Rest for Caregivers: Not Optional, Always Intentional

Hey, do you know a caregiver in your life who is struggling with something and you don't really know what to say?

Well, guess what? I do. So get them this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers. When every day feels like Monday.

They're one minute chapters. And I'd love for you to put that in the hands of somebody who is struggling as they care for a chronically impaired loved one. And it could be somebody dealing with an aging parent or special needs child. Somebody that has an alcoholic or an addict in their family. Somebody who has a loved one who has had a traumatic experience, mental illness.

There's so many different kinds of impairments. There's always a caregiver. How do you help a caregiver?

How do you help somebody who helps somebody? That's where I come in. That's where this book comes in. And that's what I think you're going to find will be incredibly meaningful to them. And if you're going through that right now, they get a copy for you. Friends don't let friends care give alone. I speak fluent caregiver for decades of this.

This will help. I promise you it'll pull you back away from the cliff a little bit, point you to safety, give you something solid to stand on so that you or that caregiver you know can be a little healthier as they take care of somebody who is not healthy. Caregivers make better caregivers. It's called a minute for caregivers when every day feels like Monday wherever books are sold. And for more information, go to PeterRosenberger.com. PeterRosenberger and I will be your hosts through a caregiver excursion. It feels like the jungle cruise ride with no safety bars.

And I'm glad to have you with us today here on this network across this great country. How do you help a caregiver? What does that look like? How do you help somebody who helps somebody? How do you help somebody stay strong and healthy as they take care of someone who is not?

Most caregivers are doing this without pay and without training. We're just jumping into the fray. We're learning how to swim while we feel like we're drowning.

We're building a plane in midair. But here we are. And I am drawing on a lifetime of experience that is continuing to offer a lifeline to my fellow caregivers because healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And today is a great day to start being healthier. How do I know this?

Well, this is my life. And I am still here in Aurora, Colorado at the University of Colorado Medical Center where we've been here now for almost 11 weeks. Gracie has had to have a series of extra surgeries that we did not know about because we can't get this one particular wound to close. Her surgeon told me, and he's a wonderful orthopedic surgeon. I mean, great guy. And he's not a young man. He's not right out of med school.

He's got a little bit of seasoning on him. And we don't really let first-timers deal with Gracie. And he said, Peter, in all my years as a surgeon, I've never seen this particular problem manifest what we're having with her. And I said, Doc, you know the first time a surgeon told me that? Ronald Reagan was president.

He started laughing. And that's been our life. Gracie is an anomaly on so many levels. And you have to approach her situation with a bit of creative thinking.

And I'm a big fan of letting plastic surgeons get involved in any type of orthosurgery with her because her tissue needs that extra finesse. And that's what they've done. And so we're waiting on that particular procedure to be accomplished. And we feel pretty good that it's going to happen and close this up. But we'll know a little bit more next week. I hope to be home before the 4th of July. No, we're hoping to be home before Easter.

But who knows? And Gracie and I are committed to this. I mean, there's no turning back. This is a whitewater rapids raft trip.

You're not going to go back upstream. And this is it. This is for all the marbles. And so if we get this right, she has a better quality of life. If we get it wrong, her life gets significantly harder. So I asked her the other day, I said, you know, how do you feel about this? And she looked at me. She was very tired. And she said, resolute. Resolute.

So those are good words. I want to talk to you something about in this opening monologue about something that is near and dear to my heart, sleep. And I'm staying across the street from the hospital. Well, guess what happens around hospitals? Lots of sirens. And it's very difficult to get a good night's sleep. And then this is a very busy road right out in front of this hotel.

And they for some reason, they have a lot of souped up cars that like to just blare through and run their exhaust really high and drag race from stoplight to stoplight. I don't understand what that's all about. You go 100 yards and you have to stop again. But here we are. And it's kind of hard to sleep through the night. You get all this stuff waking you up. I'm not used to this. Where I live in Montana, I'll hear a siren maybe every six months, maybe.

And that's if I happen to go into town. And when I lived in Nashville, for the same street for decades, it was pretty quiet neighborhood as well. And we didn't hear a lot of things. And so you remember in my cousin Vinny, when he was out trying to sleep out in a cabin in rural Alabama, and he heard all the wildlife noises going on. And he couldn't sleep because owls and crickets and everything else that sounded so loud to him.

And so he ended up getting charged with contempt by the judge and getting thrown in prison. And he was able to sleep like a baby with the noise of prison around him with all that clanging because he's from New York. Well, it's reversed with me and I'm used to a little bit more quiet.

And even still, I have a secret weapon that I normally have to sleep with. Now, it takes me back to my childhood. And I wrote about this on my Substack page. And it's from one of my chapters in my book, A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. And you can see that if you go to PeterRosenberger.com, just right there at the top, it says Substack, just click on that, you'll see the article.

The article is called The Hum That Heals. But I remember growing up in Georgia for a brief while. I was born in South Carolina. My dad took a job as a pastor in Atlanta for several years. And this was back in the late 60s, early 70s.

And at the time, my sister had not been born yet. And so it was the five boys. And we're in Atlanta. Now, I don't know how many of you all have spent hot summer days in Atlanta, but it is not desirable.

And this was before central air conditioning and so forth. The dad's up there preaching and mom's on the front row. And all five of us, all four of my brothers and I, we're out cold on the pew there. I mean, we're just out cold. And they had these black oscillating fans mounted every couple of pews. And they would just be... I mean, we were unconscious. It had to be kind of demoralizing for dad to look down and see all five of his sons sitting there just... We're just sprawled out there. But you try to stay awake on a hot Georgia day with an oscillating fan going like that.

And it's not going to happen. And so to this day, most of my brothers and my sister all have a fan that goes on. And that's something that... I don't know if that's peculiar to the south.

I don't know what's going on. But I love sleeping. You put on a box fan and I can go to sleep literally in less than five minutes.

I don't have any trouble falling asleep. And it just tunes out all the noise while I'm sitting here in all this traffic and sirens and everything going on. And it's hard to get some sleep. And I've missed my fan.

I thought about going to Walmart and... But then again, I remember where I am here in Aurora. And you've been seeing it on the news where ice, big beautiful ice, ice, you know... It's coming.

You've got Trinidad, Agua and everything else here. And I'm thinking, well, I better probably just stay where I am and I'll just suffer through it. But I do miss that. And I thought, you know, and I wrote about that, that how sometimes we just need to turn on something to shut out all the noise so we can get some sleep. Because as caregivers, are you getting enough sleep? Do you sleep well?

I know so many caregivers who are just vigilant all the time and they're keyed up and it's very hard to sleep. I'm not talking about rest. I'm talking about sleep.

Two different things here. We'll get into rest a little later. But sleep, just getting some sleep. And you say, well, I've got to stay awake. I've got to do that.

I've got to do that. Well, how long can you do this? Because I'm four decades into this. And I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I can't maintain that level of vigilance without some sleep.

And I mean good, restful sleep. You say, well, Peter, you don't understand. I think I do. I'm pretty confident that I do understand. And I can do this for a couple days, even a week or so, where I can just be up and down, up and down, up and down and catnap. But I can't do it for four decades. And I don't know anybody that can. So at some point you have to make a decision. Am I going to get some sleep? And sometimes you just need to do something different. And before you take a pill, because I think that's our culture, we always want to just take a pill to help you go to sleep or melatonin and all that's fine, I guess, you know, whatever. But try a $20 box fan from Walmart.

I mean, just try it one time. And I'd love to hear from you if that's something you have experience with. And you can go out to my website or go out to the Facebook group, Hope for the Caregiver on Facebook.

And join that group if you're not already joined. Tell me what you think. Am I wrong? If you want to read the whole story, it's out at my Substack page and you can go to PeterRosenberger.com. But it's the hum that heals.

And let me tell you something, when you have sirens going on all night long, a box fan is a welcome thing. So maybe I'll have to break down and get something from Walmart. I don't know.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopefully we'll be home in the next week or two. In the meantime, I may have to play some kind of noise or something on my phone. We'll try something. Don't go away. We've got more to go. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have Rob Galbraith and the Deacons of Delay playing our bumper music today. We are thrilled to have you with us.

PeterRosenberger.com. We're talking about sleep. We're going to talk about rest. I think part of why we as caregivers don't get good sleep, other than the fact that I'm sitting on a busy street here by a hospital with sirens going on, is because there's this heightened sense of vigilance with us that we are constantly on duty. And it's hard to turn that off.

I've known way too many caregivers like this, been this way myself, when I would be cognizant of almost every move that Gracie would make. And you get trained after a while to do this. Now, let me split these two subjects a little bit. Sleep and rest are two different things. And I found that I could sleep, but was I also resting?

And Jesus said, Come unto me, all you are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you what? He said, rest. What does rest look like to you? When I say the word rest, what comes to your mind? Most people think sleep, taking it easy, whatever.

I don't know. I mean, when it comes to me for rest, I rest. Sometimes I rest by getting out on a horse. Sometimes I rest by getting out on a snowmobile. Even though that's physical exertion, I still rest doing it because I'm kind of in the moment with it and just letting my brain kind of cool. Winston Churchill used to paint to let the part of his brain he said that was running the world cool off. I mean, it would just focus it on something else. Sometimes I rest when I'm playing the piano. But I've been thinking about this for a very long time. And I remember a pastor friend of mine told me once, he said, You need a Sabbath rest.

I thought, Well, what does that look like? I'm a full-time caregiver. What does a day off look like to somebody like me? I run my own business and I'm a full-time caregiver. And I work around Gracie.

And even while I've been here at the hospital with her, I have not stopped working. I do this program. I do a live show on Wednesday. I've written now over 40,000 words for my new book. I've got I've got a book coming out this summer.

We'll talk about that coming up in the next block. I've got a new book that I've written. It'll come out next spring. And then I've got a third book that'll come out the year after that. All of these now are in the pipeline.

And then I've published five articles since I've been six articles since I've been here. And I've got one hitting Easter weekend on Fox News dot com. And if you go out to my website and sign up for our e-letter, we'll send you a link to that when it comes out. Or you can just go to Fox News dot com. But we do that through our email list.

We don't send out a lot. If you want to join, we'd welcome you there. You can just.

Everything's at Peter Rosenberg dot com. So sign up for that and we'll do it because I think you'll love this article. I think you'll be real proud of it. I helped Gracie write one article while she's been here. That is part of her journey and dealing with pain. And this has been picked up by LifeWay and they're going to put it out on their blog this for Easter as well. And you're going to love this article.

And I've helped her write that. That's I mean, that's all while she's been going through at least six surgeries that are starting to start kind of running together here a little bit. This plastic surgery that we're waiting to see if this is going to work where they've come in, the plastic surgeons have closed up the wound. Now it's been left unclosed and they packed it. And now they're going to come in and do that. And that happens here this weekend.

This will be her ninety fifth surgery. So all this has been going on. And I'm still working and I'm sitting there in her room working.

They have a little desk there by the, they have a little sofa there in the room and there's a desk that's kind of mounted to the sofa. And then I get there and I bring my laptop and I sit there and just write. It's better than watching reruns of, you know, sitcoms or whatever. You know, she likes to watch that and she'll go to sleep. Well, that's all that kind of just kind of drones out like a fan.

She'll just have that droning. But I sit there and write. And then I come back over to the hotel room and do my programs.

And we'll finish some writing over here. And then I walk back and forth. I'm getting in about six to seven thousand steps a day. I'm trying to do that because the hotel buffet breakfast is rather tempting. But I'm trying to keep that weight off that I've lost.

And y'all don't tell my coach, Dale, she'll fuss at me. But I mean, I'm trying. I'm doing I'm doing pretty well. I haven't been perfect at it.

But you try being in a hospital for three months and see how you do. But it's, you know, what? So this is what this is my life.

This is going on all the time. Surgeries, recovery, helping Gracie. As soon as I finish this program, I'm going to go over and wash her hair. She doesn't like it when they do it because they wear gloves when they do it and it pulls at their hair. And it's kind of sometimes painful. And I don't wear gloves when I wash Gracie's hair. And I do a pretty good job.

And she says she enjoys having me wash her hair. And it does. It is a nice experience. And so it gets a little messy. But that's that's OK. It's a hospital room.

They're geared for mess. So I say all that and say, this is my life. And it has been for basically almost three months on top of almost 40 years. So what does rest look like to somebody like me? I don't know what your life is like, but what does rest look like to you? Does it look like just going to bed at 10, 30, 11 at night, getting up at 6, 6, 30, 7 in the morning?

What does that look like? If I may, I would suggest to you that rest may be far different than we've ever dreamed. When Jesus said, Come unto me, all you are weary and heavy laden.

What are we weary and heavy laden about? The physical task that I do for Gracie, the pace that I keep up is worrisome. But I mean, I've done more strenuous things.

I mean, it's not like I'm physically going out and digging ditches and moving rocks. So, yes, it is tiresome, but it's the stress of it. It's the mind numbing part of caregiving.

Let me go deeper. The part of caregiving that is never stable. There's always something and we're having to pivot and we have that uncertainty at the core of it. It's anxiety and fear and stress, concern, worry, all of those things that are constantly being stirred because of the unpredictability of our journey as caregivers.

Because of the crisis du jour, crisis of the minute, if you will, that we have in our life. And we stay in a state of churned. It never seems to get to sit by still waters. Thou leadest me beside still waters. Where are the still waters for us as caregivers? Psalm 23, He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.

What still waters are we being led by? I am perched above one of the busiest streets in this entire state in a less than desirable part of town, back and forth to a hospital with surgery after surgery after surgery and all that that involves. You can't sit in a hospital room and get any rest. I mean, every time you just have a moment, somebody comes barging in and they just, you know how it is. Anybody who's spent any time in a hospital knows this.

They try doing it for months. And this is our third three month excursion down here in the last four years. Where are those still waters that He's leading me beside? Again, what is my core issue? Is my issue the sirens, the surgeries, the hospital environment, all of the above?

Or is my issue fear, anxiety, and worry? And if my issue is fear, anxiety, and worry, that is not limited to a geographical space. Gracie and I live up in the Rockies where it is pristinely beautiful.

Do you know that I have felt fear, anxiety, and worry while up there? In a place that people will spend all year long hoping to go on vacation to? And I've said this before in Yellowstone National Park, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. And the two biggest crimes that occur there and have to appear before the federal magistrate, there's a federal judge there at Yellowstone Park, drunk driving and domestic violence. People are coming to this place that is magnificent and they're bringing it with them. They're bringing their craziness with them.

The still waters that He's talking about have to be something different than actual still waters. I have known people and I have been that person who couldn't be at peace even in a peaceful geographical setting. And yet scripture says peace a lot. Jesus pronounces peace a lot. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives. And you look at how many people are in the pursuit of peace and contentment and rest and they will go to great lengths to sculpt something that will give them that, but they're still not there.

Their hearts are in turmoil. And one of the things I've learned in this journey of mine as a caregiver, particularly in these very intense pressure points that we're in, is that we can be at peace. I can be at peace.

I can. I have been. What's changed? Well, I will tell you, I've changed, but I didn't do it on my own. I took Him at His word, that He says if you come unto Him, He'll give you rest. Well, what is the rest that He's given me? The rest He's given me is that what's going on with Gracie, what's going on with the two of us, is under His purview, not up to me. This is not up to me to fix this.

And no matter what happens, He's got her. Now the question I have for myself is, do I really believe that? And if so, how would anybody else know that? What would that look like? If I believed what I was saying, what would that look like? And it would look like me settling down and not striving over, oh my gosh, we've got to do this, we've got to do this, we've got to do this, we've got to do this. That's what it would look like. And you know how I know that's what it would look like?

Because that's what it is. Now it's taken me a lifetime to even wrap my mind around this conversation. And I've got a long ways to go, but I'm not where I used to be.

I used to laugh and think maybe I'm just getting older and I'm too tired to stress out it, but that's not it. No, what it is, is like the old hymn writer said, "'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus just to take Him at His word. He gives me the grace to do that." That's what it means.

That's what it looks like. And that is hope for this caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. I'm glad to be with you today. As we explore all things caregiver related, we're talking about rest. We started off to my sleep, which is something different than rest.

Rest is a much deeper subject. And I wanted to just touch base on this before we move on. In my new book that comes out this summer, it's called A Caregiver's Companion. It's a daily inspiration for life's toughest role, and they're just quotes that I have. That I've said over the years of just little snippets of things I've pulled from the show and some other writings.

And then I married each one of those quotes with a particular stanza from a hymn or a passage in scripture. All of it rooted in the gospel. All of it rooted in understanding the things of God, lifting our eyes up a little higher.

Are we looking at man's level or are we looking at God's level? And this is my intent with this book. And my other book, A Minute for Caregivers, they're one-minute chapters. Well, this is even shorter.

These are 32nd, if that much. I know my audience, and I know the weariness that we feel. And it's important for us to have something that redirects our eyes quickly so we can catch our breath.

Lift up your heads. This principle is so important to grasp, and I'll give you a real-time example of what this looks like. Gracie's physical therapist, who's been working with her now for four years at this hospital. She works here at the hospital, but every time Gracie comes down and she has these long stays, she gets the same PT. And her surgeons are insistent that she get the same PT because the learning curve to work with Gracie is pretty steep, as you can imagine, to have somebody with her level of complication and trauma and all the things going on.

And this young lady is just amazing. I went to the room yesterday after the PT had been there, and Gracie has a whiteboard mounted on the opposite wall from where she is in bed. Now, she's in bed all the time. That's why washing her hair is a little bit more of a challenge.

It's not like you can do that in a shower setting or whatever. It's a bit of a challenge. But she's pretty much bedridden. She gets up and walks, but then she has to take her legs off and get back in bed, and she can't stay on her back for very long because she'll get sore, so she has to be rotated and so forth.

It's very complex. And so she's got this whiteboard mounted on the wall, so when she is in bed, she can see that. Sometimes we actually turn the bed so that she can see the television, she can see the board, and the nurse of the day, whoever is her nurse that morning, we'll put her name up there in the CNA and whatever else. And her PT wrote this on that board. Gracie?

Let me stop right there. What do you think she wrote? What would a PT write to somebody like Gracie? 95 surgeries, massive orthopedic trauma to her body, all the things that are going on. She's been in the hospital for all these weeks now, months. What do you think her physical therapist would write to Gracie? Here's what she wrote. She wanted her to do something three times a day.

Anybody want to guess at what that is? Three times a day. Stretch? No. Get up and walk?

No. It's on the board. It says, Gracie, sing three times a day. Sing three times a day. That's the official directive from her physical therapist. Gracie, sing three times a day.

Why do you suppose that is? Now Gracie does get up and walk. It's very painful for her. And you can just see the sweat just pouring down her face. She's straining at it. It's worked. She's working muscles. She has it worked. It's painful.

All of the above. What does singing do for Gracie? I'll tell you exactly what it does for Gracie. When Gracie sings, she rests. She's not broken when she sings. Those of you who have listened to this program for any length of time have heard her voice. I may play another song at the end of the next block. Gracie's not broken when she sings. She's resting.

She's taking him at his word. That's the official directive. It says right there on the board. And then right above that, I have the caregiver calendar that I made. And it shows the picture for April.

For those of you who have it, take a look at it. I snapped that picture on Good Friday last year. That's going up to our home. We live up in the mountains there.

If you're looking at the picture, it's about one o'clock on the aisle there. And you'll see that's where our home is up in those hills. And the horses are out there. The sunlight is streaming through the beautiful mountains.

It's an incredible pastoral scene, like I talked about in the last block, about the leaning beside still waters and the geographical settings of peace and beauty. That's on Good Friday last year. Each picture for the caregiver calendar has a quote that I've said over the years, that I put it on there, except for one month.

And that's May, and I'll tell you about that next month. But the quote for April that Gracie looks at every day, it says, His scarred hand holds my scared hand. It's not how tight I'm holding on to Jesus. It's how tight He holds on to us.

That's what makes the difference. So she's got two things that she looks at. One of them from her physical therapist that said, Sing Gracie, three times a day, a prescription to sing. And the other one says, His scarred hand holds my scared hand. And that's one of the quotes in my new book that's coming out. And I want to read another one to you that I will have in this book.

And I thought it might be appropriate given all that we're talking about. And it says, very simply, resting is a decision. I don't rest accidentally. I rest intentionally.

It's a decision. I'm going to take Him at His word, and the hymn that I use with that phrase, Resting is a Decision, that's my quote for this book, I put this hymn, Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what thou art. I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart.

Written by Jean Sophia Pigott. And you know the hymn. The old hymn went, and I'm sorry, I don't have the caregiver keyboard, so you're going to be inflicted by what I'm about to do to you of singing this. But I will just mumble it, okay?

So don't adjust your dial. This is really, sadly, how I sound. But the old hymn was, Jesus, I am resting, resting, you know that. And then composer David Hampton, I think it was, wrote the new harmonies and melody with it and just took that lyric and updated, Jesus, I am resting, resting, you know, I don't know if you know that one or not. Steve Green did that.

I think the Martins did it. Several folks have cut that, and it's a fun one to play. In the old days, and again, I'm sorry, I don't have the caregiver keyboard here, people would play that hymn, Jesus, I am resting, resting, you know, and it would just kind of plunk it out. That doesn't sound very restful. You could play even the older version and still make it more soothing and tender, because it deserves to be. It's a beautiful text, but the newer version has this more of a lyrical quality. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. You know, it just feels better. But anyway, that's the hymn that I put with this quote. Resting is a decision.

And so my question to you and myself is, are we deciding to do this? You don't rest accidentally. You don't trust Jesus accidentally.

Okay? You don't sin accidentally either, by the way. But that's a different conversation. You don't trust Jesus accidentally. It's a decision.

Well, you take him at his word. Is rest available to you right now where you are as a caregiver? And everything in Scripture says, yes, it is. And my own experience now affirms what I read in Scripture.

Yes, it is. I'm resting today. It's not easy.

And does it eliminate all the sadness in my life and the heartache? And Gracie certainly isn't. But it's a decision that we're making.

We're working a spiritual muscle. And that's why her physical therapist said, I've never seen Gracie. I would imagine that there aren't many people that she's written that on the board for in their room. Wouldn't you say?

Would you think that's a fair statement? I haven't asked her. I'll ask her next time.

But I would imagine that that's probably the first time she's ever put that on the whiteboard like that. The people that come into the hospital situation are usually a little bit more in and out. You don't have a lot of three-monthers.

And of the ones that are three-monthers, how many of them come back for three months again and again? She's in rare air. So this physical therapist is used to getting them up, getting them mobilized, and helping them get on their way and then transitioning them off to a rehab center or sending them home for outpatient physical therapy.

But not with Gracie. And so she wrote on her board, sing, three times a day. Now, how much does that have to do with her training as a physical therapist? I mean, I've known a lot of physical therapists, and I don't know many that get a lot of musical training in physical therapy school. That doesn't mean that they don't have it. It doesn't mean that that's not where there aren't musicians who are physical therapists.

It just means that that's not necessarily part of the curriculum. But this very perceptive physical therapist saw that Gracie needed something more than just stretching, working muscles, standing, walking with the walker and on her prosthesis and so forth. She does all those things. But she wrote on the board, sing, three times a day. So if a physical therapist or anybody wrote on a whiteboard that faced you every day, what do you think they would write? What needs to be written on your whiteboard that you look at every day? So Gracie has two things.

One of them is sing, three times a day. The other one is his scarred hand holds my scared hand. Now what faces you when you get up in the morning? And that's why I did this with the caregiver calendar and all these things because I want people to have something to remind them. I want to remind myself, Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what thou art. Do I believe this?

Is this true? We don't rest accidentally. It's a decision.

It's intentional. We may need a little extra help to remind us of that. Put up a post-it note. Put it on a calendar. Put it on a whiteboard.

Sing three times a day. Rest. Take him at his word. Remember who he is. Act on that. Retrain your mind. Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, say it with me, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

It is not accidental. Resting is a decision, and that is hope for this caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg, and we'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg, and thank you for that, producer Pat. That is Steve Green singing that hymn that I mentioned. Isn't that a nice melody and a nice arrangement of that? And so it's just a beautiful song. That's the message for today.

Resting is a decision. That's more than just a quote that I put in my new book. That is an anchoring place for me.

That is an anchoring place for me. And it doesn't come easy to us. It takes time to delve into this. And it takes a decision point of saying, you know, I'm going to have to make this decision not just once, but many times, that every time I'm tempted to pick this up. But over time, you will develop that transforming of your mind, as Paul says.

It just takes time. And it takes people around you. You surround yourself with people who are reinforcing that with you. If you're surrounding yourself with people who are putting all kinds of things that are non-helpful to you as a caregiver, I mean, things such as, well, you need to do this, you need to do this, you should be doing this.

You know, I love the fact that on the whiteboard in front of Gracie, her physical therapist spoke to the very core of who Gracie is, St. Gracie. The problem is, is I really don't like it when people whiteboard with me when they have no idea what's going on. And they say, well, have you tried this?

Have you tried this? Have you thought about this? And I'm like, really? Go back to what I said to that surgeon. You know, the first time I heard a surgeon say, we've never seen anything like this, Reagan was president.

That's how long I've been dealing with this. So if you're going to come into my life and write on my whiteboard, speak to the core like that physical therapist did with Gracie. She knows Gracie.

She spoke to who Gracie is at her core, seeing Gracie. Who are you at your core? Is there somebody speaking to you at your core of who you are saying, hey, this is what has happened to me. I had a friend tell me this one time and he spoke to my core. He said, your wife has a savior. You're not that savior. That's speaking to me at a core level. That's something to put on my whiteboard. And by the way, that's one of the quotes in my book.

Gracie has a savior. I'm not that savior. And so therefore, all of my actions need to reflect an adherence to that truth. That is not my truth. That is not somebody else's truth.

That is not subjective truth. I hate that term. Well, speak your truth. I hate that term.

I think that's abominable. Speak the truth because when you say speak your truth, it implies that everybody's got these different truths. No, truth is truth. The truth is Gracie has a savior. I'm not that savior. That is truth. That is bedrock.

I can stand on that without worrying about it collapsing underneath me. There are so many implications in that statement. The number one is there is a savior. Number two is I ain't that savior. Number three is he knows Gracie.

Just that alone, I could unpack that. And it takes the onus off of me to figure this out and redirects my eyes to the savior who knows what he's doing. And how do I know that? See, that's what the study of theology is all about. Theology is the study of God. People say, well, how can you study God?

No, it's very simple. He laid it out in scripture. Everything that he wants us to know about him right now, he put it in his word.

The question is, are we going to study it? Do we believe it? We can't cherry pick it and say, well, okay, he promised that he's going to heal me. He said in Exodus 15, 26, I am the Lord who heals you. That's what it says.

However, you've got to go back up a little further. He says, if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on which I have brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you. That's just one tiny passage in scripture, but do you see how deep we mind that? There's an implication that there will be something that requires healing, and we don't know how long that something will be. For Gracie and me, it's a lifetime, 40 plus years now, and he has not, for whatever reason, chosen to heal Gracie of this. Is he still the Lord who heals us? Can we trust him on that?

Doesn't it really come down to that question? Do we take him at his word? Can we rest in his word that Gracie's healing is guaranteed by God, in his word, and we're not seeing evidence of that for a lifetime?

Do you see the conversation that has to happen for our faith to grow? And so either the word of God is true or it's not, and if it is true, then why am I not understanding this? What's going on? What am I missing? I go back to what my father, the way he approached it, he was never suspicious of God.

He was always suspicious of himself. What am I missing here? And what I'm missing is that God has a purpose and a plan for all of these things. He is Lord of this. If he's Lord at all, he's Lord of all, and I can trust him in this even though I don't understand it and we don't particularly like it. Remember what he told Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after he restored Peter, saying, Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me?

And he restored him. And he said, they're going to lead you to where you don't want to go. There's the implication that things are going to happen that we don't want to happen.

We're not going to like it. Do we trust him? He said, well, yeah, I trust him.

Well, why? Why do you trust him? Why do you trust him? I mean, let's play that out.

Why do you trust him? And it always, always, always ends up at the cross. And I've maintained it, and this is a quote in my book, too. Sin is a bigger problem than we think it is, and the cross is a bigger deal than we can ever imagine. And because of what happened at the cross, what we're getting ready to celebrate next week, to remind ourselves of what he did, and not just the cross, that he was raised from the dead. Romans 1, go back and look at that. And not just that he was raised from the dead, that he ascended and he prays for us.

And remember what he told Peter before Peter betrayed him. Satan has asked for permission to sift you, but I have prayed for you. And when you come through this, strengthen your brethren. Satan has to ask for permission for everything. Any calamity that would come our way, Satan has to ask for permission for that. We are not just subject to Satan's whims. We belong to God, and therefore he is sovereign over everything that happens. Jesus is now, because he ascended, is at the right hand of the Father, interceding as our great high priest every single day, 24-7, time without end, for us.

This one is mine, this one is mine, this one is mine, and I'm interceding. And when you come through this, not if, not I hope, but when, strengthen your brethren. What if Gracie and I come through? We're still dealing with the same issues in some respects.

Her car wreck was 40-something years ago. I would suggest we've come through this to the point where we're able to land on seeing Gracie, seeing three times a day, Peter, she has a savior, you're not that savior. That is a level of understanding, that is a core level of growth that reflects the truths that anchor us, that sustain us so that we can rest, like I've been talking about on this program.

So that we can rest, knowing that he's got this. Don't know, don't like, they're going to lead us where we don't want to go, just like Jesus told Peter. I mean, many times where Gracie's been led into surgery, she doesn't want to go there.

Many times I've had to walk with her all that way. I don't want to go there. But we're resting, resting, resting, knowing that he who began a good work is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints basically in a nutshell says we can persevere because he preserves us, even when we have to go into places that we don't want to go.

We are led there to where we don't want to go. And I go back to what it says on the caregiver calendar for the month of April. His scarred hand holds our scared hand. And that is hope for this caregiver and the one he cares for. So she's going to sing, I'm going to rest, and we're going to keep on keeping on.

How about that? By the way, if you want the caregiver calendar, we still have some we can get you, even though we're four months into it, but they're beautiful pictures I've taken in Montana. Go out to PeterRosenberger.com where it says donate, just donate any amount to Standing With Hope. And the work that we do will send you one. We're doing a campaign now for 25 and 25, 25 a month to help us. If you like what you're hearing here and if you feel like this is blessing you, would you help us do more? You can go out and do that. Also, this is the share-a-thon week for American Family Radio.

And if this network is blessing you, if this program and all the other programs that you listen to, please don't just be a consumer. Be a participant. Get involved. I, along with everyone else on this network, is putting it out there. How about you standing with them?

And whatever's on your heart, whatever the Lord leads you to give, just do it. Go out there today. They are proclaiming the gospel 24-7. Help them do more. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver. Healthy caregivers do indeed make better caregivers. Today's a great day to start being healthy. We'll see you next week. PeterRosenberger.com