It's Not Good To Be Alone

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. There are more than 65 million Americans right now who are doing this.

Are you one of them?

Well.

So you're in the right place. If not, you're still in the right place because if you love somebody, you're going to most likely be a caregiver. If you live long enough, you're going to need one. You ready for that? How's that going for you?

What's going on with you? These are the questions and more that we ask here on this program as we seek to help family caregivers stay calmer. healthier and dare I say it even a little bit more joyful. And I have found in my years of doing this, which is now over 40, that healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And so today's a great day to start becoming healthier.

But how do you help somebody stay healthy while taking care of somebody who is not? That's a good question, and that's why this program is here. And we're glad you're with us. Hope. For thecaregiver.com.

Hopefully caregiver.com. You know, the first time. term that God said something was not good? No one had sinned yet. It was before the fall.

Before All of that miss. In Genesis, go look it up. Genesis 2:18. Says it right there in the text. When he looked at Adam, he said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

It is not good that the man should be alone. He had said everything else was good. But with that it wasn't, and this is before sin marred his creation. That says something, doesn't it? Adam hadn't done anything wrong.

He was doing his job. He was naming the animals. I guess that that's what he was doing. I'm not sure exactly what he was doing. But whatever he's doing, God felt that he needed a companion, he needed a helpmeet.

He needed another person. And God knew it. and put it in his eternal word. Most of us Remember the isolation of COVID. And for caregivers, You know, it's kind of like that for us without a pandemic.

Isolation is kind of a way of life for so many of us.

Well y how many how how many just Rough survey. Raise your hands. How many of you ever turned down something like? A dinner invitation. Because caregiving challenges Or just too difficult.

Show of hands. Look at all those hands out there. You've turned down dinner. Just dinner. Or a movie or something.

Just going over to people's homes. How many of you all have had an invitation to go to someone's home for dinner and you had to ask them, are there stairs? I mean That's just a part of life for us, isn't it? For so many of us, now not every caregiver is dealing with a mobility impairment. uh of their loved one.

But many of us are. And I have had that conversation with people who've asked us over for dinner and they got a lot of stares. And I'm like, well, thank you, but we can't. I appreciate it, but we can't. And sometimes it's meeting for dinner somewhere, but we're having a kind of a situation.

Yeah. And we have to turn that down.

Okay. How about going to church on Sunday morning? Is that difficult for you? And and your loved one? Is that challenging for you?

Sometimes for some going to church Can require more planning than is put into a vacation. I mean, it is just the way it is sometimes for us. And when you get there, do you feel comfortable there at church? Do you feel comfortable there? Does your loved one behave or look in a way that causes a little bit of embarrassment or discomfort or self-consciousness that's going on?

You know, this this happens. Do you feel safe and comfortable at your church, or is it just easier just to slip in by yourself? at the rare blue moon and and not try to bring them. Again Scripture says, Genesis two eighteen, It is not good that the man should be alone. God's soul.

isolation. He saw loneliness. He saw aloneness.

So this isn't good. before the fall. And I often tell people: if you've listened to this program for any length of time, you've heard me say it, that caregivers can feel isolated in a crowded Run. And I tell pastors that caregivers can often feel isolated on a crowded pew. I remember one of the absolute loneliest moments of my life.

as a caregiver, just as a human being. was on Easter Sunday at church. In Nashville, this very large church, they had A thousand people in there. Everybody's dressed in their finest. Huge orchestra.

Everybody's singing Christ the Lord is with glorious service. I mean, if you had to, you know. Rank the top Easter service you could have, kind of thing. It was like right up there at the top of it. It was everything that you would want in an Easter service.

And I was just, I was just. groaning inside. Gracie was very, very, very sick. We lived two miles from the church, and I was able to slip down for service. The kids were away.

I think they were. spring break or something with the grandparents. And I was just by myself. And I slipped in. And I was so lonely.

and I was so discouraged. And it was Easter Sunday, and everybody's singing about the glorious moment and the resurrection. And I couldn't get there. I was so. beset with this.

in a room full of a thousand people with glorious music going on. I cannot be the only person who's ever experienced something like that. And I'm determined. to help speak to that issue to my fellow caregivers and to others so that they will know how to recognize it. Again, everything I learned, everything I share here on this program.

Comes from me foraging for all this. I mean, that I've had to just learn this on my own trial and error. Nobody really knew what to say to me. They didn't know how to speak into my loneliness. Number one, they didn't even come up and address it.

Oh, y y give our best to Gracie.

Sorry she couldn't be here. But you know, that was it. There was no. How are you dealing with this? Are you able to hold on to this?

Or is the resurrection and the good news of the gospel able to penetrate to where you are today? And if not, tell me why not. What can we do? Nobody ever said anything like this. They didn't know what to say.

They didn't have the vocabulary, but I do. And that's what I do on this program. And you know, there's a difference between isolation and solitude. You know, I love a quiet cup of coffee early in the morning. I get up very early.

And I get more done by Nine o'clock that most people get done all day. And I love being able to get out on horseback in the afternoon and it can just feel like a holiday for me, just, you know, an hour or two. But solitude gives us room to breathe. Isolation leaves us wondering: is anybody going to pick up the phone? If we call.

And it's in that kind of Quiet, that isolation quiet, that the dark thoughts will multiply. You ever replay a conversation in your head a thousand times? that you berate yourself without mercy. In the process of that, do you ever just sink into despair while you're doing it? And sometimes we just need someone else to come up next to us and say, Tell tell me what happened.

I've been Writing about this, you can see it on my substack, caregiver.substack.com. And I've been in the last couple of articles. I've been pushing back against fear, and then I talk about a measured temperament when we're advocating for someone that we love. And isolation makes both of those things harder. It's harder to be measured.

It's harder to not be gripped with fear when you're isolated. When I'm tired or when I'm angry, I need somebody who's going to hear me out and help me separate what I know From what I fear. That's why you hear me ask on this program a lot, Christian, what do you believe? Wh where where where do you anchor yourself? And Gracie needs to have me bring a clear mind.

To the next conversation with their doctor. I can't do that on my own. I usually need help getting there. And for a caregiver, reaching out can be very intimidating. And I I get that.

Well, I started my caregiver support group out here. And I was the only person there for three weeks sitting at the table. I was it. I was the only guy sitting at the table for three weeks. And now we need a bigger table.

I started this seven years ago. We need a bigger table now. but there's always room for one more. And if you'll notice in scripture, God did not tell Adam to get better at being alone. He gave him someone to share his life.

You know, a caregiver may need a friend. Another caregiver, a neighbor, or someone from church to listen as we wrestle with the next decision, or maybe a guy on the radio that talks about his journey over this. crazy life that I've had. Our loved ones need advocates. But advocates need people.

And it's not good that we're alone. Remember last week and the week before I was talking about a word from the Lord?

Well, I do have a word from the Lord for you. It's right from his text. It says, It's not good that man's alone. God said that, and it's written down for all eternity. And guess what?

You're not alone. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us today. Hope for Thecaregiver.com, hopefullycaregiver.com, where I have lots and lots and lots of things for you as a family caregiver. I hope you'll take advantage of it. Been writing things down.

I've got a pretty good library. All the archives of it go up by Substack.

Okay, so I want to be clear: what is Substack? Substack is my online newsletter.

So I just put stuff out there. It's easier than a block. If you will, because I can do video, audio, and everything, but it's all very organized. It's out there at caregiver.substack.com. But you can get there from my website at hopeforthecaregiver.com.

So that's just where I put. I've been writing quite a bit. I write for for two publications each week. And then sometimes I get three published things in a week, and then I do a one-monthly column.

So I've just got a lot of stuff out there.

Some of it is exclusive to that organization that I write for, and some of it I put out there on my Substack for listeners to this program and whoever else wants to. And I do this for several reasons. One of them is. Because I love to write. I do love to put these things down on paper.

And, well, it's digital paper, but you know what I mean. And organize my thoughts that way. But the main reason is because I never had anything like this. and I remember how difficult it was to forage. It was almost like living in a foreign land, and you had to pick up the language from the street, kind of thing, just by hit or miss.

And I thought, this is just. difficult. And I thought, there are a lot of people out there who are dealing with dire circumstances that could really use somebody saying things to them clearly. And that's what I do. And I do this through this program and through the podcast, through everything I do, is to say it clearly in a way that caregivers can understand and have those conversation topics like we've been doing for the last couple of weeks on theology, for example.

When when people say, you know, I got a word for the from the Lord for you. And then what do we do with that information? And how do we respond? What is the biblical way to be able to engage with that? And that kind of thing.

And then the last block where I talked about, you know, the first thing that God said that wasn't good. You know, you don't really think about that until you're in the throes of this. And then all of a sudden, you realize, oh. That's helpful. That's helpful.

That's helpful that God knows that it's not good that I'm alone. And building on that even more. Once we understand that concept, going back to Genesis, that it's not good that man's alone. But then sin But then when God came to us, when He invaded this world, in human form. What was his name?

Emmanuel He's literally tabernacling with us. That's what it means. He is with us, God with us, He is in our presence. We're not alone. I mean, that's the whole point of it, to realize, oh.

And now we start to see these things, but if we don't. Have somebody take us by the hand and just walk us through these things simply. Not because we're necessarily stupid or anything, but. I'll tell you what I tell a lot of guys that come out here and help me with different projects I've had, you know, when we're doing repairs here at the house, and I'll look at them and I'll say, look, I have a very finite set of skills. I'm an exceptional pianist.

and I'm a pretty good writer.

Now that's where it stops.

So what you're trying to tell me Tell it like you would tell a third grader. You know, bring out the crayons if you have to. Because I and I'm not that ego-driven that I can't look at somebody and say, you're going to have to break this down and make it simple for me. Draw me a picture help me understand it this way. Don't leave until I until you get I got a tractor out here.

I've got to learn how to drive.

Some of you guys could drive a tractor in your sleep, you know, but me, I've got to go out there and have more tutorials on it. You won't believe the amount of training I had to have on a chainsaw. and I still get nervous when I do it. You know, We we all uh get outside of our comfort zone. And as caregivers, we're being beset with all kinds of things that are coming at us.

pretty rapidly. And when somebody gives us a piece of advice or gives us instruction or even gives us scripture, how did we apply that? That's what I want to know. What does this look like fleshed out in our life? What does this mean to me?

as a caregiver. And I go back to my friends who were Bible translators. Over in Central Africa. With Wycliffe Bible Translators, and and I'm paraphrasing this, so don't hold me to task on this. But basically, you know, when you're with Wycliffe Bible Translators or any Bible translators and you show up to a place and they don't speak the language, Well, you don't start translating the Bible, Genesis 1, the first day.

You gotta spend time with these people. You gotta get to know them. You gotta be in the village. You gotta immerse yourself in their world. to be able to understand how to communicate.

And it takes an enormous amount of work. to do this. And then you got to take the complex and make it simple. And that takes work. That takes spending a lot of time with your subject matter.

That's why, when you see the guys who are really, really good at this sort of thing and the best at what they do, they can make. very, very difficult things. Simpler. And so you can understand it. But it takes years of living with something.

You know, they say to be an expert, you got to have 10,000 hours of doing something. You've heard that, haven't you? And 10,000 hours of doing a you know, accomplishment in your field.

Well, as a caregiver, if you just count half days For me, I'm well over one hundred and eighty eight thousand hours. If you just count half days. twelve hour days. That I'm on duty as a caregiver. I gotta sleep sometime, I guess.

But I mean, you know, no matter how you slice it, you're looking at an enormous amount of time I've spent.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily good. You remember when Trump and Hillary Clinton were debating, and she said, I've had 30 years of experience. He said, Yeah, all bad, you know, that kind of thing.

Well, I've had a lot of bad experience too. And I don't look at everything I've done as accomplishment, but I've spent.

well over 150 plus, 180,000 hours. contemplating the same topic. and wrestling with God in this. And trying to understand scripture, asking for guidance in this. For a hundred in eighty eight thousand hours.

When I'm awake. In reality, I think I even dreamed about all this. But you know, you're looking at I I w I remember talking to a guy one time and I said, You know, we were talking about this issue, and I said, Think about the last time your wife got sick. How did it affect your work schedule? He said, Well, I had to take off some work.

And I said, How did it affect your kids? He said, Well, we r it was Pretty rough. What about laundry? It backed up. What about cleaning the house?

Forget it. What about meals when I was doing a lot of takeout?

So what about Your relationship, any kind of intimacy. He said, forget it. And I said, And she had what? He said, She had the flu. And I said, How long was she sick?

He said about four or five days. Four or five days. I've had over fifteen thousand days.

Okay. Think through that for just a moment. Four or five days, and I've had over 15,000 days as a caregiver. Where I've had to wrestle with this.

Now, I have not gotten this right. every time. Don't do not think for one moment. But I've had the opportunity to look at the same mountain for a long time and ask the same questions, and I have to wrestle with those questions. And that's what I've done with this program and writing these things out so that you can hear some of those internal conversations I've had.

Like in the last block when I talked about it's not good that man's alone. That's an internal conversation I've had for a long time because I understand what loneliness feels like. I understand what isolation feels like. And as I mentioned about being at church that Sunday. You know, that that's I've been there, done that.

And and so I have to come to grips with this. I have to shake hands with this. I have to reconcile with this somehow. Otherwise you end up becoming bitter. Despairing rageful, resentful, all those kinds of things.

You can't have these kinds of pressing issues on you and just slough it off. You're going to have to deal with it. And that's what I've done. in my writing and everything else and you get to see how I've dealt with it.

Okay. and how I've made mistakes with it, how I've gotten it wrong many times. And then what I've learned from it. And more importantly, How scripture has become increasingly prescient in my life, where I'm seeing it now in ways that I didn't see it before. That's why I love these hymns so much because these hymn writers spent the time with this subject.

They spent the time with a lot of sorrow. And they wrote it out in a prose that is so Encapsulating of the gospel. That's what they call hymns. They call it compact theology. Because it's right there.

For example, you know, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Well, in one line you've got the double imputation. of God's grace and redemption to us. Because he not only had the atonement paid for with the blood, the shed blood of Christ. But then he's got his righteousness that is imputed to us, so that we not only have the penalty paid, but now we can. faultless to stand before the throne.

We can't just do that unless there's a righteousness that has been imputed to us. We can't go to the Father without righteousness, and we have none of our own, so we have to be clothed in His righteousness. Do you see that now?

So now you've got a hymn that is saying this in the first line, and you can stop there. That's it. I mean, we got it. That's the whole message right there. But then they keep going on with the song, On Christ a solid rock I stand, all of the ground is sinking sand.

And so that's what's come alive to me in this. And I want to share this with as many fellow caregivers who feel so beaten down. And so discouraged, and they see all these people going to church and they're having a good time, and they're all raising their hands, and they're, you know, the Lord's telling them this, and you're going home and changing adult hypers. You're going home to somebody who is hovering at death's door, or you're going home to somebody whose behavior is so erratic and so outrageous that it just tears your heart out. Or you're going back to the hospital.

Again. and again, and again. And there are there are people who listen to this program who are in that kind of isolation. They're having dinner. With me.

As they listen to this program. I know that. Because they've told me. And I want you to know how much I treasure that. and how seriously I take it.

Because I want you to feel like I'm right there at the table with you because I know what it's like to sit at a table alone. And I don't want you to have to do that, even if it's just through a podcast, through the radio show or the Substack or whatever, that you've got somebody there that is at least speaking your language. And I know it's not a two-way conversation, but I try to make it so that it sounds kind of like that.

Okay, and that's what I do.

So take advantage of everything that I have out there. Listen, I'll be right back. I've got a really funny story to tell you about what happened last weekend, and I'll call this the fourth bus of the apocalypse. I'll be right back and tell you this story. Hi, this is Jeff Foxworthy.

65 million Americans serve as a caregiver for a sick or disabled loved one. If you're one of them, then listen to my friend Peter Rosenberger's show. He's got redneck tendencies, but he's really good at what he does. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosberger, and this is the program for you as a family caregiver.

Glad to be with you. HopefortheCaregiver.com. HopefortheCaregiver.com. Come. I like to Go and speak at events and places.

I enjoy it. I've enjoyed it for years. And it it is such a Treat to be able to do those things, and I recently got to do that at Easter Seals in West Georgia. I flew down to Atlanta. Drove to Columbus.

And Georgia, and did the event. It was a lot of fun. Got to spend an extra day down there and see our grandchildren, and that was great as well. Everything went swimmingly. It was a little bit unnerving after being in Montana for so long to show up at the Atlanta airport and then try to take the Skytrain to rent a car and drive through Atlanta traffic.

And I didn't realize how sequestered I was out here in Montana because I saw more people from the gate to the rental car than I see normally in months out here in Montana.

So it was it was a little bit jarring. I I I guess I've officially left city life after leaving Nashville.

So many years ago. But anyway, we had it was a great time, enjoyed it immensely. Got to the airport, plenty of time to fly back. And this time I'm going to go s through Denver. And Head up to Bozeman.

Everything was fine. I'm sitting here waiting at the gate, and we get on the plane. We're sitting there for some time, and then all of a sudden, the pilot comes on. We're going to. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

This is uh your uh pilot speaking uh We're going to have to go back to the gate because we were already out getting ready to get. Head to to take off and uh we're gonna have to uh Go back to uh Uh the gate uh Yeah. You know how pilots talk. And we had to get more fuel because there is a storm in Denver, and they're going to route us around and come at it from the west side. And so we're going to have to spend more time in the air, and that's fine.

I'm looking at my timeframes of my connection, and I think I've got plenty of time, it's going to be okay. It's all good.

So I'm relaxing. In fact, I was dozing off. And then uh Pilot comes back on and uh Uh we're gonna have to uh Go now, but we're going to be a little bit longer time in the air. But we're going to work to make some shortcuts and uh We're gonna uh get you there as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

So the flight went fun and Dozed off, and I can sleep the moment, you know, leave the gate, I'm asleep.

So then we get in the air and we're getting updates. And it turns out Denver is going to shut down. The storm just doesn't want to leave and it's going to shut down. And so we've been in the air for some time and it looks like this is not going to happen. And they take us to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Which is not Denver, by the way. And so we're. We're there and we're on the tarmac for another hour or so. While they're trying to figure out what to do, the Grand Junction's a small airport. Everybody's shutting down, and the pilot comes back on again.

This is your pilot speaking, and we're going to have to make some changes because. Our flight attendants and our flight crew, they are timed out. And so everybody was timing out. They couldn't work past a certain time. And everybody was timing out.

The flight attendants, the pilots, and quite frankly, the passengers were timing out at this point.

So we sat there for over an hour in the plane, waiting for them to figure out what they're going to do. They let us out into the terminal. Which is an odd word.

Sometimes, when you think about that, if flaming so safe, why is the first word you see terminal? But that's a different conversation. And it turns out they're going to bring some buses. Because there's no hotels in Grand Junction. They couldn't put us up.

And so they're going to bring three big tour buses, and we're going to. Take bus rides. From Grand Junction Two. Denver. Yeah, and it's 250 miles away.

Now, by the time we get off the plane, It's roughly about You know, 9:30 or so or 10. The buses are coming. We kind of take a few moments. Everybody, I was kind of amazed because everybody rushed immediately to the little deli place they had. They didn't have any hot food left, but they had a lot of cold food, and everybody's wolfing down food.

And I thought, you're getting ready to take a four-hour bus ride minimum. And there's no restrooms on these buses.

Now you want to think through what you're doing.

Well, they didn't, but that's okay. That's not my. Problem. And so the buses show up and everybody rushes to the first bus. Then the second bus shows up.

Everybody rushes to that, the ones that are left. I wait around to do the third bus because I knew that time it would be less full. That decision proved to be Right, but not necessarily the best decision. And so We get on the bus and we're going down the highway there, and there's a group of people in the front, and they were so loud. I mean, by this time, it's 10:30, 11 at night.

I'm tired. And I've been going all day and I was just tired. I wanted just to doze off on the bus. And these people just couldn't help themselves. They just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked.

And I think I actually offended someone when I said, Y'all are loud. And uh and then I had a lady behind me and she had her baby, and I helped her get the baby into the seat. She had a little And I'm trying to be helpful. And then I had an older lady sitting beside me, and just a delightful lady. But the lady behind me was a bit loud and boisterous, and I was hoping the baby wouldn't wake up.

which the baby didn't, thankfully, but at one point the bus slowed down and we pulled over. and this lady behind me was leaning forward and she yelled out What's wrong? You know, I was dozing off. I do not like to be woken up. You can ask Gracie that.

I do not like to be woken up abruptly. And I said, well, that was right in my ear. Um The bus pulled over and the guy got out and opened up the hood of the bus.

Well, you know, at one in the morning that is not a good sun.

So Turns out there's a computer problem and it's shutting down something, but he thinks he's fixed it. And we get on our way and he said, we're going to soldier through this thing.

Well By the time we get a little bit down the road, maybe another thirty minutes or so, we're in Glenwood, Colorado, someplace. We haven't gotten to the Rockies yet where we got to go over. I hear it's a beautiful drive but we hadn't got there yet. And quite frankly, I didn't care. I live in a beautiful place, and I was just wanting to get home to that beautiful place.

And it's at night, you can't see anything anyway. But 30 minutes After we'd stopped, guess what? And he pulls over to this gas station and and it's Throttling down, and there's nothing we can do. And he says we're going to have to call another bus.

So he's going to have to call another bus. It's, you know. Again, about 1.30 in the morning. Been a long day.

So we started off with three. And now they're going to send the fourth bus of the Apocalypse. And so we have to wait.

Well, it occurred to me that we got this guy in the front that the airport crew had to help Put him on the plane because he had a disability. There's something wrong with his foot. He had a wheelchair and so forth. And they physically carried him, put him on the bus. with the airport crew and and We're going to train change buses now.

We're out in the middle of nowhere. or at least it looks that way. And what are we going to do about this? Are the passengers going to do something about it, or is this on us to do this? And being the caregiver that I am, I immediately recognize that this is a problem.

And so I told the driver, I said, You might want to call the local. Ambulance paramedic groups that come over here, they have equipment, they can transfer him over to the next bus instead of making weary travelers try to figure this out and kind of, you know, oh, we'll figure it out along the way.

Well, that, how many of you all know that's not a good thing when you're dealing with a mobility impairment to get a bunch of tired strangers to help carry your loved one? You know, I mean, if you got to do it, you got to do it. But let's not. Put ourselves in that situation. I mean, you're one accident away from this thing going to the emergency room or the courtroom.

And the driver looked at me and said, Well, you know, that's a pretty good idea. And I said, Well, every now and then I have one. And people were talking about, okay, what are we going to do when we get to Denver? And somebody suggested, well, we could, you know, do this, we could do this. And then somebody else said, well, we could pray for the sweet embrace of death.

Okay, that was me. But still, somebody said it. And and so we're out there waiting. about an hour and a half for the next bus to come. And then when they were getting about 45 minutes out or so, I told the driver to let me know and I'll call.

And I did call the local dispatch. They sent everybody. I mean, evidently, these guys had nothing to do in the middle of the night, so they sent everybody. And I was very grateful. They were very nice and kind.

And I'm standing outside, and there's a very dark river. Right by the gas station. And I assumed at this point it was the River Styx, you know, because. What else could it be at that point? I'm looking out this thing to see if I can see Caron, the ferry driver, because I figured the ferry over the River Styx would be more dependable than this bus.

But eventually we got it. We got the guy transferred safely. Everybody got on and then the bus lurched forward. And it, every curve, every pothole, it just like you just, it was just awful. And I was able to doze off just a hair, but I'd kind of wake up every time he turned a curve and hit a pothole or hit the little ridges on the side of the road to let you know that you're on the side of the road, which is comforting.

But we finally at dawn, we see the airport. And we perk up. Mm-hmm. We shouldn't have. Because as he's pulling down the ramp to let us off down below, he hits the sign that says, if you hit this sign, you're too tall, kind of thing.

You know, he hits it. And so we're stuck there. He can't go any further.

So he has to back up. You know, and fortunately, it was Sunday morning, so it was not rush hour or anything else. But he had to back up that ramp at the airport to let us out. And people were like. Pleading, we can see the airport.

Can we just get out and walk? And one person even whimpered.

Okay, that was me too. But, you know, we finally got there. They got us rerouted and I got home and so forth. But I learned something that night about life, about pulling together. I won't tell you the name of the airline.

It rhymes with Reunited, which we were not with our luggage schedule and even our optimism. But we did eventually get home. The people that promised to take care of us, and this is something we might want to remember during election season, the people that promised. There was a promissory note of, we're going to get you to where you need to be, but they were nowhere to be seen at two in the morning by the River Sticks. I mean, they weren't there.

And so, I, because I've been doing this for so long, I recognized that this could be a real problem, and I came up with an alternative solution. And We pulled together. We didn't leave anybody behind. There was nobody doing a TikTok video. There was nobody that was getting into a brawl.

There was some. language that probably wouldn't have been acceptable over the the airport. PA system. But all in all, we kind of pulled together, realized that sometimes the people that make all the best promises are nowhere to be found when there's a real problem. And we got to learn to do things ourselves.

As caregivers, we understand that.

So I. I got home safely. I was a bit tired. I had a lot of coffee to get things done as I kind of. got back in the swing of things and it was uh it was certainly an interesting time.

Um it was a great trip, but that made a memorable journey. And I thought, well, my fellow caregivers would understand this better than probably most, so I thought I'd share that with you. Listen, we got more to go. We'll be right back. This is Peter Rosenberger.

This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopefortheregiver.com. May your travels be less. Problematic than mine, and may you never take the fourth bus of the apocalypse. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosberger. Glad to be with you. HopeforthTheCaregiver.com. HopeforthTheCaregiver.com.

Well, I hope that you don't take a bus trip like that. Oops. I will add this one little note. When I got to the Denver airport, you take the train below the terminal and you take it to each of the concourses. But I was going to be on a concourse and they had a mechanism where I could walk to that.

And I walked. I didn't take the train because I'd already had planes, trains, I mean, planes and automobiles. And I thought, I just didn't want to take a chance.

So I hiked and I got in my steps, and that was okay. I was. Pretty loaded up on coffee at that point.

So it all worked out.

So I, but I hope you don't have to do that. The only. There's two good pieces of Things that I was particularly grateful for. One of them that Gracie was not with me. Because if she had, I wouldn't have been able to put her on the bus, and I would have had to probably spend a fortune to get some type of Uber or.

Limousine service or something for her to take her to the Denver airport. And that would have cost a fortune to do that, to do 250 miles in the middle of the night. And the other thing I'm grateful that it I wasn't in another country. Because I've been stranded in another country before. Again, I wasn't with Gracie when that happened, but I was stranded over there in Ghana.

Um Once for three days, there was a baggage handler strike. This is back when they didn't used to have a direct flight. When we went over there and when we first started doing our prosthetic limb outreach, we had to go through Europe and cut down. And I had gone through Heathrow and we were with British Air. they had a baggage handler strike and we were stuck there for three days.

In Ghana, and it was not cool. And so, anyway, that was my journey. I hope that you don't have. one like that, but I bet you every one of you got some kind of travel story. That was just a nightmare.

And particularly when you're a caregiver and you've got something going on. And I'm glad I was able to be there for that guy to make sure that he didn't. get manhandled in you know Paging buses and so forth. But these are things people just don't think about until you have to live with this kind of stuff. And so, anyway, that's it.

All right.

So, our hymn, we're going to transition to our hymn that every caregiver ought to know. And by the way, I do thank you. The supplies got there to Ghana. We're getting ready to ship the Bibles and the hymn books.

next um this coming week And so, I just wanted to let you know that they have their pallet of supplies. Thank you all for. For those who got involved with this, and I'm very, very, very grateful. And there will be more supplies going up. We ship supplies regularly, we purchase things on the ground there.

And you can help us continue doing that. We're going to send the hymnals and the Bibles out next week. And then we'll have more things going as well.

So, whatever way you want to get involved, if maybe this program has been just a real answer to prayer for you that you felt like you were all alone and then something's come along here on this program that's really helped penetrate into that isolation that we talked about in the first block. Thank you for getting involved. Thank you for supporting this and for sharing it with others. We have clergy that share this out with people in their church. We have doctors that are sharing this out to caregivers of their patients.

We have counselors that are sharing this program.

So, thank you for all of that. I am very, very grateful. As I said in the second block, the reason I do this is because I didn't have anything like this. I had to forage along, and I still, there's still nothing like this. I listen to my own show, I read my own book, and by me writing all the articles that I write, it helps me remind myself of these things that I've learned over a lifetime.

And so, thank you for helping us share this. Remembrance, remembering, remembering. You hear that a lot in scripture. Remember these things. And I have to remind myself of these things.

And the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. And I have to remind myself of this.

And so thank you for helping me. Get this message out to others. And you can see all of that and more at standingwithhope.com/slash giving. Standingwithhope.com/slash giving. All right, let's go to our hymn.

That every caregiver ought to know. It's a series we've been doing. I alluded to this message of this hymn earlier on in the program, but I want to go back to one of the most beautiful hymns. I just love this hymn. And there are some hymns that sound as though they were written for a cathedral.

And then you learn one may have been written during a stop in the Caribbean on the way home from a difficult missionary journey. This is one of those hymns. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness comes to us from Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

Now, can you spell all that? I think his name is longer than the title of the song. He was born in Germany in 1700, grew up in a, as you can imagine, a noble family, studied law and could have spent his whole life in government, but he opened up his estate to uh Christians who had fled persecution and built a settlement near Hernhut. I don't know what that is. They were Moravians, descendants of a um Christian movement.

Who's Roots went back to Jean Huss long before Luther.

So um this was not a little Endeavor that they did. I mean, they weren't sitting around huddled around. They were, I mean, they were pretty boisterous. They worshiped, prayed, sang, and they began sending missionaries well beyond Europe. And in 1732, the Moravians traveled to St.

Thomas in the Caribbean. I mean, think about that journey for a minute. They wanted to bring the gospel to enslaved Africans who were living under Danish colonial rule at the time. And I Um This Wasn't a picturesque drop for a missionary story. This was, I mean, these people were living in bondage.

and Zinzendorf sailed there himself, and by the time he did there the mission was in trouble, and some of the plantation owners feared what might happen when Enslaved people gathered, heard the gospel, and worshiped together. I think they were worried that there was going to be an uprising.

So the local government was not too keen on this.

So Zinzendorf gets there and he finds out that some of his colleagues, the missionaries that were there, were in prison. There was Matthaus Frundlich and his wife Rebecca. They had been in prison for months. But he had left Europe before he even knew this. Remember, we can't even fathom that because I can FaceTime while on a horse in Montana to the clinic in Ghana.

I mean, we live in such a different world. And so he got there, he put pressure on the local government to release him. They were released the next day. And he, as he was going home, he wrote this hymn. He didn't write it in English.

John Wesley gave us those words, but he originally had in the German hymn 33 stanzas. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, My beauty are my glorious dress. And Wesley translated twenty four of them and published his version in seventeen forty under the title The Believer's Triumph. But evidently, that title didn't stick. And mostly hymn was only giving us a couple of verses today.

But let's go over here to the caregiver keyboard and we'll play this a little bit. It's a wonderful hymn. And remember, this was not written. In a nice church or in a palace or even a nice setting. He was coming back from a missionary trip to St.

Thomas. The conditions were probably. you know, kind of weird, this is early 1700s, so Who knows where he stopped off with the islands when they were getting more fresh water, whatever. But evidently, this was on his mind on this double imputation: Jesus, thy blood, and righteousness. Jesus, thy blood.

By blood and bright chunks. Uh snap. Yeah. My Yeah. Beauty ho my glorious dress with flaming words in thee rain with joy shall I lift up my head.

And I just love that first line: Jesus, I blood and righteousness. my beauty are my glorious dress. If you remember nothing else, Just that line. Alone, Jesus thy blood and righteousness. Because doctrinally what it's saying there is, look, I recognize that you atoned for my sin and that you've covered me with your righteousness.

And that is That is redemption one oh. Um Bold shall I stand in thy great day. For whosought to my charge shall lay Fully absolved. Through these I am, from sin and fear, from guilt and shame. What a text Lord, I believe Thy precious blood, Which at the mercy seat of God, For ever doth for sinners plead For me.

even for my soul. was shed. And it's really in the first verse: Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty, or my glorious dress. This is what we're clothed in amidst flaming worlds. In these, you know, I'm a raid.

And with joy I shall lift up My head. What does that sound like? When you say I lift up my head. You ever heard that in Scripture? How about Psalm three?

But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, My glory and the lifter of my head, My glory and the lifter of my head. You remember that old chorus? Let's see how that goes Remember that, my glory, and the lifter of my head. Psalm twenty-seven six And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies around me. Psalm 145, 14 The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raises up all those that be bowed down.

Psalm 146 is the same thing.

So many more. Luke 21:28. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads for your redemption. bowed down. I mean, you just feel the weight of it.

Then this hymn is for you. Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, My beauty are my glorious dress, Mid flaming worlds in these arrayed With joy shall I lift up my head. a hymn that every caregiver ought to know. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

HopefortheCaregiver.com. Thanks so much for spending the time with me today. We'll see you next time.