker pro tem, fourth in line to the presidency in his nineties and was not cognitively. Well, you be the judge, you read it. And I also referenced another representative who you may remember this from the news, who was concerned that the overpopulation on the island of Guam would cause the island to tip over. They were looking at staffing a bunch of Marines there. And, you know, there are a lot of times where these politicians will outstay their cognitive abilities.

Why? Who's driving this? Who's the one that dims the spotlight? And, you know, you've seen a lot of this with celebrities who careen out on stage filled with drugs and alcohol, but they got managers and booking agents and everybody else that's invested in making a salary of that celebrity staying out there. This happened to Elvis and he had to just continue going out there, even though he really needed to take a step back.

And you can go through a lot of them, Whitney Houston and others. It's just really tragic how these people will allow this to go on, this enabling. And so I wrote about it and I was grateful that the Washington Times picked it up and then Tribune picked up the other article about keeping humor in tough situations. And I wrote that while I was in the hospital with Gracie. So all of these are out at the website and I hope you'll take advantage of it and read and glean a little bit from what we talk about a lot on the show, but I wanted to put it in writing. And I'm very grateful for these media outlets that seem to trust me with these ideas.

One of the things I don't like to write about from a caregiver related field is that whole cliche of, you know, you've got to take care of yourself and all that kind of stuff. I think we can do better. I think we can go deeper. And that's what I do is spend some time understanding the human condition of this. In this particular article in the Washington Times, I really spent some time with the human condition.

These are things that drive me and what I do here on this program and everything that I do. And I actually put this line in the article in the Times. We are prone to deceive ourselves and others without objective and established safeguards. The addiction to power, fame, and money can quickly blind any of us, even to propping up someone beyond their capabilities. You ever see that in Washington?

You ever see that out displayed in these well-known figures where they're propped up beyond their capabilities? And it's heartbreaking to watch and it has some very serious ramifications here. And as I close it, unlike those in elected offices, most families struggling with an impaired loved one cannot affect the nature of their lives.

They cannot affect the nation's policies or security. In those circumstances, enabling impaired individuals can result in disastrous outcomes. And you're seeing this played out where there are people in Washington now that are clamoring for Senator Dianne Feinstein to be transitioned out.

Of course, a lot of people are calling for that for Joe Biden. And there are others, Senators and Congressmen and women who have stayed so long that their staffers are running everything. And this enabling that we as caregivers understand, we found ourselves in this journey and in this role where we're trying to prop up somebody out of whatever reason. You know, we're embarrassed for them. We hurt for them. We care for them. We want to continue with dignity.

And I get that. Those are things that are that are very noble. But you're not helping someone if you're enabling them to inflict damage on other people.

That's the whole argument of taking the keys away. And yet we have people in our nation's capital and in statehouses across the country and in city halls and everywhere else who are affecting policy that affects so many people. And they're cognitively impaired. Now, we haven't even gotten to the ones that are alcoholics and addicts, nor the ones that harass their staff and all those kinds of things. There's a lot of enabling that goes on because that's the human condition. And if you go back and look in the Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah said the heart is exceedingly wicked. And see, I think this is the understanding we have as Christians. We understand the reality of sin.

And if we give sin any kind of quarter, it's going to take over. We're not evolving into better people. You see, this is what the world thinks. If we can just somehow throw enough money at it, if we get rid of these dissenting views, then we can achieve this utopia that we can somehow be a better population, a better race, a better whatever society. But we can't. You know, wherever two or three are gathered, there's going to be problems. And this is the human condition.

We are a broken, sinful people who need a savior. And as long as you reject the biblical worldview, you are dooming yourself and everyone else to these disastrous consequences that are played out in history over and over and over. That's the whole point of looking at history, is to see what happens when these things occur in our societies. Go back and look at the Bolshevik Revolution. Go back and look at socialism and communism and fascism, any of the isms. They're not called wasms, they're called isms because they're still around. And as long as we keep allowing people that do not value the Word of God to make policy decisions, we're going to have these crazy things in our culture that we're seeing every day where people don't even know which restroom to use.

They don't even know who to congratulate for winning a swim meet. And it all stems down from the broken human condition that is ravaged by sin. And that's why we have a savior. And, you know, in the first two blocks of the program, we talk about respecting the trauma. And I think that applies to also looking at the sin in our life, and the sin in our culture, the sin in our society, respecting the trauma of what sin has done. It has permeated into everything.

And I don't, I think I may have said this on a program not too long ago, but I think it bears repeating. There was a pastor got up, he was a Presbyterian minister who should have known better. And they did an investigation after a church split in the Nashville area.

There's a big, ugly brouhaha. And they wanted to go back and see if they had made some mistakes. He came back and says, yeah, mistakes were made.

He said this to the presbytery. He said, mistakes were made, but we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. Well, that's the craziest thing that a Reformed pastor could ever say.

Of course we should be hard on ourselves. That just flies in the face of Reformed theology. We should always be hard on ourselves into understanding that we are prone to these things, like the old hymn writer says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. And so we look at the reality of what sin has done to the human condition and we do not give it any quarter.

We don't give it any place to rest its head because it will continue to fester. Look at what we went through over a virus that had less than 1% death rate, whereas sin has a 100% death rate for eternity. And so, again, respecting the trauma, let's respect the trauma that has been done to the human condition by sin and then understand then that context of what it means to have a Savior. That there is no forgiveness of sin without a Savior. And then the cross becomes that much greater in our eyes as we understand how desperate for you it is and how prone we are. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com, Hopeforthecaregiver.com. You know, we've been talking about a heavy topic today of respecting the trauma and looking at not only our individual trauma as caregivers and our individual struggles that we have, and then our societal struggles, but then the global struggle of sin, of what this is, and the trauma that's done.

The greater our cry, the more safer. And how do you deal with that Savior? But it's hard to cry out, okay, so what do we do that you don't think you need? And as we ended the last block, we talked about what the gospel meant to him.

All you need. And I want to end the program with that today and something rather special. And that is the message of the gospel. Do you know who Edwin Hatch is? That he sees that need, met that need, and welcomes us to this place. He was a wonderful pastor, theologian, priest.

That is Hope for the Caregiver. We've got more to go. This is Peter Roseburger, professor.

We'll be right back. Just an amazing academic career. And he's only known for writing one hymn. And you can go ahead and see a picture of him. You ever see the Three Stooges? He looks like Larry.

You know, he's got a Larry haircut. And it's kind of rough. But an amazing man.

He may have written more hymns, but the only one that he is known for is this one. And I'm going to step over to the caregiver keyboard. All right. See if you know this tune. Now when I grew up, that was the way I heard it. It was kind of plunked out. And as I got a little older, I started to play this a little differently, add a few different chords and so forth and give it some texture because the lyrics are so wonderful.

That's a major seven. And it's just a simple melody that was written by a man named Jackson. Several people try to do a melody for this hymn, and this is the one that stuck. But Edwin Hatch wrote this wonderful, wonderful text.

It says, Breathe on me, breath of God. Now why are we doing this here? Because of all the things we've been talking about of respecting the trauma and so forth. I think there's a point when we realize, okay, we've got a mess here. And we've got to rebuild. We've taken an assessment. We've looked at it. We've seen the carnage.

We've seen the damage. And now we've got to do something different here. And that's where this text comes in. Breathe on me, breath of God. Fill me with life anew, that I may love as you have loved and do as you would do. Breathe on me, breath of God, until my heart is pure, until my will is one with yours to do and to endure.

You know, people that write texts like this have spent an awful lot of time thinking about the things that we discussed in this program today. Thinking about the trauma, thinking about the brokenness, thinking about this. How is this any different from what David wrote in Psalm 51, where he says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgression and my sin is always before me. He's seeing the carnage. He's seeing the trauma. He is respecting the trauma of what he caused. And this is when he had this terrible incident with Bathsheba and killed her, had her husband killed and thought he got away with it.

And then Nathan, the prophet, came and confronted him. And David saw it for what it is. Do we see it for what it is? Whether it's our own iniquity or just the mess that we're dealing with, do we see it? Do we accept it? And then are we willing to say, Build me with life anew?

And this is the next step for us. First, we have to see it for what it is, accept it for what it is. We spend so much time working ourself into pretzels to avoid accepting what is. And as caregivers, we're afforded a different opportunity than a lot of people, because we see things relentlessly. We have to come to grips with it or we'll go barking mad.

When you have a chronic impairment that is every day pushing you to the limits, you're either going to lose your mind or you're going to find peace in this, no matter what's going on around you. And that peace doesn't come from within us. It comes from him and us trusting him with this. And this is what this wonderful text says of this song, Breathe on me, Breath of God. Fill me with life anew, that I may love the way that you are. That I may love the way you love and do what you would do. Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure, until my will is one with yours to do and to endure.

This is no different than the prayer David was praying. You're going to have to purge me with a hyssop, David said. You're going to have to do this.

I don't have it in me to do this. And I think that is the place, the launching place for us as caregivers, when we understand that we don't have this in us to do this. And we come to that conclusion after we sometimes have to sit in the mess, respect the trauma for what it is, see it for what it is, see the destruction, see the carnage, and then just cry out, breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew. And that becomes our prayer. And that's what this wonderful hymn writer has given us and this beautiful tune.

And so I thought, okay, you know what? This is a heavy subject. I know, but we live with heavy stuff as caregivers. Okay. I get it.

We do. But I wanted to end with the soothing sound of my wife singing this hymn, that she sang to my mother while my mother was struggling with congestive heart failure in ICU. And I think I've played this before on the program, but it's been a while, but I wanted to end with this. So this is Gracie from her CD, singing, Breathe on Me, Breath of God.

This is Hope for the Caregiver, Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew. That I may love what thou dost love, And do what thou would do. Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure. Until with thee I will, one will, To do and to endure. Breathe on me, Breath of God, till I am wholly thine. Until this earthly part of me, Glows with thy fire divine. Breathe on me, Breath of God, so shall I never die. But live with thee the perfect life Of thine eternity. Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew.

That I may love what thou dost love, And do what thou would do. Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. Did you know that you can recycle used prosthetic limbs?

No kidding. We've been doing this at Standing with Hope since 2005. For six years, I did it myself out of our garage. And sometimes on colder nights, I'd sit by the fire in our den and I'd be surrounded by a bunch of prosthetic legs that have come from all over the country.

And I would disassemble them and store the feet, the pylons, the knees, the adapters, the screws, all those things that can be re-salvaged and repurposed to build a custom fit leg. Then a wonderful organization in Nashville partnered with us to help take it out of my garage and my den and into a better system. This is CoreCivic, CoreCivic.com. Now, they are the nation's largest owner of partnership correctional detention and residential reentry facilities. And they have a lot of faith-based programs. And I'm proud to say that Standing with Hope is one of those programs and has been now for over a decade.

Inmates volunteer to help us disassemble those used prosthetic limbs. Reports show that inmates who go through faith-based programs are better equipped to go back into society. And the recidivism rate of returning back to prison is so low.

They don't want to come back and society doesn't want them to come back. And faith-based programs are a big part of that. And that's something that CoreCivic really believes in. And we are so thrilled that Standing with Hope is one of those programs. I remember the first time we started, an inmate looked at me and said, I've never done anything positive with my hands until I started doing this program with Standing with Hope. Another inmate told me, he said, I never even thought of people with disabilities until I started doing this. And it's an extraordinary partnership and very moving to see this.

See, we can do so much with these materials. But a lot of family members have a loved one that passes away. They don't know what to do with the limb. They'll keep it in a closet or sometimes even worse, they'll throw it away.

Please don't let that happen. Please send it to us through Standing with Hope. StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. And let's give the gift that keeps on walking.