Are you "sowing in tears?" This this episode is for you!

Live on American Family Radio, this is Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger and this is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver. For those of you who are putting yourself between a vulnerable loved one and even worse issues and challenges. How are you holding up?

How are you doing? Maybe it's autism. Maybe it's Alzheimer's.

Maybe it's addiction. Whatever's going on with you and your loved one, you as a caregiver are an at risk individual. And this show is specifically designed for you to help you stay strong and healthy as you care for those who are not. And if you want to be a part of the show, the number is 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. And we'd love to have you be a part of the show. Why do a show for caregivers? I mean, think about it. I mean, isn't it more important to take care of the person who is in the hospital, who is struggling, who is suffering and all those kinds of things? Well, what happens to them if you go down as a caregiver?

Take a moment on that one. What happens to them? And what does help look like to you as a caregiver? Do you know what that looks like? Do you know how to receive that help? These are all things that we struggle with as caregivers. I've been a caregiver now for more than 33 years and been dealing with harsh realities.

All right. So what happens to my wife if I'm not in a good place? And I've many times been in not a good place. Financially, emotionally, spiritually, physically, professionally, all of those things. And that's why we do the show and we'd love to have you be a part of it.

888-589-8840. I want to start off with the scripture. I saw this this morning and I thought it may be encouraging for those of you right now. We're coming out of Thanksgiving. It's been a little bit of a frantic time with holidays.

It always is. And now we're getting ready to go into the Christmas season and it gets even sometimes more crazy for us as caregivers because we're trying to make it special for everyone else. But we get lost in the shuffle. There are a lot of nostalgic feelings that come over us and nostalgia is not everything it used to be.

Y'all can write that down. But we try to somehow recreate because we're under such pressure because oh my goodness, this is the last one or mama wants this or whatever. There's all kinds of pressures we put on ourselves that we don't need to, but we do. And as we go into this, there's a lot of private tears that we as caregivers will experience and endure and struggle with.

And how many of you all have had a late night conversation with the ceiling fan, for example? I mean, you know, we get that way as caregivers and in those lonely places and we wonder if anybody sees. Do you wonder that? Do you wonder if anybody sees what you're dealing with, what you're going through, the sadness that you're feeling? Well, more than anyone else, God sees it.

God knows it. And so I want to read this scripture. Psalm 126, five through six. Those who sow, S-O-W, sow, not sow. I have friends of mine who knit and sew and do all those things S-E-W, but those who sow S-O-W in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. Now, what does that mean to you as a caregiver this morning? I mean, let's unpack that a little bit.

What does that mean? Do you go out with seeds for sowing, weeping tears? I bet you do because that's what you're doing as you care for somebody who is struggling or is dealing with whatever. You're working through tears as you minister to someone else.

You really are. And those tears are not for naught. Those tears are not wasted. He goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing.

You're sowing ministry and love and care into someone who not only can't reciprocate at times, but sometimes will make it even harder or even be abusive to you. You're doing that. And scripture says that when you go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, you'll come home with shouts of joy, bringing the harvest, your sheaves with you. I'm not going to sing bringing in the sheaves.

How many of you all remember that old song? Most people do it from watching Andy Griffith shows. But the principle is this, is that you think that this is just one step away from purgatory that you're in sometimes as a caregiver. You're back and forth to hospitals, you're back and forth to rehab centers, back and forth to doctors, you're back and forth to that back bedroom and you're changing adult diapers or you're dealing with the child that is acting out with or going through multiple seizures, or you've got an addict that's in your life or an alcoholic that somebody is, they're just off the charts causing you stuff. And you are weeping just uncontrollably at times and you think nobody's noticing, but scripture says, no, no, no, no, no. You're pouring into this. You are sowing into someone's life. Don't, don't beat yourself up for how miserable you think you may be doing it. You keep showing up to doing it.

You keep going out to the field to do it. And scripture says, here's, here's the principle. Here's the life principle from scripture. There's so many things in scripture talk about life as related to agriculture because that's when this stuff was written.

It was, it was an agricultural society and, but there's God's gardening tips as a professor of mine used to call them are this way. When you're sowing in tears, but you're still sowing, you're still doing it. Watch what God can do and hang onto that promise that no, I promise you it does not always feel that way. In fact, it rarely feels that way, but you can't go by that. You can anchor yourself in scripture so that you know that this is not just haphazard. This is what anchors me.

I can't tell you how many times I've just weirdly hung my head and, and cried hot tears and wondered if anybody even noticed. You know, I know that, you know, I can't count how many people have asked about my wife over the years and well, they should, she's an extraordinary individual and I got a special treat for you. I want to play one of her songs from her new record in the next segment. So you don't want to miss that. This is, this is brand new.

Nobody's ever heard this on the air, but they've asked about her for all these years. And it's almost like I didn't even exist because I didn't look like I was struggling. There was this assumption that I was handling this okay. And I wasn't, and I don't. That's why I do this show.

I don't think as caregivers, we need a lot of instruction. And you know, if you'll notice, I don't give a lot of advice on this show. What am I going to tell you? You you're in the middle of it. You know, what's going on in your situation.

I don't think we need a lot of instruction, but I do think we need a lot of reminders and we need to be reminded of not only the goodness of God, but his principles as well, that we can trust those things when it gets so bleak. And when you're smiling on the outside and just an anguish on the inside. How about you today?

Is that where you are? How's your heart space? What's going on with you? You're why I do the show.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers, but we're not going to do this in a vacuum. We're not going to do this by ourselves. We've got to pull together and do this with someone else helping us and pointing us to safety, pointing us to Christ, pointing us to these promises. 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840.

This is Hope for the Kicker. I am Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show for caregivers about caregivers hosted by caregiver. This is Hope for the Caregiver and I am Peter Rosenberger. I am your host and I am glad to have you with us.

888-589-8840, 888-589-8840. How are you holding up? How are you doing? We speak fluent caregiver here. So we'd love to hear from you.

Hope for the caregivers, that conviction that we as caregivers, as people who volunteer to care for a chronically impaired loved one, we as caregivers can live a calmer, healthier, and dare I say it, an even more joyful life. We can do this. Scripture tells us we can, and we anchor everything in our lives on scripture here on this show.

That's what this show, that's what separates this show. We're not here to give you platitudes. We're not here to tell you just take care of yourself and get a good night's rest and eat something healthy. We're not here for all that nonsense.

That's just dribble. And I'm not here to give you a lot of practical things of stuff. I mean I'm not going to tell you how to navigate the health and welfare system of Oregon. I don't know.

I don't live in Oregon. I don't know these things. I know some things. I know how to deal with doctors. I know how to deal with insurance companies.

I've dealt with this all since Reagan was president. But that's not really the purpose of this. Because that's not going to address the matters of the heart. And when I set out to do this show, I set out specifically to go after the matters of the heart and speak to that with the authority of scripture, with the conviction of knowing that God is moving in this thing in ways that we cannot even understand or see.

But we can trust Him. Because I knew that if I had a caregiver that was in a good heart space, then they were better equipped and they had a fighting chance to deal with all the craziness that comes at us. This is my life. This is my journey. And I'm the crash test dummy of caregivers.

If you could fail at it, I failed at it. But you don't have to. You don't have to make all the mistakes that I've made. And we can learn from them together.

And then reinforce them. It's not like I get this one and done and then I've got this. I'm good. Now I'm an expert caregiver. No. Gracie will tell you every day that there's ample room for improvement. And I don't need Gracie to tell me that. I know in my own heart there is.

And that's why I have to be reminded of these things. Speaking of Gracie, I've got a treat for you. And I want to play a song.

I want to interview you. This is brand new. For those of you who are just watching, tuning into the show or watching on Facebook live or whatever, at Hope for the Caregiver, my wife Gracie is a no kidding singer. And this is a scripture that we're all familiar with. And it was, this is a song written by Martha Menezes. And Gracie recorded this for her new record. It's called Resilient is the name of her record. And Gracie's had 80 surgeries, both legs amputated.

A hundred doctors have treated her in 12 hospitals over 36 years, $11 million. She lives with relentless pain, but she is resilient. And so Mark, if you can go ahead and play this, this is, I know the plans I have for you. The plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope. I know, I have for you. I know just what you're going through. So when you can't see what tomorrow holds and the last day is through, remember, I know the plans I have for you. Oh, thank you Jesus.

Thank you. He knows the plans he has for you. Oh yes, he does. He knows just what we're going through. When you can't see what tomorrow holds and the last day is through, remember, he knows the plans he has for you. Oh, plans to give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through.

He'll give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through. Remember, he knows the plans he has for you. Oh, he knows the plans he has for you.

Oh yes, he does. He knows just what you're going through. So when you can't see what tomorrow holds and the last day is through, remember, he knows the plans he has for you. Oh, plans to give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through. He'll give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through. He'll give you hope for tomorrow, joy for your sorrow, strength for everything you go through. Remember, he knows the plans He has for you Oh, yes He does, He knows The plans He has for you Oh, thank you Father, you know Oh, I rest in your love Father, you know That is my wife Gracie and that is, that's why I married her Because not only can she sing like that, she wants to sing those songs She wants to proclaim that, that He does know And that's from her new CD, it's called Resilient If you want to get a copy of that CD, go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com It's right there on the front page And you can see how to do all that It's an extraordinary recording that she's done of songs It's amazing and I love listening to that voice I've heard that voice now for a lifetime But that's the message for you as a caregiver He'll give you hope for tomorrow Joy for your sorrow When you can't see what tomorrow holds And yesterday is through He knows the plans He has for you Can you rest in that, can you hang on to that While you're dealing with what you're dealing with While your child with special needs Is struggling While you've got that son or that daughter Who just continues to spiral with addiction While you watch your parents, parent or parents Deteriate Their bodies deteriorate And their minds deteriorate Can you hang on to that That you have a savior that is acquainted with all of this Understands it And bore the penalty for every bit of all the things That are wrong with this world And He's working them out in a way that you cannot imagine And it's hard to wrap our mind around that But I go back to the scripture we had at the beginning of the show Those who sow in tears Shall reap with shouts of joy He who goes out weeping Bearing the seed for sowing Let me put that in context for you as a caregiver When you show up every single day To care for someone who is vulnerable Who is at risk Who is struggling Who has some type of affliction You're going out there Bearing the seed for sowing You're ministering into their life You are extending ministry and grace And help and care and love That is your seed that you're sowing And you're often doing it while you're weeping Did you know that? You're doing it while you're weeping And if you say, well I don't weep while I do this Give it time You will Sometimes you'll gnash your teeth But scripture says very clearly You're going to come home with shouts of joy Bringing your sheaves with you Bringing the harvest with you And we can't even imagine what that harvest looks like We don't know how in God's economy this is going to be restored to us But He says that it will And we can trust Him How do we know we can trust Him?

How do we know? Because He stretched out His arms and gave His life for us on the cross See, this is where the cross stands and looms beyond anything we can imagine This is where we have the opportunity to wrench our will into something that is greater than we can possibly imagine I think we've gotten so familiar with things We've heard the word so many times That it almost becomes passé to us But it's not I had a caller call in the show one time and he said Yeah, no, I've accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior And he kind of repeated all the words and I stopped him I said, have you considered the fact that he's accepted you? And that was a conversation changer Have you considered the fact that Christ has accepted you? This is Hope for the Caregiver This is Peter Roseburger 888-589-8840 888-589-8840 We'll be right back Welcome back to the show for caregivers This is Hope for the Caregiver I am Peter Roseburger This is the nation's number one show for the family Caregiver 888-589-8840 888-589-8840 We've been having a little bit of a problem with our phone I'm going to try something here, Mark Good morning, can you hear me okay? Are you talking to me, Peter? I am indeed Oh, well, let me set the radio off Our call screener's been having a little bit of a problem with his software there So I'm just going to go straight to it And tell me your name, where you're calling from, and how you doing? Well, I'm Donnie from New Mexico And I called to apologize to you Because I was unfair in my criticism of you the first time I called you Because I said that all you do is tell people to go to church or go to a support group And that was really harsh and unfair And I hope you accept my apology I do, it was harsh and unfair But I figured you were having a bad morning And I do accept it, Donnie And that's very kind of you to say that How are you feeling today?

Yeah That's not a fair question Well, it is a fair question You were miserable last time I talked to you Are you still miserable? Everything is always the same with me So hardly anything ever varies You know, let me stop you there No, it's not the same Because today you're calling back to recognize that you crossed a line That you really went too far And so obviously something's different from you today than it was before So yeah, there's something different going on What do you think that is? Oh, I was just, I got to hear the rebroadcast of the show And I got to hear myself And I could hear how negative I sounded And so I thought, well geez, I owe that man an apology So that's the only thing Well, you know what? That's the wonderful thing about our journeys Like if we ever get a chance to look in the mirror If we ever get a chance to hear ourselves We could hear those things And then that's the Holy Spirit just really pinching us Saying hey, you see what that, there's an old saying in Nashville That the tape don't lie The tape don't lie When you go back, a lot of people think they were playing really good on a set When they were doing a particular event or something And they have to go back and listen to the recording Like oh, that's bad That's really bad And the tape don't lie But that's okay, that's a good reminder But Donnie, I got to take a bunch of calls Because Mark can't speak to the callers when they call in So they just go straight to the board But I want you to know how much I appreciate your call today And thank you for that, okay? Alright, let's see, good morning, this is Peter Mark can't screen the calls today So just tell me your name and where you're from and how you feeling? This is Phil Tipton, I've spoken to you before Hey Phil And I thank you so much for your show and the hope I'm in Spring, Texas Sitting out in front of work Giving you a call I'm the guy that takes care of Miss Jessie And her son Danny Who works two, sometimes two and a half jobs He had the pleasure of spending the night with her last night She's been in the hospital since before Thanksgiving And she's been having a really hard time of it She has been declared cancer free for the fourth time However, it has taken her, taken so much out of her She's two years younger than me She looks like she's a hundred and something Alright now Phil, Phil, I'm going to stop you My first question is always, how are you feeling?

I don't need the whole treatment of cancer for this lady I'm sure all that's important and I want to hear about that at another time But this show is hope for the caregiver How are you feeling? I'm feeling guilty this morning What are you feeling guilty about? Well I have my own issues, health issues and what have you People are praying for me And they're praying for me and what I do for other people But you're not feeling guilty about that So what are you feeling guilty about?

How do I be perfect because He's perfect? How do I become always because He's holy? Wait a minute, let me back up One of the things that I'd like to do on this show Is I really try to get people out of talking God talk Because we can speak fluent Christianese at times And we get all wrapped up in God talk Now you're not feeling guilty about not being holy And being perfect like that There's something driving that a little bit deeper What do you say? My personal sin is getting to me Things that I just don't seem to be able to stop sometimes And it just goes out Part of it is the meds that I'm on It drives me to extremes Well what happens is You've got meds, you've got pain, you've got affliction All that stuff but there's sin in there somewhere And what happens is we are broken sinful people And the whole point of this thing is you're not going to be perfect And you're not going to be holy on your own You can't squint your eyes hard, real tight And make yourself better or nicer or less sinful or whatever It's one of those things where you retrain your brain Be not conformed to this world But be transformed by the renewing of your mind Well what does that even look like? And again I don't really like to talk God talk here Because that's what happens sometimes when we get around as Christians We want to impress ourselves with how well we can opine on scriptural things But the bottom line is we're wretched broken sinners But we have a savior And it's not how lurid the tale, it's how great the savior And so when you think on the things of God And we're all like this Phil You're not dealing with anything that anybody else isn't dealing with We're all like this When we turn our eyes You know that old hymn, turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in his wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of See this is what happens with us And we get so wrapped up in the things of this earth And we're so bent on this Whether it's the lust of our hearts Whether it's the abusive tone we take with other people Whether it's the demandingness Whether it's the ugliness, the miserableness All these kinds of things that come out in us And there's nothing like dealing with suffering for a lengthy period of time Whether it's you or someone else To expose the gunk that's in your soul And every time you see it, it's like that caller we just had with Donnie He went back and listened to the rebroadcast And heard how miserable he sounded And how negative he sounded So he wanted to call and apologize And that is wonderful Well, but the thing is We all get a chance to listen to the rebroadcast If we'll pay attention That's what the Holy Spirit does He plays the tape back And says, you know, hey, did you see this? And we gotta have people in our lives Who are willing to push the button And say, hey, I'm gonna play the tape back You know, this is what marriage can be like I think it's designed to Because Gracie and I both can play the tape back for each other Hey, you know, when you said this, this was very, very hurtful This was very cutting to me And we play the tape back for each other And then as believers, that's what we do But when we sit there, we get all My father calls it And he's not listening this morning Because he's over making sandwiches at his church I talked to him briefly this morning I'm trying to think of my father making sandwiches this morning Because I don't remember him making a whole lot I guess everybody likes bologna and white bread And peanut butter and jelly Because that's about the only sandwich he knows how to make But he used to always He calls it navel gazing And we're just sitting there looking at our belly buttons And we're so wrapped up on the minutia That we can't see the big picture And the big picture is Phil, let me let you in on a little secret You're a wretched sinner But you have a great savior But you have a great savior Yes And as long as you keep focusing on your wretchedness Which, I understand that, I get that the same way Try, every time you do that, focus on how great a savior you have It's not that your sin doesn't matter And if you've got things in your life you need to deal with You need to deal with them Okay If we confess our sins to one another He is faithful and just to forgive them And cleanse us of all our unrighteousness But the point is that sometimes we want to self-flagellate I just like to use a word from the big board column of words right there Self-flagellate We want to just beat the crap out of ourselves over stuff But we stop at that part And we need to understand that all of that was All of that was inflicted on the body of Christ And we rest in that and understand that he who began a good work in you Phil Is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus And that's how you retrain your mind And it's not easy but you can't do it in a vacuum And you can't simply do it while you And you can't speak that whole christianese and god talk You got to just get real earthy and down with it You just got to say look you know what I am what I am, don't blame it on your drugs Don't blame it on this, don't blame it on stuff Just blame it on you But then understand where that blame went And if you're in a courtroom and they ask you how you plead Well how do you plead?

I plead guilty and go straight to execution And go straight to execution You got to remember that part, go straight to execution Because Christ was executed on your behalf You're guilty and he was executed And every time you do that it's retraining your brain to understand Oh wait a minute Look at this great savior That doesn't give you license to go out and do it anymore It just, it anchors you back in reality Are you tracking with me on that? Yeah I am It's Galatians 3, 20 Speaking of Well go back and look at the other part of Galatians Where it says I have been crucified with Christ And I no longer live, the life I live in this body I live by faith in the son of God So every time you are plagued with this You say you know I feel guilty about, I can't be holy like he said When I was in Bible college on Fridays we used to have testimony chapel And we used to start calling them bragimony chapel Or testophony chapel Because so many people got up and they wanted just to say Oh y'all pray for me I'm having a real problem with pride That's just goofy man You want to get away from that and just start saying You know what? Let me tell you What that cross means to me Let me talk about Christ, not about me That's where we go as caregivers That's where we go as believers That's where we go as individuals who are putting our trust in his Perfect In his perfection, in his righteousness Not our own And we yield to that And the life we live in the body we live by faith in the son of God This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver We'll be right back Hey this is Peter Rosenberg Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization Standing with Hope When my wife Gracie gave up both of her legs Following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager And she tried to save them for years and it just wouldn't work out And finally she relinquished them and thought wow this is it I mean I don't have any legs anymore What can God do with that? And then she had this vision for using prosthetic limbs As a means of sharing the gospel To put legs on her fellow amputees And that's what we've been doing now since 2005 With Standing with Hope we work in the West African country of Ghana And you can be a part of that through supplies, through supporting team members Through supporting the work that we're doing over there You can designate a limb There's all kinds of ways that you can be a part of giving the gift that keeps on walking At standingwithhope.com Would you take a moment and go out to standingwithhope.com And see how you can give They go walking and leaping and praising God You can be a part of that at standingwithhope.com Welcome back to the show for caregivers about caregivers Hosted by a caregiver I am Peter Rosenberger This is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver We're glad you're a part of it 888-589-8840 888-589-8840 If you want to be a part of the show We're having a little bit of call screener problems So what I do is I just go straight into the call cold Because our call screener can't answer it I'm sorry for that if you're in trouble But don't worry about it We'll just make do But it's I love that song by the way with Russ That's one of my favorite songs with the Imperials Is I'm Forgiven and Russ Taft singing that And you can hear Gracie and Russ singing their duet On Gracie's new record Resilient Go to hopeforthecaregiver.com and you'll hear it Alright good morning I'm just picking up the phone I have no idea who this is Tell me your name, where you're from And how are you feeling? Hi my name is Mark I'm in Texas Hey Mark And I'm feeling actually pretty good Emotionally And physically I'm having some trouble That's been going on for a while Who are you caring for?

Who are you caring for? My wife has had breast cancer surgery about a year and a half ago And she's been on the hormone blocking drug now And it really puts her out of it She can't do much at all You know maybe 15% she can do And so I'm taking care of three teenagers and her And working a second job trying to manage it How are you holding up? It's beginning to me I would imagine How are you holding up? Well for a few months there early on I was really frustrated because I didn't understand That it was really as bad as it was And then just in the last two months God really has kind of done this I don't talk like this usually But he did a real miracle in my life To first of all understand how bad the situation was And then give me energy and motivation To step up and take care of things And I almost feel like what I'm experiencing Is kind of like what was that thing Paul had this thing in the flesh right That was there to remind him of his weakness And God's power But even though I suspect that maybe what's going on I still kind of am trying to see Maybe I should look into my physical health Well I think let's just stop right there Yeah you should look into your physical health When's the last time you saw your doctor? Well several times over the last couple of weeks I went to the emergency room a few days back And I have these things where I just kind of lose The ability to focus and not just focus and concentrate But to actually function It ends up being kind of physical But mainly in my mental functioning Brain fog What did they say at the emergency room?

They couldn't find anything Okay Have you been to a mental health counselor of any kind? Not recently My doctor asked I went to my general practitioner after the ER And he said Could this be emotional or depression or something? No I feel better now than I have in years Decades really Emotionally But to have this physical thing or whatever it is going on I don't know if exhausting can exhibit this way All of the above What was your blood pressure?

My blood pressure is always low It was slightly higher than it is normally for me But it was still low But it was still low in the ER 121 over 80 Which you know I like this very top of normal Do you drink a lot of water? I've been drinking tons of water In fact yeah I've been drinking tons of water For maybe 6 or 8 months I mean plenty of water The stress of what you're dealing with Will have adverse effects I mean let's just get right to that It will You're under an enormous amount of stress Alright? Yeah It's hard sometimes to recognize that but it's true Well going to the And you give it the respect it deserves Going to the emergency room When it gets to be crisis level is You know that's appropriate when you're in a crisis But let's go out and get out in front of this thing And why don't you go ahead and get a referral From your primary care physician To go and see a mental health counselor And see what's going on And not wait around for this Let's get out in front of this A licensed mental health counselor Don't go see a life coach or anything like that And I don't want to get a bunch of calls from life coaches Okay? That's not what this is about Is to disparage the life coach industry But we're not dealing with life coach issues We're dealing with physiological issues Significant emotional issues And you need a trained mental health professional That could be a licensed clinical social worker That could be a health counselor That could be a psychologist or psychiatrist But it's somebody who has had formal training in this I think you would benefit greatly from it And it may be something where you may Who knows?

Who knows what it is? I'm not going to speculate what it is But obviously it's enough to drive you to the emergency room And when you go to the emergency room for something You don't need to go see a motivational speaker Alright? You need to see somebody who is trained on dealing with stuff And then start on that What about physically? Are you active? Are you walking? Are you doing any kind of exercise?

Are you doing something? I've added the exercises In fact that was part of what I think helped me really get moving About 3 or 4 months ago I started exercising quite a lot more than usual Well for me I did martial arts And I'm a second degree black belt You've heard of Shogun? Uh huh Well I'm Shonuff No I'm just kidding But I did that and Now I've moved out to Montana where I'm a long ways away from a DoShan So I can't get to it so I'm I'm having to retool some things with me And today you'll be happy to know I don't know if you'll be happy to know that but I am I'm firing up my snowmobile I'm in Southwest Montana And I'm firing up my snowmobile and I'm going to be Doing things for me physically just get out there in the forest And start sledding around and doing things active Because I think we have to do that we've got to bleed off that stress And you've got to respect the stress that you're carrying Okay? And the way you bleed that off is several things One of them is you change your lifestyle to accommodate that That could be food and rest and water and all that stuff Get rid of sugary drinks and things like that The second thing is you've got to do some kind of physical activity You've got to do some walk get out and go for a walk Do something And then the third thing is you need to regularly check in with trained medical people Whether it's emotional and mental health people Whether it's emotional or physical You've got to do those things because the stress that's on you What you're dealing with with your wife and raising three teenagers and working two jobs Dude your body can't handle that your heart can't handle that without help One of the landmines in my book 7 Caregiver Landmines Is thinking that it's all up to you Is that what you think? Sometimes? Yeah I don't see much And the other one of the landmines is failing to see to your own physical health So 72% of us as caregivers don't see our own doctors regularly And as guys as one caregiving husband to another I will tell you that we have this terrible proclivity To somehow just try to white-knuckle ourselves through this We're gonna just cowboy up we're gonna do this we're gonna we're gonna wrestle this steer to the ground here And it doesn't work that way And one of the things I learned in martial arts From the very get-go Is that we can't muscle these techniques We can't force it we have to learn the technique And let the technique do the work for us But as guys sometimes we try to muscle them up And we're gonna use our size and our muscles and our strength And our physical abilities to overpower And it's not that way in martial arts At least not in the art I'm doing Is that we use the technique to do it And if I have to get to the point where I'm working up a sweat I've done it wrong Well as a caregiver That's the way we approach things as a caregiver We tend to muscle up and basically what's happening is And I'm gonna just take just a stab at this You're basically paddling upstream in white water Turn the boat around And go the other way it's a lot easier You know just turn the boat around And let's go the other way And let's focus on you not trying to just muscle your way through this But let's get some real help for you So you can get back to a place of safety And real help for you is going to most likely It's going to be you sitting down with trained mental health and medical people And laying out just how much stress you're under And then start developing a plan And it may just come in inches I mean you may not be doing this you know by major increments If you didn't get here overnight you're not gonna get out of it overnight But you can take significant steps towards you being a healthier person Not happier The goal is not for us to be happy Alright now that may surprise a lot of people We can have joy but he said the joy of the Lord is our strength Not the happiness of the Lord is our strength Yeah I understand that I've learned that recently We're not here to be happy happy happy all the time time time My wife doesn't have any legs and she's in pain all the time And this has been going on since Reagan's first term We're not gonna feel better about these things We're not gonna be happy about those things But we can have joy in these things We can be healthier in these things And the goal is for us to be healthier Healthier caregivers make better caregivers Your wife needs you healthy Your kids need you healthy And in the process you may be surprised by episodes of happiness But they need you healthy And I would suggest to you from your call today that you don't feel very healthy today do you? No not at one level On multiple levels Yeah But that's okay alright Now we got a starting point So you got some action steps ahead of you this week Alright you got some calls that you can make this week Okay Make the calls Start that path to healthiness And thanks for making the call today This is a big step for you to call a show like this On Saturday mornings you're calling a radio show for family caregivers You pick up a phone it feels like it's a hundred pounds I get it But you did a great thing and I'm very proud of you for doing this And I'm very grateful that you trusted me with your journey This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver Hopeforthecaregiver.com Healthy caregivers make better caregivers I mean it's just that simple By the way if you want to get that CD of Gracie's with you know it's resilient It's at Hopeforthecaregiver.com See you next week