#428 Caller Cringes Over Advice He Gave to His Grieving Mother

Let's go to William in Odessa, Texas. My mother died in 2016 of a brain cancer, and I took care of her for about however long before God went ahead and took her. Being a nurse kind of prepared me for a little bit, but really the emotional attachment to a dying mother. So the thing that really bothers me, and her dad, my dad, and she took care of him before he passed, she grieves about him, and I'm going to try to stay unemotional here, you know, for the years that they had... William, William, hang on.

If you do get emotional, it's okay. This is your place to do it. So, as the voice gets wavy, she grieves for him, and I worked with that, and I said, Mom, at one point, and I know this is not therapeutic communication when I talk about it, Dad is in heaven, okay? He's not here anymore.

He's not suffering. Let him go. You know, and that was so presumptuous of me, because the folks had been married for 16 years, and so I wish now that I could go back and take those words back, and I wish that I hadn't done that, because I wasn't a good steward at that point, and I knew better, and I just need some therapy or something for that. Well, I think the first step you've taken is you've just said, look, here's what I did.

And then, where do we take things like that? Lord, I cringe over what I said at this point. Lord, I just struggle with, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. And you know what? He knows this. I know this, you know this, he knows this, and so that's the beauty of our walk as believers, is that we can go to him and take this to him and say, you know what, Lord, I just cringe over this, but I thank you that she's with you now, too, as well.

And sometimes that's just a good starting place. It's okay to admit that you cringe over stuff. Man, William, I'm with you, man.

I cringe over things that have come out of my mouth. But you know what? We were doing the best we could with the information we had at the time, and we asked God to, you know, he redeems all of that, too. We serve a great God of redemption, don't we? Why don't you hang on through the break? Hang on through the break, William, will you do that? Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you?

I have. 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 here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840.

If you want to be a part of the show right now, I've got William from Odessa, Texas on the phone. I asked him to stay through the break because what he's saying is a place where a lot of caregivers live. We look back over things that we said during our journey as caregivers with a loved one and cringe. I mean, just cringe. And we just hang our heads in sorrow and shame and frustration. Okay, we get that.

Every one of us are going through that. And William, I am so glad that you called about this because this is such a hard place for us as caregivers when we go back and we replay the tapes. But you know what? You did not... Well, I get your grief on it.

I really do. And I think that one of those things that we do with each other as caregivers is recognize at the time we did the best we could with the information we had. And when we go back now through the clarity of hindsight and we see these things, that's when we have the opportunity to go to Christ and say, You know what? Lord, I got this wrong. And I ask for your forgiveness. Or, Lord, my heart was too short with it. I should have been more patient. But again, we use those should have, should have, should haves and say, Okay, here's what it is, Lord.

This is my mess. You remember that song by Bill Gaither? They wrote, Something beautiful, something good. All my confusion he understood. All I had to offer him was... Do you know it? Do you remember the song?

Yes, sir. What's the last line? So he said, All I had to offer him was what?

Me. Brokenness and strife. But he made something beautiful in my life. And it's a wonderful little chorus called Something Beautiful. And I think, I think, you know, William, maybe that's a good song for you to go out and just listen to somewhere today.

Just do it. All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife. And as you look back and almost torture yourself for the way you've said things to your mother, but you weren't saying that. You weren't trying to be mean.

You were just trying to help her. But it was, you look back and he said, I wish I knew then what I know now. Well, who doesn't say that? All of us wish we knew then what we know now. But here's what we know now also is that we have a God of great redemption.

And that he is redeeming even those things. And your mother is safe. Your mother is safe right now. The irony of the situation was, you know, I had counseled families with loved ones that died as a professional.

I was the big, strong professional nurse. But, of course, when it came to my own feelings with my mom, and I'll tell you that I did a good job with Mom and Dad, but it's just like, and I'll confess one more time, and then I'll give to God and let it go that, hey, come on now. You knew better than that. It's your mother. You should have been more tender, right? And she loved your dad with a different kind of love.

And here you were, me making some sort of pronouncement about that, like, oh, come on, Mom, get over it, which is essentially, you know, and that was so wrong. Well, William, I want you to take just a step back, if you don't mind, and understand that your pain and what you learned through this and the hard lessons and the tears that you even felt this morning, and because of that, and you've done this, and you struggle with this in your Christian walk and understanding what God is doing and did do and is doing and will do, you've come on this show, and I don't know how many people are listening to this show. They say there's a pretty large number. And there are nurses that are listening. There are sons and daughters who are struggling in this same manner. And now they're hearing from this big old strong nurse who took care of more people dying than you probably want to remember. And you're sharing the lessons that you've learned through it the hard way, the painful way, but you're also imparting wisdom and clarity to let people know that they're not alone in this and the isolation that grips us as caregivers. You've pushed into that, William, and you've taken this. And I think that's about as a wonderful way to honor your mother and father after they've passed on is to say, you know what? Here's who these wonderful people were.

Here's what I wish I'd said better. And who knows how many lives now will take your words and your heart to their heart and change the way they deal with this. And that's the beautiful part of God's redemption.

That's what He does. He weaves all these broken things in our lives into something that's extraordinary. And this is a broken place in your life that hurts, but He's doing something even now in you and through you to who knows how many people, William. You know, many times we don't give ourselves credit for the good things that we have done. We just tend to concentrate on the one or two little errors that we make.

Now, that's kind of my personality. But my word would be that, you know, the suffering, the loved one passes and the suffering is over with. You praise God for that.

But sometimes, you know, we, the living, still kind of suffer and replay the tapes, like you said, of the suffering of the loved one. I just want to be able to, hey, you know, that's over with. I did a good job.

Praise God, they're gone, and who's going to minister to me? Well, you know, we caregivers, we judge ourselves without mercy on our job performance. You as a nurse, you always get performance reviews. I mean, you consistently get those throughout your career as a nurse. You have to sit down with a nursing supervisor and so forth, medical staff, and there's always this evaluation on your job performance, and we get that.

There's always room for opportunity. So if we're going to judge ourselves by our job performance, which we caregivers do, we do it religiously almost of criticizing ourselves. We're our own worst critic. What about, though, also with that same zeal, judging ourselves by our attendance record? Because that's part of your job performance as well, too. And you keep showing up, and you showed up with your mother, and you showed up with your father. You showed up.

Your attendance record. And for all of us as caregivers, our attendance record is flawless. We keep showing up. And so, yeah, you did do a good job. You showed up. Let God handle the perfection.

Our job is to be excellent in what we do, be good stewards of what we do, but let God handle perfection. And a friend of mine sent me a note. This may resonate with you, William. A friend of mine sent a note to my wife, and she's a dear friend of hers. They've known her for years. She knew my wife before her wreck, which that was over 37 years ago. And she said in Japan, and I didn't know this, but when there's a piece of pottery or porcelain or something like that, and it cracks, they don't just discard it.

They repair it, and they put gold in the cracks, and it becomes a more beautiful piece of art because of the gold in the cracks. And I didn't know that. And it was a little note that she sent on that. And I thought, you know, that's kind of the way we are as people. That's what God does. And we have these cracks in us that are broken places and broken pieces in us. And that's where he pours more of himself in.

And that's what you've demonstrated this morning. And that's what your tears reflect this morning is that, oh, God's making something beautiful even out of the cracks. You know? Does that resonate with you? Yes, sir. Nobody gets out of here unscathed, and these little marks are like the record of our lives. Well, from everything I see in Scripture, I can almost guarantee you. I can guarantee you. According to Scripture.