When Caregiving, Don't Underestimate the Value of Cleaning the Microwave

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Call 866-WIN-ASIA or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to crittercampaign.org. On American Family Radio, this is Hope for the Caregiver. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. We are so glad that you are with us. If you want to be a part of the show, 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840.

I am Peter Rosenberger. I am your host, and we are focused on the family caregiver, those who are putting themselves knowingly, willingly, voluntarily, at sometimes great expense to themselves, to their own wallets, their own bodies, their own peace of mind. And they're putting themselves between a vulnerable loved one and even worse, disaster. How are you doing? How are you holding up? How are you feeling? That's what we ask of every caller, of everyone on this show, as our starting point, not that we base our well-being on our feelings, but we get used to being able to speak in our own voice, be able to speak from our own heart.

So many caregivers struggle with that. They have a very difficult time speaking from first-person singular. I. I am angry. I feel despair. I feel discouraged. I feel resentful.

Whatever. Whatever comes after the word I, I'm okay with because now we can have a real conversation, and let's go from there. So if you want to be a part of that, if you have felt so lonely and so isolated and so ignored or taken for granted, presumed upon, all of those things, overwhelmed, this is your place. This is your time, and I want you to take advantage of it. There's no show like this in the entire world, and we are so very grateful that you're a part of the show. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. As we are used to doing, we want to start off with a scripture this morning. And this came from a conversation I had with a friend last week who was just beyond tired and overwhelmed. And we talked after the show, and it's a tough situation. She's dealing with a very tough situation, and she just felt so overwhelmed, didn't know where to start. And I said, all right, let's back this up. And so here's, we'll read the scripture, and then we're going to start just kind of unpacking it from there and showing the application thereof for us as family caregivers.

Luke 16 10, Luke 16 10, one who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. And we've heard this a lot, but we'll talk about this as a caregiver. What does that mean? And sometimes I think we feel like we've got to take on all the things that are coming at us, and there are so many things. It's coming at us in droves. We are overwhelmed, and I get that.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Got it. Okay, still feel that way. And when you read this scripture, okay, God is looking for us not as to solve all the problems in the world here. That's His job.

Okay, He's pretty clear on what He is to do. And so one who is faithful in very little, those are things that mean something to God. And if you look through scripture on that, people being diligent where they are, doing what they can with what they have, where they are, stands out. God sees these things. He sees the small things, and we may not place a lot of value on them, but He does because it's reflecting of what's going on in us. Helen Keller said, I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish tasks as if they were great and noble. Now, you're starting to connect the dots for you as a caregiver.

Who among us wouldn't like to be able to do wide sweeping things and have global implications of what we do and things such as that? We'd love to be able to feel like we're doing something important, but the secret is that what we are doing is important as a caregiver, and the little things that go on in your life as a caregiver truly are important. They really are. So what I told this friend was, I tell you what, here's what I've learned in my 35th year as a caregiver. Here's what I've learned.

Sometimes the great successes come in unexpected places. For me, sometimes I just clean the microwave. I start with there. I look at it and say, does this look kind of like it needs a little bit of cleaning here? And so I'll clean the microwave. And that's maybe all I was able to get done on my list of things that done because I'm juggling too many things back and forth, the hospitals, back and forth, the doctor's office, back and forth, this or whatever crisis erupts. And I didn't get all the tests, but I look back at that microwave and it's clean.

Or the refrigerator. My wife has an aunt, a great aunt. She is a great aunt and she is literally a great aunt, but she's also great. Her name is Lila.

She lives down in Texas. And Lila evidently impressed upon my wife at a young age the need to clean the kitchen before going to bed at night so that you wake up to a clean kitchen. I did a series of interviews as the whole world kind of changed. Everybody started working from home. They said, what are some tips that you would recommend?

And I've been working from home since 2003, so I'm way ahead of the curve here. And I gave my great aunt Lila's tip. Clean the kitchen the night before so you wake up in the next morning and there's a clean kitchen. How many of you know how distressing it is to walk out to the kitchen the next morning and just see it looking just awful?

Now, I don't get it right every time. There's sometimes I'm just like, I put all the dishes in the sink and I got to go to bed. But for the most part, I hear Aunt Lila's voice in my head. I told her she lives rent free in my head.

She'll be 90 years old this year. She lives rent free in my head. And because I think, OK, I got to clean this kitchen here. But when I come out the next morning, I'm always grateful that I did it because I can start the day with a clean kitchen. That doesn't sound like much in the scope of things and the firestorm that is a caregiver's life. It truly does not sound like much.

But it is to me. And you'd be amazed how different your day starts when you come out to a clean kitchen or when you open the microwave and you see that it's clean and not, you know, all nasty with spaghetti sauce splattered everywhere. Or when the refrigerator is clean. You know, little things like that mean something. And if you can do one.

You can do two. And that's how you start building successes for you as a caregiver. Now, the point is not to just get all your tasks done.

That's important. But the point of it is for you to start building successes in your life as a caregiver and value those successes. If you're faithful in small things, Scripture says, you'll be faithful in large things. And if you start holding your head up a little bit higher, knowing I'm doing what I can with what I have and being responsible to the task.

Go back to what Helen Keller said. You know, she'd love to do something just great and noble, but you know what? I'm going to do these small tasks as if they were great and noble. Mark Twain said the secret of getting ahead is getting started. A lot of people plan, but do they actually start? The secret of getting started is to break your complex, overwhelming task into small, manageable task. And then starting on the first one.

It's very easy as a caregiver to get overwhelmed. It comes at us in waves and it's relentless and it's unfair. I get it.

I get it. But this is how we can fight back about it and build up our own hearts, our own stamina, our own sense of well-being. You know what? We're going to do this. We're not going to sit there and just look at the clutter and the mess. We're going to put away one thing.

You touch it one time and you put it away. And stop just letting this stuff beat on you and pull you down and say, look, I'm doing nothing here. I'm accomplishing nothing. Yes, you are.

You may have a clean microwave oven. That's something. 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840. This is Peter Rosenberger. He will be strong to deliver me safe. And the joy of the Lord is my strength.

And the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Welcome to Caregiver Here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. This is a show for caregivers, about caregivers, hosted by a caregiver.

Everything related to being a caregiver. That's what we do on this show. How are you feeling? How are you doing?

What's going on with you? 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840. Let me welcome AM 1010 up in the Norfolk area, I believe it is. WPMH, one of our new affiliates. This show now is on over 200 stations. And we've got more stations that are coming.

Again, there's nothing like what this show is. And we are thrilled to have any and all affiliates, all of our affiliates that come on. And we've got quite a few of them.

I won't go down the entire 200 list there, but we'll like to recognize them as we can. And it is an extraordinary show of focusing on a group of individuals that people, by and large, just ignore. I mean, if you're a caregiver of any length of time, you know this. And it's just, you know, this is the way it is. But we're changing that.

I'm sorry, this is WPMH 1010, Portsmouth, Virginia. And I want to welcome them to the show, The Lighthouse. And we are just thrilled to have them be a part of what we're doing. And the secular world has co-opted just about every social issue out there, if you've noticed. And it tends to be extremely proactive on addressing these issues from a, from a secular point of view.

But not this one. This one, we are leading the charge to help this group of 65 million Americans who are, by and large, just ignored and left to kind of just dangle out there. And there are some, a lot of folks out there talking about, you know, helping caregivers, but they're always focusing on those who are taking care of aging ones or seniors and so forth.

And we on this show expanded. We have special needs children and their families. We deal with the mentally ill. We deal with people who are struggling with addicts or alcoholics. That's a chronic impairment. And these are things that we are focused on because we know that as long as there's a chronic impairment, there's always a caregiver.

And how are you doing as you care for this person? Tomorrow night on my podcast, and you can go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com. On the podcast, we open up some interviews and do a little bit more lengthy conversations. But on the podcast, and it's a free podcast, you can go out and subscribe to it. It's wherever podcasts are, it's Hope for the Caregiver through iTunes or Google Play or Amazon, whatever. Wherever you get your podcast, you can go out there and do it.

But hopeforthecaregiver.com is the launching point. And I'm going to have a gospel singer, Michael O'Brien, on the show. And he's going to talk about his journey as a musician, all the things they do, but also they're pretty open about their journey through bipolar with his wife. And these are things that you wouldn't think, okay, well, he's a caregiver.

Well, yeah, he is. And that's what we're doing. We're redefining the term and we're bringing to you a wealth of experience and understanding and biblical perspective and so forth about how to function in this. And some of this stuff may sound real simple. You know what?

So what? Simple is good. We deal with complex all the time. My wife's had 80 surgeries.

Both of her legs gone and 100 doctors, 12 hospitals, seven insurance companies. We get plenty of complex. Sometimes it's the simple things.

And the simple things don't always make sense to us. God asked, if you go back and remember, Naaman, this Syrian guard, you know, when he went to Elisha and he, you know, he wanted to get healed. And the guy in Elisha said, go down there and bathe in the Jordan River. And he said, you know, I don't want to do that.

That river is nasty. Something to that effect. And he wouldn't do it. But the servant of Naaman said, sir, if he had asked you to do something complex, you would have done it.

He just asked you to go down in the river. So he went and did it and he was healed of his leprosy. So those are the kind of things that mean something in the kingdom of God. When you realize that, oh, wait a minute, we're dealing with, you know, craziness in our world. And yet simple things may be able to bring us back to a place of stability. So as I said in the first segment, you're overwhelmed, you're sitting there in your house, you feel like everything is just clutter or whatever.

Sometimes it starts with just cleaning the microwave oven. And people think, well, that's kind of stupid. Well, so what? So what?

Maybe it is. But at least you get a clean microwave oven out of it. Don't underestimate the power of being faithful in small things. Don't underestimate the impact for you to do something simple. And if anybody tells you that doesn't have value, then give some distance to that person.

Because they're wrong. It does have value. It has value for you as an individual.

And guess what? Don't be surprised if it has value in the kingdom of God. We're not here to sit there and somehow have delusions of grandeur. Sometimes it's about serving and it's about cleaning and it's about faithfulness in these small things. And if you learn to be faithful in these small things, you'll be faithful in much more. This is what scripture says. This is what he says in Luke chapter 16, verse 10. One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much. One who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much.

Do you see the application for you as a caregiver now? Do you see what that means? First off, understand this. God sees these things. He is not blind to these things. He knows what's going on.

He sees them. And there's things that he's working out in us as caregivers as we mop a floor at 11 o'clock at night. Or as we do laundry at three in the morning. I've noticed that my journey as a caregiver, that laundry seems to be a big part of it. You know, when you make a meal for a loved one, are you doing it out of resentment? Or are you doing it as unto the Lord?

All of these things result in a mind shift and you realize, OK, wait a minute. I don't work for this person. You know, my wife has all kinds of challenges, but I don't work for her. She's not my supervisor.

She's not my boss. I'm a steward of this woman to care for her to the best of my abilities. And ultimately, I have to answer to her father. Not her earthly father, which I get that, too. But I answer to her heavenly father. And so I do these things as unto him.

What would he want me to do in this? And sometimes it's about just being faithful in the small things. And once you start doing that, it's a mind shift.

It really is a mind shift. Sean in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Sean, good morning. How are you feeling?

Good. How are you feeling? You know, for a man of my age and limited ability, Sean, I'm doing OK. That's awesome.

I just call because you just hit it on so many different levels this morning. You know, I'm you know, the whole feeling of overwhelmed and just the list of things to do to just seem to stretch on endlessly. And in the days that days when I don't get any of it and I'll get anything done. And then there's only there's maybe a few days where I can sit all the things as well. Out of all this, I got this one thing done.

I got this thing that that has been sitting forever. I finally got that one thing done. But and I can relate to the whole. Kitchen serving is your central topic because I.

My kitchen is the worst imaginable and. And it's just is a clutter upon clutter upon clutter. I don't know what to start. And so I just try to start with one thing and then. It's just. There's there's there's only so much I can do. But anyway, I just. Wanted to say. I appreciate you show and appreciate all you do. And you're just really hitting it on a lot of different levels. I just wanted to call.

So that means that means a lot. What are you going to do today? You know, typical Saturday, you know, you know, work all during the week, go Saturday, sleep in and then try to, you know, wake up this time to show. And I will probably I know one thing I had to do is I got to go over and visit my wife at the facility. She wants me to go pick up some things. So I'm going to go do that. And then I'm going to try to try to put some things away, like in the living room.

And that's kind of about it that I have right now. Well, pick pick one thing, pick one thing, just it doesn't matter how small it is, just one thing that you could do today that by this evening, you look back and say, you know what? I got that one. I got that one done today.

Just one thing. And so then and when you do that, you know, kind of step back and say, OK, look, I've got clutter, I've got craziness, I'm trying to juggle too many things, but I did this today. Bask in that for a moment and then pick one tomorrow. You know, and just little by little, you just chip away at it.

And I know that sounds like a, you know, a Hallmark card in some respect, and I don't mean it such, but I mean with caregivers, though, there's so much coming at us. We are not able to just simply, you know, just well, we'll just see about this today. Now, we have to be deliberate in this. Be deliberate in your accomplishments. Be deliberate in your task. I will do this and then do it.

But but make it small, make it manageable, make it realistic. And then, you know what, Sean? Call me back and let me know how it went. How about that? All right. All right. Listen, thank you for the call. Thanks for listening to the show.

I really do appreciate it. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg.

This is the show for you as a caregiver. John, John, you know, do you know that there's a pandemic going on? You know, I read a couple of stories here and there.

You saw something on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I went into Walmart and they said I had to wear a face mask. I'm like, cool, but why? Hey, pants are not required, but face masks evidently are in Walmart. I just thought they were telling me I was a little bit ugly.

Like Rodney Dangerfield says, they told me I had to wear two face masks. But the reason I'm referencing that is because you know of our work for many years with prosthetic limbs. And we can't go to Ghana right now.

And I certainly am not going to take Gracie over there. We've been going to Ghana for many, many years to help work with amputees over there, but we've been sending supplies and we're sponsoring more patients, but we're not sending teams right now because we just can't. And we've got patients that are lining up that are really needing some quality prosthetic care and we're contracting out with prosthetic providers there in West Africa, in Ghana. And they're helping these patients that we really are urgently trying to treat. We get them up walking. One of them is, and you know, one of the criteria we have with our patients, John, is we target children and working age adults.

Children, students and working age adults. And really in that order. Gotcha. Because we want to give them a fighting chance to have a productive life with a quality prosthetic limb.

This is what Gracie envisioned after, you know, losing her own legs. And it's not that we don't want to help aging or so forth. It's just that that's where our targets are. And lately we've been having a lot of these.

Yeah. And we've had a lot of kids. We've had some students that are getting close to their graduation, but they're constantly needing prosthetic adjustments or a new leg, a new socket, new liners and sleeve. And we're trying to ship things over. We're trying to sponsor things and contract with the workers there to do it. And we could use the help. So I'm asking standingwithhope.com. Would you just take a moment to go out to standingwithhope.com? Look at the work we're doing.

Look what you're seeing and get involved. And you could certainly write us and ask us any questions about it. But we would love to have your help today. We really need it today for any donation amount. Whatever's on your heart.

Doesn't matter. We're going to send you a copy of Gracie's CD. And we just want you to know that this is this is what we're serious about doing. We've been doing this for a long time. We can't go over there in person, but guess what?

We could still help them get up and walk. And you could be a part of that today. It's a gift that keeps on walking. I came up with that myself, John. Oh, yeah.

Did you? Pretty proud of that. The gift that keeps on walking. But it does. And with Gracie being a double amputee herself. We understand that in our world. In fact, we're dealing with prosthetic stuff right now with her.

And because she's constantly needing adjustments and so forth. And so we understand the need and we're asking you to help with it today. So go to standing with hope dot com today. Thanks so much.