One of the things I talk about here on this show is, what can we do to equip you as a caregiver to stay strong? I get emails in and I get phone calls. I see people around town when I go out and speak and so forth.
And it's the same thing. You can just see it in their faces. I got an email in from this lady the other day and it just, let me just take a moment for this.
It broke my heart. Her husband, he's become disabled and just bitter. And she's got children that she's trying to take care of and so forth. And a couple of them have some special needs going on too. And she's working three part-time jobs to try to keep it all on the rails. She is truly coming apart. How do you stay strong in this thing?
How do you function in this thing? And so what I told her is what I tell you, what I tell myself. We're going to go real slow. We're just going to take our time.
We're going to take a quick moment here just to catch our breath. And then we're going to look at playing for inches, not miles. Don't try to throw those 90-yard passes. Don't try to go there. Let's just play for inches. Now it's going to be tough.
That's some of the most expensive real estate in the world is the real estate of your peace of mind that you're trying to gather. And it's not going to be easy because this happens over a long period of time and it erodes your self-confidence. It erodes your identity. It erodes your ability to even think straight sometimes, whether you're taking care of your parent, whether you're taking care of a spouse who's gotten real bitter, whether it's a child with special needs.
It doesn't matter. If you've been doing it for any length of time, you understand exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just wait because if you love somebody, you're going to be a caregiver.
If you live long enough, you're going to need one. And I know this is very serious right now. We have a lot of fun. Butler and I, we clown around and play all kinds of crazy music because I'm trying to give you one hour. That's all I have is one hour to give you a respite where you don't have to worry about thinking, that you don't have to worry about, does he really understand what I'm going through? You don't have to worry about being isolated. You can be a part of a community if it's only for just this one hour. That's all I got, but I'm giving you all I got.
One hour to laugh, to cut up, to speak in your own native language so you don't have to worry about it. Do they understand me? Yes, we do. I truly, truly do. What this lady's going through that emailed me, I get it. Been there, done that, still there at times for now three decades. I get it. So what do you do? How do you function?
And you go back to just very, very small increments. I go back to what Colonel Hal Moore, Mel Gibson, played him in that movie, We Were Soldiers. I've quoted it many times before, but it is probably one of the best examples of how to deal with this as a caregiver. When everything is flying around, I mean, when the grenades are going off, when bullets are flying, when people are screaming at you and everything else, when the whole thing is just going to hell, that's when you have to have that voice of authority that says, OK, look, we're going to just take this creek bed. We're just going to take this piece of real estate. This is all we're going to do. And we're going to stop.
We're going to secure this. That's it. And if you notice, these guys were not, while they're doing it, if you ever see the movie and it's a tough movie to watch, but it's a great movie. If you ever see it, you'll see what I'm talking about. They weren't thinking about their taxes. They weren't thinking about this, this or this or whatever.
They weren't trying to map out their future, whatever. They were living right there in the moment. And give us this day our daily bread is a wonderful saying until you have to live it every day. And this lady that emailed me this week, she's living that every single day, every single hour.
There's an old hymn that says, I need thee, every hour I need thee. This is not something that you get a handle on and just go live your life and right off into the sunset. You are trudging through peanut butter and it's going to be hard and it's going to be unpleasant. And I'm going to give it to you straight because you deserve to hear it straight. Anybody else that's going to give you platitudes and hearts and rainbows and unicorns and lucky charms and clovers and all that kind of stuff, nobody cares about that.
When your husband is turning into just a bitter, angry, abusive guy right there in front of your eyes, plus he has health problems and you're having to clean up all this stuff and you're having to go work a couple of jobs and you've got a kid with special needs, you don't need a Hallmark card. You need a path towards sanity. But you don't have to do that alone. You really don't. That's why I do this show.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-24 00:03:53 / 2024-01-24 00:06:26 / 3
