The Questions That Expose the Truth

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Uh Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to be with you, HopefortheCaregiver.com. HopeforthTeCaregiver.com. One of the things I've learned after doing this for a very long time, and I mean being a caregiver, is that questions matter.

And I was recently in the doctor's office for what I'm getting ready to face with here and the procedures that are available when you have a cancer of this type. And the doctor, we went through a lot of different questions and he asked, are there any more questions? And I said, let me ask you two questions. How much care will I need post-operatively and how much care will I be able to give? Post-opportunity.

Now, that second question is a loaded question, isn't it? Because I cannot detach myself from the reality of being a caregiver. If I'm not providing Gracie's care, she can't recover with me, for example. You know, if I'm not providing your care, somebody has to. And so how much care will I be able to offer?

And that's a very good question. And I've been thinking about this a lot with questions because I think that's how we can learn and grow as caregivers. Questions. Ask better questions, not clever questions or not performative questions, but real questions. That the kind that cut through the noise, the filibusters that happen so much in our culture.

When you spend enough time in hospital rooms, exam rooms, and ICU areas, and so forth. You discover pretty quickly that polished language, does it keep people alive? You got to have real conversation. Clarity matters. And you don't ask questions to sound informed.

You ask because something's at stake. You know what happened? What changed? What are we doing now? And when the answer starts drifting into jargon, or what I like to call the filibuster rehearsed talking points, you see this on the news all the time.

You as a caregiver have to bring it back. The stakes are too high to let somebody go off topic. And so we have to go back to the same questions: like, okay, what happened? No, no, no. What happened?

No, no, what happened? You know, you just keep asking them. You stay with the question until something real emerges. And I think we've lost that a little bit in our culture. Not just a little bit.

We're drowning in commentary. while starving for clarity. Watch any ten-minute news segment. You'll see it every time. Everybody has a statement.

Everybody has a slogan. Everybody has an outreach. But very few people are willing to stand still long enough to ask obvious questions and to refuse to let go of them. Ronald Reagan understood this in 1980. Tell me this: Do you remember Jimmy Carter's policy platform when he was running against Reagan in 1980?

Now, we know the misery index, and we know the gas prices, and the RAN hostages, and all that stuff. But do you remember? Jimmy Carter's policy statement about what he wants to do for the economy of the United States. I bet you don't. I mean, if you're a real policy nerd, you may, but I doubt you do.

Some of you weren't even alive during then, but for those that were, I doubt that you do. But I'll bet you remember The one question that Ronald Reagan asked. See if you can finish it with me. Are you better off than you were? Four years ago.

And that question became part of the American conversation. To this day, we're still asking. It cut through everything. And Jimmy Carter was not allowed to filibuster with that question. He had to filter everything through that question.

And the American people answered resoundingly, No, we're not better off than we were four years ago. Howard Baker did the same thing in Washington. He was the majority leader of the Senate during Watergate. And he said, What did the President know? And When did he know it?

That distills it down to the essence of it. A real question does that. It doesn't merely accuse, it exposes, it tests. And it clarifies. Marcia Blackburn, another senator from Tennessee, asked.

Katanji Brown when she was going through the Supreme Court hearing process. Can you define a woman? And what was her answer?

Well, I'm not a biologist. I mean, what a no matter what Katanji Brown does for the rest of her life, and she's on the Supreme Court for the rest of her life, she will never be free from that question. Long after she's gone, history. will have that question attached to her. I mean, that's the power of a question.

Brandon Gill just did this, representative from Texas, when he asked this lady from some type of abortion advocate thing. And he said, what's your favorite type of abortion? I've known a lot of surgeons over the years, and I've talked about surgeries. I remember asking Gracie's neurosurgeon about this very big surgery. She was going to have this like nine-hour surgery.

You know, that morning when he came in, that morning, we're getting ready to do it. I said, I looked at him. I said, Doc, are you ready for this? And he clapped his hands together. Oh, yes.

I love this surgery. And to me, it was like horrific because he's got to go in there and redo Gracie's back. It's nine hours. It's a big surgery. But he looked at me and his eyes just bright.

He said, This really helps people. And I love being able to do this surgery. And I know the nuances of what he was going to do for the most part. I mean, I had a pretty good understanding of what was getting ready to happen. And I didn't want to do the surgery, but he loved it.

And I've known surgeons who gave me a very detailed description of an amputation. And explaining what's getting ready happened. with absolutely zero Embarrassment. They recognized this was necessary. This was going to happen.

And this is why we do it. And this is the way we do it. And this is what. But when Brandon Gill asked this woman, she didn't want to talk about that kind of surgery. She didn't want to talk about abortion.

And he forced her. by asking a question, what's your favorite type of abortion? to have to deal with it. And that will enter in long past her and past Brandon Gill, that question. But you know who asked better questions?

God When God asks a question, He's not looking for information. He is penetrating down to the essence of it. In the garden, Adam Where are you? And then, when they told him that we were naked and shaved, who told you you were naked? He wasn't trying to locate Adam geographically.

He was exposing Adam spiritually. He was bringing Adam into the light. And then there was Job. After all the suffering, all the confusion, all the anguish, God speaks to Job. Finally, he lets thirty something chapters of bad theology.

Just permeate the book of Job. And what does he do? He asks questions of Job. Never gave him answers. He said, Where were you?

when I laid the foundations of the earth, That's not cruelty, that's perspective. There is a difference because suffering has a way of convincing us that we're the center of the universe. Pain narrows the lens for us. All we can see is this moment. Think about it.

If you have a splinter in your finger, what are you how much are you thinking about your toe? You're not. You're thinking about your finger and to the exclusion of everything else. Fear magnifies our own understanding, and God's question to Job does something essential. It reminds Job that God.

Is still God. He's not absent. He's not confused. He's not improvising. God asks questions because questions force us to see.

That's what good questions do. They uncover things we would rather leave Comfort. That's why filibusters exist. Filibusters They don't want to answer the question. That's why they run off at the mouth.

They don't want to stand alone in the spotlight. And we do this spiritually too. And you can see this all over the news. Anybody pick a newscast and they ask a question, watch what the politician does, they just bloviate. until the clock runs out.

We drown ourselves in noise, activity, outrage, explanations. Endless words, because deep down we don't want to sit quietly before the questions that God asks us. Where are you? What are you trusting? Who told you that?

Do you believe what you say you believe? The questions can be frightening because they demand honesty, but they're also merciful questions because clarity is mercy. A surgeon cannot help a patient while pretending the wound isn't there, and God does not heal us through illusion. He brings things out in the open. And that's one reason I think that caregivers understand this better than a lot of people because caregiving strips away performance.

At three in the morning in the emergency room, nobody cares about slogans and filibusters. You want clarity, you want truth, you want reality. And frankly, I think the church. Needs to recover the courage to ask better questions and the humility to answer the one God asks us. Not dodging them, not decorating around them.

Answer them because a real question has a way of shutting down the filibuster. It leaves nowhere to hide. And sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is ask the question everyone else is afraid to ask. I wrote an article about this on my Substack. Go out to caregiver.substack.com and you can see this.

Read the whole thing over there. And I've got more out there for you as well. We'll be right back. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger, and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. I am very glad to be with you today. HopefortheCaregiver.com. HopeforththeCaregiver.com.

We're talking about questions. In the last block, I talked about, you know, asking a better question, and it brought to mind something I got this week from a listener, and I wanted to share it with you. It was a very good question. And his name is Lee. And Lee, thank you for writing this.

I did write you back. You gave me the wrong email address. I think you were doing that just to test me, Lee. You were trying to test me. That's what you're trying to do.

You're trying to test me. But I figured it out. You left off an L off of the name of it.

So I think I figured it out. I hope you got it. If not, I'm going to answer it on the air because it was a very good question. Lee's concerned that he is going to be the person needing care in the not-too-distant future. And he wants to prepare for it with his wife.

And help plan, help do what you can now to get ready for what's probably coming down the pike later. It's a very good question, and it shows a lot of advanced thinking.

So I wrote about this. A while back on my substack, caregiver.substack.com. And I'll try to remember to pin this at the top.

So if you go there, you can access this particular article because I talked about this very thing: what can you do? Where does the conversation start with you as a caregiver as you are thinking about? The things you're going to need, and you're facing some mobility impairments and that kind of thing. Where does it start?

Well, I'll give you a hint: it's in the bathroom. I know that money and all that kind of stuff is an important part of this, and I'm not going to address that. You got to get with a financial planner, set those things up. But I know as a caregiver, you want to start in the bathroom. You want to start right with the toilet.

I'm sorry, we're right here on the radio and I'm saying toilet in front of everybody, but that's the reality of our life as caregivers. And if the person you're taking care of cannot safely, with your help or adaptive equipment, If they can't safely get to the toilet, As a caregiver, you know what kind of day you're going to have, and that's every day. All right.

So let's talk about the toilet. Not something you normally hear on a radio program, here on American Family Radio, but hey. I'm just calling it like I see it, okay? Grab bars. Hugely important.

But let's talk about the height of the toilet. Do you want one of those low riders that you need a crane to help pull you off of? Because those things can sit down so low. We were up there at my father-in-law's place, and he built a bathroom there in his house many years ago, and he put these, told us that they were so small. And you, you know, you really had to work to get off of these things.

I'm sorry, I know, but look, we all use them.

So the point of it is, I like those 19 inches. That sit up a little tall. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George said he liked to use the handicap accessible bathrooms because he likes those big toilets. He says, You're perched like a gargoyle there. You know, but think about it: you want something that's going to be easy to get onto and off of, and you're helping somebody.

So, you want to make sure that they're not having to go so low that they bang down and just flop on it, or that you're having to struggle to get them off of it. You want them to be as independent as possible. And then once you decide to do that, and go ahead and replace it down, they're nothing expensive. And not as expensive as other things can be. But once you have that, then you establish where your grab bars are going to go.

If you're going to keep your toilet as is, you can start with the grab bars. If you're going to change the toilet, don't do the grab bars first. Do that after you get the toilet where it's going to be.

Okay. And if you don't know what to do and how, but you know, the size of grad bars and the length and the height and all that kind of stuff, there are people all around you. You could probably get somebody there at Home Depot or Lowe's they could refer to you. You may have somebody in your church that does home remodeling. Your pastor may know somebody.

If you talk to your doctor's office, sometimes if you've got a neurological issue that you're dealing with, like Parkinson's and so forth, a lot of neurologists have a social worker in play. Talk to your insurance company. If they can recommend a social worker or an occupational therapist, somebody that can come and look at these things and help connect you with the people. They may not be able to do the work themselves, but they can connect you because that's the world they live in.

So you start with the toilet. Then the grab bars. If your toilet's going to stay the way it is, And put your grab bars in. They're not that hard to do, but if you don't feel comfortable doing it and you want a professional, please, by all means, I recommend it. I've put them in myself and I've had professionals do it.

That they're in, but professionals do it do this kind of stuff all the time so. You know, spend a little extra money. And by the way, if you know somebody who's going through this, offer to pay for that for them. If you want to do something, don't say, Let me know if there's something that you need.

Well, here's something they need, so you could offer to help with that. Maybe your Sunday school class they say, you know, we'd like to help make this bathroom more accessible for this family in our church.

Okay, with that, there you go. Grab bars, toilet, that kind of thing. And then let's go from the toilet, look at the sink. Because a lot of times the toilet is near the sink. And a lot of people get pedestal sinks.

I don't recommend it. They're not as stable, and chances are, as you get older or you're having mobility impairments, you're going to put your hand out on the sink and use it to support your weight.

Well, those things can come off from the wall pretty easily. And then you got a fall, then you got water, you got everything else. Get a cabinet sink.

Okay. A cabinet sink that you're that will support whatever weight you're going to put on it if you're just using the sink just for your balance and that kind of thing.

So you got a toilet, you got grab bars, you got a sink.

Okay, what's next? The shower.

Now a lot of people have a shower tub combo. We do not. We don't have any tubs because they're not safe for Gracie. And so we moved away from tubs. A lot of people like tubs.

That's great. That's your business. I don't like them because there's a lot of risk for falls and so forth. But I understand.

So you need to look at the space of getting to the tub. And then, do you have grab bars inside the shower wall there, the tub area? You're gonna need grab bars.

Okay. and the entire bathroom facility there.

Okay, and it's worth the time to spend it. Get them from a seated position, maybe look at from a standing position, all those kinds of things. But where do they go? Really spend the time with this. And if you don't know, you can get an occupational therapist in there to really help with that kind of thing.

Your doctor could recommend one, your insurance company, local community hospital, whatever. There are plenty of people out there that can do that kind of thing and make the phone call and do it. We've done that extensively in this new bathroom that we built for Gracie.

So there's grab bars everywhere. And when's a good time for you to fall?

Okay, and where's the most at risk place? What's in the bathroom?

So if you need a shower bench, make sure it's going to fit inside that tub shower combo, you may have to turn it sideways. And that's okay if you do, because it'll go the whole length of the bathroom, I mean the tub, maybe, or most of it. And then you make sure you have plenty of bars in there. Then you have a handheld shower wand.

Okay. And you can use that to make sure you have those kinds of things. And if you have a shower that you don't have to have a tub with, that you can just step into, then you got to make sure they can get into it if they have mobility impairments.

So then you got to have bars going in and out of that shower. If they got a little curb above it, you know, so they have to step over it.

Well, again, that's a fall risk.

So make sure that you and your loved one can get into the shower safely. One of the things we did with ours, we made it so that you roll in it. There's a wheelchair, the whole door is open. There's not even a door. It's big enough that roll in and it stays contained there so that Gracie can be safe in there.

And there's bars everywhere. But we took a long time to plan that out and really think through it. Because we've done this for so long.

So Toilet? Grab bars. Pedestal sink. Out, don't do a pedestal sink, get a cabinet sink. And then make sure your shower or tub or shower tub combination is safe to transfer into.

Don't just lean on your own understanding. Ask for help with this. There are professionals that do with this all day long. It's worth the time to make the call.

Next, you got to go to the bedroom. You got to be able to get into the bathroom, from the bedroom, and back to the bedroom again. Is the bed too high? Is the bed too low? Is there carpet?

I don't recommend carpet. I like to throw carpet away because things spill, messes happen, and then your carpet, it's hard to keep it clean. And so we don't do carpet at our house. Watch the throw rugs because they can be a fall hazard. Make sure there's plenty of light.

Do you need a rail on the side of the bed to help? You can get those that mount underneath the mattress, and sometimes you can put plywood underneath the mattress and drill those things in so they're they're really strong and they'll hold.

So there's all kinds of if your bed's too big. Maybe you need to have a smaller bed in there so that you can easily get around. All right, so those are the things just for the room. Again, watch the fall risk: the carpets, the rugs, all those kinds of things to make sure that there's a smooth. path, uh easy access path to get to and from the bathroom.

So now you got the bedroom and the bathroom. You can hold off on the kitchen for a little longer unless your loved one wants to be more independent, start cooking, and then you have to do some remodeling for the kitchen if that's required if they're in a wheelchair. But chances are you're going to be caregiving, so you're going to be doing the most of the cooking.

So we can put that aside for now because now you've got to make sure they can get into the house. Do you have steps? Do you need a ramp? How many steps do you have? How big a ramp do you need?

Don't just build any ramp. It's one inch of rise for every 12 inches of run. It's a one to twelve slope.

So that's about an 8.33 grade, percent grade.

So you want a very slow grade there. You don't want to have to be pushing a wheelchair up a 45-degree angle. It gets a little bit cumbersome.

So, you need to look at that on your stairs.

Now, if it's just one stair, you could buy little aluminum-type ramps you could get through Amazon. And they're real easy, and you could mount them right there in the deck or whatever. If it's on concrete, you may need some help with that to keep it stationary. But you could do that for the meantime, but you gotta get them into the house.

Okay, so those are little things that you could start. right now before this thing gets out of control. And remember, we're always one sprained ankle away from this thing being pretty challenging.

So, you want to start making these types of adaptive equipment. Modifications Right now. Toilet first. It always starts with the toilet. Always.

Then work your way out in circles depending on how active the person is. And so you want to be able to. Have them be able to get into the home, be able to take care of them while they're in the bedroom or in the bathroom. Paramedics can bring them into the home and carry them, but if you know, if they're going to be more non-ambulatory, But you still want to have all these things: the bathroom, the bedroom, and then go from the entryways and so forth to make sure that they can get in and out. Think about the entryways also with bad weather.

What's that going to be like? Do you want your entryway to be covered or not? And things like that.

So there are a lot of different things you can think about and ask questions about. And it's good that you're asking questions. Leah, I do appreciate the question very much. And you can see all of this and more. At Substack.

about this very issue, caregiver. dot substack this is where i'm just putting all this information out there And you can enjoy all the articles and things I write about these things, and just practical things I've learned over. 40 years of this. Gracie is a bilateral amputee.

Okay, so she's either in a wheelchair, she's wearing prosthetic legs, or she's on a girdie. Regardless, the house has to be accessible. And that's the name of the game here. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be back with more. Great question, Lee. Thanks so much for it. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger.

Glad to be with you, HopefortheCaregiver.com. If you're just now joining us, we're talking about questions. Questions that Distill the thing down to its essence.

So the question becomes the teaching tool, becomes the moment of clarity. And of course you can trace this all the way back to the garden. Better. Where are you? Who told you you were naked?

And then later on he asked Cain, Where's your brother? And you could just go through scripture and see how God uses that. Eventually, this would become called the Socratic method, where you have. Teaching done by Questions. Let me give you an example.

Teacher says, Do you trust God? The student says, yes. Teacher says, Well, what does trusting God look like?

Now, this hits home for us as caregivers, okay? Because this is where a lot of us live. People say, Well, you know, do you trust God? But yes, what does that look like? believing he will take care of me.

Well, the teacher says, Well, did Job trust God when he lost everything?

Well, yes. Then does trust in God always mean life in proofs?

Well, guess not.

So, if the circumstances worsen, but a believer still obeys God, is that trust? Yes. Then is trust measured more by outcomes or by obedience? Oh, you see where it's going with that? And I think that's the thing that we as caregivers are faced with a lot.

People say, well, don't you trust God?

Well, yes, I trust God.

Well, what does that look like? What does that look like in these situations?

So I think asking questions. Is such an amazing tool that we've lost in our society. You think it's basic. You think that, you know. We would Be doing this on a regular basis, but we don't teach people to critically think this way.

To ask better questions.

Well, why? Why is this? What what's happening here? You know, I I I look back at the the fraud in Minnesota. And Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love what Tyra said on Fox News. He said, Call me racists, but I'm a moneyist. Where's the money? Show me the money.

Where is the money? And that's a good question. Where is that money? Give an account for it. And so I think that as we ask those things as caregivers, we find that it helps.

Clarify our own thought processes. I'll give you another example. I met a lawyer back in Nashville when we lived there, very successful lawyer. And He decided to go and give back a little bit to his law school.

So he served as an adjunct professor. He taught a class over there. Don't know exactly what the class was. That wasn't really important to the conversation. But anyway, he had a second-year law student that came up to him that was looking for some advice.

He said, I don't know what to do. You know what? What type of law should I go in? What type of career path? I'm lost.

I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. What advice do you have?

Well, this guy, by the way, is a very successful lawyer there in and Nashville and He gave this guy a great piece of advice, and again the form of a Question What do you want your obituary to say? Go home and write your obituary. What do you want your obituary to say? That is the last Summary, if you will. public summary of of your life, of what it stood for.

Now people may write a book about you, and somebody else may do it, but but if you had control over your own obituary And do you see how it immediately clarifies the issue? What do you want your life to stand for? But he said it in such a way, he asked in such a way, presented it in such a way that it distilled it all the way down to its essence. And so I ask you, fellow caregiver, Caregiver to caregiver. What do you want your obituary to say?

What do you want people to say about you? What do you want to say about your own life? The the time you had here on this earth. What does it count for? in your own words.

Isn't that a great question? And in that Builds on to what we've been talking about the last couple of weeks when I talked about caregivers pushing themselves to learn, to grow, to not put their life on hold. I don't want my obituary to say he put his life on hold for 40-something years and took care of his wife. That's a noble thing, but. Is that it?

I'm going to do other things. I'm doing this radio program. I write books. I write columns. I have a support group that I lead.

And I'm raising my children. They're grown adults. I have grandchildren, but I'm still involved. And I want to communicate to them. I I was talking with people just this week.

I had a guy call me up. His wife is going home to hospice. He's somewhat lost at this point. And I was the first person he called. He wanted to run this Bible and say, you know, what are your thoughts?

And we talked about it, and I kind of helped steady him a little bit on his feet. 'Cause he was he was pretty rocked. I want my life. to count for things like that. I want that to be part of my obituary.

that he saw the need. And spoke to it and gave the best that he had to offer into that. that was elbows deep in people's misery. What what do you want your life? 2.

stand for? What what what kind of summary do you want for your life? At the end of your life, when people are reading this at a church, I've played a lot of funerals. Over the years. I've participated in a lot and I've played at a lot.

I just did one not too terribly long ago. and they read off all the accomplishments of this guy. And they were good, they were impressive. But is it more than that? Do we want just the list of do we want our resume writ?

Or do we want something more? What do you want? And if And then what is keeping you from doing those things? and caregiving cannot be an excuse. We cannot use this as an excuse to not do the work.

Because whatever it is that we want our life to count for to stand for. Not that we don't get to go on this particular trip or we get to go do this or meet with the, you know, at somebody, you know, that being rich and famous or being in that world. I don't think I've been to a lot of funerals. Again, I've done this since I was a kid. When you're a pianist and your dad is the minister, you're cheap labor.

So I've been to a lot of funerals. And I don't know of anybody that wants to say, boy, you know, his only regret was that he didn't spend more time at the office. His only regret was that he didn't do, you know, meet with this guy, or buy this boat, or whatever. Mott people don't want that. They want their life to stand for something.

Funerals are the most sobering moments for us as human beings, I believe. when we're faced with our own mortality. And I've set in more pews or set at the piano more times. at funerals. and watched families and the attendees come to grips with it.

I actually don't mind playing for funerals if I know the person. I don't want to play for them if I don't, but. I don't mind doing this. Because it's a way for me to care for these people. in in a in a very difficult time.

But I'm very selective on the kind of music I'll play, too. I mean, if they wanted, if one of their favorite songs was something from the Eagles or whatever, I'm not playing it. It's got to be appropriate. to the service. And it's not just a party.

It's not just a wake, it's not just a end of life celebration kind of thing. For a believer it's so much more than this.

So what do you want it to to say? What do you want your life to count for? I know way too many caregivers. who have put their life on hold. And they ask You know, what what what can I do?

What can I do about it?

Well, that's another question.

Well, what can you do about it? What are you able to do? And I don't see anywhere in Scripture that lets us off the hook from participating in the furtherance of the kingdom of God. at whatever level we can do.

Some of us will do this with great constraints on us. And some of us will do this on big stages. But what is the goal? Is it the goal to elevate us or to elevate Christ? You've been hearing me do this series on hymns that every caregiver ought to know, but so many of those hymns were written in great sorrow, such heartache.

and sadness and obscurity for many of em. They didn't find it until after the person was long gone. And they found the text and they put it to music, and it became a global. Him? And I can go through list after list after list with this.

Of People whose lives stood for something because they wrote it down. They were still Interested in the things of God at whatever level of constraint they had. Paul did not set out to write most of the New Testament, I don't think. He was being obedient to the calling on his life, and he was doing it from prison. A lot of it.

And and I can go through scripture after scripture after scripture. of people who changed literally the course of history. But from dire circumstances, think about David writing Psalms. The psalms that he was writing, Psalm fifty one, one of the greatest passages on repentance. And he wrote that as king, but he wrote that in the awareness of his own.

horrific sin. the devastation that his sin caused. And out of that anguish He wrote a guiding prayer for so many who also found themselves in grievous sin. With his title and his wealth and kingdom and this house of David, all these things. But if you had to sum up David's obituary in one sentence, What would it be?

He was a man after God's own heart, despite the fact that he sinned horrifically, committed adultery, and tried to cover it up with premeditated murder. And yet he's still What's called that? That gives me great hope. Because a broken and contrite heart he will not despise, and God can use. Anything.

To further his kingdom. The question is: Do we wish to do that? Do we wish to be a part of that? Is that something that we value? And say, hey, This is what I want my life to stand for.

I want to further the kingdom of God. with everything in me at whatever level I can. And if it is as a caregiver, then do it as unto him. If that is the constraints that you have on you, That you can do nothing else but serve the one that you are there with, then do it as unto the Lord. Let your prayer be, Lord, may you be glorified in this, and may your kingdom grow because of this.

May your kingdom expand, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And if this is all I do, Lord, may I do it with such passion. to to further your kingdom. That'd be one kind of obituary, would Do you see how asking a better question can truly identify the issue, the core issue. And I think that's for us as caregivers.

So I ask you that question: What do you want your life to stand for? Don't do this out of resentment. Don't do this out of a sense of bitterness. Don't do this out of a sense of, I just got to get through this and then get on with my life. This is my life, and I'm going to make it count, and I'm going to make it count to the glory of God.

And that is hope for this caregiver. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver, the nation's number one program for family caregivers. We are the longest running and the largest program. And I am very grateful to be with you today.

The need is so great. There are 65 million of us here in this country alone. Who are serving as a family caregiver, and I'm glad. To be able to do this program, and I want to thank you all for making it possible. If you want to help me do it better, you want to help me do it more?

Today's the day. standing with hope dot com slash giving you'll see a Donation button right at the top, statingwithhope.com. Standing with Hope is the ministry. Gracie and I founded this to do two things: to help her fellow amputees and to help my fellow caregivers. That's what we do.

That is our. For the wounded and those who care for them, it's pretty simple. But we can't do it by ourselves. And if you're getting something out of this program, today's the day. Let us know by getting out and being part of this and then sharing it with other people and letting people know what's going on.

All right, we're back to our series now. of hymns that every caregiver ought to know. hymns that every caregiver ought to know. And we've been talking about questions today.

Well, I got a hymn. That asks a question right off the bat. And some hymns don't just Comfort-weary people. There are a lot of those out there. There are a lot of highway to heaven hymns, I call them hymns that talk about what we're going to get when we get in heaven.

You know, you're going to be, we got a mansion up there on a hilltop or something like that, you know, and people are going to have the streets of gold and, you know, that kind of thing. And that's that's great. To us as caregivers, you know, the first thing when somebody told me said, You know, you're going to have a mansion in heaven, I said, Well, who's going to clean it? You know, I mean, let's be honest. Is that what we really want?

No, we don't. We just want to see Jesus. And, and, and, Those hymns are great. They get people all riled up and excited. But I look for the hymns that steady people.

that that help study me. That force My exhausted heart to stop for a moment and Meditate on and be reminded of what is actually true. And this hymn is one of those hymns. It's one of the greatest hymns ever written by one of the greatest hymn writers, Charles Wesley. And he wrote this in 1738.

few years ago.

Some of you were around then. No, I'm just kidding. You weren't. But he Came into his own spiritual awakening.

Now, he grew up in the church, he was already a minister. deeply religious, but he came to realize that he had spent years trying to earn peace with God. Rather than rest in the finished work of Christ. And so he wrote this. Amazing question.

And can it be? that I should gain? An interest in the Saviour's blood? He was stunned. And caregivers understand.

The exhaustion we have of trying to somehow. Measure up. We put this on ourselves a lot of times.

Sometimes people put it on us. But We know what it's like to reach the end of ourselves. We can't do any more. It's like Scotty on Star Trek. I've given her all she's got, Captain.

You know, there's nothing left to give. We know determination alone is not going. to sustain us. And that's why this hymn matters. You know, caregiving has a way of exposing every false refuge.

You know, every performance fails. Control fails, adrenaline fails, everything fails, and even kindness can be strained. uh when fatigue settles in the bones. But eventually, we're going to come face to face with a pretty difficult truth. That we are not sustained by our own strength.

And that's where this hymn comes in. Listen to this text Long my imprisoned spirit lay, Fast bound in sin and nature's night, Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I awoke. The dungeon flamed with light, the My chains fell off. You know, and I arose and went and followed thee.

This is Charles Wesley saying, I was a prisoner of what was he a prisoner of? Yes, he was a prisoner of sin, but what did that look like? He was a prisoner of his own striving. And that's what this hymn answers: it's not our striving. We're not going to get this right.

This hymn. is it's Putting a f Flagging the ground that's saying it's his efforts, not mine. We're saved by works, just not our works. We're saved by his works. Don't ever think that somehow we are making this happen, we don't.

The only thing we bring to our justification is the sin that required it. We don't do anything. We can't do it. We're dead. And Paul said we're dead in sin.

Enemies with God. You know, dead people don't do I heard this great Seminary professor took you a seminary class. His homiletics class, they were learning how to be preachers. He took them out to a cemetery. And he said, all right, now.

Preach your best sermon and see what happens. Yeah. The point was not lost. I mean, these people are still going to stay dead unless the Holy Spirit. Regenerates.

They can preach their heart out. They can have the cleverest of phrases. I can take a piano out there into a cemetery and play my heart out, and nothing's going to happen. Unless God raises from the dead. And this is what Charles Wesley understood, and that God raised him from the dead.

And can it be that I should gain amazing love? How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Well wha what is that all about? And that's what he's saying with this enormous hymn, and it's been a. You know, a staple in churches for hundreds of years. Let me go over here to the caregiver keyboard. If it sounds a little bit different, it's because it's a different mic, so bear with me.

Well, man, I put it this a little bit lower because it's got a pretty big range on it. Thomas Campbell wrote the music, but and Mm-hmm. Can it be? There a Uh yeah. And yeah.

Interest. Yeah. The savior's blood See, it takes on a different sound when you play it slower, doesn't it? We don't have to rush through these things. We're caregivers.

We're not here for a pep rally. Died he for me. The club Most ears. Pain for me. Who is To death.

Pursue. Amazing love. Yeah. How can Can it be the time? My God.

Should have for me amazing love. How can it be that thou my God should stand for me? Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flame with light. My chains fell off.

My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee. No condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine, alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness. Remember, we talked about that last week, clothed in righteousness.

Not, see, we forget about the imputation of righteousness. Yes, our sins were imputed to him. but his righteousness was imputed to us. Why is that necessary? Because go back all the way to the garden.

Adam's sin. was imputed to all of us. For in Adam, Paul said, one man sinned. But the greater Adam. The new Adam Scripture calls Jesus.

Came and lived a righteous life so that his righteousness by faith then belongs to us. Bold, I approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own. And then and then he and then Charles Weston just breaks into this course of See love. How can it be? That there My God should die for me amazing how can it be without my God should die for me and then you could just sing that throughout the day when you get into situations where you're just you feel like you're losing your mind sometimes and then go back to this amazing Love.

And by the way, I'm throwing in a chord for all you piano people out there and musicians and guitarists and so forth. That's a, I'm in the key of D, but that's a f the. Four major, seven chord amazing. Then I go to this note right here, this card. This is a seven a C S A minor flat five How And then I go to a F sharp 7 flat 9.

Can it? Be to that minor third. That's Like God should stay before me should stay before me And that is our hymn This week, let me go back over here to the Desk microphone, but that's our hymn this week: of hymns that every caregiver. ought to know. Go and and look at this hymn.

And Can It Be? that I should gain an interest in the Saviour's blood. Died he for me, who caused his pain? I don't think we think of That very much, but see, you see how the question. Is the teaching?

Can you believe this? It adds this awe and this majesty and this enormity of what has just happened. That Christ, the God man, Fully man, fully God. did this. on our behalf.

Wow. And so Charles Wesley, who gave us some of the greatest hymns ever in. the church uh was was thunderstruck by this. and as caregivers we can be as well. Standingwithhope.com.

And you can go out there today, be a part of what we're doing. Thank you for sharing this time with me today. I love being able to talk to you about these sorts of things. And remember, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. We'll see you next time.

Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think? The inmates would help you do that. Not in a million years. What does it do? I would have ever thought about that.

When you go to the facility run by Core Civic and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country that you put out the plea for. And they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms, too. And arms.

When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry. because I see the smiles on their faces and I know. I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out. Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long.

When I go in there, and I always get the same thing every time that these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one man said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that... Parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. I thought we were still in the.

1800s and 1700s. I mean, you know, I thought of peg leg, I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of. Titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and C legs and all that. I never thought about that.

I had no idea.

Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that Core Civic offers? I think they're just absolutely... Awesome. And I think every prison out there. have faith-based programs like this because return rate.

of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program. and the other ones like it, but I know about this one. Are just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much. That test so much.

about Just, that doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken. to help other broken people be whole. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limb, whether from a loved one who passed away, Yeah. You know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own.

What's the best place for them to do? How do they do that? What do they find? Please go to stanningwithhope.com/slash recycle, and that's all it takes. It'll give you all the information on the what's that website again?

StanningwithHope.com/slash. Slash recycle. Thanks, Crazy. Take my hand. Lean on me.

We will stay