The Obligation Trap for Family Caregivers.

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver on American Family Radio. This is the nation's number one show for family caregivers, for those who put themselves voluntarily every day between somebody who has an impairment and even worse disaster. How do you help those people? Why should you help those people? What does it look like to help those people? That's what this show is about. I'm Peter Rosenberger.

I'm your host, and we are glad that you're here. Maybe you're taking care of someone. Maybe you are a parent of a special needs child, child with autism or Down syndrome or spina bifida or cerebral palsy or a host of other things.

Maybe your spouse is having some issues that you're having to deal with. Maybe your parents are aging or dealing with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Or other types of afflictions. Maybe you got somebody in your family who's an alcoholic or an addict.

You know, that's a chronic impairment. And where you have a chronic impairment, you got a caregiver. And how do you help a caregiver? Why do you help a caregiver?

What does it look like to help a caregiver? We speak fluent caregiver here. And we understand that there are 65 million people right now doing this.

Actually, I think the number is even higher. And they are in every part of our society. And yet they go often overlooked. And their needs are not being addressed. You can't fix the problem. And a lot of times caregivers will think this.

I know, I've thought this. If we can just get to such and such, then it'll be okay. If we can just stop this, then it'll be okay. And we can get back to normal. And I'm here to tell you that no, it doesn't work that way. And even if your loved one passes away, you're going to deal with the reality of your journey as a caregiver for a long time.

Maybe a lifetime. Because it shapes you. It changes you. It brings things out in your life that you may not want to see.

That we've got to deal with. And this show, there are 168 hours in the week. But this is the one hour that you can hear this show on American Family Radio. If you want to be a part of the show, it's 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. And we'd love to have you on the show. Last week I talked about fear. And that's a big issue for caregivers. Part of a series I'm doing called The Fog of Caregivers.

F-O-G. The Fog of Caregivers. And The Fog of Caregivers is fear, obligation, and guilt. And when we get into those things, we get so disoriented. And it starts affecting every part of our life.

And so we want to kind of help detangle that. And what do you do when you see a fog? And you're driving out in the fog. What's the first thing you do? Well, you slow down.

That's the whole point of it. You slow down. And so as caregivers, we need to slow down. We're running at 90 miles an hour with our hair on fire, and thinking that if we don't do this, this, this, this, this, this whole thing is going to come unglued.

And it might. But it's going to come unglued no matter what you really do anyway. This is not something that you have control over. And we have to learn to adapt to it.

We have to learn how to just function in it. And not be in a situation where we are feeling like we've got to just race through this. You don't do this in your car. You don't do this in an airplane.

You don't do this in a boat. When you come to a fog, you go slow. Well, a lot of caregivers will hit a fog and they'll just turn on their bright lights and they'll just floor it because we've got to get through this. That's what they think.

That's what I thought. And we end up getting hurt. And we end up hurting those we're taking care of. So last week we talked about fear, which is a big issue for caregivers. And we have things that we deal with that are fear-worthy.

They're legitimate things that we're afraid of. And we can hold a stack of bills. We can see that. That's tangible. We can see the hospital. We can see the behavior. We can see our loved one staring out the window. We can see and experience our special needs child going into multiple seizures. And these are very frightening things. We can't always see the hand of God moving in this. And that's what we need to help each other with, to see perspective, to gain a sense of perspective so that we're not terribly afraid of these things. And we can live calmly knowing that we have a Savior that this makes sense to. My wife's had 80 surgeries, both legs amputated.

And all this is from a car wreck she had back in 83. Somehow in God's economy, this makes sense to Him. Doesn't make sense to me, but it makes sense to Him. And I'm left with the choice of whether or not I'm going to trust Him.

Now, how do we know we can trust Him? Let's look at His scars. I see my wife's scars, but what about His scars? And the scars on His hands, His feet, what do those mean?

What do those mean in the context of what I'm dealing with as a caregiver? And I realize that, you know, her scars are temporary. They are not here for the rest of her life in eternity, just on this planet. But His scars, now that's a whole different thing. How about you?

Where's your headspace on that? And these are the things that we want to talk about and flesh out on this show so that you're in a situation where you are not floundering around in this fog all by yourself. And today we're going to get into obligation. Now, obligation is just a cruel taskmaster. And it has done more to cripple caregivers.

We'll get into this, but I want to start with the scripture verse. Also, if you want to watch the show on Facebook Live, you're welcome to do so. And you can go out to Hope for the Caregiver on Facebook.

I hope you'll take advantage of it and do it. I want to give a big shout out to, Gracie and I have a dear friend, Kim, and she's in Italy watching. And so, Kim, ciao.

That's all the Italian I know. Ciao. Let me give you scripture today. And this is in Genesis 2.15. All right, we're going all the way back to Genesis. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Now, this is before the fall. This is before sin crept into this story. Adam's job was a steward. Adam's job was a steward. He did not own the garden. He was a steward. He was not obligated.

He was a steward. And here's how you can tell if you're struggling with obligation as a caregiver. You use language like, I've got to, I have to, I'm supposed to, I need to, I should have been, I should do this, I should do this.

That's how you know that you are skewed in that direction. And I want to help change the language a little bit and give you a place that you can go to that's a safer place for you in your heart. I can't change your circumstances any more than you can change mine. But what we can do is better equip each other and strengthen each other for this journey so that we're not in a situation where we are putting all this pressure, I've got to, I need to. I was talking with somebody the other day and, you know, she's got a sister who's working with her and her brother's kind of a jerk and they're living with these promises. Well, we promised mama 40 years ago we weren't going to put her in a home. And so they're obligated now by this promise they made 40 years ago, but life has a way of changing. There are some things you just can't care for people in a home with, I mean, in your own personal home, you just can't do it.

You're not really set up for it. And some afflictions will cripple you if you try to do that. But you're beholding to a promise you made 40 years ago when things were not this way. Life changes. And so we have to be good stewards of where we are.

We have to be good stewards of our resources financially, our resources physically, our resources emotionally, the family unit, the whole thing. And we're going to talk about that some more. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow. That's the whole point of the song. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow.

Because He lives, all this is possible. That is my wife Gracie and her dear friend Johnny Erickson-Tada singing that hymn. And you can go out and take a look at more of the music we have. She's got a CD that's going to come out I think next month.

If her producer can get everything done in time, that would be me. So we're releasing songs as singles on it, then we'll have the CD. And if you want to find out more about that, go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. And you can sign up for E-list. We'll be telling people about that when it'll be available, how to get it. And there's some things you can listen to right now out at Hopeforthecaregiver.com. And if you like what you're hearing on this show, if you feel like this show has value, support it. It's right there.

You just click on it and there's a thing right there at Hopeforthecaregiver.com. And take a look. We are unique in what we're doing. I mean, how many shows for caregivers are there out there? And this is the nation's largest. And why shouldn't it be?

Why shouldn't the church be out in front of this? What does the world have to offer to a caregiver? I mean, let's just be blunt. We can give practical stuff of dealing with certain realities like, you know, logistics and where you can get your ramp made and how to deal with certain finances and all that kind of stuff. And those are important things. That's my world. I live with that. I live with somebody with significant mobility impairments. You get two artificial legs. But is that really where the battle is for caregivers?

Yeah, I don't think so. And this is 33 years of this talking. The battle for caregivers is the dumpster fire that's in our heart. Because we're not going to make good decisions about a ramp, about healthcare needs, about changing the dressing, about dealing with this or this or whatever if our heart is a wreck. And so what this show does is speak directly to those issues. And then if your heart is in a healthier place, guess what? It's going to extend to the rest of you. In my book, Seven Caregiver Landmines, I go through these things that cause so many caregivers such heartache. We fail to see our own doctors.

We get into excessive weight gain. Look around. You'll see it.

Maybe you're there. We're a lot of caregivers. I just was with someone this week who was pushing a wheelchair with her loved one who was blind and a bilateral amputee, diabetes. And this woman was pushing and she was morbidly obese. I mean dangerously obese. Excessive weight gain is one of those landmines. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. And the whole point of this show is to help direct you to a place of safety. And when we get into that fog of caregivers, fear, obligation, guilt. Fear, obligation, guilt. Fog of caregivers. Just remember, just hang on to that and understand what I'm saying here.

It leads to heartache, anger, and turmoil. Put it all together, it says Fog Hat. And that was a 70s band because I like 70s music. And their number one hit was Slow Ride. So it makes sense to slow down.

And let's slow down together. And we go back to Genesis 2.15. The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. He was a steward. Stewardship. That's not a word we talk about a lot in our society. We're $22 trillion in debt.

Clearly. I mean you look at Washington and this stewardship is not a word you see with Washington or any of our elected officials for that matter. I mean how many balanced budgets are there out there? So we're not really good stewards in our society. We're not good stewards of our resources. But as caregivers, are we good stewards of ourselves? Are you a good steward of yourself? Or are you pushing yourself to the breaking point until this thing gets better or worse and then you can rest after that?

After the funerals when you're going to probably look at taking care of yourself. Is that the way you're thinking? That's the way a lot of people do. I've done that. I've pushed myself to the absolute breaking point. And then all of a sudden it dawned on me that this thing's not going to end anytime soon. For all the things that my wife has been through, and there have been times when we have faced death significantly.

Many times. But she's pretty hardy. I mean girl, I tell her she's tougher than train smoke. And it started to dawn on me that maybe this girl could outlive me. So I got to change the way I think about this. And that obligation cripples us from doing it. And what it does is it leads to resentment.

I mean when you start getting into the obligation world of I've got to, I have to, I must, I should, I need to be doing this. It takes about two seconds to start developing resentment. How many of you all are dealing with resentment right now? I mean resentment.

Not just a feeling of, oh, this is just frustrating weather. I'm talking about just deep-seated resentment of a family member who's not helping, of a parent who died and left you with this mess. At yourself for getting into it.

At God. How many of you all are dealing with that? As a caregiver, I can promise you, you do this long enough, you're going to deal with resentment. And my goal, my vision, my passion for myself and my fellow caregivers is that when we stand at a grave one day, one day that we're the ones standing at the grave, that we are living in a healthy enough life that we can outlive this. We can't insure it, but we can try to live and be better stewards of our own body so that we can. But when we stand at that grave, that we're not standing there with clenched fists.

At ourselves, at our loved one, at our pastor, at our church, at our family, at friends, cousins, neighbors, or at God. We can learn to live peacefully with this. Do you think you can do that? Scripture says we can.

I'm going to go with that. This is not my opinion. I try to avoid my opinion as much as possible. I don't even care about my opinion. But I really care about God's opinion.

And His opinion is that we can. And if you look through all of Scripture, be still and know, don't be afraid. In translating into southern lingo, y'all simmer down. Settle down. Chill out. Be cool.

I got this. That's what He's saying through Scripture, all of Scripture. But do we trust Him with that? Do we trust Him with that when our loved one is going into a seizure or groaning in so much pain or just looking out the window staring off into space somewhere and drooling?

Or can't remember our name? Do you trust Him with that when you're taking care of somebody and you're wiping their bottom and they're cursing at you and telling you they never even liked you? Or you're taking care of the man that abused you when you were a child? This is where the heart of a caregiver is.

And this is where I believe is the real battle. And if we can speak life into that heart, then all these other things got a fair chance of really going down a healthier path. But if your heart is just a mess, how in the world are you going to make good financial decisions, relationship decisions, health decisions, professional decisions? You get the benefit of a guy that is the crash test dummy of caregivers who's had almost three and a half decades to make every kind of mistake you can make, been there, done that, still doing it, got the T-shirt.

And so I determined, I said, you know what? I'm going to lay it all out there for my fellow caregivers so that they have somebody that can point them to safety. Whatever safety we can find for you at that point. And sometimes you're going to think, well, safety is not for the symptoms to stop doing this. Safety is not for mama to stop acting this way. That's not safety.

That's just reality. Safety is for you to be in a place where you can deal with that from a healthier place, from a healthier point of view, from a healthier heart place. Safety is in the hand of God. Are you in the hand of God?

Do you understand what that means? Do you understand that he is not up there just smacking his forehead thinking, oh, my goodness, what has she done? That is not the way God works. Go through scripture. Don't take my word for it. Look at his word. My pastor tells me this often.

If he's Lord at all, he's Lord of all. Now, why don't you just hang on to that for a moment? See, we're dealing with grown up theology here. We don't deal with all this pablum that you see spread across a lot of places in our culture. You know, people that want to have a cheerleading pep rally for God kind of stuff.

That didn't work so well for us as caregivers. We're the ones that, while everybody else is singing victory in Jesus, we're the ones over there just groaning and saying, how could this be? We'd like to think that we're not, but in reality, we're a lot like when Jesus took his time getting to Lazarus and he died and he shows up there and Mary and Martha met him. They said, you know, if you've been here, why don't you come? Sounds like they're pretty resentful of Jesus. And they didn't get it until Lazarus walked out of the tomb. But at the time, it didn't make any sense to them.

And why would Jesus allow them to go through all that kind of grief? Didn't make much sense. Sometimes it still doesn't make sense. And there's some things that are not going to make sense. And people will, for whatever reason, and church folk have been, I don't know, maybe you're not there.

Been there, done that. But a lot of church folk want to come out and try to tell you why God is doing what he's doing in your life. Give those people a wide berth because they don't know.

They haven't been there. They're just trying to figure it out in their own mind and then they're putting it on you. You have my permission to walk away from them if you need someone's permission. Just as a fellow caregiver say, no, you are not obligated to them any more than you're obligated to this other stuff. It's stewardship. Stewardship is a better word for you as a caregiver. Stewardship is the word for you as a caregiver. Are you being a good steward right now of your own heart?

Can you breathe? 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show for Caregivers About Caregivers hosted by a caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. I am glad you're with us. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. I like that song because I like to ride horses. I was riding on Labor Day. I'm out in Southwest Montana and I got out and Churchill used to say there's something about the outside of a horse that helps the inside of a man. I love that quote. When you're sitting on a horse up in the mountains in Montana, yeah, it does. That's what I do for me as a caregiver. I get outdoors and just catch my breath. It was a gorgeous day. I'm crossing creeks and up in the mountains. Every now and then, as I drove in this morning, I'm doing the show from Madison Valley Baptist Church here in Ennis, Montana, where I also serve as the music director. There's all kind of deer on the way down.

I love the outdoors. There's a chill in the air, so it's about that time of year. I know the rest of you guys in the South where I'm from are sweltering, but I'm having to wear a jacket this morning. It was a little chilly, but that's a little side note for me.

Sorry about that. I'm sorry that you guys are so hot. We'll pay for it in the wintertime out here.

Our winters get a little exciting. All right, 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840. This is Hope for the Caregiver, 168 hours in the week. This hour is yours on American Family Radio. We take the time to be able to unpack what's going on in your heart. We're talking about obligation today, part of what I call the fog of caregivers, fear, obligation, and guilt. Last week, we talked about fear and how it just paralyzes.

Fear has torment. Obligation is a terrible taskmaster, and it'll lead to resentment. I learned about resentment a lot of ways with it. As a pianist, I'm a pianist.

I've been a pianist since I was about five. I learned that you can't play a piano with clenched fist. You just can't do it. You can't push a wheelchair with clenched fist. Try it sometime, not with them in it. Take the wheelchair by yourself somewhere and do it, but try pushing a wheelchair with clenched fist.

Can't do it. In order for me to make beautiful music, I have to loosen my hand and let music flow. I have to let it go so that music can flow out of my hand. What about you? What kind of music is not coming from you? What kind of beauty is not coming from you because your hands are so clenched? What's being stifled in your life because of resentment, because of obligation, because you feel this, I've got to, I have to, I need to, I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I'm supposed to be doing this, as opposed to God has placed me here as a steward.

He owns it. I do not. I do this little test for myself and for fellow caregivers all the time. Look down at your hands.

If you're driving, put them at 10 and 2. You can see them very easy there. Look at your hands. How many here see nail prints? If you don't see nail prints, then this is not yours to fix.

And it's really important for us to remember that as caregivers. I can't undo what happened to my wife. I didn't cause it and I can't undo it. Both legs amputated. I don't have any power over that.

She's in severe pain all the time. I don't have any power of that. You can't undo Alzheimer's. You cannot undo Parkinson's. You can't make somebody stop drinking. You can't make somebody stop putting drugs into their body. You can't undo cerebral palsy or autism. These are things that you cannot undo.

That's not your job. And once we understand what our role is in this, it frees us up so that we're not putting this undue pressure on ourself. This crazy pressure. Somehow we've got to fix all this. Somehow we've got to make all this thing right. Because we can't.

That's not our position to do that. We are stewards. And if you accept the role of steward in your journey as a caregiver, you're going to find that you can live a little more peacefully in this. That you are not somehow putting yourself in this craziness of trying to fix something that you have no power to do. You do the best you can.

Period. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. James in Texas. James, how are you feeling? Hello Peter.

Good morning. How are you feeling James? I'm just feeling very well Peter. Well I'm glad to hear it. What's on your mind? I have two messages for you this morning.

I am now a care receiver. Not very grateful to God for you and for all who hear my voice. We are ungrateful many times. But I am still grateful and I thank you. That's my first message.

Thank you for that James. I appreciate that. What's your second message? My second message is for years my wife and I were caregivers for her parents. My wife's parents. And we prepared our home to receive them into our home.

But found that it would be just too great a task. So our decision was we put them in a nursing home as close as we could. And my wife visited every single day and did their wash. And then that became too heavy for her. So she and her step sister arranged between the two to spell each other off every other day.

And they would take care of being not all day but great stretches of every day in the nursing home with her parents. Tell me what you were doing during that time. Well I was very busy in the ministry.

I was a field director in a church blender here in Dallas. But I visited the home at least once a week and was invited by the director and the personnel to have a service for the residents who wanted to come. How did it change the relationship with you and your wife while she was taking care of her parents? What were you doing to help take care of her during that time?

I would let her. We always spent time together every day. I mean did you have to learn to help with the laundry and cooking and grocery shopping and all that kind of stuff? Well the thing is we didn't have any little children.

We're old okay? And the thing is when we put the parents in the nursing home we were relieved of everything but the laundry. One of the things I talk about is for men to learn to do the laundry while their wives are taking care of their parents. It's a great idea and it's not complicated because I've learned James that men can somehow figure out fantasy football but they can't figure out the cold and the warm and the hot cycle of the laundry. And that the iron is not some kind of magical device.

You can plug it in and it works and you do different settings based on what kind of clothing you're doing and then stocking the pantry and learning how to cook heart healthy meals. These are all part of the journey for us as caregivers, particularly men. And I hear a lot of men that don't have any clue on that stuff so I'm on a mission to help men learn how to do laundry.

It's not that complicated and it's certainly not as complicated as some of the other things that we men choose to do. But I'm glad that you're seeing the value of what we're trying to do with caregivers now that you're in a position where somebody's caring for you. And so that's very meaningful and I'm glad the show is meaningful to you James, I really am. Yes, and I bless the Lord for you Peter. I had the advantage and the blessing of being raised on the mission field of missionary parents who taught me to cook and to wash my clothes and to do all this stuff so I carried that right into Where did your parents serve? In the Belgian Congo. Oh mercy. Well we work over in West Africa with our prosthetic limb ministry that Gracie founded when she wanted to put prosthetic limbs on her fellow amputees and we work over in Ghana.

Good ways away from the Congo. Marvelous. That's marvelous. Well James listen. And you know that's a wonderful thing for us care receivers to be occupied with other people.

Well I think so. And I appreciate your calling on this James and appreciate you just giving a good word on that. You keep listening and thank you very much and you stay healthy. Okay who's taking by the way who's taking care of you as your care receiver who is taking care of you? My son does.

I take care of practically all of my needs but I'm living with my son. Well how's he doing? He's doing great. Well you tell him that I said hello and he's welcome to call in the show anytime he wants. And you are too for that matter.

But we'd love to hear from him and maybe he has some thoughts he'd like to share with other folks as he's doing some of these things but James I appreciate very much you taking the time to call. You behave yourself all right? Have a good day. You too.

Bye bye. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is hope for the caregiver. This is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver and sometimes it can come down as simple as laundry. You know for you men out there particularly pastors if your wife is taking care of her aging parents and they're dying well we're all dying on some level but if they're in bad shape and she's stretched pretty thin. If you need some tips on doing the laundry call me 888-589-8840. If you're going to give me an excuse on why you don't do the laundry go ahead and call me on that one too. We'll be glad to field that call 888-589-8840. We'll be right back.

Hey this is Peter Rosenberger. 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 to 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 caregivers.

This is Keith Green. That's the whole reason we can do this. You put this love in our heart. If you try to do this on your own strength, well good luck with that. Let me know when you get worn out because I'm going to point you back to Christ because that's where this comes from. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me as a caregiver.

You try to do this on your own and we caregivers are high functioning multitaskers or at least we think we are. We can push ourselves pretty fast. We can do a lot of things but it's only a matter of time before we just simply give out of steam. How much carnage are we going to leave in our wake before we realize that we're not equipped for this. We're really not but He is and He will equip us to continue doing it. We are stewards.

We are not obligated. That's the whole point of this conversation we're having today about the fog of caregivers. If you want to know more about this, my book is out there. It's called Hope for the Caregiver. The show is called Hope for the Caregiver. The podcast, the YouTube channel, the Facebook page, it's all Hope for the Caregiver. Which is that conviction that we as caregivers can live a calmer, healthier and even more joyful life while serving as caregivers. We don't have to wait till we're done doing this before we can be calmer and healthier and joyful.

We don't. The book is called Hope for the Caregiver. Get it today. You can get it wherever books are sold.

I've got several other ones too. And go out to standingwithhope.com. You just heard the ad for Gracie that she's doing for the prosthetic limb ministry and it's for this radio show as well for the ministry there. And be a part of it. And get involved in what we're doing. The podcast is free.

The e-letter is free. All these kinds of things. I'm putting it out there but you take advantage of it. And if you see value in what we're doing, support it.

It's a tax deductible gift. Support it. Help us do more. There are a lot of caregivers out there. How many voices like this one on this show? How many shows like this are out there?

None. This is it. I'm the guy. So let's go get some caregivers some real help.

And I want to just also circle back to this thing. Men, women just stop listening for just a minute. Don't listen. Men.

Only men listen right now. Learn to do laundry. Learn to buy groceries. You don't have to come home with a deer over your shoulder to say, hey I've got dinner tonight honey.

And doing dinner is not car side to go or take out. Learn to make a heart healthy meal. Learn how to stock a pantry. Learn how to clean the bathroom. Not by your standards but by your wife's standards.

And if you need to know what her standards are, she'll tell you. But learn how to do this. Clean the toilets. Scrub the showers. Fold the laundry. Put it away. Ask her how she likes it folded. You know women are pretty particular about that sort of thing I've noticed. They like certain things folded in a certain way.

And because we act like we're just bumbling cavemen sometimes, they'll just say, oh we'll just do it ourselves. I fold laundry. I do laundry. I iron. I cook.

I do all these things. And a lot of guys will tell you that they can't do it because they're working another job or doing this. Well I'm working.

So am I. Please, please feel free to call the show and tell me why you can't do these things. Because that's a conversation I would really like to have with you if you've got a really good reason why you cannot clean the toilet. Please. 888-589-8840. 888-589-8840. I will put you to the top of the list. I will hang up on whoever I'm talking to if you could argue for me why you as an able-bodied man while your wife is taking care of her aging parents or your special needs child or whatever and you feel like you somehow can't clean the toilet or do the laundry.

That's a conversation I'd love to have with you. In the meantime, I want to go to I think it's Ketta or Kita. Tell me how to pronounce your name before I go any further. Is it Ketta or Kita? It's Ketta. Ketta. How you doing?

Ketta in North Carolina. Good morning. How are you feeling? I'm fine. How are you? Oh, I'm just lovely. What part of North Carolina are you in?

I'm from like the Raleigh area. So you're not affected by the hurricane at this point? Just a lot of rain?

Just a lot of rain. Alright, well you're okay. Yes, sir. Alright, well tell me what you got on your mind. I just want to say thank you for what I heard you started to share about losing that whole idea that we should be, we have to, we got to as caregivers and just learning that we can't do it on our own. Personally and professionally, I'm basically a caregiver, particularly in regards to my family.

Since my mom passed away, I kind of became kind of like a caregiver of family and give it of myself mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and you know physically and also in my professional life based on what I do clinically. You know, constantly giving, giving, giving. You got to take time to pour back on yourself is what I've had to learn. I've had to learn to say no and learn that in my weaknesses, that's when I get the strength from above and just knowing that I just can't do it on my own.

Well Keita, let me ask you a question. When you say no, what happens? What's the response back when you're telling somebody no? Well, first of all, when I say no, I have to be consistent with myself in that. So my response back to myself is I've had to grow into not feeling guilty about saying no and being authentic with my no. And as far as the response back, I think at first, the people that are used to me always saying yes or always being there for them or coming through to them, they're probably not used to it. But at the same time, they accept it. Do you find there's pushback from them?

At the beginning anyway? I think there's going to be pushback because of the fact that if you're a type of person as a caregiver that's always coming through for everybody and you've been given that role that you're the strong one or you're the one that can come through and make sure everything is okay, I think at first people expect that. But when you start to be consistently authentic with them and just be human about it and remind them of where you get your strengths from, I know where I've gotten my strengths from or that's from above to be able to keep going.

It helps them to know that they're going to have to do the same thing, turn to the same place and source that you have to turn to instead of turning to you all the time for the resource. What I'm hearing from you is that you're training people on how to treat you. Absolutely, because I'm training myself on how to treat me. Keita, you are an absolute jewel because you have modeled and said beautifully everything that I'm wanting people to know as caregivers, that it's okay, that no is a complete sentence. And this is very important for us as caregivers that we've got to train ourselves and then we train others on how to treat us. We don't have to be doormats, do we?

No, we don't. I want to do something for you. Don't you hang up from this call because I'm going to let our producer get your information. Would you allow me to send you one of my books on Hope for the Caregiver, would you allow me to send that to you just as a thank you for such an amazing call this morning? I just love your heart and I love the fact that you are working through these things and I'd love for you to have it.

Would that be alright? Absolutely, and I just want to say I appreciate you and I appreciate your bravery and your courage to have this message because you can only give such a message like this when you've actually walked this road. And blessing to Ms. Gracie with the ministry, the prosthetic ministry, because I tell you that that's a place where we just don't know how much of value and hope we can be with the little things that we do in life.

And it first starts with taking care of ourselves and realizing where our help and our hope comes from. Once again, I'm a resource and I'm learning that my role is a resource, not the source. So that's why I'm saying no these days and being okay with it. Are you in a good church situation?

Absolutely. I definitely draw from that my faith within my ability, I must say. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a licensed addiction specialist. Now you've gone to the top of my favorite list here because I love licensed clinical social workers. I think that you guys are the workhorses out there for the mental health industry.

You are working so hard to do this and that you're an addiction specialist as well. I want you to do one small favor for me. After you're done reading my book, would you give it to your pastor?

Absolutely. And just share with your pastor why this is important because I want to equip pastors on how to speak caregiver. A lot of pastors don't really know.

It's not necessarily their fault, it's just they haven't been exposed or trained to it. And they're tasked with ministering to people that they may not even know how to speak the language to. And you obviously know how to speak the language. And so I want to give you this and then I want you just to put it in his hands. And if you need more, by the way, I'll be glad to send you more.

You just always call in. I want to make sure you have this resource for others because you are doing the work. And I'm telling you, Keetam, what you've said this morning has really touched my heart. It means a lot because you get it and you're doing it. And I'm so grateful to know you. You know, as you we got just one minute left, what would you like to say to fellow caregivers that are listening right now?

I just want to tell the fellow caregivers, you're not alone in this thing. You're not on your own. I know oftentimes it seems that way because people are constantly coming to you. But as they come to you, look up to him. Where all blessings and your source come from, the one thing that I know to be true, there's three things that I can count on. I can count on the love from above. I can count on the grace from above. And I count on the presence from above as Emmanuel, God with us. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That you're not by yourself.

Well, thank you for that, Keetam. We've got to go. Don't hang up. We're going to get your address stuff, OK? Don't hang up. OK. Hey, this is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com for more. We'll see you next week.