This is the Truth Network. 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. But those of you who are putting yourself between a chronically impaired loved one and even worse disaster. How are you doing?
How are you holding up? What's going on with you? You're the reason we do the program. There are 65 million people here in America alone who are doing this every single day.
Now it could be a variety of things. You could have somebody that is dealing with Parkinson's. You could have somebody who is dealing with. Addiction. Trauma.
Mental illness. whatever. Whenever there's a chronic impairment, There is always A family caregiver. who struggles to stay strong and healthy as they take care of someone Who is not? And this program is for that person because healthy caregivers do indeed make better Caregivers, and I'm bringing four decades of experience to help you do just that.
When you hire somebody to come and help out at your house, what is the stereotypical Cliche response when you talk about the duties of the house. They will always say, I don't do what? And I'll tell you what came to my mind with this while you're mulling over that answer. My mother was interviewing somebody to come and help her because the lady that did that on Mondays or so. has left.
She's moved away. And so she had a lady come by the house to sit down and talk with my mother about things. And she said, Well, I don't do this and I don't do this and I got a bad back and I got this and you know, my mother's almost ninety. And and this woman is telling and she's this woman that's coming to interview is not almost ninety. And finally, after listening to her Rattle off all the things that were afflicting her life and what she couldn't do.
My mother looked at her and said, Well, what can you do? Yeah. And mom told me later, she says, We we we parted. You know, we we left as friends, but she left, and that was good. I thought that was pretty funny.
But most people will come in with a list of things that they won't do. And at the top of that list is what? I won't do. Windows Won't do windows. You ever found somebody that would come and do your windows?
People just don't want to do it.
Well, the other day I was cleaning windows. And I was reflecting on no pun intended, I was reflecting on why we installed so many of them and the size of the windows that we have.
Now when we built this addition to our home this little cabin we modified and they built this um Mm-hmm. Handicapped accessible bedroom suite for Gracie.
So, because she has to spend so much time in bed, and certainly for the last seven years, she's had to deal with this being flat on her back a lot. And when she doesn't have her prosthetic legs on, she's, you know. In bed. They don't want her sitting in her wheelchair because it's going to bend her back up again.
So we have to be real careful with that.
So I thought, okay, I need to build a room that's going to make it a lot easier to take care of her and a lot easier for her to receive guests and have a spacious place. And she can't get outside as much, but we live. In this A just amazingly beautiful area, so I want her to be able to feel like she's outside, and so I We have these very, very large windows installed. And I was cleaning them. And and that was um You know, no small task.
So the guy that, when we bought these windows, the guy came up here, the window representative for the company. And He said, look, my goal is for people to walk in here and say. You know, what a view, not what great windows. You really don't want people seeing your windows. If you if you follow my drift.
The point is that the best windows are the ones you don't notice. They allow you to see beyond them and see through them. But if you're noticing the windows, and not the view particularly when you live in a place that has a view like what we have here. of the mountains and so forth.
Well, you may have missed the mark.
So We want to make sure that our windows are clean.
Well, that's hard to do out here sometimes. You know, we don't have a paved driveway. We don't live anywhere near a paved road.
So there's a lot of dirt and dust and we get a lot of heavy winds and it, you know, the windows get dirty. And and and then when you You know, you open them up, or the sun hits it right, and you see all of this. Muck. And grime on the windows, and you're like, oh, you know, I know there's mountains behind there somewhere, but all I see is the dirt, you know, kind of thing. And you want to get out there and clean the windows.
I couldn't help but think about the Apostle Paul. You know, when he wrote, for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.
Well, you know, of course, he was speaking of an ancient mirror, not a Montana picture window, but I understand. A bit more about the point he was making. When we're faced with things like pain and fear and exhaustion, you know, it could grime up our windows. It could grime up the mirror. We can't see very well.
And it just kind of obfuscates everything. And the burden we carry. takes up most of our view.
Some people carry loads that are too big for anyone else to lighten. We just can't do that very well sometimes. I can't change the diagnosis. You know, we can't restore what has been lost. And sometimes I found, you check me out on this, you're a caregiver.
We can't. very well explained why some of the burns remain. We struggle for words on that. We can't do those things, but. Maybe we could clean the glass.
40 years of this, I've been doing this for Gracie, and I've learned how much of this remains beyond my control. I can't. move her mountains But I can help her see the mountains outside our window a little more clearly.
So much imagery. In poetry, in literature, in scripture, in film, is about looking to the mountains for strength and for. inspiration, and so forth. You know, you think about the sound of music when the Reverend Mother was singing to J uh Julie Andrews's uh character Maria, you know, Climb every mountain and you you're it's it's juxtaposed against the Austri Austrian Alps and and it it's just the there's something about the mountains. that lift our eyes and lift our spirits.
Maybe maybe sometimes that's all I can do. is clean the window so she could see the mountains a little bit better. When someone faces an immense burden. Washing the windows can seem pitifully small. But small is not the same thing as Meaningless.
Right now, by the way, we have a lot of smoke in our valley. It comes from all these forest fires around, some in Canada, some in Idaho. I don't know if we have some anywhere here in Montana close to us, but they're around. I can't do anything about that. That's way beyond my pay grade and my skill set.
And by cleaning the windows today, it's going to help me see the smoke a little more clearly. That's what we're doing. I mean, the smoke is there. We can't see the view. But I'm cleaning the windows, but you just have a better view of smoke.
But I still clean them. because I know that the promise of Montana weather is that the smoke will not last forever. The rains are going to come. The wind's going to blow it away. Snow's going to come.
And that magnificent view will Soon fill our windows. God promises that suffering and heartache Won't last forever either. And our small acts of care that we're doing as caregivers. Don't make all things new. But we do them.
Because we trust the one who trusts. Who will? We take care of what is in our reach, what is at our hand to do. even though the task may seem pitifully small at times. Cleaning the windows.
I do windows. I don't know if you do windows, but I do windows. And as I was cleaning the windows the other day I thought This is not going to make her legs grow back. It's not going to take away her pain. But it is going to allow her to see the beauty of God's creation and lifter spirits.
Even if right now the valley is covered with smoke. We take care of what's at our hand to do and trust God with what is not my job. that day was to clean the windows. And by the way, I found out where I missed a few spots, so I got to go back and work on that. But that's my job: to clean the windows.
The smoke's still there. But the windows are clean. That's my job. The view belongs to God. And that is hope for the caregiver.
We'll be right back.
