"Don't Overreach for the New Year"

Hey, this is Larry the Cable Guy. You are listening to Hope for the Caregiver with Peter going on with you. If you want to be a part of the show 877-655-6755, we'd love to have you with us. And it's a treat to be along the journey here with you as a family caregiver. The more than 65 million Americans serve as a family caregiver right now. It's a very difficult job. It's a very challenging set of circumstances. We take care of someone who is not. And it's just not any more complicated than that. And part of that is we talk about different things of the journey and love doing it. And we don't try to get into the nuances of caregiving because, you know, I can't tell you how to take care of your loved one anymore.

You can tell me how to take care of mine. But what we can do is we can strengthen each other along the journey and be a part of that. So I'm just glad to have you with us. And always, I have himself, John Butler, the Count of Mighty Disco with us. John, are you with us? Indeed. I am with us. Yes, yes. So how are you doing today, Peter?

You know, for the shape I'm in, I'm in pretty good shape. And I had the show ready to go on Facebook because we streamed the show. When we do the podcast, like you and I do here, I had it all ready to go. It was all tested out.

Everything was fine. And then I pressed the go button and everything just fell apart. I have no idea why this happens, John.

I feel like there's a caregiving metaphor in there, you know. Well, there is. So if you hear me typing in the background, that's why I'm reloading it and doing it again because I can just, you know, that's the kind of guy I am and that's the way I roll. But it is a little bit annoying that Facebook cannot seem to be consistent on that. So anyway, we're doing it right now. Well, I think there's a lot to be annoyed about with Facebook, but we won't get into that because this is not that kind of show.

That's not where we are, but I am annoyed with it. Hey, a lot to talk about today. And, you know, it's the beginning of the new year. And one of the things I wanted to do today was just to help set the table for this year on, you know, what is caregivers, you know, how can we navigate through this? I mean, 2020 turned 21 and now is able to start drinking.

So who knows what 2021 is going to be like. But I think one of the pitfalls that we fall into as caregivers is that we tend to overreach and punch above our weight class. I don't know. That's just something I've struggled with. No, I like that metaphor. That's good because we often will, you know, we see these things that seem insurmountable and then overcome them. And that kind of primes us for, well, I can kind of do everything all the time and to the point of burnout and terribleness, you know. Well, and setting unreasonable goals. And, you know, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions simply because I think that it sets us up. We don't know what the year is going to hold. And I think that we set unreasonable goals for ourselves.

Oh, I'm going to lose 30 pounds or I'm going to do this. And I think let's just set today's resolution. And so what can we do today? And I think this is a good reminder of where we are today and what we can do for ourselves today. And then later on in the show, I'm going to talk about some things that I found and discovered and I'm going to check out for you as a caregiver to offer a couple of things. One of them is a creative outlet because that's something I really spent a lot of time on and helping caregivers find a creative outlet for themselves.

I think that is so incredibly important. And then the second thing is I'm going to talk about something I saw the other night that was funny that I watched with Greg. And our son, Grayson, he and I are big movie buffs and we're kind of behind the scenes movie buffs.

And I'll give you a teaser on one of them before we get into some other stuff. There's a documentary we watched called SCORE. S-C-O-R-E. And I would highly recommend it. It goes through the history of film music. Oh, how many times does the name Newman come up? That's what I want to know.

It does indeed. By the way, I did not know this. From what I understand, his father was a big composer in music. No, no, no. That whole family. Him and his dad and his brothers. That's why I said Newman and not a first name. Well, I was thinking, of course, Newman the mailman from Seinfeld.

But no, it was his father. No, I'm just kidding. But they spent an awful lot of time on John Williams. Oh, OK. And deservedly so.

Because he wrote some of the most outstanding and they said something I thought was really interesting. If film scores go away with that, then orchestras, as we know in this country, may go away. They are big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you.

But it was just fascinating to me to watch these guys, you know, come up with nothing. And the way the movie changed because of that. And so Grayson Grayson, our big face. I don't say this very often, but I'm going to say it now in the context. OK, you say, Peter, why are you talking about this?

Well, I I won an award for best original theme in a short film in an Italian film festival. Yeah. Yeah. I remember this.

Yeah. So I am an award winning composer. Oh, look at that on your wall. Well, I guess I could put it up here somewhere. But I got a diploma. I don't even have that up.

But I did. I did win that. And that's been a big outlet for me as as a caregiver to do my music and to to really kind of work through a lot of the things in my life.

You know, whatever challenges. And I love to watch documentaries on that sort of thing and watch these the creative work. And I had not heard of that, but I am I'm very interested. You know, oftentimes, oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good document. I watch a documentary about penguins or something like that.

And it's just kind of like background, whatever. But that one is one that I feel like would really the I would sit down and not and not leave until it was over. And really, because that that you would you would really, really like this. And the process that they go through is astonishing. And I also watched a doc. I've been watching a lot of documentaries because I think it's better than watching the news. And I feel a little smarter after watching documentaries. Oh, the implication be just I'm just walking away.

Nobody gets hurt. But, you know, we I remember we spotlighted a poem that that a lady who sent me that listens to the show. And we read this on the air, which if any listener has any poem that they've written as a caregiver, please send it to me.

You can go to Hope for the caregiver dot com under the contact thing and just send it to me. We'll read it on the air. You know, as long as it's not like a, you know, inappropriate.

Well, well, well, but to but, you know, but but but I think that's a wonderful, healthy outlet. But I was I was watching a I was watching a documentary last night on Fanny Crosby. Now, you may not know who she is.

That is not a name that is written about her name. She was born Francis Crosby, but she went by Fanny and she was blind. She was blind, dead as an infant.

And sadly, back in the eighties, she was born in 1820. And she the family called the doctor. She had an eye infection. The doctor was away. And there was another doctor who was kind of a evidently turned out to be a real shyster.

And he wasn't properly certified at all. And he came over there and he put a mustard poultice on her eyes. And then it ended up on the infant side as an infant and it blinded her and it was irreversible. OK. And that's tragic.

I mean, you know, it's just sadly you had basically one step up from which doctor medicine. But she went on to do extraordinary things. She was the first woman in 1843, when she's 23 years old, to address Congress.

Really? OK. And that was which was astonishing. And she did it on behalf of people with disabilities. And she was at the New York School of the Blind. And she was a tremendous poet, a prolific poet. And then she became a Christian when she was 30 and then started writing hymns when she was around that age, but really started most of her hymns she wrote in her 40s, from her 40s on. And she ended up writing more than 10,000 hymns. Holy mass. She had to write them under pseudonyms because the publisher had so many coming from her that they thought, gosh, we're just going to be doing a book of her.

So we did it under different names. And some of the most beloved hymns in the country, in the world that are sung, she wrote and she was blind. But it was her love of poetry.

And she's blind since birth. But her love of poetry that really her mind was so nimble and so quick. And I came to have, again, even more respect for those who are creative with verse, you know. And so I want to encourage all caregivers listening right now. It doesn't have to be what you think may be master quality. If you feel it, write it down.

If it's important to you, write it down. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be something that we traditionally think of as creative or art or whatever.

It can be a little bit outside that if you want. I mean, there's, you know, people write poetry and music and they draw and things like that. But it can be a creative. People do flower arrangements.

People do all kinds of stuff, interior design and whatever it happens to be. Whatever gets oxygen to your soul. You know, I go back to Dylan Thomas, you know, when he was watching his father die. I read this poem the other night on another thing I'm doing.

Do not go gentle into that good night. And it's just, you know, and he was he wasn't trying to write a hit poem. He was watching something that caused him angst and he wrote it down. And I think as caregivers, you know, if you have that kind of outlet, I don't. I'm not a very good lyricist.

You know, I write to care, to share, to be there. I have great hair, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need like a Bernie Taupin, you know.

Yeah, I'm not that guy. But I'm going to talk about why I brought that up later on in the show. Because I have something I found that I'm going to be testing on myself and then I'm going to do that with other caregivers. But but but today, instead of setting a new year resolution, you know, can we can we maybe just dial it back a little bit and say, what's something you could do this afternoon for you as a caregiver whenever you're listening to this podcast? And I hope you subscribe to the podcast, by the way, because we are we are on every kind of platform out there and we have a great time with it. And I think from all the data that we've seen, it is the number one podcast in the world for family caregivers. So there is that. And share it. And share it with your friends. And, you know, if even even if they're not a caregiver, what one of the things we one of the big things we do here is just we speak the language of being a caregiver.

And oftentimes people who are not in that might could use a little example if they if they've got a loved one who is in the caregiver role for somebody else, they're kind of maybe one or two steps removed from it and want to know or just be a little more, you know, deft in the way that they they behave in that situation. Well, and the podcast has also were funny. So we are funny. We're serious about our funny. The podcast for me has been a real treasure.

I do the broadcast every Saturday morning live and it's very color driven. But the podcast is something a little bit different and it's allowed us to open up and unpack it. And John and I kick around these ideas. And those of you who are regular listeners know this.

You have to indulge me. But the the secret is, is that these are conversations John and I used to have out on the mezzanine, the veranda at iHeart Studios in Nashville on Music Row for many, many years. And we would kick around things that we found interesting. And, you know, we felt like it would be interesting to fellow caregivers. And, you know, we're not here to solve problems that you may have or that I may have. What we're here to do is just kind of build each other up and strengthen each other along the journey.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. So keep that in mind. I've enjoyed the podcast and I hope you are as well and share it with others. It's a free podcast. We put it out there and have a good time with it. But we'll be right back. I got some great things we're talking about. We're talking about some things you can do starting today.

Just don't go all the way to the whole new year. Let's just deal with this afternoon or today. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? 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 Rosberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. That's Gracie from her CD, Resilient. You want to copy that, go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com. You can get a copy of it today. We'll send it out to you. It is a fabulous CD.

I'm supposed to be putting that out on all the digital streaming services. But my staff. My staff. I thought I heard my name for a second. My staff is struggling.

That would be me and John. But it's we are going to do the best we can this this year to get it out. We've got a lot of things we're going to do. We're going to start doing some more video stuff on our page as well.

I'm going to be doing some video vignettes of things and just a lot more content. Just constantly putting content out there for you as a caregiver so that you have a friendly voice. I have a friendly voice, John.

A friendly voice just to kind of talk you through some of the stuff. And so you don't feel so alone. You know, we know what isolation feels like. And it can lead to some very dark thoughts.

And this is our way of pushing back on it. So I hope you will take advantage of all the things out there and hope for the caregiver dot com. And our Facebook page is hope for the caregiver. There's a group page to hope for the caregiver. You can join the group. And that's a little bit more private if you need to just vent or whatever. We don't share that out. And we try to keep things as confidential as possible in there to let you know that this is just a safe place for you to.

To kind of deal with whatever. And if you need to write me, it's right there at the website. You can do that. And we'd be glad to have you do it. John, I was, you know, I'm going to save this for the next segment because this is something I want to continue talking about. But I want to get back to the music thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And I reached out to a friend of mine and he has got to serve. I'm going to test this on myself. OK, so I'm not going to give it out today.

I'm just going to give a teaser for it, but I'm going to test it on myself to see, because this is an outlet that I would like to do for me. OK, as a caregiver, I don't know. It's not going to be for everybody. But if any of you have ever wanted to be a songwriter. Or to be better at it. If you like writing songs, you like writing music, whatever.

But you wanted to be better at it. This guy is a very, very successful, established songwriter. That's what he does for a living in Nashville. I used to do martial arts with him and he launched this thing that's very affordable. It's a subscription per month, but it gives tons and tons of videos and access to him.

Basically downloading his craft into this streaming service that he's provided. And to help you become a better songwriter so that you can learn the ins and outs of writing good quality songs that would be commercially viable. And if that's something you want to do, which is something I've done that. I mean, I've got songs that were cut and I've done things and so forth, but I certainly would like to do it better.

And he's the pro. And so I'm going to try that out for me to see if it works on me and if I like it. And I believe I will.

And then I'll pass it on to you guys. But I thought that'd be something that may be of interest to some. Because I know we have people in this audience who do like to pick up a guitar or a piano or whatever in John's case.

You can't pick up a piano. Oh, by the way, I did see I saw somebody posted this on Facebook the other day and it was somebody doing jazz on a bagpipe. Nice. It was at first I thought, no. And they were bending the notes and everything. It was really good. Yes, it was good. I'm down.

I'm down. Now, have you seen the guy that's dressed in a kilt doing Thunderstruck on it? Oh, no, no. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah.

And the flames come out of the top. That's the guy in Portland. He also rides a unicycle and occasionally wears a Darth Vader mask. You know, God love him for that. Well, it's Portland. What do you expect, you know?

But I was when I saw him do Thunderstruck, I thought that's the way Thunderstruck should have been done. That's an AC DC tune for those of you who don't know and don't maybe care. But, you know, John and I felt like it was important. But no, I did the creative mind for caregivers and I can't stress enough as we begin this new year. I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to give yourself permission to unleash that creative mind that you have as a caregiver. I know it's there.

You can't do what you do as a caregiver without having it. Well, and let me a quick aside, like we always do. But everything we do is aside.

Right, right. But if you don't feel like you have a huge amount of like, oh, there's a story in my brain that needs to come out. Or you don't usually say create in quotation marks out of whole cloth some new things, some new poem, some new song or whatever. One of the things that I did throughout this year that satisfied that urge was I built several wooden clocks, which is a little odd.

It's you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But these were not things that I designed myself.

They were from a kit. So if, you know, and that worked out really, really well because I did get to satisfy a lot of maybe that creative bug that like, oh, I'm going to develop the process for how this all goes together. Or really just think about how I need to make this work without snapping the one piece that's really, really important that I'd have to buy the whole thing.

Which is what I would do. I was lousy at models. Good at jigsaw puzzles, lousy at models. Yeah.

And I was the other way. I did really well with models. You know, if you like models or you like, well, I was going to ask, you know, how many model trains are in your basement or something like that. Which I always admire people that, that had huge train setups, but you know, the creative. Which is a very creative thing, you know.

It is. And the creative thing is not limited to music or even the arts. You could be somebody who would really enjoys cooking and cooking something more elaborate. John, you're like that.

And there's so many things online that you could watch that are tutorials. Oh, I made a strawberry pie the other day that would have knocked your socks off. It was great. A what, a strawberry pie? A strawberry pie. Absolutely.

Fresh strawberry pie. Well, you know, there are so many online tutorials that you could take and I would highly recommend taking advantage of those things. It could be, you know, a masterclass in such and such that it's affordable, it's easy, but it gives you a gardening or, you know, woodworking. I admire the heck out of people who do woodworking. Oh, man, it is amazing.

Yeah, the things they can do. Well, and like a lot of these, they're not even, there's no cost. Like, I don't know if you've ever watched Binging with Babish is a YouTube channel, but it's a cooking show. And he just, he cooks things from like shows and movies and, you know, like it's like, hey, we're going to try to construct this obnoxious sandwich from, you know, I don't know, SpongeBob SquarePants or whatever happens to be.

But he has, he has the voice. Like, it's really, really nice. But yeah, there's just, there's a ton of things out there that may be low or no cost. And you can learn really almost anything.

Please do. Like I said, I've been taking advantage of all these documentaries out there because, gosh, there's so much bad news and there's so much bad drama and all this stuff on this thing. And you feel kind of yicky after watching certain things, but if you watch some of these other things, man, you feel like you're smarter and you're wiser. So, you know, anyway, we've got to go to a break. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about some more things here. And I think you're going to enjoy it. This is Peter Rosenberg with Jon Butler, Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. 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 could designate a limb. There's all kinds of ways that you could 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 could be a part of that at standingwithhope.com. As a caregiver, think about all the legal documents you need. Power of attorney, a will, living wills, and so many more. Then think about such things as disputes about medical bills. What if, instead of shelling out hefty fees for a few days of legal help, you paid a monthly membership and got a law firm for life? Well, we're taking legal representation and making some revisions in the form of accessible, affordable, full-service coverage.

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Isn't it about time someone started advocating for you? www.caregiverlegal.com, an independent associate. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberg, along with Jon Butler.

This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. Hey, a little programming note. Jon, I got an email back.

We're going to try to work it out hopefully this month or maybe next. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy. MyPillow guy. Here's why I reached out to him. Because he was heavily into drugs. I mean, like, they're near took his life.

I mean, it was bad news. And I thought, you know what, we talk about that with addiction and alcoholism and so forth. And I thought, let me share a story and some things he would share to folks who are in a relationship with someone who's got those problems. And some insights that he may have.

And I thought, you know, I met him once, and he's a pretty good guy. You ever notice he talks like Jesse, the body Ventura? He does. He does. I was going to say, I think they're from the same area.

Minnesota. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so and by the way, if you ever want any of those products, you can use the word caregiver caregiver and you get a discount. Use the word caregiver on any of these products.

Promo code caregiver. But we're going to try to have him on the show. So that'd be kind of fun. And so that's that's coming up and we're going to have other guests along the way. And I think you'll be pleased. We've got a good slate of folks that we like to have on. Some of them are going to be well known.

Some of them are not. But it's always a fun time to unpack some great conversations with folks. I've been I've been always pleasantly surprised by just the way the conversations go with these folks.

And this is a great forum just to kind of kick it around. And so stay tuned for more and more wonderful guests. But in the meantime, you have John and me. Well, mostly John.

Hi, John. I've got it. I got a quote for you.

Oh, right on. I said this to my son the other day because we were talking about some issues in his business that he's he's got and some human resources issues. Did I say that delicately enough?

I think you did. And I think that was that was a lovely Orwellian way of putting it. He was torqued a little bit because he was afraid that some of this stuff would kind of was going to end up being making his life more filled with drama or his company is going to do this and this. And I said, look, risk aversion is is not a sustainable way to live. You know, it's just not I mean, it's important if you're an engineer and your middle management somewhere.

But if you're going to be any kind of entrepreneur or self-starter, there's risk involved. And you might as well just accept it. And then I said this quote. I just it just came out of the off the top of my head and I wanted to talk about a little bit with you. And I said, life is messy.

Keep a mop close by. And he looked at me and he said, you know, Dad, I got to write that one down. And I said, well, you're welcome to it, but I want five cents every time you use it. No, absolutely.

But but no, I thought about that. OK, as caregivers, life for us is very messy. And will be. And keep a mop close by. Sometimes you need a literal mop close by.

Yes. In fact, I probably need one this afternoon. But it's it's OK. And I've learned what happened was I used to get so uptight about that sort of thing because like Gracie, for example, if she's if you got somebody in a wheelchair, you're going to have spills. OK, let's just let's just deal with the literal messy part. You're going to have spills.

It's going to happen. You cannot avoid it. If you got somebody has any kind of mobility impairment, it's going to have spills. Now, Gracie, her hand on the right, a lot of people don't know this, but on her right hand, she had a pinched nerve in her elbow. And the nerves on her hand really are messed up and she can't grip very well. And so she's lost a lot of feeling in her fingers. And that's been very, very troubling to her because Gracie also was a pianist.

And but and I hate that for her. But holding a cup sometimes can be, you know, a little bit of a challenge. You're going to have you're going to have a spill. And I used to get very uptight about things because there's there was always a mess to clean up or this or whatever someone spill. And so you know what I did, John? What did you do?

I got rid of carpet. Yes. Those nonstandard solutions for things like some people struggled with depression or anxiety or various mental health issues that can produce some weird and unfortunate things. Like it might be a week or two before they get around to doing the dishes or something like that. You know, and like this, this happens.

This is not, you know, it's just it's just a deal. And I was reading a thing. Somebody's like, you know, I just I can't keep up with the dishes.

That is the one thing that is really torquing me about this. And the therapist was like, well, you know, what's stopping you from using plastic plates or paper plates or anything like that? You know, I mean, do you feel do you feel shame about that?

Yeah. You know, you might because of the way that mom mom would not like this at all. But, you know, when it's just when it's just you or your your family or something like that, then that's that's a total like why? Why wouldn't you think of this sort of thing?

Well, I know why you wouldn't. Bobby Boucher in the Waterboy said it best. This is this is like the third time this week I've talked about the Waterboy.

Go ahead. Bobby Boucher in the Waterboy says, what mama don't know won't hurt. Actually, I think it was Henry Winkler that said it to his Mr. Copeland's client, sir. Mr. Copeland's client, sir.

And so, you know, I know this, but I have an autographed picture hanging in my house of Farooza Balk, who was his. What's her name? Vicki Valancourt. Vicki Valancourt? Vicki Valancourt.

I have an autographed picture of Vicki Valancourt. Yes. Mama says she the devil.

Mama says she the devil. No, it's hanging because. Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Nonconventional solutions, though. Yeah. I mean, well, actually, in some respects, it's kind of a conventional solution, but instead of stressing about the carpet getting messy with something on a spill, you get rid of the carpet. And I don't ever anticipate if I could ever help it. And in my life, having carpet again, I mean, we're right now in this little cabin we're in right now. I have just a little bit in my office. Right.

Because of the sound for the radio. But we tore up a lot of the carpet in here. And then when we ended up building, end up building a house from wherever we go, we're going to tear it up. And people said, don't your feet get cold? I said, I'll wear shoes.

I can't go barefoot in a house. You know why? Oh, OK. Why is that?

You know why? Die hard. Die hard. It ruined me for barefoot. That's why you need one little patch of carpet so you can make fists with your toes. Well, no, no, I just never go barefoot. I hate going barefoot.

Die hard ruined me for that. And Gracie, it's not like she doesn't need a carpet, you know, with wheelchairs and prosthetic legs. And it probably makes it worse, you know?

Yeah, it does. It's it's actually harder on her. And so I thought, OK, just go with it. But life is messy. Keep a mop close by. And as a caregiver, I would suggest to you, and particularly if you're new at this, if you're new at this, be prepared for messes. OK. And avoid, if possible, if possible, trying to overprepare for messes. Sometimes it's just going to happen. Yeah.

And when you say be prepared for messes, messes are not always spilled, you know, chocolate milk on the carpet, which is the worst, by the way. Well, no, no, no. That's the one.

I don't know. There's more worse, believe me. No, no, no. We're not going to talk about this.

Believe me, there's worse. This is coming from a parenting standpoint. Like that's that's the thing that always would just, you know, I'm a pretty calm dude and a pretty calm dad. But the thing that really would just hit that anger button in my head was whenever chocolate milk got spilled on the carpet.

I now have hardwood floors just like you. I'm good with it. But being prepared for that with a mop, but also being prepared for the emotional messes that will happen. Well said.

Brilliantly said. He whose height exceedeth most normal people. Sometimes my reach exceeds my grasp. No, no, no. As tall as you are.

Look here. Puddle glum. As tall as you are. Nobody's going to get that, but you and me. But that's OK. But no, it's because you're going to have emotional messes. You're going to have drama in your relationships. You're going to have all these things. It's going to happen. It's OK. Life's messy. Keep a mop close by and understand that perfection is not the goal. OK.

It just cannot be. And sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good. And so that's something I was sharing with Grayson as we did that. And he seemed to think that had value to him.

And and he said, OK, I got it. So he's not spending all of his time trying to make sure nothing bad happens and instead make something good happen. And I think that's what the advice I would give to myself in the covid world. I think so many people stop living in order to keep from dying. And, you know, that there has to be some balance to your life. You cannot just go into self-preservation mode 24 seven.

You're going to have to extend out and take a risk. And C.S. Lewis, you know, the that doesn't mean go that doesn't mean go to the dance club right now. OK, guys.

All right. That's no, no. Don't be stupid. But there's a great quote from from Lewis that says, if you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly, but it's still worth it. Isn't that a great quote? Well, he was a very creative individual.

Well, I watched a documentary on him and and one guy said he had a lot of things to say. And he said, well, it's no. Yeah. So if you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly, but it's still worth it. And I say to you as a caregiver, you love deeply.

That's kind of the whole point. You're a caregiver. That means you're loving deeply someone else at your expense. It's going to hurt.

It's going to feel uncomfortable. But it's still worth it for for multiple reasons. And your loved one may not be able to reciprocate back in the way you would like. Or even appreciate.

Oh, yeah. They may not. They just may not. And oftentimes that happens. Maybe they have an impairment that they can't do it.

Maybe they're just being a jerk. I don't know. Yeah. That doesn't mean that you're not growing and becoming a more spectacular individual because you're expanding your heart and loving deeply. And that is kind of what I was thinking about right as we were going to the break last time we were talking about doing creative things or learning something new or going on YouTube or whatever and finding something. You know, I don't want to equate these two things, but having a growth mindset of, you know, like I plan on learning for the rest of my life and the intellectual humility that comes along with that is something that I find very important.

And that there's always some new little thing to discover about whatever it is, even your great passions, especially your great passions. Well, I think it's Grayson and I. Gray and I, when he's been out here in Montana with us, he went back to Nashville. But when Grayson is a deep thinker and I enjoy those conversations with him, I enjoy my conversations with Parker.

Parker has three children and four dogs. So it's. I believe that's what we call a pastel. That's that's a lot. So it's it. But we had a great time and I got to see my little granddaughter with the holidays and we came back and Gray's been with us a little bit.

So I just sent him back. But he and I would have these conversation. And it's it's really about personal enrichment. Am I going to enrich myself? Not waiting for things to be in order or perfect in my life, but just go ahead every day, look for something that's going to enrich me. And I would suggest to you that as a pianist, as a composer, as as an artist, I am far more pleased with what I do musically than I would be had I not experienced some of the pathos that I've done as a caregiver. I mean, I cannot see me playing the way I play if I had not felt and experience what I've experienced as an artist.

I don't see how any artist does that. And as a caregiver, I would suggest to you that that what you're experiencing is, however painful, however difficult, however scary. Is just as equally capable of of expanding your heart in ways that you may not expect for you to to love more deeply, for you to experience beauty more deeply and for you to be loved more deeply and embrace love more deeply. In all its capacities, whether it's stopping to to look at a flower that you may not have seen. I got up the other morning and we have, admittedly, one of the best views that one could have. Yeah. All right.

All right. Keep on bragging, buddy. I have a 30 mile view from our bedroom window. 30 miles.

Easily. And for those of you playing along at home, if you're if you're standing at sea level on the plains, you have about a six or maybe even less mile view. I'm at 6000 feet and we look down over a valley and then the peaks rise up on the other side of the valley and I could see the peaks going way down south towards Yellowstone. And on a clear day and I watched the sunset come over the peaks. I mean, sunrise come over the peaks and it took my breath away. I mean, truly. And I've seen this view every day, but it's just like, oh, you know, and and I made you want to write a song. Well, it did. But I could appreciate a sunset, you know, when I was young.

I mean, sunrise when I was young, but not nearly on the scale that I can do now. And so it's just a thought that I wanted to share with folks that, yeah, life's messy. Don't try to, you know, spend so much time avoiding the mess. But when when it comes, just be prepared to clean it up and move on and keep going.

You were going to say I jumped. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You need to finish that. But no, I hear you in that it's it's it's not that this is not to say that, you know, because people say, oh, you can't have light without shadow. Right. OK, that's I get you. I guess you can't have good without evil.

All right. Because it's defined by their opposite. That is not to say that the shadow or the darkness is is good. It is to say that it is that it can provide much needed contrast. Put it that way. Contrast is good. Contrast is good.

All right. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back with something that has nothing to do with the caregiver, but it made me laugh and it really just, yes, cranked my my engine here. This is Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger. John Butler's joining us.

And Hopeforthecaregiver.com will be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? 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.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you doing?

How are you holding up? As always, with me, John Butler. Hey, listen, real quick, John. Right on, right on. I've been waiting for this.

This has nothing to do with being a caregiver. But there is a wonderful movie out there that has become a cult hit. It didn't, when it first got going, everybody's kind of figuring out how to define this movie. And then all of a sudden something flipped and it became a cult hit. And they've done a documentary about making the movie.

So I have, real quick aside, because I have been, the last song I was learning to play, I started, I picked it up two days ago. I'm like, oh, that's the chord progression. Let me mess with that. And it's from Rocky Horror Picture Show. No, it's not that one. It's not that one.

It is Galaxy Quest. Oh, that's one of my favorites. With your favorite actor.

Yes. Well, I don't know if he's my favorite, but he's definitely my top five. And that is, of course, Alan Rickman.

Alan Rickman. Well, evidently this movie has become a real, it's endeared itself quite well. And it's held up pretty well.

As it should. Well, Grayson and I sat down and watched the behind the scenes of this thing and he said, you got to see this. And they were going to cast a bunch of different people in the role that Tim Allen really lobbied for.

He wanted this. And basically what it is, is if the cast of Star Trek made a movie about their life as actors, and then aliens from another planet happened to see the original series and thought it was real, and they came to these actors to help them fight an intergalactic battle. Right. They needed the Enterprise. Like, well, we got to get like the legendary Captain Kirk, you know.

Yeah. And so the Captain Kirk character was played by Tim Allen. And then the Spock type character was played by Alan Rickman and so forth. And it was just hysterical, but the way they made this movie and they set out to make a really, really good Star Trek movie.

And Gray and I watched this thing and just laughed. Not just the movie, we laughed at the movie, but we laughed at all the behind the scenes stuff and the drama that was going on. And I did not know this, but the film company said, I mean, the producer of the movie said, when you make a movie like this, you really hope and pray that the studio has a bigger project that is having problems so that there's no adult supervision over our movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The studio was making a big movie at the time that was Gladiator and it was running way over budget. Oliver Reed, one of the actors in it died during the filming of this movie, you know, and it was. I mean, look, Richard Harris was in it. I mean.

Yes. It was a big movie and it ended up winning all kinds of Oscars. Well, in the meantime, while they're doing that, these guys over here making this movie. They're making Galaxy Quest in the boys room, you know.

It really was. And Alan Rickman was so incensed by Tim Allen because Tim Allen would be cracking jokes all the way up to the moment where they say rolling. And he's making the cast laugh. And Alan Rickman is over there going, I'm not going to laugh at him.

I will not laugh at this. What do you say? In the movie, I think he says, like, I played King Lear or something like that. Well, yeah. And there's this one scene. But then they got really serious in parts of the movie and it was really very meaningful.

In fact, Steven Spielberg came to the set because his company was executive producing it. It was watching Tim Allen, who was, you know, he's a comedian. And, you know, he's watching him deliver this emotional scene. And in Steven Spielberg's like, man, this guy's really he's doing a great job. And then and then Tim Allen was so overwhelmed by the emotion of what he looked at. The director said, I got it.

I don't really like what I'm feeling right now. I got to go to my trailer for a minute. And Alan Rickman said, oh, my, Tim has been overcome by acting.

He has finally learned to act. You know, I can't do Alan Rickman like you do. But it was it was really quite entertaining. And if you if you enjoy those kinds of things, it just lightened my heart for a while. And I do love that kind of stuff.

It's just to me, it just makes me laugh. So you watched a documentary on the making of Galaxy Quest. Yes, it's called Never Surrender because their tagline is never give up, never surrender.

And I was either going to go with that one or by Grimthar's hammer. Tony Shalhoub is in it. You know, Tony Shalhoub is?

Yes, I'm well aware of Tony Shalhoub. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like when they get transported the first time. Right. And everybody else is freaking out or vomiting or whatever.

And Tony Shalhoub's character gets gets gets lorped. I don't know if that's a word. He's like, well, that was a thing. We've got beamed up.

But it's like a little more wet than getting beamed up in this particular set of technologies. But he was the only one that was like, well, that was a thing. Well, he was. This was before Monk, but it was really it's very entertaining.

If you want to watch something that is kind of entertaining. This has nothing to do with caregiving. I told you it had nothing to do with caregiving.

It absolutely has something to do with caregiving. Well, yes. Well, we're we all need a little bit of an escape sometime.

And I don't mean an escape, but I mean, some sort of pause in the chaos. And one of the best ways to do that and we talk about it all the time is to have a good laugh. Now, that's it's so important.

Yeah. And well, that's a. And I enjoyed it immensely. And you look, you listeners stayed all the way to the end of the podcast.

So I'm going there, you know, you made it to the Easter egg. And so we watched this and it was it was a lot of fun. But Tony Shalhoub, I loved him.

I watched every episode of Monk and and I just I love I love him and everything. But this is before it. But it's really worth it just to see the inner workings that go on behind a movie, you know, making a movie like that. And and they they really did a great job of not for the first time that, you know, Star Trek was kept alive because of the fans. And and they reference this in the documentary that the the. They had the view of the Star Trek fans is that episode of Saturday Night Live when Kirk came out there. And you remember that when William Shatner did this?

Did you ever see this? If you ever see it on Saturday Live, William Shatner was on Saturday. This back in the 80s.

Yeah, I think. Or maybe it had been the 80s and they're all dressed up in in their Star Trek uniforms. And here William Shatner comes out and he's like, it was a TV show.

Move out of your parents basement. What's the matter with you? You know, and it all the fans were just like really just just broken hearted. And so they. Yeah, that's kind of what they had in mind to do it. But they did actually give respect to the fans. It's just a fun movie and it's got an amazing cast. But Alan Rickman, you know, they were going to make a series of it and then he died before they can make the series.

They had already planned it and they were all going to come back. And then he and he passed away. Just a great, great fun time.

So that had absolutely nothing to do with the things we're talking about. But it made me laugh. And I hope you enjoyed a good little laugh as well. Listen, we got to go. All right.

New year. Here we are. Do something today that stirs your heart. And remember, life is messy.

So keep a mop close by. You don't have to have everything perfect for you to have a spectacular day. And for you to have enrichment in your life. Do something that enriches your soul. Let's start with that. We'll worry about New Year's resolutions other time.

I give mine up for Lynn anyway. So, John. Always a pleasure, sir.

It is indeed. Hope for the caregiver dot com. If you want more, share the podcast with somebody you think would find it meaningful. And we'll see you next time.

Thanks 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 and arms 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 someplace 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. But 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 limb, whether from a loved one who passed away or somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own. How do they do that? Where do they find it? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.