Gov. Mike Huckabee Calls The Show

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. That is my wife Gracie singing with Joni Eareckson-Tada through it all.

What a great testimony of those two women who have faced such brutal challenges in their life and even now as Gracie is dealing with the coronavirus and she still has the same message through it all. About 12 years ago I was watching a presidential debate for the Republican nomination for the primary and they went through and they asked different questions and at the beginning of one particular candidate they asked this question, why do you think you're qualified to seek this office? Now this guy was a two-term governor and I thought that was kind of interesting to ask him that question where they didn't ask other people who had far less experience that question but they asked him but his answer is what just absolutely floored me and he started off with as a pastor I had a front row seat to virtually every social dynamic out there. Well I'm a pastor's son and I immediately perked up and I heard that and it was Governor Mike Huckabee and I thought that was the most extraordinary answer because governors you know have this vast amount of experience running a state but he went to that place of knowing as a pastor you're really you know elbows deep into the lives of people from unemployment to health care to you know all kinds of just name it crime everything.

I know because my dad got the calls and I had an opportunity to go on his show and we talked a little bit backstage about that and I have been begging him to come on the show and guess what he finally relented I chased him down I held him by the ankles and he finally called it the show so Governor Huckabee welcome to the show. Well thank you Peter you know it took a quarantine to get me where I was absolutely stable in the same place. I've been home more in the last two weeks than I've been home in the past 10 years. I'm not saying that as an exaggeration it's honestly the truth most months prior to this I've been traveling sometimes 26-27 nights a month so I wasn't avoiding you I just was trying to find a time.

Now we can do it this is great. I've been avoided by I've been avoided by lots of people. I avoid them all the time.

Well I'm delighted to be here. Speaking of avoiding I want to introduce you to my sidekick here on the show John Butler. I call him the count of mighty disco but he met you twice once when he was in Boy State he's from Arkansas and the other time as an Eagle Scout. Yeah I grew up in Jonesboro. I'm hoping everybody in your family is okay in Jonesboro. I got a call from my family today there were some tornadoes that went through and my grandmother lives in Mountain Home and they had some issues like that a couple of weeks ago and I live in Nashville and we had some issues like that a couple of weeks ago.

Yes you did. And you're down in Destin. Gracie and I were married in Destin and that's home for her.

She was Miss Fort Walton Beach High School and now we live in Montana so we're all over the map here but Governor I just had Larry the cable guy on the show and he brought us a few laughs and was able to just kind of help us breathe out a little bit because the country's a little bit weird right now. Gracie and I are dealing with the coronavirus. She's got it.

I tested negative. She's got it but she's doing well. She's hanging in there and I just thought my don't take this the wrong way. My sister sometimes refers to you as America's grandfather. That's an honor. I consider it a compliment.

I was going to make a bass player joke but that was me. She means us one because you just come along and you're able just to kind of settle everybody down. That's that pastoral experience and not every preacher is a pastor.

Every pastor is a preacher but not every preacher is a pastor and you really have that heart and you took that into government and everything else. You're watching what's going on in the country. You know people are just anxious. They're all torqued up and I've been trying to say look calm down here calm just everybody take a deep breath.

You know Gracie and I are dealing with this thing and she's not freaked out about it and she you know we follow instructions but what are your thoughts on this? Well first of all let me compliment you on having Larry the cable guy on to get people a laugh. I don't know why people think that in the midst of challenges that we ought to lose our sense of humor. A sense of humor is something God has hardwired into us.

It's a part of who we were created to be. To be able to laugh and in fact the scripture says that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a bitter spirit dries up the bones. I wish we really believed that because you'd have more Christians reaching for joke books than you would reaching for bottles of medicine every time something goes wrong in their lives. Humor releases a substance in our bodies, endorphins. They are a natural painkiller and sometimes when people say I just hurt all the time I say do you ever watch comedy shows?

Do you watch something that's just drop dead funny? And they say no I just don't I'm not in the mood for it. I said and that's when you need it the most. So I really compliment you Peter for helping people to take a break from the anxiety the fear of the uncertainty the unsettling nature of the virus and all of the things that are happening to the economy pull aside and say wait a minute what's the very worst thing that could happen? And if the worst thing is well I could die from this that's right you could but you could die from a lot of other things and you're more likely to so the fact is if that's the worst thing that can happen to you and it hasn't happened yet be grateful that you're still here you may have to fight the disease it could in fact take you but I'm one that believes that when God is finished with me there's nothing on earth that can keep me here and until God is finished with me there's nothing on earth that can get rid of me sooner than he's ready for me. I just have to believe that I think that's part of what your message is in terms of hope we tend to look at our circumstances I heard of a fellow he was a church and a fellow asked him he said how are you doing he said oh I'm okay under the circumstances and his friend said well what are you doing up under there and that is a great reminder to me Peter that sometimes people live under their circumstances that's just not a healthy way to live I'm not saying these aren't serious times there are people who are listening to us who have lost jobs they're not sure how they're going to pay the rent how to make a car payment I do understand all of that but worrying about it doesn't change the situation but living with hope looking for what I can do rather than what I can't do that's one of the keys to to coping with the challenges and the tragedies of life. You know I was in the hospital with Gracie the other day and they wanted to come down and just evaluate her just to check out her oxygen levels we live at 6,000 feet so they want to make and she was struggling a little bit to breathe and she's had you know pulmonary emboli and all these things going on and we were down there and we both had to mask up and I sat there we were in the room and and they were they quarantined us off and I looked at her said are you are you scared she looked over at me and she said a little but I've been through worse and beautiful and I thought you know she really has and she has been through worse and we've faced death many times with her you know well yeah she's had 34 years of me but that's a that's a whole different show but on this show we've tried to and then I started singing if you like piña corona and she even had to laugh at that one but but you know we we've tried to we've learned that we can have a merry heart in this thing we face harsh realities harsh realities you've met Gracie we fix face harsh things but but here we are and and we have found that God is more faithful than than than we could ever possibly imagine as we look forward to these things of the country I mean I would I would love you just to stay with that theme and you know there are people in this audience one of the things one of the reasons I do this show is because I know the pain of what it's like to watch someone suffer and care for somebody like that and I've done it for a long time and so the whole point of the show is to help point people to safety as we as a country grapple with these things we've never done anything like this we've never had to face anything not in not in my lifetime and my mother I talked to my mother the other day and and I was you know my mother's response to everything is you know how you doing mom well I don't see too good I don't hear too good I don't walk too good but I'm doing pretty good she's really funny and and but she said I remember the polio uh when polio was just taken our country by storm and and how that was and so you know we have faced things like this as you look at the governors coming along and you've been there that position you've been in a pulpit you've been at a podium what are your thoughts as the country is coalescing around this concept now the way we're living is being changed and and we're taking a two trillion dollar stimulus and and all these kinds of things what are your thoughts on that peter I think it's important that uh public officials whether they're mayors governors presidents uh it's important that they provide people with honest answers that they give them a transparent reality check of what's going on and they explain people can handle even bad news but they have to be told the truth and that's the first thing the second thing is they also must play the role of consoler in chief they can't just come out in a sterile uh political way and say okay here's what's going on here are the new rules you're going to have to live by and we're going to enforce them and it's going to be tough on you and walk away you have to do uh that other very important part and that's uh you know bring some carrot with the stick and remind people this is a resilient and a resourceful country those two words to me define america we've always been resilient we got through a revolutionary war we got through several other attempts to destroy us in the early days of our country we survived a civil war that most nations never would have survived we survived world war one a great depression world war two uh we dealt with uh the cold war we dealt with 9 11 we've seen things that shook us to our roots the assassination of a president when i was a child i remember so vividly when jfk was assassinated all of these things wound us they hurt but what we need are leaders that step forward and say we are hurting there are problems we're working on them here's what we're doing to deal with them but we're our people who are resilient we bounce back because that's what happens when you have liberty and we're resourceful when we face a crisis we don't give up we get right to the laboratory and we start figuring out uh how to bring a fix to it so in the in world war ii detroit became the arsenal of democracy as it was called and they retooled the auto plants uh to build the war mechanism that gave us the capacity to literally save the world why because we were resilient and resourceful so when i hear people act like this the end of the world no it isn't the end of the world happens when god says it does until then it's our job to be faithful doing what he's left us here to do until he comes and and i want to just share a personal word because i know there are people they don't know my story they may think well yeah easy for you you have an easy life uh you know you're not faced with crises when my wife and i were married in our first year she was diagnosed with cancer of the spine and we've been married it'll be 46 years the end of may but our first year of marriage was faced with the prospects that she wouldn't live and the first report the doctors gave us was that her tumor was inoperable and uh it probably just wasn't going to be able to be restored only thing we could hope for was a peaceful ending then they came back and said we make and get to the tumor but as it is inside the canal of her spine if we can get to it uh she will most likely be paralyzed from the waist down because we'll have to sever her spinal cord because we'll have to get her to separate her cord from the tumor that was the best news that we were even given so here we are a couple of scared kids 20 years old and this is what we're facing um the surgery turned out to be more successful than they thought she had to go through radiation learn to walk again there were a lot of tough tough months of of rebuilding our lives but from that came a frame so that when later we would face crises it was always okay this is pretty bad but compared to some other things just like what you and gracie have been through it gives you perspective and you're able to say we faced it before we'll face it again god is our strength and we remain faithful to him governor those are just beautiful words these are words that mean something to people that face things on a daily basis like gracie and i do you you have been such an encouragement to me i i enjoy every time you come on i watch you and and you you are you're america's grandfather i'm sorry you just are as long as you don't call me america's great-grandfather we're in good shape we won't do that you know i told shannon bream the other night on fox i said you know we our scared hands are being held by his scarred hands and uh you you have you have really been a source of encouragement so thank you for coming on and thank you for giving these words this is this is such a treat for me governor mike huckabee this is peter rosenberger this is hope for the caregiver hopeforthecaregiver.com don't go away we'll be right back have you ever quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with hope for more than a dozen years we've been working with the government of gana 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