The One With The Best View

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.

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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.

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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. Hi everybody. I am Peter Rosenberger and I am very glad to be with you today. How are you doing?

How are you holding up? What's going on with you? That is the question I ask all my fellow caregivers. Not so that we base anything on our feelings because that is pointless.

But so that we have an understanding of what's happening in our lives, not just the one we take care of. You know, I'm around a lot of doctors, clearly. And they always ask, how are you feeling?

Not so that they can have a conversation about emotions and so forth, but they ask, you know, what's going on in your body? Where does it hurt? What's not right? Do you know what's going on with you?

Can you can you pinpoint that? This is a hard thing for a lot of us as caregivers because we're so used to somebody else's issues driving our life. I mean, how many of us wake up every day and ask someone else what kind of day are we going to have? I mean, those aren't the words we necessarily use, but we might as well because our sense of well-being, our sense of settledness, our sense of peace is often held hostage by how someone else is doing. This is the reality of so many lives who are caregiving. And it's not limited to us as caregivers by any stretch of the imagination, but it's so much more exacerbated in the caregiving world because we see it in such a high definition, if you will.

HD CG, HD caregiving. We see it so vividly when one person's life is so deeply connected to someone else's in a caregiving role. And I mean, my own life. I've told you this so many times. You've heard me say it. Of all the years I've been doing this, I cannot count how many people have asked me about Gracie.

But I can count the ones who ask about me. Okay, when you have that level of disparity, then the danger for so many of us as caregivers is to lose ourselves, to be clueless about what's happening with us, or if we're aware of it, we suppress it. It's not as important. We minimize it. We push it down.

We do not spend the necessary time to address what's going on with us. So here I've been in the hospital now. We're still here, by the way, over 100 days. We're going into extra innings, and I'll talk about that more in the next block. How important is it for me? Now you tell me, okay?

I'm going to let you guys take over the show for a minute. How important is it for me to stay in a good state of mind physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially? How important is that while I'm dealing with this with Gracie? She's getting acute, round-the-clock care, and we've had very intense moments here. What do you suggest I do? One of the things I've done is I stay across the street. I spend the night over here at this extended care hotel. I don't spend the night in the hospital. I've done that. I've spent many nights in the hospital. I've done it more times than I want to remember. Why am I not doing it now?

Why am I putting myself into financial straits, if you will, to do this? Well, number one, this thing has gone on over 100 days. How well do you think I will hold up if I'm spending the night in the hospital on a couch in the hospital with her for over 100 days? You know they come in all times of the night.

You've got beeping and everything else going, lights and so forth. Do you think I would get any rest over there? No. It's not going to happen. I know. I've been there.

You've been there. It's not going to happen. I can do it one night. I can do it two, three, four, five, six nights. But I'm not going to do it 100 nights for two reasons.

One of them is I'm tired and I'm old and not necessarily that order. The other reason is, well, the other several reasons are she requires me to be at my A game right now. That means I have to be rested, clear-headed and organized. Here's another reason. When we eventually go home and we pray that we will, guess who's got the lion's share of this thing?

Yeah. So how important is it, or as they say around here, how important is it when I go home for me to be in a rested, strong, clear-headed frame of mind? Because I'm going to be doing everything when I get home, just about. Now, there is the anticipation that when Gracie goes home, she will continue to improve then, and her life will change and get better and she'll get stronger and so forth, and it's not going to be as dire as what we've been dealing with. But regardless, she's not going to benefit if I'm tapped out. Well, in order for me to do that, then I have to be keenly aware of what's going on with me.

And I'm not talking about deep, profound things. That's important too, but I'm talking about just, are my clothes fitting? Have I put on some pounds while I'm here? Is that important for me to consider? Is that something worthy of my time to consider?

Yes, it is. They have a breakfast buffet at this hotel. It tasks me.

It is a challenge for me. They don't have a lot of the offerings that I would do at breakfast, and I have to go with what I got, and I'm trying to be judicious on that. But a couple times a week, they'll have pancakes. I love pancakes. I'm not so sure I want to be friends with somebody that doesn't love pancakes. But what am I supposed to do here? I mean, I can't just binge on pancakes. You know, you eat a bunch of pancakes and then two hours later, you're rethinking your choices of life. And so I have to be a little bit more guarded on that. I have to be aware.

Clothes aren't going to fit very well, and I've got to step it up. I walk back and forth to the hospital several times a day because I'll come back over here and do some work. When she gets settled, I'll get there early in the morning and I'll bring her a cup of coffee because the coffee that she orders from the cafeteria that comes up to the room is not good.

It's really not good. And so the guys at the coffee shop all know me. They have a cup ready when I get there, and I get that for her, and I get her settled in. And then I walk back over here, and then I walk back over to the hospital, and then I walk back over here. And I'm doing a minimum, I've set a timer on my, I mean, a goal on my phone every day of 6,000 steps. That's my minimum that I'll do every day.

And it's important for me to meet that goal. How am I feeling? Well, I feel a lot better if I'm walking 6,000 steps.

What do you think? And it's something that I'm pushing myself to do because I'm aware that how, particularly on pancake day, how essential it is, I'm going to quit saying it, how essential it is, let me come up with some more words, how essential, how needed, how critical. But I've got to do this in order for me to stay healthy. How am I feeling? Well, I feel a little sluggish today. Well, what am I eating?

What's going on with me? What am I doing? Be aware of me so that I can be better aware of her. Not in a narcissistic way to be aware of me, but in a stewardship way. It's always, always, always, always about stewardship. And by bringing this body into submission. And as we unpack the show a little bit more, I'll talk about the other things that we bring into submission so that we can accomplish that which God has laid before us to do. And it always comes down to one truth that I coined a long time ago.

It's on my Substack page this week. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Gracie's life is not improved if I'm unhealthy.

Today's a great day to start. And that is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger and that is Rob Galbraith and the Not Ready for First Service players. Thrilled to be with you today as we discuss all things related to the family caregiver. What is it like to stay strong and healthy while taking care of somebody who is not? And that is the crux of all that we do on this program.

And I'm so glad that you took the time to be with me this morning as we delve into this. Let me give you a quick update of where things are. We've been here in Denver, Colorado area at the University of Colorado Medical Center for now more than 110 days. Gracie's had 10 operations and is expected to have at least one more if not three more.

But we are holding off on the secondary until we get through the primary. And that's this first one that we're waiting on her to have. They're going to have to go in a plastic surgery team and reconstruct a good bit of her skin on her right leg. What happened is this. She came down here to have her hip flexors released. By the way, I've been doing a blog series on this. You go out to my website, PeterRosenberger.com.

At the top it says resources and then just scroll down and it says blog. Go to the blog and you'll see everything that's going on with her if you want to follow along and understand how did we get here. Because I don't want to repeat her entire medical journey every time so I put it out there. But bottom line is the orthopedic surgery that brought us down here worked.

But it created an ancillary set of problems that the tissue won't heal and we've gone down conventional means and now we're going up into a higher level of aggression as we tackle this thing. And she's very, very tired. She's very, very, very weak. And she has moments when she is rock solid and then she has moments when she's very discouraged as you can imagine. And I wanted to tell you about one of those moments. Her orthopedic surgeon has been worried about her because I mean this is grueling.

I mean think about this. I mean she's facing her 98th surgery, her 11th in this 110 days. So her ortho surgeon is a wonderful guy and I'm really quite fond of him. Incredible doctor and he was concerned about her and so he asked the psychiatric team here at the hospital just to check in on her. Say are you okay?

You know how are you holding up? And you know they have chaplains here and so forth. I think the biggest help she gets is the dog therapy because they bring dogs around to the room to be able to engage with the patients and that always brightens her up when the dogs come in. Gracie loves dogs and she's not much of a cat person. My son has been trying to get her to get a cat when we get home.

We have barn cats and she's not a big fan of cats but he keeps thinking that a cat would be good for her to just sit there just hold and they're very comforting. But she's a dog person and we had a wonderful dog for many many years. He was her support animal and he was wonderful. His name was Mac and we had to sadly put him down because he had such terrible arthritis and it just tore both of us up. I don't want to ever go through that again and he's buried there on the property there in Montana and got a nice little spot picked out.

Gracie's dad got the backhoe out and dug a big hole for him. Sorry I digress on that but you know how we all feel about our pets. When the dogs come around she really gets excited and we're going to get her another dog but we've had to wait for her to be able to get through a lot of these things. That's my commitment to her. I was going to get it for her birthday but then we've had all this stuff and then I thought Valentine's Day and now we're still here. Mother's Day, no, no, it doesn't seem like that's going to go well.

I'm thinking maybe for next Christmas, I don't know. But this psychiatrist came by to see her and he came in and he had a student with him or a resident or something. They kind of come in teams because it's a teaching hospital.

Nice guy, real nice guy. Gracie's laying there. She can't wear her prosthesis.

She's got tubes coming out of her everywhere and she's been locked up in here for a long time. He says, how are you feeling Gracie? Again that question, how are you feeling? How are you doing? And she said, how do you think somebody in my situation would be feeling? What would you expect them to be feeling?

Which I thought, Gracie. But he took it in stride and he said, fearful, angst, driven, worrisome, all the things. And she said, ditto all of that and more. But he was a nice guy and they had a nice conversation. I was right there. She wanted me to stay in the room.

I mean she wasn't interested in having any kind of therapy session. But he was just checking in on her, making sure everything is in his wheelhouse if he could help with anything. And then he said something, he said, you know a lot of people try very hard to come up with something that gives purpose to their pain, to their challenges.

A mother in labor is distressed but knows that the baby will come. He said, in your case, that's going to be a bit more challenging. Have you struggled with this in trying to find purpose?

Have you found purpose? What are your thoughts on this? And she said, without even thinking, I mean didn't even hesitate. It was almost like it was an offhand remark. She said, I'm not worried about that. I don't concern myself with why or what kind of purpose this is.

I know that he has purpose and that's all that I care about. And I was stunned. He was stunned.

His assistant was stunned. It's not like she was trying to be profound, which it was, but that was not her goal. Her goal was just, this is, no I'm not going to spend my time thinking about what I can do to have purpose in this.

God has purpose and that's enough for me. I didn't even know how to respond to that. He didn't know how to respond and his assistant didn't know how to respond. I mean we all just sat there in amazement. It was kind of a jaw-drop moment and it was the first of two that she gave in just that brief time.

And I'll tell you the next one in the next block because I want to set it up properly. But it speaks to where her headspace is on any given day that she is locked into God has not abandoned her. Now if somebody else said that, you may take that with a grain of salt.

You may just take it in stride. But this is a woman facing her 98th operation. Now what do you suppose goes on in somebody's mind that leads them to that place? What does she know? What has shaped her thinking? Remember the scripture says, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus.

And remember the scripture that says, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So what do you think has happened? What are your thoughts on that? You hear this woman who is clearly in a very difficult situation. She is not new to this.

This has been going on since 1983. And then this is where her mind goes. And one of the things for me that I think it imparts and it communicates to me is that if we are constantly thinking of the things of God, we are not going to have to do some kind of mental inventory to figure out what we believe. It is ever present and it is going to come out. Jesus said don't worry about when you are brought in before kings and rulers of men. Don't worry about this. Because if you are led by the Spirit and you are immersed in the things of God, when the rubber hits the road, it is there. That is the beauty of a Spirit-led life.

It is not something you have to manufacture. I am a political junkie. I admit it.

And I try to stay out of that on this program and things because that is just not really where my headspace is. But I can't help but look at politicians who are not authentic. This is the one issue with politicians that most people agree on, almost universally, is that they are not authentic.

They are whatever they are needed to be in the moment. I heard somebody say this about Bill Clinton, the way he could lie because he just made himself believe that it was true in that moment. I am not here to pick on one or the other. That was an observation someone made.

I saw a pundit make on that. And so in that moment that is truth to them, but it is not truth. And there is not this authenticity of who they are that permeates so they could be blown around by whatever wind that comes their way, whatever you need them to be.

They are a slate for you to write upon, particularly if you write checks upon. And that is why when you find an authentic politician who is just going to be who they are, people are drawn to them. And I will give you an example, and it is not one that you may think, but Bernie Sanders. I mean, I do not agree with anything that he says or does, and I do not particularly like any of his politics, but you cannot deny that this man is who he says he is.

And people are drawn to that, that authenticity. Now, he is wrong, and I disagree with him vigorously, but that is who he is. And I think that can explain a lot of things with Trump, that this is who he is. Love him or hate him, this is who he is. You look at people that were like this in the public eye in history, and you can see the way people are drawn because people want authenticity. One of the things I have heard about Billy Graham, one of the greatest compliments I think anybody can ever pay to anybody, was that the gospel exuded out of him. This is who he was. This is not something he put on. And there are a lot of public preachers, if you will, who put on an affectation, but that is not who they really are.

We have seen it, and I think it was J.C. Ryle or somebody that said, a man falls in private long before he falls in public. But when you have that authenticity, this is who they are. It is jaw-dropping, and this psychiatrist and his assistant and this caregiver watch this woman from her sick bed be who she was, and say, I'm not worried about finding purpose because he has purpose in this. A stunning moment.

We'll get more when we come back. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you, PeterRosenberger.com.

PeterRosenberger.com. Hey, if you go out there, there's a couple things I want you to see. I've been doing a video blog of what's going on with us here in this lengthy hospital stay. It's kind of unprecedented for many people, and certainly for us. We've never been in here this long. A lot of people have.

I've seen and heard of people being in for years, but not us. And so I've been trying to kind of give an update of why here so long, what are we doing, what's going on. And that's all out at my website, PeterRosenberger.com. Go up to the top where it says resources. Scroll down. You'll see blog.

Click on that. And I do a video each week. I have friends say, you look more tired at each video, so I'm trying to drink coffee and slap my face around so I don't look exhausted. I'm okay. I mean, I'm not great about this, and certainly Gracie isn't, but I'm not miserable.

And that's a conversation we'll have, but to tell you why, because I am in it to win it with her. This is the way it's got to be. You set your face like Flint, and you do it. There's no plan B.

There's no off ramp. So we're going to see this thing all the way through. And while you're out there, so take a look at that video blog, and you'll see what she and I both are learning through this process, what she is teaching me on a lot of things, and I hope you enjoy it. Also, while you're out there, there's a thing on my Substack page that I've been doing. It's called The Caregiver's Companion Vault, and what it is is these are, I'm taking quotes from my new book that will be coming out in August.

It's called A Caregiver's Companion. And these are quotes married with a scripture or a hymn stanza. And if you'd like, you can go out to my Substack page. The link is right there on my website. Or you can go out to Peter Rosenberger on Substack.

Substack.com if you're not familiar with it. And I take a quote, and I unpack it. Every Tuesday and Thursday I release a new one. And I unpack it for a very short little devotional type of thing, and then I'll put an audio with it as well. I hope you'll take advantage of it. It's out there at my Substack page, which I have a lot of stuff there. I have a lot of stuff on my website.

I put out as much as I possibly can to help strengthen fellow caregivers. I didn't have anything like this. I had to forage. And even still, there's nothing like this out there for me other than my stuff. And I don't say that in a way of arrogance. I say that in a way of there's just not a lot of... How many people do you know that have been through what Gracie and I have been through and that have written books about it? If you've got somebody, I'll read their book.

But there's just not that many people out there that have done it. And there's even fewer that have got a book. And I've looked.

I've looked for the book. Sorry, I didn't mean to go Dr. Seuss on you there. But I'm in uncharted territory, and so I'm mapping it out as I go. And I have to go back and read my own stuff sometimes.

I have to listen to my own show. You know, I've got certain people, like Joni Eareckson-Tada, and we talk quite a bit. And I've got different pastor friends of mine who anchor me theologically.

And I plow through these things. I'm going through right now the book of Acts, which is quite meaningful. And I do this through Ligonier Ministries.

I listen to them religiously, if you'll pardon the pun. And there's a whole sermon series on... you just march through the Bible. And there's people out there that have that, I think, desiring God and others that have it that they just walk through the Bible. And so I do that expository preaching, where I'm listening to sermons every single day to renew my mind, as we talked about in the last block. What is going into my mind?

Where does my head space go? And faith comes by hearing, hearing from the Word of God. How are they going to hear without a preacher? Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

Okay? So it stands to reason that the more I hear the Word of God preached, the more it increases my faith. The more my faith is increased, the more I'm able to please God.

That's what the text says. I've got theologians that listen to this show, show me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am on this one. The more I hear the preached Word of God. And I'm not talking about hallmark card sermons with a Jesus veneer. I'm talking about the preached Word of God, going through the whole counsel of God. That's why I like to march through the entire book with a pastoral series.

So that's something that we've lost. We tend to be a little bit topical in a lot of our churches. Or they'll take a particular scripture and kind of cherry pick something and then just build around it, whatever is going on with the theme in the world.

But for me, this is where my headspace is. I want to march through books of the Bible without jumping over here or jumping over there. I want to have a systematic approach to this, an understanding of going through that. Luke wrote out the book of Acts under the superintendent of the Holy Spirit. So I want to go through it.

I want to understand it better. And I immensely enjoyed going through John at the first part of our hospital stay here. I finished up Romans, and I've gone through Galatians, and I just listened to him. I can't sit down and do these things a lot.

I mean, look at my life. But I can listen, and it says faith comes by hearing. And so I'm hearing, and I'm listening, and the thought process for me is, for what I see in scripture, is that the more I do this and saturate my brain with this, the more it's renewing my mind, transforming me.

It is rewiring me so that I'm equipped in those moments when things get gnarly. I'm not searching for answers because I just have scripture embedded in me. That's been my thought process, and I hope it's yours as well. There's no other way to do this, by the way. You look at our situation as maybe an extreme. Okay, well, if this is what I'm finding to be sustaining in something as extreme as this, wouldn't it stand to reason that it would be sustaining into things that are less extreme?

Okay, that's my thought process. So I am enjoying it immensely, and I am seeing things and understanding things that I never even considered. And I've marched through the Bible.

I remember going through Bible college, but I did it for academic reasons then. Now I'm doing it for survival. Now I'm doing it because it's life itself, and there's a much different approach when you have that. Speaking of which, I want to go back to Gracie and the psychiatrist. She'd probably get mad at me for doing this, but it wasn't an official therapy session, okay?

So I'm not betraying anything like that. It was such an amazing moment, because the guy really just stopped in to check on her. Are you okay?

Because this has been pretty rough. And her surgeon had asked that, and I respect that, and I think it's a reasonable request. But this guy came in, and Gracie didn't have much of a view in this room. Now she's moved now. She's got a better view. She's got a better view of the Rockies now. But for many, many, many weeks, we were in this same room.

They kind of deposited us in. We stayed there, and she had a view of another wing. It was a window, but you just looked out at a brick wall.

It was a terrible view. And he asked her, how do you cope with being in this room with such a poor view? And she didn't even bat an eye.

Again, it wasn't even on her radar for this question, but it's like she was ready for the answer the moment he asked it. I was kind of stunned by that, and she told the story that my mother had told her, okay? And I didn't even remember the story, but there was an old fable where two men were side by side in a prison in cells. One had a window.

The other did not. Every day, the man without the window asked, well, tell me what you see. Can you tell me what you see? And the man with the window would describe it all, the trees, the spring or whatever, birds soaring through the air, leaves falling, snow, you know, that kind of thing. And those stories brought light into the windowless cell, and they gave him hope.

And then something changed. The man with the window died, and the other prisoner was moved into a cell, and when he looked around, he was stunned because there was no window. And he asked the jailer, why did that guy tell me all these things? And the jailer said, didn't you know?

He was blind. And Gracie finished that story, and she looked up at the psychiatrist, and she said, that's how I cope. She said, I've learned to listen to the one with the best view who was not limited by jail cells or hospital walls or hospital windows that looked down and break because he sees it all, and I listen to him. That's how I cope with this, knowing that he has the view. And unlike that prisoner, he's not blind, and he's not making it up. He actually sees it.

He sees it all, and I can trust him. And I was just stunned listening to her to say this. She didn't even bat an eye. I mean, it's like she was waiting for somebody to ask her this question. And I thought, wow, that's where her mind goes in the midst of all of this. You know, I've been married 39 years, and I was stunned.

I mean, sometimes you can be married a long time, and you still feel like there's a whole lot more to get to know of a person. And I thought, that's where her mind went. And she trusts that God has the view, and he sees all these things. And so I ask you, and I ask myself, do we look at it that way? Do we consider his view, that he sees this in ways that we can't even imagine? And in our dark windowless cell at times, quote-unquote, are we able to draw strength and hope from his view? Not a manufactured view, but he's seeing reality.

Not through a prison window, not through a hospital window. Windows don't mean anything to him. He sees it all. Do we believe this?

You know, I've asked on this program many times in the last couple weeks that question that I ask myself. Christian, what do you believe? Do we believe this?

Do we recognize this? You know, there's only one place in scripture where God has one name that's attributed to him, Elroy. And it was when the encounter with Hagar, when she said, he's the God who sees.

Now, there's many times in scripture where it's referred to God seeing the plight of his people and so forth, but that's the only time that the name was given, Elroy. Do we believe that he is the God who sees? And do we trust that what he sees is for our benefit? Do we trust that what he sees is for our good? That is the question, isn't it? Let me answer it for myself.

Yeah, I do. And that's what gives me hope for this caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. That is Fred Hammond singing an old chorus that we all know, but boy, does that not bring it home, doesn't it? And that song, by the way, guess who's been singing that in the hospital when she wakes up every time. We prompt her.

I looked at her and I said, what is today? And she goes, this is the day, and Grace will start singing this. And again, I got to ask you, do we believe this or not?

And if we do believe it, how would people know? Now, you can't tell me you listen to that song, that arrangement, and don't start tapping your foot and singing along with it. That is a song to sing, and that is a great arrangement.

Fred Hammond, they did a great job with this. I mean, he brought it. That's spine stiffening. That's not just having a fun time and it's a good groove and all that stuff.

That's the very word of God. And that's spine stiffening because we're singing that in a hospital. Now, where are you singing it? Wherever you are right now, where are you singing this right now? When that song came on, what circumstances are you in?

Because whatever they're in, that song trumps whatever you're going through. That text has more power in your life and in my life and in Gracie's life than anything that we're dealing with in this life. You want me to say that again? That text from Psalm 118 has more power than anything in Gracie's life, my life, your life, or anything that this life can throw at us.

Do you believe this? That is the word of God. It will last for eternity. Gracie will not be in the hospital for eternity.

I'm not going to be a caregiver for eternity. That word will last for eternity. And if you go back and look at Psalm 118, that's the last of the Hallel Psalms 113-118. And they were sung during festivals, particularly the Passover. So it is very likely that on the night of the Last Supper, they went out, Scripture tells us, after the Last Supper, going to the Mount of Olives, they were singing psalms, hymns.

And it is incredibly likely that this is one of the ones they were singing. This is the day that the Lord hath made. There's also, the Lord is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. Verse 22, the stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. You don't think that a Messianic Psalm like that would be on the mind of our Savior as He's going to the Garden of Gethsemane? And then this is the day. Verse 24, this is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. It is incredibly likely that Jesus and His disciples were singing that song on the way to the Garden.

They may not have known what was going on, but He did. So my question to you and myself, are we singing that song? Gracie sings this in the hospital regularly. If you come up to her at any point, if you see her, Gracie, this is the day and she'll say that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. And the other day she was singing, I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter His courts with praise.

I will say this is the day that the Lord hath made. I will rejoice for He has made me glad. He has made me glad.

He has made me glad. She's singing that in the hospital. I got it on tape. I mean, there's no such thing as tape anymore. I recorded it on my phone and I sent that to a few folks that were just marveling at this.

And I understand that. I understand why they marvel because it's incredibly moving to see it. But should we be marveling at this?

Or should this be the norm for us? Do we not know? Around midnight, Paul and Silas were singing hymns. I don't know what they were singing. It didn't say. It didn't say exactly what Jesus was singing on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane. But according to Jewish custom, they sang that Psalm 113 to 118 during the Passover. And it's very likely he was singing that one because there's a messianic reference into it.

And he is the stone. And so these are things that I think about and I watch and observe. And when I hear that music, I realize this is a call to action for us. Yes, this is painful. Every one of you are going through something. You wouldn't be listening to this show if you weren't. I'm not exactly entertainment. I mean, let's be honest here.

Hope for the Caregiver is not exactly an entertaining and enthralling subject matter. But you know what? This is where we are. This is where we are. So what are we going to do about it? What are we going to focus on?

How shall we then live, as Francis Schaeffer said? If we know these things and if we have the eternal promise of scripture, can we... And when I recorded Gracie singing, you've got the air. She's wearing oxygen, of course, and you've got that going. And she's very weak. And she even had to take a breath in it. So she didn't have that normal strong voice that she usually has. And she felt bad about it. She said, I can't sing very well. And I said, Gracie, you've had 10 surgeries just in the last 100 days. You're tired. Give yourself a little bit of grace.

She's still singing. And I sent it to some friends and family and they just wrote back and they were stunned. And I say to you, Christian, what do you believe? I say, that's to myself. I look in the mirror, Christian, what do you believe? And if we believe what we say we believe, are we then doing something that other people want to record and send it to people? People are watching you as a caregiver.

Did you know that? People watch you. People watch me.

People watch Gracie. If you wear the name of Christ, somebody's watching. Heaven is watching. We have a great cloud of witnesses watching. The world watches, too, to see how you're going to deal with this.

What's different about you than anybody else? These are things I think about when I'm in the hospital. People are watching us. And when Gracie's saying, this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it, people watched. Listen, we're out of time and I want to end up with something a little special because while she's whispering to get this out in the hospital, there was a time, and not too distant past, that she didn't whisper. And we're going to get her back to that again.

On all the elevators in the hospital, they have patients from years past that they feature in living their life. And my goal, and I've told this to all the people, and they're going to make it happen, is for her to be standing on stage with the microphone and standing up straight and singing. That's what's going to happen. It's going to be plastered on the elevator inside so everybody will see it every day, to the glory of God. This is what we are.

We're the handiwork of God in this, even in our weakness, so that's why we can boast all the more gladly in it. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. Go out, take advantage of it, sign up for the newsletter, sign up for the Substack, join our Facebook group.

There are so many different ways to get involved. Join me, let's do this together. This is Gracie when she's not whispering with Russ Taft singing The Joy of the Lord. This is Peter Rosenberg, and I'll see you next time. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength.

Oh, yeah. Oh, the joy of the Lord will be my strength. He will uphold me all of my days. I am surrounded by mercy and grace, for the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh, the joy of the Lord will be my strength. I will not waver walking by faith.

He will be strong to never be saved. And the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord is my strength He will deliver me Oh, He's our strength When I'm weak and strong My soul allows His joy The joy of the Lord is our strength