It's A Bigger Problem Than We Think It Is

This is Peter Rosenberg and I'm so glad that you're listening to this podcast. If you're finding it meaningful, I want to ask you for two things. Would you mind sharing it with someone?

Would you mind telling somebody you know who is struggling as a caregiver about this program and what it can mean for them? We have over 800 episodes, more than 250,000 downloads. The need is massive. I can't do it on my own.

I'm still a full-time caregiver. But I'm putting it out there as best as I can. And I can use your help in sharing it with others. The other thing is, would you consider helping support what we do? If you like what you're hearing, if you're finding it insightful, if you're finding it encouraging, please help us do it more. We can't do it alone.

We ask that you help us. Stay with Hope.com slash giving. It's time for you as a family caregiver and I'm so glad that you are with us today. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. More than 65 million Americans right now are taking care of a chronically impaired loved one. If you're one of them, you're in the right place. And if you're not one of them, you're still in the right place because if you love somebody, you will be a caregiver. If you live long enough, you will need a caregiver. Those are the facts. We're bringing a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to fellow caregivers to point you to a place where you can catch your breath, take a knee if you have to, and then let's start rethinking how you're living so that you can stay strong and healthy while taking care of someone who is not.

What does that look like? What does that present like every day in the midst of all the things that we do as caregivers? And that's what we talk about on this program. We're not going to solve the problem, okay? The problem is the human condition. If you want to solve the problem, I think Charlton Heston said it best in the Ten Commandments.

Do you remember when he stood before Seti and Seti said, Are you this deliverer? And Charlton Heston, his only Charlton Heston could say, said, It would take more than a man. It would take a God, you know, kind of thing.

And it was just such a perfect line. But in reality, that is our condition. We are not up to solving the problem, okay? That's God's responsibility, God's job, God's purview, not ours. We are to be good stewards of what He's allowed us to go through, what He's purposed us to go through, what He has seen fit according to His will, according to His decree. Now if you don't like His will or His decree, then you've got to take it up with Him. But I see purpose, I see His provision, and I see everything in scripture pointing to the fact that we don't understand some of the things that are going on with Him. In fact, we don't understand pretty much anything that's going on with Him. But we're to trust Him and obey Him in it.

Once you've made that mental shift in your life, and that does not come easy. In fact, that doesn't come from you at all. That comes from the working of the Holy Spirit that you agree with, but you are not the originator of, because it is not in us to seek after God. Scripture says that no one seeks after God. And it's not in us to do it. We really don't understand the nature of the fall of what happened if we think that somehow we're going to eventually come around to this and well, okay, we'll choose God this time. No.

No one comes to Him unless they're drawn. Okay? Go back and look at scripture. Is this all there? If you're going to anchor yourself in the Bible, then anchor yourself in the Bible. Okay? We don't cherry pick things that, well, it feels this way or whatever. No. This is the way it is.

This is what scripture says. Now, what do we do with this information? What are the implications of it? And that's what we flesh out on this program in the context of being a caregiver. Okay? The things that I discuss here on this program are not exclusive to the family caregiver. It is the human condition. We just have to do it in this particular crucible as caregivers because the acute, relentless, and sometimes overpowering suffering that we have to witness or participate in as caregivers forces us to ask and answer and deal with these types of questions that we would not normally deal with.

Normally we would just allow this stuff to kind of hit us episodically over life and, you know, we'll just, we'll take years or even decades to wrestle with an issue that as caregivers we're going to have to wrestle with daily and sometimes hourly. And that's just the way it is. I mean, we don't have to like it. Okay? He asks us to trust it.

And why do we trust it? Well, see, this goes back to the crux of the whole thing. And that's the cross. I've maintained this for everything that I do. Some of you know I've been really pushing myself to study theology and to dig deep into these things.

And I've been doing this now for a couple of years. And I'm compounding that with the education I've had, great education in Bible college, great education with a lot of pastors who have pastored me. And I've had the benefit of knowing some wonderful theologians. And I've wrestled with these things.

I've wrestled hard with them. And here's what I've come to. Two conclusions. One of them is sin is a bigger problem than we think it is.

And the other one is the cross is a bigger deal than we could ever imagine. Those two things anchor me into everything that I do, everything that I believe, everything that I act upon. That is the foundational beliefs that I've come to the table with. Now, you may not be there. And that's where you are.

I'm not here to say you've got to be where I am. I'm just simply saying this is what I do. This is what I've learned. This is what I've experienced. This is what I've wrestled with. And I've done this while watching a woman suffer for four decades and taking care of her. And I've done this while floundering around and spazzing out and doing all the things that I've done and messing it all up.

You don't get to be the Wile E. Coyote of caregivers without a whole lot of just crash and burn moments, which I've had. But as I keep going back to scripture, this is what I see. Sin is a bigger problem than we think it is. The cross is a bigger deal than we could ever imagine. So take that statement I just made, that sin is a bigger problem than we think it is.

The cross is a bigger deal than we could ever imagine. Now, let me show you why I've landed on this, because you go to 1 Corinthians 1, 20 through 31. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preached to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

You ever feel like that as a caregiver? We're not powerful, we're not wise, we're not of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

You ever feel that way as a caregiver? That it's foolish, that it's weak? God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Now that's a mouthful of what Paul just said there.

He has these long, run-on thoughts that go, but do you hear what he's saying? In the context now, as we deal with this as caregivers, we're dealing with weakness, we're dealing with things that are foolish, that don't make sense. And yet God weaves all of that so that He brings it about. He is glorified in this. And I remember my pastor back in Nashville, Jim Bachman, said this years and years ago, and I remember where I was sitting when he said it, and I used this quote when I helped Gracie write her book.

It's called Gracie Standing with Hope, and the opening sentence of the book is from him, and it says, God, the Lord says, I'll give you weakness, I'll give you brokenness, I'll give you emptiness, then you'll be useful to me. Now as caregivers, we understand that sort of thing, weakness, brokenness, emptiness, then you'll be useful to me. Do you see the corollary there? Do you see how this is all starting to fit in according to Scripture? It doesn't have to make sense to us, it makes sense to Him.

And we trust Him because sin is a bigger problem than we think it is, and the cross is a bigger deal than we could ever imagine. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, this is hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver, this is Peter Rosenberger, this is the program for you as a family caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com. Last night I was trying to set up some new audio equipment, and my mind became besmirched. Has your mind ever become besmirched?

Mine was. And I just threw my hands up and decided, I looked at Gracie and said, I'm going for a ride. So I went out there and I saddled up a horse, and I was listening to a podcast that a friend of mine sent me, Mike Flynn. He's a counselor in Virginia, and he and I have had the opportunity to talk many times over the last several years, and he's actually been out here and we've gone horseback riding together. And I was listening to his podcast about, ironically enough, listening. I enjoyed it immensely, and I called him and said, hey, do you suppose you could call into my program and talk about this? And he was gracious enough to do that. So Mike, I'm glad to have you here. And by the way, it's time for you to come out here and ride horses with me again. That's absolutely right.

Well, we're going to make this happen. Tell me a little bit about this conversation you're having with people, particularly men, about listening and what has gotten you so passionate about this. I find that most people spend their entire life never being heard and that people need to be listened to, and relationships require listening to one another.

And I came across a Chinese symbol for listening, which involves listening with your eyes, listening with your ears, listening with your heart and focus, and listening as though the speaker is the king. Given the speaker the status that they deserve and doing this mutually with one another, very focused, paying attention to the fact that people need to be heard. And, you know, when Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had a rift in their relationship, C.S. Lewis said, when you have an impasse, first of all, acknowledge that friendships are essential and we can't do without them. And when people are in a conflict, in a relationship, it must be worked through. It has to be worked through. Otherwise, things that needed to be said would never be said. And that's powerful to me. People need to speak. You benefit from being in rich relationships that involve mutual listening and caring enough. I like to talk about the acronym ACE.

I was an army psychologist during Vietnam War, and I worked in stateside and psychiatric hospitals in the army with guys coming back. And there's for ACE, ACE. A is ask a guy, if you have someone in your life and you're worried about them, they're not quite right, they're off their game, ask them, what's going on? How are you doing? What's happening?

What can you tell me about? And then the C in ACE, the C is care enough to listen. You know how people will ask you how you're doing, but they really don't want you to tell them. And so ask care. And the third letter is E, escort. So if you have a friend, you listen to them, you care about them, and you do not have to be a mental health professional to determine this person needs some assistance that I need to get them to.

That's escort. And so we used to teach that to the troops in the various military companies we worked with. Ask care, listen. Well, that applies to friendships. It applies to parenting. It applies to marriage. It applies to all relationships. Be in it with another person, but not just superficially, oh, how you doing? Yeah, I'm fine.

We're all fine. That's almost never the case, is it? So we have to be honest. But you can gain a lot of trust quickly if you listen attentively. If you've ever been in a conversation with someone who listens with their eyes and their ears and their focus, you feel attracted to that person.

You want to be in their presence in the future. And the same thing happens when you give that to someone. So it's a powerful tool in human communication. Talk about that in the terms of caregiving for us as caregivers, because we don't always feel heard or listened to. And we, quite frankly, don't always listen to the ones we're caring for or to others. And in this program, you know this audience. You text me on a regular basis after programs and back and forth.

Share your thoughts on that. Well, the reason that I really love the texting that goes back and forth between your listeners is that that's an opportunity for people to voice a thought or a feeling or a concern and be heard. You have to develop relationships that can provide that listening ear.

And that's your responsibility to do that. You know, I was in a men's group last night and one of the gentlemen said, he said, you know, I feel burdened because I have a wife and three kids and my elderly father needs me to listen to him, needs me to pay attention to him, needs me to take care of him. And I always feel torn between my household and my elderly father.

And I said, well, you know, here's something to think about. Your father, for whatever reason, chose to live his life in a way that he never developed closeness with anyone. You're the only one he's got. That's not your fault. And you're not a bad son because you can't give your dad more than you can give him. You know, so don't beat yourself up.

Give him what you can, but understand that he's an adult. So we have a responsibility to live our lives in such a way that it makes us whole. It makes us strong. And in order to be useful to the Lord for the purposes for which he created us, we have things we can do to keep ourselves going. One is to have relationships where we take the time, we say no to other good things we might be doing because we want to take the time to interact with other people who need to be heard and who will hear us. So that applies whether you're a caregiver, receiving care. All human beings need to receive care. And all human beings at some point in their life will be a caregiver or have the opportunity to be a caregiver.

But you can't do a good job at that if you're not equipping yourself, if you're not filling your own tank. And that's why I like those textings that occur between your listeners. How did this guy respond? What was his response when you talked about his dad?

It was pretty silent. One trick in saying hard things to people is timing. And I may have been a little bit ahead of the timing on that one because I didn't know him that well. But I'm not going to be around for the next month.

I'm going to be not in that group for a month. So I wanted to share that with him. He's going to bring it up again. I know he will the next time we meet.

And we'll talk more. It wasn't a therapy group. It was a fellowship encouragement group around a fire pit, actually.

The kind of thing that Peter Rosenberger would do on his ranch. Well, he didn't blow you off. He took it to heart, right? Yes, he did. I believe that he did. And I think he needed to hear it.

So we'll have future opportunities to do that. You know, I run three pastors groups every week. And you talk about a bunch of guys who don't know how to get their own needs met. In fact, I'll say that most of the pastors I've ever met, and I have a heart for pastors. I love pastors. Most of the pastors and ministry leaders I've ever met don't get listened to. They do all the listening. They do all the caretaking.

There's no one there for them. And so we have groups, and there are others, people who do, around the country, where they can be real with one another and be heard by one another. And hear each other in a way that makes them stronger when they're in the pulpit or in the church or at home with their own. You know, these skills, when you practice these skills with your friends, with your guys, man to man, woman to woman, then you're developing some skills that you take into your marriage and into your parenting and into your other friendships. And you will find that being a good listener will, as I said earlier, create trust rather quickly. And people will start telling you things that they don't tell anyone else. And now you have to understand confidentiality.

That is huge. If you pick someone out to listen to you, and you to them, you have to talk about the word confidentiality. And don't give any impression that you'll put up with somebody who shares your information outside of your conversation.

If that happens, you have a responsibility to move on to someone who will keep your information private, as you will theirs. What is the reaction that you're finding with these pastors that you're talking to? I mean, they're listening to their sermons, but they're not necessarily listening from their heart.

What is their response? You know, they need to be able to be real. In Eldridge's book, Wild at Heart, the one sentence that's worth the price of the book is, Christian men, it's not your job to be nice.

It's your job to be real. And so we provide a weekly opportunity for these pastors to be real people. To say, you know, it really hurts my feelings when I do a wedding and somebody throws a hundred bucks at me, but the guy that's the sound mixer for the event gets $2,500. That hurts my feelings. And then another pastor will say, well, yeah, me too.

The last wedding I did, somebody said they'll send me a check, but never did. And, you know, they're able to be honest and say that hurts. That feels disrespectful. They use the word discouragement. You know, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be the guy that discourages a pastor. I don't know how God looks at that, but I want to be an encourager. Listening to someone encourages them. Gordon Fee came to Richmond and Gordon Fee said, Dr. Gordon Fee, well, he said, if you're an encourager, the Holy Spirit was sent here to be an encourager. And if you're an encourager, you're on the Holy Spirit's team. But if you're a discourager, you're on the other team. I don't want to be on the other team, especially with a pastor's life who's got a responsibility to minister to so many people.

I want to go out of my way to listen to him, to be attentive, to treat him like a king when he's talking, so that he feels at least once a week he's got eight buddies who have listened to him, and he feels strengthened by that to go out and face the rest of his week. We set around fires up at my farm in Buckingham, and we have talks like this with ministry leaders, and sometimes we mix it up with law enforcement guys and military guys, because Peter, I think you and I talked one time about the concept of living on the X. A pastor, a law enforcement guy, and a military guy all have a target on their back.

They all have people who want to do them in. So if you can be that one person who listens to them, cares enough to ask them how they're doing and really mean it, and then if they need help, because pastors sometimes need some outside help, get them to some assistance as well. But you'll never know that about them if you haven't listened to them, and you'll never have the opportunity to listen to them if you haven't made the opportunity for that to occur. We're talking with my friend Mike Flynn discussing listening, and I'm just grateful that he's here. We're going to continue more when we come back from the break.

By the way, there's texting back and forth. That's at our Facebook group, Hope for the Caregiver Facebook group that you can join today, and Mike's part of that as well. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. We're continuing my conversation with my friend Mike Flynn, who is a counselor in Virginia. He's a regular listener to this program, a participant in our Hope for the Caregiver group on Facebook that you can join today if you want to go out and take a look at that. And also, he's a fellow horseback riding enthusiast. He's been out here to our home, and I have nothing but just high regards for Mike and his family. He's a wonderful man with great insights. We're talking about listening. But Mike, you also mentioned you're getting ready to go to England for about a month.

Tell me what's going on with that. Well, we're going to go. John Lennox is one of my heroes.

He's my favorite topologist. And we're going to go listen to him and some others talk at a faith conference at Oxford this coming Saturday all day. And then my wife and I are going to walk the Cotswold, which is a trail through farmland, where we like farmland and see me like that.

And so we're going to spend 10 days walking and talking and walking and thinking and listening to what the Lord has to say and probably also interacting with some other folks who walk along the same path. We're looking forward to all of that. Switching gears a bit, you told me that you were looking at buying a draft horse. You and I talk horses a little bit and I know that this is subject near and dear to your heart. What's going on with that?

Tell me about this. What are you going to do with this draft horse? I mean, there are easier ways to pull stumps out of your farm there. I'm interested in buying a draft horse and I have several Amish friends near my farm and there's an auction while I'm gone. One of my Amish friends is going to do the bidding for me. He knows what I'm looking for and he's going to do the bidding.

So when I come back, I may have a horse. Hey, let me make a comment. Do we have a couple more minutes? Absolutely. Take your time.

Yeah. I want to make a comment about what I observe with listening with Amish parents, Amish fathers, because I interact with different Amish people with their family by having them come and help me on my farm. They listen with a focused level of attention.

They definitely make eye contact. They listen with their ears, their heart and their eyes and they are respectful. I've never heard them demean their children. I've never heard them criticize their children. I've never heard them put them down. On all the things that I grew up with, where I grew up, people were called names and you were said you were too slow or you weren't fast enough, you weren't smart enough, you weren't whatever.

People just were that way. But with the Amish folks that I watch parenting, I'm very impressed and I think there's something we could all learn. Because when you listen to your daughter or your son respectfully and you don't criticize them, you don't beat them down, you're training them to attract people in their life going forward that will listen to them. What father doesn't want his little girl to marry a guy that will listen to her and treat her with respect? How she gets set up for that is how the father treats her. If he's attentive, he's a listener, he's focused, treats her like a queen, a speaker, she will find that familiar and that's what she will attract into her life. People attract familiarity from their experiences as a child, not only in their close intimate relationships but in their circle of friends and quite often in the environment they choose to work in. People will go toward what feels familiar.

So planting those seeds at home early on. And I used an example the other day. Let's say that your granddaughter or your daughter comes home and she's all upset because the other girls are mistreating her. And you're tired, you're busy, it seems kind of trivial to you. That's when you want to coach yourself. And I talk a lot about coach yourself to listen because it's not always natural and it's not always timely to listen. So talk to yourself like a coach talks to somebody on the sidelines of a basketball court and say, look, I need to tune in, tune in to this little girl, hear what she has to say, don't disregard it, don't minimize it. And then she'll feel loved by that and that will feel familiar to her as she goes forward in her life as well as for your sons.

It's not different. In the last few minutes here that I have with you, talk a little bit about the context of your faith and what it means to us as believers, what it means to you to know that we have a Savior who listens. That God is not out of tune with what's going on in our heart that He does listen and how we can glean from that from scripture and how we can interact with one another and be strengthened in our own journey.

Share a little bit of your thoughts on that. It's unimaginable to think how someone goes through life who doesn't know that God loves them personally and loves them very focused and treats them with honor and respect. I can't imagine what people do in their mind and in their heart without that. And when you have those moments where you're recognizing that your Savior is listening to you, and prayer doesn't involve always talking, prayer involves listening.

Listening to the Lord like we're going to do on the walk or maybe when you're out on your horse, when I'm out on my farm, we can listen to God and that's prayer because we know He's there. He's omnipresent. He never is away from us. He's always there whether we're on a horse or a tractor or wherever we are.

He's there. And He's there because He cares. Now, I have a prisoner that I visit occasionally who has a long sentence for something very wrong that he did. And he's a Christian now and he ministers in the prison to other prisoners and he spends most of his time communicating with the Lord. And he said something to me the other day that I thought was profound. He said, you know, God is omnipresent, omniscient. He knows everything and He's everywhere, omnipotent. So God is able to say, to look at you and say, you are my favorite. That's a powerful, for someone who's never been anyone's favorite, for someone who's never been listened to, to know that their Creator views them as their favorite. That's a beautiful, powerful thought.

It really is. I was thinking about this last night when I was out on horseback and I was listening to you talk about this on the other program that you did. And, you know, I was checking on the cattle. We've got a friend of ours who's putting cattle on the property out here for the summer for summer feeding and I like to go out there and check on them. I'm not much of a cowboy but I'm learning and we have, I got to see a brand new calf being born and it's a little late in the season for that but there was one or two that were pregnant still.

So I got to see them. I mean, the baby was just born and that was kind of cool and I was coming back and it was starting to get kind of late, a little bit dark. Well, it gets dark here about 10 and it was twilight. It was about 9.30, 9.45.

The sun had already gone down behind the mountain so it was still daylight. But I got to be careful because a friend of mine across the hill over here has a grizzly bear on his property and he caught it on the trail cam and somebody said, Well, can you outrun a grizzly bear on a horse? I said, No, I don't have to worry about that. He said, What do you mean?

He said, I just have to outrun you. But as I was coming down the hill back to the barn and it was very quiet. Nothing much going on.

The traffic from the 4th of July was over and it was just not even hardly a breeze. It was very still. And all I could hear was the creak of the leather on the saddle and the hoof falls. And it was very settling to me. You and I have talked about this many times, Mike. My life as a caregiver can be a bit rambunctious, but it takes those moments of learning to be still and be quiet and to listen to what's going on. So I can hear my own thoughts.

I can hear scriptures that God brings to my mind to settle my life down. And all this to say is I really appreciated your interview and what you said, and that's why I'm so grateful that you took the time to call into this program. I know you're getting ready to go to England here, so you've got to get and you've got to catch a plane.

And I do appreciate you taking this time out. And I look forward to hearing reports from your trip. And when you come back, I want to have you back on and talk about it and see some pictures of what you're doing with this draft horse on your property.

I'm still not quite sure what you're going to be hauling around there that you can't do with the tractor. But, you know, if that helps you, if you want to get out there and look like Paul Ingalls, you know, that's all good. But this is Mike Flynn. And, Mike, thank you again for joining us. Mike said I could give out his email. If you're a pastor or somebody that is struggling and these things have hit a nerve with you, Mike said I could give out his email and you could reach out to him. And he has these pastor conferences that they do, a Zoom conference, where they spend time together just encouraging men who are serving in pulpits who don't necessarily feel listened to and don't feel heard or understood many times.

And so if that's describing you, I would encourage you to reach out to Mike. And here's his email. I don't normally give this out over the air, but I'm going to do that for him because he said I could. And he said that's just the best way to get in touch with him. So you got something to write with? Take this down. Flynn Mike.

F-L-Y-N-N-M-I-K-E-O-1. FlynnMike01 at gmail dot com. FlynnMike01 at gmail dot com. Send him an email if you are one of those pastors he mentioned that are feeling a bit disconnected. And take him up on this. I've spent time with Mike. You learn a lot about somebody spending time on a horse with him. And I've spent time with him and you can lean on him. He's got a lot of good counsel, a lot of good wisdom, and he's got a great heart to listen to men who are struggling in particular. He's got a tremendous ministry that he built with his practice. And now in this new chapter in his life, the things that he's doing are quite moving.

And God's using him in a very powerful way. He's used it with me. And so would you please take him up on this?

OK, you can join a Zoom meeting and be encouraged with other folks who are struggling with different things. So Mike Flynn, I appreciate you being here very much and I look forward to hearing about your trip when you come back. All right. Thank you, Peter. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Hi, this is Jeff Foxworthy. Sixty five million Americans serve as a caregiver for a sick or disabled loved one. If you're one of them, then listen to my friend Peter Rosenberger show. He's got redneck tendencies, but he's really good at what he does. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. That is Brian Duncan with a great song. I just love that groove in that song. I love the text.

I love the whole thing. And what a voice. He's been on this program and just an amazing guy. You don't know much about his music.

Go on, take a look. The guys won all kinds of awards. Grammys, doves, everything else.

Just one of the best vocalists you'll ever hear. And take a listen to it every Monday on my Substack page, which is caregiver.substack.com, which you go out there and take a look at caregiver.substack.com. And if you lose that, you can go out to my website. It'll link to you there. Just go to Hope for the caregiver dot com. But anyway, I do a Substack page where I delve into other things just besides caregiving, but mostly caregiving, but I unpack a lot more.

And I will put a post out every Monday from my book, A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. And so you can see that. That's a free. There's some subscription paywall stuff there too, but this is done every Monday. It's free.

And I've got the newest one. It's called When It's Hard to See Because of the Forest and the Trees. And I thought I'd share that with you here in the closing moments of this program. A recent event sparked this story. I was repairing a fence on the ranch here in Montana with my father-in-law.

This is his ranch. And it's a small job, not when I say repairing the fence. Now, please understand that I am a novice fence guy. OK, I'm trying. I'm trying to learn. I'm getting there. These are things they didn't teach me in music school.

I have four brothers and a sister and I was voted least likely to live on a ranch in Montana. But here I am and I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn about cattle, horses. I've got people teaching me all kinds of stuff. And, you know, it's good for me, but sometimes it can be a little intimidating.

But anyway, we were working on this. And I paused for a moment and studied this thick cluster of trees and bushes following a stream that comes down through the property. And it seems that the trees and bushes all clamored for water. You know, Montana is real dry. That's one of the reasons we've moved out here, because the dry air helps with Gracie's arthritis, because that humidity was just tearing her up back in the south where we were both raised.

And we spent our lifetime there. But the dry air, she just does better with cool, dry air. And Montana has plenty of dry air and plenty of cool air. But the stream was, you know, helping, everything around it was just reaching for the stream to get that moisture because of the dry climate here in Montana. I mean, they say that we're always ten days away from a drought out here. And even now, right now, it's pretty dry. It's so dry that the Baptists are sprinkling and the Methodists are using a wet cloth.

I mean, it's dry. And from my vantage point, I observed the growth stop about 10 to 15 yards on either side of the stream. And then it was just open grass right there in proximity to the stream, though everything was just overgrown and very dense.

Bushes, thickets, and all that kind of stuff. Even though you're a stone's throw away from clear fields on either side. Are you following me?

Are you getting the picture there? Many caregivers feel closed in and even lost. And trusted friends and physicians and clergy or counselors can call to us when we're in those suffocating places.

But only we can make the leap of faith and move in a new direction. The courage and trust in voices other than our own allows us to take steps to a better perspective to the clearing that may be just 15 yards away. But we can't see it because we're so inundated with the thick foliage of caregiving. That perspective helps us avoid becoming disoriented.

And that was, it was just such an interesting moment to look at it, you know, when I'm out there working. I guess I should have been working on the fence instead of staring around at the bushes. You know, think about if you follow that stream, you may think you're in a deep forest the whole way down if you stay close to the stream. But if you go 10 yards one way or the other, you're in the clearing and you have perspective. And I think this is what happens with us as caregivers that we get so twisted around, we can't see, we think we're in this deep forest and we got to follow the stream, you know, we got to stay close to the water.

And it's important, you know, you got to stay close to the water. But maybe if we could just step outside of ourselves for just a little bit, we can avoid being disoriented, even in the dense thickets of caregiving. And there's a great quote from our friend and friend of this network from Johnny Eric Zatata. She said, perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life. Perspective is everything.

How's your perspective today? And that's one of the chapters from my book, A Minute for Caregivers. There are only one minute chapters and you can go out and check them out at HopeForTheCaregiver.com and you can see all the books that I've done. It's a great gift book if you know somebody who's struggling and you don't know what to say, it's a great book for that. And we have the audio version and the Kindle version and all the above if you want to check that out.

But every week I post a new one on my Substack page and you can subscribe for free. And I'd love to have you get those things and you can share them around with folks. I'm interested in equipping caregivers to have better perspective.

Alright, and then I've got a couple things I wanted to mention to you. I have the caregiver calendar is now finished and the first groupings of them would send out to folks. I know there was discussion about this in our Facebook group that you could go out to and join. It's a private group that I manage at Facebook called Hope For The Caregiver. And I flowed a lot of stuff out there to that group first and I want you to know, by the way, Paula is a regular listener to this program and she was asking about this in the Facebook group. And I've got your beautiful card here, Paula, and I thank you for that.

I really do. It means a lot that you took the time and I'm very grateful. The caregiver calendar is something I wanted to do as a way to help support Standing With Hope. Standing With Hope sponsored this program and is the ministry that Gracie and I started many, many, many years ago.

We have two programs, the prosthetic limb outreach and the caregiver outreach is for the wounded and those who care for them. And I just wanted to have a way of saying thank you to folks to do something that I felt like would be kind of meaningful. And people seem to like the pictures I take out here in Montana.

And I have all these different quotes of things that I've said over the years that I put on each month's picture that ties in with what's going on for that month or that picture. And I thought it'd be something that you all would like. And so if you want this, it's a gift that we give as a thank you for anybody who wants to support what we do monthly at Standing With Hope.

And I appreciate that. You can go to standingwithhope.com slash giving, standingwithhope.com slash giving or just again go to my website. Hopeforthecaregiver.com if that's easier to remember and it'll take you where you need to go.

It's something that we wanted to do. We have a caregiver tumbler that we've done. It says healthy caregivers make better caregivers.

We give those away as well and those will be coming shortly. I'm not doing the caregiver key chain. I do have the caregiver keyboard, but I'm not doing that one either. That stays with me.

The caregiver keyboard is all mine. So that stays with me and we'll certainly be firing that sucker up for future programs. But anyway, if you want to go out and be a part of what we're doing. Now what does Standing With Hope do with prosthetics? Well, I just ordered a whole bunch more carbon fiber. It's pretty expensive. We buy it in sheets and we've got that ready to go over to West Africa. They use this to laminate the sockets. The way you build a prosthetic leg is this. You take a mold of the individual's limb. You do that with plaster like you put on a broken arm. It's called a stump.

Sorry, some people call it a residual limb, amputee limb or whatever, but it's a stump. You cover it with plaster. You actually start with what they call film. I call it saran wrap, but it's film. It's just plastic wrap. You put that over the stump. Then you use an indelible marker to outline certain parts of the limb.

It's kind of a grease pin. You do that on top of the plastic. Then you take that bandage material, basically bandages like you do with a broken limb. You wrap the limb in that. It hardens.

You pull that off. When it's completely hard, you fill it with plaster. Then you take a cast off. Then you cut that cast off of it.

You're left with this plaster mold. Then you take a cheese grater or screen material and you modify it. You sand the rough edges down.

You make it so it's perfectly smooth and has a perfect representation of the patient's limb. Then you set this up with carbon fiber. You laminate it with acrylic resin and you laminate it. It makes kind of a hard shell. Then you bust out the plaster and you're left with this carbon fiber shell, acrylic resin laminate shell that's very durable, very lightweight but very durable. Then you attach the pylon and the foot to that.

That's for a below knee leg. It's pretty involved. There's a lot of materials that we send over regularly.

We've got a whole shipment of it getting ready to go. That's why we're looking for help to do that. If that's something that you want to participate in, we'd welcome it.

Like I said, for any monthly gift, we'll send you the caregiver calendar. We've got all kinds of things that we do with this ministry. It's pretty cool.

It's all Gracie envisioned this. We've got inmates that help us disassemble used limbs that are donated to us to recycle the parts. Inmates at a prison run by CoreCivic down in Arizona. We've got a bunch of those supplies that are getting ready to go. There's lots of ways to get involved.

There's lots of things that we do. We'd love for you to be a part of that as well. Go to HopeForTheCaregiver.com and you can see how you can get involved today. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll see you next time. This facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs. This facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic.

We met them over 11 years ago. They stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks. All these things we can reuse and inmates help us do it. Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville. I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere, feet boxes and so forth. I was doing all this myself and I'd make the kids help me.

It got to be too much for me. I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction. And we'd love to be a part of this.

And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb.

And that's where the focus of Standing with Hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prostheses. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials, and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona where it's such an extraordinary ministry.

Think with that. Inmates volunteering for this. They want to do it.

And they've had amazing times with it. And I've had very moving conversations with the inmates that work in this program. And you can see, again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be. And we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do. And that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with hope. Standingwithhope.com.