#433 Caregivers and Apologies: "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word."

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Or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to crittercampaign.org. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberg and this is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. How are you doing? How are you holding up? How are you feeling?

What's going on with you? That is the question that we ask on this show and we're glad that you're a part of it with us. If you want to be a part of the show in the studio, live with us, 877-655-6755. And we'd love to have you be a part of the show and you can just call in whatever's on your heart. We have a topic that we're going to be dealing with.

John and I are going to be kicking around today, but if you've got something that is aside from that, we will swerve into whatever you wish us to discuss as it relates to the family caregiver. I know caregivers are pretty nimble people. Nimble people, is that what they are? Nimble? Yeah, nimble.

Speaking of nimble, here is the nimble-minded himself. Would you please welcome John Butler, the Count of Mighty Disco, with his weekly dad joke? Oh, yeah. Hey, you know how the man in the moon? First of all, thank you for the intro.

Appreciate it. The nimble man of John Butler. I don't know about all that, but we'll find out. You know how the man in the moon cuts his hair? I do not know that. Well, I would make an apology for John, but that is our subject today, is apologies.

Apologies. See, I like to surprise John with whatever we're doing, because we don't like to prepare on this show. I will think about things, but one of the things that's great about having John as a part of the show is that I can throw whatever. He's like a major league catcher. Whatever pitch I throw at him, he's going to catch it. And whether or not he tries to storm the mound himself, who knows?

He may charge the mound. Well, this is a complete aside, but as you know, I say they're young children, but they're getting older by the day. I have an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old. And I was out at a cabin this weekend, and my two children watched for the very first time the sandlot. You're going to be embarrassed, ashamed, and in dismayed. I've never seen the whole movie.

No, you are one of today's lucky 10,000, sir. As good as Field of Dreams is, the sandlot. Which it is. I know it's one of your favorites, and the amount of wholesomeness and really good stuff. Yes, it's a comedy, but we do love baseball. It was a formative movie for me growing up, and the two kids got to see it today, or earlier this weekend. And it's just fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough. Well, I'm glad to hear it.

Baseball and kids. Well, I was thinking about this a lot, John. Apologies. And we live in this society filled with acrimony.

Ooh, that's from the $5 column on the big words. Yes, we like to use a big word every now and then. But if you are in any kind of relationship, apologies are going to be a part of that journey.

I mean, it just has to be. And if you're in a caregiving relationship, there are ample opportunities for more apologies. How could I say that? That's an interesting sentence. I want to put a positive spin on my mistakes, but I just call them opportunities to practice my apologies.

Yes, ample opportunities. But one of the things that's a pet peeve of mine is when I see people in the news or media, whatever, and they apologize poorly. And so I want to read this quote from Benjamin Franklin, the very quotable Benjamin Franklin. Never ruin an apology with an excuse. Exactly. There is no qualifications.

There should be no qualifications on an apology. And I'm glad you brought this topic up. This is one of my favorite TED Talks was from Robert Gordon. Now, who is Robert Gordon? Yeah, Robert Gordon.

And it was the power of apology. But who is Robert Gordon? Robert Gordon. I don't actually. He's a he's a he's a psychologist.

I'm sorry. OK. Yeah. So he's he's got some some numbers or some letters after his name.

We like deferring to. I have numbers after mine. Yeah. But he he listed three. Aspects of a good apology. And you know what wasn't one of those three aspects was an excuse.

And exactly. Yeah. Have you ever tried to make an apology without the word? Sorry. Deliberately tried to use.

Oh, yeah. Using the word. Sorry. Like I say things like I apologize and well, there are other aspects to a good apology.

But yeah, I generally try to avoid the word. Sorry. Because sorry doesn't necessarily, in my opinion, convey the the the depth of what needs to happen here. Apologies are very important.

And and that does it seems I don't know which is it's probably a style consideration. It just seems a little flip to me. Well, the word has become diluted in our society. We even have a game called sorry. You know, it's a diluted words, but, you know, it's, you know, it's in all the complaints to John at the Internet, Google.

But but the word has become diluted. And as a caregiver, there are two traps we fall into with apologies. One of them is we try to apologize or feel sorry or take on sorry for things that don't belong to us. Right.

That's not appropriate. And then the other one is we give half hearted apologies or excuse apologies or passive aggressive apologies. Even an explanation is not an explanation can be an excuse.

It's really, really quick. And just it's one of those things that I feel like we should just remove from the initial apology. If someone wants an explanation, if someone wants, in quotes, an excuse, then they will ask us for that. But many times the people to whom we're apologizing don't care about that and they shouldn't or they don't need to.

No, they shouldn't. But, yeah, yeah, their feelings are hurt and they're struggling and they want to feel validated. They they've been injured.

And I think if you could put. And if you don't feel they've been the offense apologizing, you know. Well, yeah, if you could put the offense into a way that a physical injury, I have physically injured someone.

So it's going to change the wording you use, because if you if you if I remember one time. And Gracie was helping me in the kitchen one time and I was trying to fix a light. And I had a hammer there on the ladder and I was up there and she was just studying the ladder.

This is many, many years ago. And she was just studying the ladder. And and I inadvertently dropped the hammer or knocked the hammer off and it hit her in the head. And it really hurt. It really hurt her. And she started crying.

And and I was I felt so awful. It was my carelessness of of not being more careful around her. I dropped something or knocked something off and she got injured in the process and she's OK. She was all right. You know, I hugged it out and all that kind of stuff. But when I go to her and say, well, what were you doing under the path of that hammer?

You know, you don't say that. You know, why would you get in the way of a falling hammer? You know, it was my carelessness.

I owned it and I can't explain it away. I can't be mad at her. She was assisting me. And I dropped the hammer.

And I don't know if that's where Thor got it from. You know, you put the hammer down, you know, I don't I don't know about that. No, but it's well, there is a drive within all of us to. Justify everything about who we are as people, including our mistakes. And that's it's rough.

It's hard to get around. And because it's around protecting our identity as good and competent people. And we're not always good and competent people. And that's, you know, we're talking. We're not perfect.

We are flawed individuals in both carelessness and ethics. And well, we are. And you have to own that. Yeah, exactly. You know, and it's it's not really hard.

It is hard to own. And you have in their words that matter. And I'm a big fan of this. Words matter. And they're words you don't speak that really matter, like not justifying your behavior. Correct. Yeah.

Correctamundo. No, no. I mean, words. But words matter in a situation. So when you come to someone and you're apologizing and we've all seen these these these politicians who get up there basically said, look, I'm sorry if I offended anyone. That's the worst. I hate that.

I truly hate that. And if you ever hear any type of leader or public figure, whether celebrity or or politician, pastor, anybody or yourself say that, understand that they are not apologizing. They don't think they did anything wrong.

Correct. You know, they can apologize. And if they really wanted to say something like that, like, I don't think I did anything wrong in the actual act.

However, the way it comes off is something. You know, if you want to apologize or say something in a nuanced way, that's fine. If you want to explain your actions in a nuanced way, that's fine. But don't call it an apology. Right.

You know, you could say I just spoke or. This is what I truly believe, and I don't feel I need to apologize, but don't call it an apology. Well, and you're not talking about that. We're talking about things that we actually done wrong. No, no. But that's that bleeds into the way we talk with each other.

And what we see, we mirror what we see in the news and in the media and so forth of that's the way we're supposed to do it. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings or I'm sorry. I'm sorry if you misunderstood what I'm saying. I hate that one even worse. Oh, oh, that is I didn't even I don't see that one as often.

But yeah, that one's it's like putting it on someone else. If you it's your fault for not being able to keep up with me. Yeah. Yeah. If you if you truly want to apologize to someone and you really feel like you have done something wrong, you should do so without any expectation of forgiveness. And the words you use are going to reflect that.

Yeah. I regret. I regret what I said and what I did.

It is it is it is inexcusable. And I would like to make amends. And I understand that it may take time.

But I want to earn that from you. Well, this is the thing in the TED talk that I was talking about. You hit all of the good points. Exactly.

The first one is ignored. I told you I've had a lot of practice. I have had ample opportunity to work this out. Right. Right.

Would you make as many mistakes as just before coming on the show? I had an opportunity here and an opportunity to I don't see that. But I think if you want to have any kind of significant, meaningful relationship, no matter what you do, whether you're a public figure or whether you're doing it as a caregiver or whatever, the words you use really do matter. Exactly. Well, there's there's in this thing that I like as soon as you said apology, I knew exactly where I was going to go for this because it is something that is the apology is I pay pretty close attention to this. And I've read a lot about it just because of who I am as a person being like like yourself, one who has ample opportunity to apologize. But that an apology can play a huge role in relationship maintenance.

And just if you if you really like it, it is important. But the three things that were at this. Say that again. Yeah. Say that again. Yeah.

I stole it from psychology today. So but yeah, it's like I don't care where you stole it. Right.

We buy stolen goods around here. Oh, yeah. That was a brilliant statement. Well, thank you again.

Can't take credit. But yeah, an apology plays a huge role in relationship maintenance. It is is just this you know, we have to maintain our relationship and that is sometimes really boring, really long work. And the apology plays a big role in that. Yeah, there's but it requires a level of vulnerability in you if you're going to offer a sincere mea culpa. And that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today.

As caregivers, we find ourselves in this situation, not just with our loved ones, but with all the other relationships surrounding that loved one as well. We're going to make mistakes. We'll talk about how to deal with them. If you want to be a part of the show, 877-655-6755, 877-655-6755. This is Peter Rosenberger.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. If you want to be a part of the show, 877-655-6755.

877-655-6755. And way to go, Ed, on that, because that is such a great song. I've always loved that song by Elton John. Sorry seems to be the hardest word. And it requires something of us. And that's what we're talking about today.

We're talking about apologies and sorry and making amends. As a caregiver, we're going to have ample opportunity for this. And it could be that you snap at a health care worker taking care of your loved one in the hospital or whatever, or an employer or coworkers or whatever. The stress that you're under as a caregiver is staggering. And you're trying to juggle so many things, and your patience becomes thin, and it exposes a level of demandingness or a cavalier behavior.

There's all kinds of things that can come to the surface. We're flawed human beings. We're going to screw it up.

It's going to happen. How do you make amends? Yeah, and it's going to happen because of reasons. There are going to be reasons you snap. There are going to be environmental factors that are beyond your control that contribute to these mistakes. And you can try to blame them, and you can assign appropriate blame to them, but it's not 100 percent because we reacted the way that we reacted.

And we need to figure out how to deal with that with ourselves and allow others who are affected by it to deal with it with our words and understanding. Trying to express how we feel in an apology is, yeah. And I have found for me the best way to make an apology is to get into a place where you're not doing it on the fly, that you give it that you give the injury.

If you are truly sorry for something you said or did, then you give that offense the respect that it deserves of what the damage that that offense has caused and give it the respect it deserves. You're going to hurt people in your journey as a caregiver, or in any journey, in a relationship. If you're in a relationship with any other human being, you're going to hurt each other.

It's going to happen. For all you parents out there, your kid has gotten on your nerves to the point that you have done something that you wouldn't have done normally. And it's not a good thing, and it affected the kid in a negative way. And it wasn't necessary. And to acknowledge that, we've all been there, you know. And we're going to continue being there.

Yes. I have found that human beings have an incredible capacity to forgive, but it is predicated on a conviction that that individual has genuinely seen the error of their ways and is genuinely trying to make some type of correction and amends for this. Some things cannot be amended for in this world. They just can't. I mean, I get that our best efforts are what is required. And we're not entitled to forgiveness. Yeah, part of it.

We're not. I remember one guy was saying, you know, he had had a it was it was a pretty bad situation in their marriage, and he dealt with some issues that were in his life, and it was pretty unpleasant. And they were trying to patch it up.

And he said. It took about three months, but I started feeling better. But it was never about you feeling better. Yeah, it was never about you feeling better. And I think that part of our journey is is human beings is that we're not going to feel better about some of these things. When we see how we have wounded someone else that we care about someone else that has value, even if we don't care about it we still wounded them. You know, we don't necessarily know that maybe it was a we was like these politicians on the. You come on the news and they'll apologize to the masses but they've never even met the masses.

So they don't know, I mean they they're not engaged in that kind of relationship they just got caught in something and they go out and say, I'm sorry if anybody's feelings were hurt. I'm talking about looking in the eyes of someone that you care about, and said, I was wrong. I really botched this.

I got this wrong. I was careless. I was thoughtless. I was rude. I was inconsiderate.

I regret this deeply. Those are the kind of words that mean something with an apology. Something I an aside I think I need to make here is that there are times when someone is not going to want to hear our apology.

They're not going to want anything else to do with us for the rest of their lives. And we need to respect that if that's the consequences of our actions. You know, it, it does not absolve us from doing what is right. Exactly. We talk about consequences of actions all the time and we were all about consequences for other people.

Yeah. Well, what's the old prayer? We want justice for everyone else and mercy for ourselves. And it's about us becoming healthier individuals. This show is all about healthy caregivers.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Part of being a healthy individual is owning your own crap. Just owning it. I'm sorry. I don't know how to say it any better.

You've got to own your own stuff and realize that no, you are not a victim and no, you are not a martyr. You have free agency to screw it up. Exactly. And we do. Yeah. And this is and if that's it, it part of being a healthy individual is recognizing that we did and making amends to the best of our abilities. Well, this is, uh, go ahead. Go ahead.

No. Well, I was, uh, the three, the three, uh, uh, the three parts that I was talking about that you keep on hitting, but I just need to put them in words. The first one is acknowledgement. You, you, you see how your actions negatively impacted another individual. And the second part is remorse and empathy. You see that, or you see that you, the first one, you acknowledge that it did affect them. The second one is that you acknowledge or you, you have remorse for the negative ways in which it did affect them.

And you see how their, their emotions are, are affected negatively. And the third one is restitution, which is making amends and trying to do that. And nowhere do I see in those three very easy things explaining oneself or trying to lessen one's own pain. The idea is to lessen the pain of another.

Yes. And that, that is the growth of being a healthy human being. And, um, we're going to get into this in the next segment because some of these things, um, you can't go to the person. They've either become so mentally disabled because of disease or affliction, or they've passed away. What do we do about that?

How do we make peace with those sorts of things and live up to our responsibilities? These are hard things to do as caregivers, but I felt like it was an important thing to do for us in our journey. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'd love to have you be a part of the show with us. 877. 877. That number is 877. 655.

6755. And you're following along on social media. I highlight everybody on social media. And, uh, we'll be right back. Hey, this is John Butler, producer of Hope for the Caregiver. And I have learned something that you probably all know, that Gracie, his wife, uh, lost her legs many, many years ago and started a prosthetic limb outreach ministry called Standing with Hope.

And recently they ended up with a rather unique and unexpected partner. Peter had a conversation with Gracie and take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic over in Nashville, 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. 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. And so, um, these men are so glad that they get to be doing, um, as, as one band 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. You know, I thought of peg leg. I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're, they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for the supplies to get over there.

What does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave. I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them and I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers?

I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the 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 is just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much.

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. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do.

How do they do that? Please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. As always, Jon Butler is with me, the Count of Mighty Disco, and we're glad to have you with us. That is Gracie from her new record, Resilient Era. And if you want to get a copy of that, we'd love for you to do that. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com. You'll see the picture of her album cover there, Resilient, and click on it and you see how to get that. We'd love to send it to you. And man, she can sing.

877, if you want to be a part of the show, 877-655-6755, 877-655-6755. We're talking about apologies. We're talking about learning to, I love what you said about relationship maintenance. Yeah.

And that's part of it. And how many of you all just, as you're listening to the podcast, the show, you're watching on social media, whatever, how many of you all have said something to someone else? Not the person necessarily that you're caring for, though that happens as well too, but just in passing. I mean, somebody that was an attendant at a grocery store or a waitress or somebody who was serving you dinner, a nurse or a CNA at the hospital, and you just barked. You're an Uber driver. Or you were rude.

You're an Uber driver. Any of those individuals who were at the mercy of your frayed nerves. And how many of you all have said something to them that you just cringe when you go back and think about? How many of you have said something to someone in junior high school 40 years ago that you still remember and you just wrack your brain about, you know, once every couple of months, like, man, I was such an idiot. Well, flawed people. Now you've gone for preaching to Midland.

No. But this is the journey we have. And so how do you go back and make restitution for that or some type of amends or some type of apology that means something? And what we don't want to do is what we see paraded out every time you get some type of public figure, usually politicians who are trying to spin it. Save their career. And they'll say things like, I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt. I'm sorry if you didn't understand me. I'm sorry for some people who may have taken this the wrong way. You know, that kind of stuff.

And that stuff just is so shallow. And it's so indicative of that person's character. The conditional apology where you're saying if or but. I'm sorry, but. Well, another good thing, something that you mentioned trying to avoid the word sorry to me earlier. Something else I try to avoid is, well, really more than even sorry is the word but. Because many times if you see somebody say, especially after the one word you'll never hear me say after this is but. I will never have a sentence that goes, I love you, but. Yeah, it's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen. I think you can almost always discount everything before the but in the sentence as not important to the person who's saying it. And that's a rough thing to think about. Just either just say, if you're going to be vulnerable, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're going to be vulnerable, and that's what this is all about is learning to be vulnerable. If you're going to be vulnerable, then you don't get to try to orchestrate it and have some type of escape clauses. Vulnerability means vulnerability. And so if you say I love you, it's I love you. And that's the end of that sentence.

Yeah, you can then and if a lot of times if you speak in first person singular, it really helps to I love you. I'm struggling with something and I could use your help with it. I need to wrestle with this. And all of a sudden you're taking the onus off of them and putting it back on you because you're the one with the issue. You're the one that made the mistake and caused the pain. Yeah.

Yes. It might be a vulnerable person that takes that that that that is easily injured. That doesn't matter.

You still did it. One of the other things this gentleman talked about that I think I need to touch on is that apologies need to be dose appropriate. You don't go way over the top and you don't go to flippant with it. That is very insightful. That is really insightful.

Dose appropriate. Yeah, I think there's a point where you start overselling it or underselling it. Yeah. And and so again, this is not just in the situation with your loved one, even though that is a catalyst for so many. But sometimes your loved one is not even able to have a meaningful relationship with you.

Some of us have that and some don't. And I get that with a lot of my federal caregivers. And and they're not. And you're going to have to judge the appropriateness of how you're engaging with this individual. And that's hard to do. And then sometimes they've gone or they're they're they're so far gone mentally that they cannot participate in the relationship. Number one, number two, they've they've passed away. And you've still got these unresolved issues. And those are hard things to do, but they need to be dealt with.

What does that look like? And I had someone gave a spiel about this, a speech about this. They said one of the things that is sometimes often help helpful for people to do who have a loved one that's come by. But they've they know that they've they've they've grown now. They could see.

They're wiser, even though there's grass growing on the grave and and there's nowhere to take that wisdom to. And they said, write it down, write down a list of all these things. Say it out loud.

Put your hand on it. Say what you want to say. Say what you feel about it.

If you if you're if it causes you to cringe, if it causes you to cry, if you tear up with it, you know, whatever it is that's going on within your own heart result. You know, let that out. Put your hand on that list of things that you needed to say. And then burn it. And then walk away because they're gone. And now it's gone. You've dealt with it.

You've owned it. See, the point is, is not whether or not they come back running to embrace you. The point is, are you willing to step up and own as a responsible adult your own behavior? If you're the type of person that can experience growth, that means that where you are today is somehow larger or better or more wise than you were a year ago or yesterday or whatever.

And that means that that person you were a year ago made more mistakes than you do today. And if you're not willing to acknowledge that, if you're saying that's a will, just part of the process of growth, I don't know what to tell you, because, you know, tomorrow tomorrow, I hope to be a better person than I am today, which means today I'm going to get some stuff wrong. And I feel I don't know, I just I want to emphasize the value of humility in a lot of this. I think I think it always comes down to humility, recognizing your place in how this is working. And one of the axioms that we live by on this show that I have embraced wholeheartedly in my own life is that the goal is not to feel better. The goal is to be better. And I am not I recognize that I am not going to feel better about a lot of the things in my life that I have done and said. But can I be better in it?

What can I learn from this? And how can I avoid this? Yes, you do. But but that can't be my goal for myself.

Right. And in the process, I found other people, though, come along and help me feel better. By by participating in the same type of things. So they come along, realize, oh, the reward is not in me trying to make sure I feel better. The reward is for me to grow in this process. And then guess what? Life has this way of enhancing.

You see and experience relationships and life and beauty all around you on a on a more vivid level than you would if you were just lumbering through this, trying to make yourself feel better. Yeah. I walked outside the other night and we had I live in Montana, southwest Montana.

They had a big rainstorm. Well, we have they call it Big Sky for a reason out here. By the way, he really does live in Montana. It's not a myth that Montana is just empty. We've been telling all the people in California that it's far south of us to keep going on.

Don't come here. But I went out there and I saw a full rainbow that ended right up here by the house. I could see it. And then it arced all the way over there. And then there was another rainbow on top of that. You had the double rainbow across the sky. Double rainbow.

The full thing. In the end, I could see both ends. And it was so vividly beautiful that it just catches you. And I think the thing about one of the things I've learned about being out here is that this place is so beautiful that I it I am struck by the beauty of it. And I think that we start to appreciate that level of beauty more and more as we grow as human beings and learn to be vulnerable, learn to slow down, learn to own our own things and not be in such a frantic race to feel better.

And if we can do that, if we can read, divert all that kind of energy of trying to make ourselves feel better, then we will experience better. I don't know if I'm saying that right now. Well, I'm going to take a hang with me on this one. It's gonna be a hard left turn. All right.

I'm going to hang with you. Yeah. You remember the movie? Everybody buckle up. Right. John's got the wheel. Yeah.

David Lynch has got the wheel on this one. You remember the movie Dune? Did you ever see this? I do. All right. You remember when you remember?

The the the Bene Gesserit witch has has has been around. I'm sorry, Paul put his hand in the box. And it's what's in the box. It's been a while. Right.

Right. But it's this weird thing. You put your hand in the box and it's it's there.

What's in the box? Pain is in the box. OK. And it's this mind, you know, kind of quasi hypnosis thing that she makes him believe that his hand is on fire and rotting away. And the longer he keeps it in there, what it turns out is the more human he is. And it's it's you know, but it is it is human to it's it's a it's a reaction to run away from pain. And the pain of what we have done to someone will affect us.

But we need to stare that in the face so we can become better about that. And so we can just not blindly run away from the pain. I get it. I truly get it. That is well said because we've been talking about pain now for a couple of weeks.

Yeah. And it is it is our first instinct is to flee pain at all cost. Emotional pain, anything that makes us feel bad, we don't want to experience.

But that's not reality. And if we get embarrassed by something we did, the first instinct we want to do is spin it and someone will say, we're not at fault. It wasn't us. Was it me? Was it me? Being at fault is painful.

We want to run from that. And yet I can tell you in 34 years as a caregiver and and the person who holds the title for clearly the most. I mean, you know, I'm the crash test dummy of caregivers. I have forgotten more mistakes that most people are going to make. I hold the title.

You can't run from this if you're going to grow as a human being at all. If you're going to have any type of. Of. Sense of what's the word I'm looking for, John? I was going to say wisdom, you know, or just wisdom. I guess with pleat, a complete worldview.

Yeah, I think so. And wisdom, I think, is the key is wisdom doesn't come cheaply. Now, wisdom does not come cheaply. And you could have a people that are very, very intelligent. And I see them, I see them on the news and so forth, but they're not wise. They're intelligent, but they're not wise. Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. And wisdom is knowing that you don't put it in fruit salad. You know.

All right, did y'all catch that one? Words to live by. All right, well, charisma, charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad. You know, and for us as caregivers. One of the highest pursuits that we can do is wisdom. Because we're dealing with something that is coming at us so fast, so hard, so painful, so relentless. And if we don't have wisdom and discernment on how to best deal with that, it's going to it's going to destroy us. And part of that wisdom is learning how to own your own failures and looking them in the face. And those failures that give you wisdom. Yeah.

And I. If we don't do that, we're never going to learn. And we're going to keep repeating the same.

And I'm going to I'm going to swerve into something, but I'm going to make a point with it, with the political event that happened. Like you were saying, you know, if we don't if we if we're not sitting in the pain of this and acknowledging the pain of what we did, we're going to make it. Oh, well, that that wasn't painful. I guess I'm going to do it again next time because I didn't. Nobody ever nobody ever wipes their brows. I sure learned that the easy way.

You know, nobody ever says that. And, you know, but I remember it was it was 15 years ago this summer when Hurricane Katrina hit. And it was bad. It was for those of you watched it unfold. And there was this pivotal, pivotal moment when George W. Bush went down to Louisiana. And he's standing there with Governor Blanco, the governor of Louisiana and Mayor Nagin, who ended up going to prison for all kinds of nefarious things.

She's passed away now. I don't think that there are a lot of people that would rush to the podium to say that Louisiana has been managed well over the years with their political leadership. I mean, I just don't think there's a lot of people that would jump on that particular bandwagon. But George Bush stood there and he said, we're going to jump in. He just basically jumped in. And yet if he had just held back for 30 seconds and allowed the failure of that political system to be exposed for what it was, he said, OK, we're going to help in the absence of leadership here, we're going to help. But we need your patience and expose that failure for what it was and let them own it. How much different because who's labeled with the fault of Katrina? Not the governor of Louisiana, not the mayor of New Orleans.

It was President Bush got labeled with it. And I thought, are we going to repeat the same mistakes? But we don't allow people to feel the sting of their failures.

And for me as a caregiver, I've got to feel the sting of my failures so that I won't keep repeating the same stupid things. I don't need to be rescued. I need to be I need to have it revealed. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back to trust God when lousy things happen to you.

I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me. But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own lives.