Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver.
I am Peter Rosberger and I am now in my 35th year as a caregiver and I'm drawing on a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to my fellow caregivers to help us live a stronger, healthier, calmer, and dare I say it, a more joyful life while serving as a caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you doing? How is Christmas for you? How was this event that happens once a year that seems to cause a lot of extra drama for caregivers?
Are you doing okay? And I hope that you were able to embrace the season and the understanding of what God has done in bringing forth this child. You know, he said way back in Genesis that this was going to happen and against all odds, against everything that Satan and this world threw at God, he brought forth his son there in Bethlehem to deliver us from our sins. And if you go back in Scripture, there's three times when God named a baby for the parents, for the mother and the father. Of course, we know when he told Zacharias that his son would be named John, in the Hebrew it's Jochenon, I think, I can't pronounce it well, don't hold that against me, even though my name is Rosenberger, and that means that God is gracious. He told Mary, he's going to name him Jesus, which is Yeshua, Yahshua, God delivers. But there's one more time, and it surprised me to learn this, but it was back with Hagar, and he told her that her child would be named Ishmael, and that means that God hears.
Three times that God named a child. God hears, God is gracious, and God delivers. That'll preach, won't it?
That'll preach to us as caregivers. I have a very special guest on, for regular listeners of this network, you know Abraham Hamilton III, who I just love to listen to, and I love his passion and zeal. He introduced me to a long-time friend of his, he said, you need to talk to her. And I agreed, because when I found out her story and found out a little bit more about her, I thought, yes I do, and I want to have her on the show, and I think that she is going to be a perfect individual for you to get to know, and hear her story, hear her passion, hear her heart for the Lord, and what she's doing, her journey, how she's learned to trust God with some tough things. And her name is Rhianna Sanford, and Rhianna's with us right now.
Rhianna, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you so much for having me, Peter. Well now, you're a lot more perkier this morning, but I'm still slugging down my coffee, but I'm an hour behind you, so. I'm going to say, I am on the East Coast, I get a little bit of, yeah, I have a little bit more time to wake up over here. Well, I'm in the Pacific Northwest, but I am drinking my very strong coffee from my Babylon beet mug that they sent me.
Fake news you can trust, that's their motto. But Rhianna, I am so glad to have you here, and I'm glad to get to know you a little bit more, and spend some time hearing your insights. I want to give you as much time today in this special after Christmas show to just talk about your life, your journey, trusting God, and what it is that you want to deposit into the lives of others that you have gleaned from the foot of the Savior, and the foot of the cross. And so, tell us a little bit about your background and your story, and then we'll get into all the other things, and then we'll just, when you hear the music going, we'll go to a break, we'll come back, and we'll just continue on. We're just going to have a, so everybody grab a cup of coffee, unless you're like Rhianna, that you're already wide awake and going, but grab a cup of coffee and enjoy just listening to this woman of God share her story. Well, thank you again for just allowing me and asking me to share. I know this show is a prized possession of yours, and I just feel so privileged to be able to be on here to share with your listeners.
I am a mom of three, three teenagers, in fact, ages 17, 15, and 14. So I'm in the thick of it, if you want to say, quite the different kind of season of my life, but I'll start, I'll back up a little bit and just talk a little bit about where I came from. I grew up in a very Christian household. We were taught to believe in Jesus, we were taught to believe in the Bible, we were trained up, so to speak, to be strong believers in God, and I went through a phenomenal youth group as a teenager, really cultivated from an early age an understanding that God is with me always, and that there are keys to living life and being successful at life if we find them in His Word and we apply them to our lives. I learned that as a teenager, and as most teenage girls will say, I had my thoughts about what life would look like, I knew I'd go to college, and I'd sometimes along the way find a husband and get married and then have children, and all of those things I was really looking forward to, and I think some things that we kind of come into reality later on in life we find are curve balls. We find that things don't necessarily always turn out the way that you had planned, and I would say by the time I had graduated from college and married my husband, that was probably the very first thing that was like, whoa, I did not expect this, because the guy that I married knew that he was created to be in full-time ministry, and that was not on my list of things to do. You weren't going to be a minister's wife? I was not ever planning on being a pastor's wife in any way, shape, or form, and so that was something that, even though very unexpected, I trusted God.
I said, okay, this is the man that I know you've placed in my life, so I buckled my seatbelt and said I'm along for the ride, and early on in our marriage we did find ourselves kind of kicked out of the boat of comfort. We planted and pastored a church in middle-of-nowhere Kansas. I'd like to say shout-out to all of you guys in Portland, Kansas, and northwest central Kansas. This town had about 350 people. There were about more cows than people, okay? It was a very rural area, and— Hey, listen, I'm there.
I've moved from Nashville out to southwest Montana. We don't even have a traffic light in our county, in the county, and it's a big county. In the whole county. In the whole county. Wow. Yes, no, I know. There were very few traffic lights in our county, but definitely in the little town of Portland, Kansas, not one traffic light to be found, one stop sign, one four-way stop sign in the whole town.
The closest Walmart was about a 30-minute drive away. It was definitely out of my comfort zone. There were things that we learned, though, in that time, a lot of cultivating of trust.
What does it really mean to trust God? During those seven-and-a-half years, those are also the years—three years within that seven-and-a-half years, I spent having babies, so I had three kids in three years, and our first kiddo— Wait, wait, wait. Three kids in three years. Yes, sir. You heard right. Bless your heart. I know.
Well, what did you do in rural Kansas? Well, there is that, I guess. There is that, you know, and we're early on in our marriage, and we just knew, you know, there were things that we were busy doing, building the ministry, and just really bonding with one another, because God was throwing us out of the boat, you know, and these were some very, very experimental, very fun, interesting years.
Well, that's a good way to describe it, and I think we'll just leave that right there on the table. We're going to take a quick break. We're talking to Rhianna Sanford, a tremendous woman of God who will bring insights to you as a caregiver, and more importantly, as a sister of the Lord, of what she's learned, trusting God through some very uncomfortable things. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com, and if you want to see more about this show and what we're about, we'll be right back.
He does know the plans that He has for you. This is Peter Rosenberg, and that's my wife Gracie from her CD Resilient. You can get a copy of that at Hopeforthecaregiver.com.
Just go out there and click on the donate button. Whatever's on your heart, we'll send you a copy of that. And that's an appropriate song right now, because Rhianna Sanford is with us, and she's telling her story, and she had her life mapped out. She knew the plans that she had for her, but God knew the plans that He had for her, and they didn't necessarily meet up, but now she sees His hand through all of these things, and she's here to tell her story.
Rhianna, welcome back. We are so glad to have you with us on this special show after Christmas here, and for you to just share your heart, share your story. You did not plan on being a minister's wife, and you certainly didn't plan on being a minister's wife in rural Kansas, and yet here you are now, seven something years later into that. You've got three children, but something else is going on too, and tell us about that. Yeah, so about year three of being in that rural town of Kansas, we did bring home a baby girl. She was perfect, I mean just perfect, like the most angelic baby face you've ever seen, and she to this day is like just joy, you know, just so much joy that radiates from her, but we learned early on within about her first year of her life that there were some things that just really were different about her. She was starting to go backwards in her skills, and things that she could do before, like she could say a few words, and she was feeding herself and things like that. We noticed that she was starting to regress in these skills, and by the time she was a year old, we decided we needed to go and see a specialist, because something was just not right, and as a momma, first time momma, on top of that, what I was realizing were kind of like my worst fears, kind of starting to come through, because again, you have these things that you expect in life, right?
You expect to get married and have children and raise those children and send them along their way. These are the quote unquote normal things that you have expectations for, and this was probably the first crack in that little picture perfect dream of what was expected, you know, what I had expected in life, because something didn't seem right with her. And fast forward over the next two and a half years, and more regressing of skills we saw in her, and we finally get a diagnosis after about two and a half years of both hand fighting that she had something, was born with something called Rett syndrome, which is an incurable neurological disorder that, in layman's terms, causes a massive amount of traffic jam, like a traffic jam of communication between your brain and the rest of your body. So things that she might have had in her brain to do, the messages and the synapses just weren't firing correctly to tell her body parts to do it. And so she continued to lose skills over time, and by the time she was seven or eight years old, she could no longer move along the floor on her own.
She never did walk. She was finding it hard to continue to crawl and things like that. Other health issues arose along the way, like seizures, a heart arrhythmia, intense digestive problems that caused her not to be able to gain weight effectively, also caused her to vomit several times a day. And soon enough, we found ourselves in and out of hospitals. Like, almost every other month, we were having to be admitted because of some kind of emergency health situation or surgery she was going to have to have to improve her quality of life. Did she have, like, a lot of seizures and things such as that? Yeah, the seizures showed up about three years old, and we weren't sure why the seizures.
We just knew that, you know, this was a part of this onslaught of things that were starting to show up in our world that we had to kind of figure out. Did you, take me back, I mean, here you are, you're a woman of faith, you're married to a minister, he's a man of faith, and then the doctors come back with this strange diagnosis that you've never even heard of, I guess. Had you ever heard of this before?
No. It's a funny story to that. Prior to the night before, the day's worth of being a specialist in St. Louis, we were sent to Shiner's Hospital in St. Louis, and we saw a day's worth of therapists and specialists, and that was on a Saturday. That Friday night, we got to St. Louis, especially where I was raised, okay, so we were at my mom's house for the night, and we got all the kids settled and stuff that night, and the news, someone turned on the TV, and the news on the news, the 10 o'clock news that Friday night, if you can believe it, there was a special story on of this family with a child who has this disorder called Rett Syndrome, who, everything seemed normal in the beginning, and then she started regressing in her skills, and all four of us, my mom and her husband at that time, and my husband, we were all just like, our jaws dropped to the ground, just, what?
This is exactly what it looks like, you know, and it seems like Chaya hasn't. We had never heard of Rett Syndrome to that point. So we get into on Saturday that next day, and the guy calls us into his office that afternoon after just hours of meeting with these therapists, and he's asked us to never heard of this thing called Rett Syndrome. That was at his best guess, from all the data that he's gathered throughout the day on our entire, what he believed this to be. And I just thought, well, look at God. Like, look at God.
I mean, what are the chances that we would prepare to go to this facility to be seen and have our questions answered? And we have somewhat of a peak, you know, a warning, so to speak, that this might be what you're dealing with, just from watching the news on a Friday day before we go into the appointment. Well, my dad says, my dad's a minister, and he often says, you know, where he guides, he provides. It's so true.
It's so true. And he obviously prepared you all a little bit for this. So when you're sitting there, and I want you to share this specifically, because there are a lot of parents that are in this situation and that will hear this show later on the podcast and so forth, who are going to be sitting in a doctor's office and having news that is unpleasant. We've all, you know, if you've been a caregiver for any length of time, you've had this experience. What was that like for you? Your faith is strong. You're going to this, you know, you know whom you have believed, and yet you're hearing this. What did you and your husband just look at each other?
What did you do? You know, I will tell you, it's a little bit different for us because it may be then, you know, for parents who maybe are getting diagnosis like this, now they're able to get these diagnoses a lot quicker because the red syndrome, for example, is much more well known today than it was, you know, 15 years ago when our daughter was diagnosed and 14 years ago. And so remember, it was two and a half years worth of asking questions, trying to figure out what was going on.
And so it was a much slower process of having to deal with the fact that A, something is not quote unquote normal. And B, we don't know what it is exactly. You know, like, we don't know how long we have with her. So we had a lot of time to really activate our faith and ask the question, what do we believe?
And we still believe that the Word of God is true. And as a mom, yes, I felt this bitter thing of fear, of doubt, of worry. As a mom, you know, the emotional nurturing mama side of me that just wanted her daughter to do everything to be right with her. You know, I wanted to walk into her school, first day of kindergarten, walk in with her hand in hand. I wanted to be able to, you know, sing in the car with her and sing harmony like I'm a singer. So that's what I, you know, that's what I grew up doing was singing with my mama in a car and singing harmony together.
Like I had these expectations, right? And so there was a part of my mama heart that was really breaking, was really breaking. And then the side of me that knew the Word of God, that remembered the scripture that says that we are overcomers, that we are, you know, conquerors and that we are victorious in all things. These things never went away. These older things, that still kind of continued to flood my mind. It was this kind of like conflict between, you know, the emotional heartbreak and the spiritual, you know, strength of the Word of God. And that became, that became our source.
That became what got us from day to day to day to day. And that whole phrase that I'd always learned, you know, I've heard growing up in church and stuff about Jesus being your rock. Have you ever read Lamentations 3 much? Lamentations 3 specifically, this is, for me, this is a verse that keeps coming back to me.
It sounds like what you guys read. It says, this is the one where we get the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness From, but he said, you know, the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He calls grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love, for He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men to crush underfoot all the prisoners of earth, to deny man justice in the presence. And he goes on, and Jeremiah is writing this, and he said, I remember the wormwood and the gall. Remember my afflictions and my wonders, the wormwood and the gall.
My soul continually remembers that it has bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, verse 21, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.
Do you know that song, by the way? The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
And it sounds like that's exactly what you were doing. You were drawing on that deep reservoir of scripture in you, even though the tears were, you know, filling your eyes. I mean, this is hard to look at, but God sees that.
He's already put that in His Word that He gets that, and He understands that, and His own Son did that. And, Rhianna, this is where so many of the audience that listen to this show are. And it's so important to hear from people like you who have walked through these things, and you've plunged into, you've run to this Jesus, as you take your special needs daughter here and say, Lord, I trust in you. And we're talking with Rhianna Sanford, and I want you to just continue to hear her story. As it continues to open up, it's going to sound like yours.
We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I have. I'm Gracie Rosenberger, and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident, leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.
But over time, my questions changed, and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.
And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.
I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. That is Russ Taft and the Imperials. I grew up with the greatest music in the 70s, and so that's why I play stuff like that, because I love it. And I'll never forget when that record came out, Michael O'Meary produced that record.
Oh, it was a great record. Higher Power. And anyway, we're talking with Rhianna Sanford, and she is a tremendous woman of God who has an amazing story of trust in the face of unexpected and certainly painful realities. And their precious little girl, she noticed things were going on. She didn't know all the things, but they knew something was up. And they got the news from the doctor, here's what you got. And it was a disease she never even heard of until she happened to see the news like the night before, and they mentioned it and they showed some of the symptoms.
She said, oh my goodness, that sounds like us. And she goes in there and they come in and she and her husband, they drew on that faith, on the scriptures, that solid foundation. And for those of you who regularly listen to this show, you know that one of the arching things that we're trying to do is build you up in the Word of God so that when these things come at us, and they will because we live in a broken, fallen world, that we'll have a place to go to that can nourish our soul, that can sustain us.
My goal for this show is I want this vast army of caregivers that are out there, there's 65 million plus of us strong. And I want you to be informed about sound biblical teaching and achieving victory on a heart level as you face these difficulties. Because if your heart is squirrely, guess what? Your wallet, your relationships, your job, your body, your spirit, everything else will be messed up. It always starts at the heart of a caregiver. And that's where the Word of God permeates into that place and sustains us in this. So Rianna, I thank you again for spending the time with us.
So you've got the news. Your daughter now is going to go through all these different challenges. But here she is now at 17 years old. And she doesn't have the ability to do a lot of things that you would want your 17 year old to do, your 17 year old daughter.
And there are a lot of things coming down the pike that you would love to experience with her, but you're not going to be able to do some of those things. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. You know, a lot of those earlier days, you know, I had to really train my brain, train my mind. The Word talks about renewing your mind, you know, every day.
And I know this. I know what that feels like because if I didn't, it was very easy to go off into despair, into bitterness, into heartache and pain and anger. And so that renewing of my mind, you know, with the Word and just literally feeding and fueling my spirit with words of faith, with words of truth, was instrumental, extremely experimental in those earlier days. And today, you know, there are things that we face that they're just easier to deal with, you know, like the thought of the, you know, the thought of the reality of, you know, she's going to graduate high school and still be in the house with her parents. She, you know, isn't probably never going to marry or have children. Like I don't have a luxury of being able to, you know, see her brain, brain children in the world, like my mom has a luxury with me. You know, those are things that if I focus on them, they do cause my heart to fatten, you know. But the thing that I always come back to, and this is something that I think we all have to, regardless of, you know, what, if your child or, you know, whatever it is you're going through as a caregiver, you, we all could come back to the fact that we have great purpose. We have great purpose in the earth. And I know it's very easy for me, you know, to think of that because I know I can get out and I can do things in the world. I can, you know, have conversations with people. I can be in the light and be a witness to people and stuff. But what was important for me was to really apply that same great purpose or the concept that my daughter had great purpose, that her life had great purpose in the earth. And really being overjoyed by that, like allowing myself to really embrace the fact that even as she is, without being able to walk, without being able to talk, that she has such a valuable purpose in this life and in this world.
And that was something that my heart rejoiced over. You know, I got to, I want to jump in right there because, and I don't like to talk over my guests at all, but that is such an important point and it is in direct contradiction to what the world is saying. I don't know if you've heard about this new issue of the Atlantic Monthly, which is a leftist publication that's almost like their go-to place for left ideas. And they, the article is I think titled something the last child with Down syndrome. And they're doing, you know, because of all the testing they can do in the womb, then they identify if the child is going to be born with Down syndrome and then recommend certainly terminating the life of the child.
And they'd been experimenting with this in Denmark. They're doing 100% testing for Down syndrome in the womb. And the abortion rate in Denmark is at 95% for Down syndrome children.
And in this country, it's like 70%. And so I got a buddy of mine who is not necessarily a conservative by any stretch of the imaginations, but he's got a 40 year old son with Down syndrome. And he said on the show that those dangerous place for a child with Down syndrome is in the womb. And I'm thinking, okay, if they're going, and they're thinking that this is going to spare families, the heartache of caring for a special needs child. They're thinking they're doing this out of compassion. We don't want to, this is undesirable, but they're not looking this from a biblical point of view that all life is precious and that God has purpose for all life. And this is what you just said, Rhianna. This is a very important point.
This is what separates the Christians from the world. And I asked this, I was speaking at our church recently and I said, do you think they're going to stop with Down syndrome testing and weeding out quote unquote undesirables? And I heard, do you know who Bob Woodson is?
No. He said, if you get a chance, look him up. He's a wonderful thinker.
He's very much involved in the civil rights movement, but he's rejected all of this leftist march. And he was talking about America born with our original sin, which was slavery. And he said, this country was born with a birth defect. But when you have a child with a birth defect, you don't destroy the child. You rehabilitate the child, you nurture the child and help the child grow beyond that to the best of your ability and that child's ability. And I thought, what a beautiful picture.
And this is what you're saying. And this is the Christian model is we're all born with some level of defect of, of, of some level of brokenness. Ultimately it's all in sin and yet we are nurturing each other and your daughter does have purpose. She has great purpose and she is, um, and one day we'll see all that manifested when we stand in glory with, as God redeems all these things and shows his hand in it.
Gracie has great purpose without her legs. We started a prosthetic limb ministry for her fellow amputees inspired by that, but, but, but she has great purpose in her pain. And, and you have great purpose as a mother of a special needs child, as a wife, and as just as a woman of God. And, and this is what separates us from the world. And this message that you're sharing, this is why I wanted to have you on, because this is so important.
I'm sorry to interrupt and go off on that little diatribe, but you really struck a nerve there. And I know that this audience desperately needs to hear that because the governor of Virginia said, if a child is born like this and they'll put the child aside and then we'll have a conversation whether or not to destroy the child. And that's how many special needs parents are hearing that and saying that's their, that's their clause to get out of this. They don't want to raise a special needs child for the next 30, 40, 50 years or beyond their own grave.
And here's a governor saying, well, this is what you, this is the path you can take. And he's a medical doctor and I categorically reject that. And biblically, more importantly, biblically, we reject it. And thank you for affirming that, that your daughter has great purpose.
We don't always know it, but she does. So, sorry, I'm sorry to talk over you, but continue on. And by the way, this is Rhianna Sanford and you can go to her website, Rhiannasanford.com and it's R-H-I-A-N-N-A-S-A-N-F-O-R-D, Rhiannasanford.com and see more about her story. But go ahead. I apologize for jumping in on that.
Oh no, it's okay. I mean, it's a valid point because, you know, we follow, we know, if we know anything about Margaret Singer or, you know, the history of eugenics, even back to the days of the Nazis and they were, they were trying to purify, right, the race or whatever. And so they were really controlling who they allowed to live and who they didn't. And I remember first learning that, I don't remember how old I was when I first learned that, that they were killing children with, with special needs. And how heartbroken I was over that, because at today, after 17 years of parenting this three baby girl, I cannot imagine the kind of person I would see if she were not in my life exactly the way that she is in my life. Because I know that it has drawn me closer to God, it has drawn me closer to a knowledge of who He is and His amazing character. And those are things that are priceless. Like those are things that are life altering. If, if we allow us to get out of ourselves, if we allow ourselves to get our eyes off of our own, you know, wants and desires and expectations, what we find as a caregiver is that we become, we become like the greatest versions of ourselves ever.
Because you think about Jesus, right? Jesus came to the earth and He said, I come not to be served, but to serve. And when you're a caregiver, ultimately, you're spending your life serving, you know, really, maybe not even ever expecting to get anything back for the time and the effort that you're investing in that person that you're serving and loving. And like you said, nurturing and things like that, you don't just throw it out because something is broken or something doesn't seem quite right. You, you ask God, how can I take this and glorify you and glorify your kingdom?
And ultimately that's the question that I had to ask myself as a mom. I had to say, Lord, allow my will, but yours be done. And what is it that you, what is it that I can do where you would receive the glory and you would receive the honor? Um, I remember being in a prayer circle.
This was many, many years ago. Hang on to that thought. Hang on that thought. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I have.
I don't want to lose that thought. And in 1980 I experienced a horrific heart accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed somebody so brutal to happen, but over time my questions changed and I discovered the courage to trust God. That understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish Stating with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.
And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. The joy of the Lord is our strength.
In the midst of that, that's Gracie, my wife, with Russ Taft off of Gracie C.D. Resilient. You can go get it at hopeforthecaregiver.com. And the joy of the Lord is something that we think that we've got to go around and be happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time. It's more than that. The joy of the Lord is sustaining strength in the midst of craziness. And as a caregiver, you know this. I know this.
We live this. And my guest today, Rhianna Sanford, rhiannasanford.com, truly knows this. And she drew upon the joy of the Lord as she ministered to her daughter with special needs. Now, she's 17 years old. Her name is, is it Kaia? Yes.
Kaia, 17-year-old, beautiful. And you have two boys, right? Two boys, yes.
Jaden and Alex are the other two. Before we get into the wrap-up of your story, tell me how your sons have reacted to this now. Because I have a brother whose daughter is 32, cerebral palsy, and she can't walk. She's wheelchair-bound, can't speak.
She's about like an 18-month-old. And they have two sons. And then I've got my cousin, Meredith, who has a daughter very similar to your situation, and she has two sons. And so I'm always curious and usually quite moved and delighted to see how families with special needs daughters and sons that are not, how these sons are becoming men of God, strong men of God, by serving their sister and their parents in this manner.
And tell me about your sons like that for just a moment. Yeah, you know, their perspective is very different than that of their friends, you know, who don't have the same experience. And what I've learned about them, and what I love seeing, is the fact that they accept their sister for exactly who she is. They can look at other people in wheelchairs or people with, you know, quote-unquote disabilities or whatever, and have not pity in their heart when they look at them, but appreciation and love and genuine thoughtfulness, you know, when they look at them.
And even from a young age, I can remember seeing them, you know, when we'd go back and forth to the hospital, right, seeing these other kids in wheelchairs and stuff, and just going right up and talking to them, you know. Sometimes kids, I think, you know, they just stare because they don't know what to think. They're like, wait, what's your, you know, they don't know what to say, they don't know what to think, but my kids are very comfortable around children like my daughter. And so I know that they're growing up to be men who are going to be amazing nurturers because they've had to serve their sister all these years. They don't know anything different.
They don't know anything different. And so I'm great. Those are also very priceless things that I'm grateful for and wouldn't trade for the world. Well, and I look forward to more conversations with you as these young, they're teenagers, I mean, they're still kids, but as they grow into men of God, and I know that you and your husband are nurturing them that way, what God is going to do in their life.
Because we have no idea, but I expect probably that we'll all be standing back and just with our hands over our mouth in amazement at the two young men that have emerged from this journey with your family as well. And that's, that is something that, and it's hard. It doesn't come easy.
It comes at a cost. I remember my son when he was nine years old and he said, why should I care about my hurts? I mean, why should, why should I believe that God cares about my hurts when I see what he allows mom to go through?
And that's a tough question from a nine year old. And at that point in my life, I'm so grateful that God had graciously given me some insight and I looked at him and said, son, I don't know why your mom has to hurt like she does and go through this. But here's what I do know, that he stretched out his arms and he gave his life for us on the cross. And he loves us enough to bear all of this on himself. And if he loves us that much, I'm willing to trust him with the things that I don't understand.
And at that point I just, just held him. That's all that's, and that's what we do. We, we, they, they need to see parents. These, the only way your kids are going to go through this and come out in a stronger way is, is, is the model that you two are setting. Well, not the only way, but God could work around you guys, but God has chosen to work through you guys to, to bring these sons to an understanding of him that they would, that their peers are not going to have.
They're not going to have it. But, but when they see their parents bending the knee at the foot of the cross, it is such a powerful thing. And the family is under such assault. You know, the divorce rating in families with a disability is like nearly 90%. Really high.
Yeah. And, and so here you guys are, and you've been married a long time and you're, you're thriving in ministry. You're doing these things and this is what we need to continue to show the world. This is what God can do.
And I think you and your husband both would admit that this has, this says very little, this is not about you guys. It's about the work of Christ in you all. When we submit to him that he can, like the old Bill Gaither song, something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, he understood all I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but he made something beautiful of our life. And this is when, and when people go to your website to see you, I mean, Rhianna, you just glow. I mean, you truly just glow and, and you don't have any pictures of your husband up there.
What's that all about? So does he glow too? He does, actually. So tell him, you tell him that I said he needs to have some pictures up there. Okay, I'll make sure.
It's a whole branding thing. I know. Listen, I know, I know. I'll give you a hard time, but, but you do glow because you can see that you're not a mom that's over there just bitter and just grinding your teeth. But you're saying, I trust you in this and I trust this as a gift from you to bring me, my husband and my family all deeper into your presence. And this is my prayer for myself. This is my prayer for my fellow caregivers. If there was a mother out there right now that you could just talk to who is, who is dealing with this right now, she feels overwhelmed. And just the last few minutes we have, what do you want to say to her?
Yeah, I first want to just encourage you and, and tell you that I understand, I know the pain of, of being thrown the curveball. This is not what you expected, but I want to encourage you with the fact and one of the truths that I wrote about in my book, I didn't really go into this, but I wrote a book for, for mamas with special needs children because there are some, there are three very powerful keys that I've gotten from my relationship with the Lord and his word. And one of those perspectives that I've grabbed is just the fact that this is temporary, that the things that my daughter can or cannot do does a very temporary thing. And we're taught in the word about eternal life. And when you have this eternity perspective about, about your life and about the things that you're experiencing right now, you know, there's a lot of reasons where you could look at today and say, Oh my gosh, this is not what I want in life. This isn't what I expected, blah, blah, blah. So when you think about the fact that this is just temporary and God is showing me something and teaching me something through this in the here and the now, what is that?
What could that be? I want to encourage you and challenge you even to really continue to just to throw your focus and your hands up and surrender to God and, and, and his kingdom because the kingdom needs you to have the right perspective about this. He wants you and desires for you to live a very full and fulfilling life. And you know, we taught that the word in the word that, you know, Jesus came for us to have abundant life. And in that abundant life, you might not understand all like what you were saying with your son. You might not understand all that comes your way, but you can have peace in the knowing that he is with you all the way and that there is purpose and a plan for what you're going through.
So really just dig into him. Understand that there is eternity, but this pain is very temporary. This body that my child has today is a temporary body. One day he's going to have the perfect, most awesome body and same with your wife, right? Which is great.
Well, it is. That's exactly right. And I tell people, Gracie's scars, she has a lot of scars from her wreck. Gracie's scars are temporary. One day she won't have them, but his scars, his scars are not temporary.
They are permanent. And that means something. His resurrected body had scars in it and he told Thomas, touch it, feel it. That means something and that means something for our eternity. And you're exactly right. And this is the difference between the church and the world.
The world says if it's undesirable, we kill it, we get rid of it. Jesus says, I'm redeeming it. I'm redeeming it. And I'm going to redeem it right in front of your eyes sometimes and while I'm redeeming you too.
And he's redeeming all of this. And Rhianna, you know, you have, you've just been such a blessing today and I'm so grateful for Abe for introducing us and I'm, you know, you got to come back on more and do this. But I want people to know about your book. Tell me about the book that you want these special needs moms to go get.
Yes. It's called This Special Life, Living with Special Needs and Loving It. And it's really a little, very brief read, but powerful read because I wanted to give and offer these biblical truths to be able to help mamas to put something into action when you're walking day to day to day to day through this journey of being a caregiver, being a mom of a child with severe special needs.
And like I said, it's a very quick and easy read. They can go to, they can go to my website, they can go and fill out a form. Actually, they go to Rhiannasanford.com slash free gifts. There is a link that I will send them to be able to get the book and some other free things that I just like to offer for people. And so I'm excited to offer that today.
Right now, the price on Amazon is super, super low because it's the end of the year with Christmas and all that. And I'm going to leave that until at least January 1. So anyway, definitely go get that. But I wanted to make sure that I leave Second Corinthians 4, 17 through 18, because this is that eternity perspective where our light and momentary troubles are receiving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes, not only what it seems, but what is hunting. So I wanted to leave that with you guys today. That is the great verse to go out on for this show, this episode. Rhianna, you've just been a blessing, your delight. Please go out to our website, Rhiannasanford, see for yourself the glow that is coming off of this woman. And that glow, you know what, that glow is available to you too right now. It really is. Get her book, learn more about it.
And you can always go get the podcast and share it with friends. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Thank you so much for being a part of the show, Rhianna. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. It's been a great day to do it together.
Thank you so much. Hey, this is John Butler, producer of Hope for the Caregiver. And I have learned something that you probably all know, that Gracie, his wife, lost her legs many, many years ago and started a prosthetic limb outreach ministry called Standing with Hope.
And recently they ended up with a rather unique and unexpected partner. Peter had a conversation with Gracie and take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?
Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic over in Nashville and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs and arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry because I see the smiles on their faces and I know, I know what it is to be locked some place where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.
Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. And so these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg, I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there.
What does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.
Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave. I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith based programs that CoreCivic offers?
I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith based program and the other ones like it. But I know about this one is just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much. That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or somebody who outgrew him, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle, standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-11 02:04:31 / 2024-01-11 02:24:40 / 20