The 24-Hour Rule

Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger, and this episode was originally featured for my Caregiver Vault subscribers at caregiver.substack.com. And that's where I share exclusive content, insights, and behind-the-scenes stories for fellow caregivers. If you'd like early access to episodes like this, head over to caregiver.substack.com. and join us.

Now let's get to today's episode. Do you struggle with worry? Is this something you have wrestled with? Are you having late-night conversations with a ceiling fan kind of thing in your life? And you're looking at finances, you're looking at health, you're looking at a job situation, you're looking at.

Whatever, politics, it doesn't matter. Whatever you're looking at, does it cause you to fret? Decades ago, I got the bad news from my wife's surgeon that she had gotten an infection in her back after a particularly difficult back surgery. He came up to the room to see me. I was waiting in her room.

She had gone down for search, I was waiting in her room. And he said, look. She's got an infection. And she's going to need to be here for three months. And we're going to have to go in every couple of days and do what they call a wash-out.

They irrigate it out. Resow it and do it again several days until we are sure that this infection is out of her body.

So it's going to be about three months. And I I just looked at the the wall. I'm standing there, I can see that. Moment in time, still today. It's fresh in my mind.

I was thinking about our children at home, they're at school, my job, and Gracie's in the hospital, and everything else is going on. And I said, I can't do this. for three months. I wasn't saying that to him. I was just saying it to the wall.

and I felt his hand on my shoulder. The surgeon said, you're not going to do it for three months. You're going to do it for twenty four hours. You're going to do it for today. And then he added, The Passage from Matthew 6:34, tomorrow will worry about itself.

And up to that point, I knew that scripture, but I had not had it applied to my life in the way that it was getting ready to be. And I had to learn that in a much different capacity. And that was one of several three-plus-month stays that we've had in the hospital. currently still here. in this four plus month stay.

Tomorrow will take care of itself. Do we believe that? Yeah.