Grace for the Person But Boundaries for Dementia

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That's 800-937-9673. Thank you for caring. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

This is the show for you as a family caregiver. That is my wife, Gracie, from a long time ago when I rewrote the music for today's musical trivia hymn, Wonderful Grace of Jesus. And that's the chorus. And I can't find the whole recording of this song. I've got to find this thing somewhere. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. If you knew that hymn, if you know that hymn, if it's important to you, if you've got a story about it that you like, or it's something you, you know, whatever your favorite hymn is. And I'll try to play it sometimes if I can, if you call in. But I wanted to introduce that hymn to the audience today, to you guys to take a listen to it, the text of it. That was, of course, the chorus of it.

The second verse, I love this. Wonderful grace of Jesus, reaching to all the lost. By it I have been pardoned, saved to the uttermost.

Chains have been torn asunder, giving me liberty for the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me. Now, why is that important to us as a family caregiver? Because if we understand this on a core level, at our soul level, it's going to change everything in the way we give care to the ones we're with.

Even if it's an adversarial relationship, even if they are bitter or mean or whatever, it doesn't matter, because there's something going on that is transforming us internally, that allows us to extend the same grace that we ourselves have received. Once we understand what it is that we have received, then we can better reflect that to others. Paul says in Corinthians, comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from the God of all comfort.

Well, it's very difficult to comfort other folks with that same comfort if we haven't received that comfort. And it's there for us. And so we'll talk about the third verse here in a minute, but I want to talk to Mary. Mary, where are you calling from? I am calling from South Carolina. South Carolina? Well, that's where I'm from, Mary.

Well, we have something in common. Whereabouts in South Carolina? Columbia. Columbia? Well, I went to Columbia Bible College many, many, many years ago for several years, and I'm from the upstate up there in Anderson. You ever heard of Anderson? I have, yeah. You ever been there?

Yeah, sure. Well, tell me what's going on with you this morning. Well, my husband has Parkinson's, with Parkinson's dementia, probably with Lewy bodies, and he's making irrational decisions. Yesterday he paid $1,450 for another stock program. He already has several. He loves to buy stocks. And he's really not able to do that anymore.

And we are having a sort of a tiff here, because I don't think he should spend that money on the program. And I don't know what to do. Should I, as you said before you came on with me, extend him grace and just let him do whatever he wants?

Or should I try to control him? Well, grace doesn't mean you allow people to do whatever they want. That's different.

God extends us grace, but that doesn't mean we're allowed to do whatever we want, certainly without consequences. And this is your money too. Yeah.

You know, this is yours. And so, no, this is not a situation where you are in any way obligated to allow him to flitter away. I mean, if he had spent $1,400 on lotto tickets, what would you do? I wouldn't be happy about that either. Well, I mean, what would you do though? It's one thing to be unhappy about it, but what would you actually do? If he had already bought the tickets, I don't think there'd be anything I could do. Well, there is something you can do moving forward.

Moving forward, you have the option to do what? You can control the finances in a much different way. So he has limited access to funds. If he's spending money in a way that you feel like is reckless, then you have the opportunity and really the obligation to go in there and put some structure in this. Because if you don't, he'll do it again. And if you don't, he'll do it again. Because if you don't, he'll do it again.

Oh yeah. He'll forget. He forgets what he has. And then he does it again.

Yeah. So how do you, you can work with the bank or you can work with, you know, sit down in moments of lucidity and say, we need to have some kind of checks and balances on this thing. And it's a painful conversation to have, but it needs to have, because I don't think, if he was in his right mind, would he want to leave you without resources?

No, I don't think that's a question. That's a question is worth asking him when he's has moments of lucidity said, look, are you comfortable leaving me without resources and leaving you? He will point to his success that he's had in the stock market. And I'm sure he has, is he comfortable with the flitting away money and spending it recklessly? I mean, if he has that much money that he can just go ahead and just spend recklessly, that's one thing, but I don't know that that's the case, but if you're unhappy about it, and if you're concerned about it, and this is yours and you have ownership in this as well, then that's a conversation that needs to be had, preferably with someone else, maybe a third party that could help you guys navigate through this. And is there somebody, a financial advisor or anything that he trusts? I mean, I can think of a few people that he would probably trust. Yeah.

Well, maybe it's time to bring some of those people in, whether it's a financial advisor, a pastor, a child, somebody, an adult child that you have, or somebody that anybody that he trusts as a third party that you trust as well and say, look, I just want to put checks and balances on him. Obviously he's been very successful at this in days past. He may still be successful at things again, but it's going to be hit or miss when you're dealing with dementia. Yeah.

And dementia is not necessarily a, you know, it's not something that's going to just get better with time. Is he driving? No. Why not? He can't. So if he can't drive, why would you give him a checkbook? And a credit card. Okay. If you can't drive, if you feel like his disease has progressed to the point where driving is a danger to himself and others, why would you want to give him a checkbook or access to credit card checkbook that he can make decisions with, with serious consequences?

Yeah. And so that's a question that needs to be answered, it would seem. And so I would bring in a third party that you guys can trust it out and have a legitimate, you don't want to, you don't want to just all of a sudden make him completely dependent and he, you know, you just can't be trusted with anything else. He needs to have agency and things that he can do, but he also, you know, any good financial manager would tell you, you want to have responsibility and checks and balances in this. You know, I would certainly recommend not getting somebody from Congress because clearly they don't understand that concept, but you know, anybody in the federal government is just completely clueless on this.

We need to take away their checkbooks. But in this particular case, I would recommend very, very highly, and I don't like to give advice, but it would make a lot of sense to have this conversation. It will happen again otherwise. He will continue doing this. He'll forget about it and he'll do it again. And then you'll just stay in a state of, oh my gosh, he's just spending money recklessly. And that's no way for you two to live.

No, it's not. So, and back to your original question of, should I just extend grace? That would be a misappropriation of grace.

Okay. This is a man who is not in his right mind at times. You know, he has a disease that has an impairment. And so grace in the context we're dealing with is on a heart level with understanding.

In this particular case, you can be gracious with him and kind with him and thoughtful and considerate of who he is and what he's accomplished in his life. But you don't have to extend grace to dementia. You extend grace to a person. Dementia, you have to have boundaries with, and you have to have structure so that they don't get hurt and hurt others. There's a difference.

Grace is meant to deal with on a soul level, on us as we're extending grace to each other as Christ extending grace to us. But impairment is a different thing. And so he's impaired. Now you're going to be gracious to him. You're going to honor him. He's your husband. You love him. And you respect what he's accomplished in his life.

And that's extending grace to the man who he is. But you have to protect yourself and him from the dementia. And the dementia is the opponent, not him.

Because if he was in his right mind, you'd be pretty much okay with his investments, I would assume. Is that correct? Yeah, I never really held him back in any way from what he wanted to do. But now it's just different. Right. So he's not making the decisions that he used to make. His dementia is affecting his decisions. So that's the issue, is dealing with the disease, not the person. Extend grace to the person, but boundaries for the disease. And so that is, to me, that would seem a better course of action.

And to put boundaries on the disease, bring in a third party objective. Don't be the one that you're the one driving this ship. Because that's going to put you in a situation where he's going to then resent you or whatever.

He's not going to necessarily process it. But if you have a team meeting where he has agency in this and he's relinquishing some of these things in order to have, you know, protection. It's a seatbelt. That's all it is.

It's a seatbelt. That's good advice. Well, I hope it helps. Let me know.

Let me know. But do bring in a third party. But extend, by the way, here's where the grace can be appropriated. Extend the grace to yourself right now. What you're dealing with is very hard, Mary. And extend that grace to yourself to realize you're going to flounder a little bit in this thing.

But we're going to help point each other to solid ground. Okay? Does that help? Okay.

Yes, it does. Thank you very much. All right. Extend grace to yourself. Remember this song of the rest of the day. Just wonderful grace of Jesus. Okay? That's a great thing to remember as we go through the day.

We'll be right back. Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. Have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization, Standing with Hope, when my wife Gracie gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager. And she tried to save them for years.

And it just wouldn't work out. And finally, she relinquished them and thought, wow, this is it. I mean, I don't have any legs anymore.

What can God do with that? And then she had this vision for using prosthetic limbs as a means of sharing the gospel, to put legs on her fellow amputees. And that's what we've been doing now since 2005, with Standing with Hope. We work in the West African country of Ghana. And you can be a part of that through supplies, through supporting team members, through supporting the work that we're doing over there. You 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 can be a part of that at standingwithhope.com.