"Honey I Forgot the Melody!"

Live on American Family Radio, this is Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans right now do this. With a vulnerable loved one who may be struggling with aging issues, Alzheimer's. Maybe you've got a special needs child with autism.

Maybe you have somebody in your life that has an addiction. Whatever the impairment, there's always a caregiver. And this is the show that helps strengthen and equip you.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And how are you doing today? Glad you're with us. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. Some years ago when I was in Nashville, when we lived there and we, Gracie and I lived in Nashville for a very, very long time. That's where most of all of her surgeries occurred.

And that's near where her accident occurred. And we were at a very large church there in Nashville. And the pastor asked me, he said, look, I've been noticing that when people show up, that it's really kind of like a barnyard. I mean, it's very loud and boisterous and so forth.

And when they come into the sanctuary, I'd really like for them to kind of calm down and get their hearts and minds ready to worship. Would you mind playing? And I was thrilled to do so. Gracie had stopped singing for a while.

She had been going through some pretty rough patches and she wasn't singing. And so I appreciated the opportunity to do this and play. And I've been playing, of course, in churches since I was a kid. And I love these hymns.

Well, I got up there to play and it's this beautiful setting. And in fact, you can see it on the front of my CD Songs for the Caregiver. It's that church and this beautiful Steinway piano. And I was loving doing this. And a couple of measures and bars into the song, I realized something. I realized that I was playing the harmony. I was playing the accompaniment. I was so used to Gracie singing and accompanying her.

And I would play, as we say in Nashville, play the changes around her. And I wasn't playing the melody. Now the chords I played were wonderful. They sounded great. Even if I say so myself, they were great chords, but nobody knew what I was playing. It'd be like, you know, um, I'm over here at the caregiver keyboard here.

Um, so I'm just like, you know, and, and those are nice chords, but they don't mean anything. And I mentally adjusted very quickly in front of quite a few people to go back and playing the melody. And I had to work at it and I worked longer in that 10 minute spot that I was playing, that I'd worked as a pianist at a long time because I was having to physically retrain my finger to play the melody. And this is, this, this became a real teachable moment for me as a caregiver, that I'd lost my melody. I'd lost my ability to speak in my own voice and to be able to say something as a, as a pianist. And then as a caregiver, as a person, you know, and I was playing something, but I wasn't saying something. And so I make it a point when I have interaction with people on this show or anywhere else, how are you feeling?

There's a reason I do that. It's not that I want to anchor ourselves in our feelings because that's, that's not what anchors us, but we do have to acknowledge them. But I want people to get used to speaking from their own heart, play their own melody, play their own melody. And, and I've, I've said often on the show that, that my piano professor back in Nashville, John Arden, I still talk with him at least once a month. And he's in his eighties now. And he taught me more about this concept than anybody else. And he's arranged a lot of hymns over the years that he's had published books of his hymn arrangements, so forth.

In fact, I've seen them before I was really in college, I saw his stuff and there it was everywhere at churches around the country. But one of the techniques he uses was to teach us to go and play the melody of any song with one finger to make sure we really understood the melody of that song and then play around it. And you don't want to get out there and just do piano gymnastics and something and say, Hey, look what I can do. If you're not communicating what the song is saying, then what are you doing when it comes to the hymns? And these are things that have meant so much to so many people for so long. And so that's what I, I learned that day. I happen to have to learn it in front of quite a few people.

And I hope that nobody paid attention to the song and to the sweat that was pouring off of my head, because I was just so used to having Gracie sing. You ever get that way that you're so used to somebody else's story, sucking the oxygen out of the room for you, that you forget to share your own and forget to talk about your own journey or in any way express your journey. And one of the hymns that I've played over the years, and I love it, this is our hymn this morning, has a very complicated melody. And it, I still have to work at this one a little bit.

I'm gonna go over here to the caregiver keyboard here. See if you know this one. I'm gonna start off with just probably the melody only. Does that sound familiar? That's a wonderful melody, but it is a little bit tricky to play. And I've always struggled with that melody myself. But then when I taught myself to go back and really get into this, Thomas Campbell wrote this to this amazing lyric of Charles Wesley. And I realized, oh wow, what is this song saying? And this became one of my all-time favorite hymns to do it right. It's just, I just love this hymn. But I couldn't put those chords into that hymn and effectively play it that way. With some of those chords, you probably didn't recognize those, but they're great chords that my piano professor taught me how to play many, many years ago. But I couldn't put them in until I understood the melody.

Until I really understood what this song was all about. Do you know this song? 888-589-8840 if you do.

888-589-8840. And have you lost your melody? And here's the sign that for us as caregivers when we lose our melody, somebody asks you, how are you doing? And you say, well, we had a bad night. She's not doing well. Our situation is this.

He's such and such. We have a hard time speaking in first person singular. And today we're going to learn to do that a little bit better.

Okay. 888-589-8840 if you want to be a part of the show and we'll be right back. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. This is Peter Rosenberger. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers.

And part of being healthy is learning to speak in your own voice. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

This is the show for you as a family caregiver. I got to tell you, I just love that song. It's one of my all-time favorite songs. And Gary Chapman wrote this and performed that.

He wrote a song for Gracie. He sent it over and she's going to be, when she gets back in the groove here and starts recording some more. And I think you're going to really like it. I can't wait to play for you. It's really good. And I think you're really going to love this.

All right. 888-589-8840. 888-589 if you want to be a part of the show. I was listening on the break and they were talking about the identity issue that's going on across the country. And of course now that word identity has been used on whether what gender you are or how you identify this.

I'm not going there right now. I'm looking at us as caregivers in the identity theft that happens with us in our journey where we just lose our ability to even know who we are anymore. The world is trying to tell us that you can identify as this, you can identify as this, you can identify as this.

I'm not going to go there with that because that makes my head hurt. What I'm learning as a caregiver is where my identity emanates from and that I'm a unique creature created in the image of God and that he knows my name. And nowhere was this driven home more clearly to me than in the hymn, Jesus loves me.

This I know for the Bible tells me so. And I don't care how simple people think that is. Simple is good for me. When you're a caregiver and you're dealing with the things that we deal with as caregivers, we need simple.

I'm okay with simple. And I love being able to delve deeper into this because the more I understand my identity in Christ, then the better equipped I am to deal with whatever comes my way. And so that's why I love this particular hymn today and why it means something. And again, and I see the phone lines have lit up, people know the song.

The goal is not to see who's the smartest person who knows the hymns. The goal is to talk about this song and what it means to you. And I always like it when somebody gets the song, but please understand if somebody else gets it, if you got something you want to share about this song and what it means to you, now we have a conversation because we're delving into this treasure trove we have in the hymnal of all these wonderful texts and melodies that we've been provided for by people who've wrestled these things in ways that many of us may never have to.

And this is one, of course, written by the incomparable Charles Wesley, who has written some of the most fabulous church lyrics and worship songs that will ever be written. And so I appreciate that. All right, here we go. Let's go to Paula in Virginia. Paula, good morning. How are you feeling? Good morning. I'm good. How are you?

Well, you know, I think I'm doing okay. We got a winter storm coming in and our first big snowfall. And so we had the internet kind of went a little wonky this morning as I was getting logged on here, ready to do the show. And so we worked it out so that if something goes down, you'll hear this thing. Hey, hey, go on. Snow is dealing with where we are in Montana.

And Peter will be right back. But other than that, I'm doing okay, Paula. Oh, wow.

Wow. So it's nice and warm in Virginia and I'm headed to work this morning. I'm not a caregiver per se, like you are. And I am so grateful for your show. Well, thank you. On Saturday mornings, I usually listen to your show as I go to work.

I work at a cemetery. So I care for family in that capacity. And so it sort of hit me when you talked about losing our identity. But also, so this song is Amazing Love, How Can It Be? And indeed it is. Or I think it is. It is. It is. Well, that's the course. The title of it is, And Can It Be?

But the course is Amazing Love, How Can It Be? That Thou My Gods Would Die For Me. And what a song to talk about for our identity. Don't you think? I do.

I do. And I see, I love to sing and worship and praise God. And I find in the busyness of life, sometimes I get distracted and don't do that. And if I can take some time to praise God and thank Him for His love to me, that really does help me stay centered and pour out that love to others. You know, we were talking about this earlier this week with some friends and Cicero said that gratitude is the parent of all virtues. And it's hard to be miserable when you're grateful, isn't it?

Family, think about it. If you're spending so much time being grateful, it's hard to be miserable. It's hard to be self-centered if you're grateful. Gratitude is such an amazing mental transformer, soul transformer, when we start thinking about the things we're grateful for.

And you're absolutely right. When we focus on that, it changes everything, Paula. And let me ask you a question, because what you do at the cemetery, that's an important work. What is one of the more poignant moments that you've had in that journey? So I look at what I do is to care for the people that are left behind, try to point them to an eternal perspective. They lose their loved one, but if I have the opportunity to pray with someone that's hurting, help them in the months ahead as they get through the loss, then I feel like God has me in the right place to reach out and love.

That's beautiful, Paula. That really is. What a ministry that is. And it's a costly ministry to you because you're weeping with those who weep, you're mourning with those who mourn, you're comforting the grieving. And that is a reflection of the heart of God. That's what he does.

That's who he is. And you are reflecting that to those who are in sometimes their most vulnerable state. And that's a tremendous thing that you do, Paula.

Tremendous. I'm grateful that God has put me in this place. Last question.

I've got a last question for you. When you heard this song, it obviously resonated with you. Is there a connection that you've had with this over the years, that something about this connection that you've had with God, that something about this connection?

Or what's the story behind that? So years ago, I was involved with a church choir. We sang this song, and I was just thinking about that group of friends, of brothers and sisters in Christ. And yeah, the camaraderie that comes with worshiping together, and also the journey that God's brought me through.

He's put out his love so deeply for me. You know, you hit on something, Paula, that I think has crippled our nation. As we've gone through the pandemic, we have allowed ourselves to have an excuse to not worship together. Where scripture says, don't forsake the assembly of the brethren.

I mean, don't do this. You need to get together and worship together corporately. I've been in chapel services and church services and so forth, when we've done this hymn in a room full of people, I mean, massive room full of people that were singing this full-throated. I mean, they just, amazing love, how can it? I mean, there's nothing like it when the people of God come together and worship in solidarity and conviction of these great things. And I think that if anything that we've learned through this pandemic of the crippling effect on us as individuals for the isolation, but also what it does to us as believers to be isolated apart.

And obviously this took you back to a time where you guys sang this together and it strengthened you, it equipped you, and it just so, it was so memorable that here you are so many years later and you hear it on the radio with a guy playing on the keyboard and it immediately takes you back there. Isn't that astonishing? Right. I mean, there's scripture that says that God inhabits the praise of his people. And I think if we don't do that together, then we're missing something. Well, we are. And what is the old rust half tune? Praise the Lord over the Imperials.

Let's see. How does that go? Praise the Lord for God inhabits praise. Praise the Lord for the chains that seem to bind you serve only to remind you.

They drop powerless behind you when you praise him. You remember that song that the Imperials did? Oh, what a great song.

Brown banister, I think wrote that. And, um, just a great song of you're right for our God inhabits praise and we've lost that. And so I'm, I'm, I'm grateful that you've reminded of all, all of us of this, Paula, and I'm grateful. And I, and I love these, this lyrics. I mean, you, you came up with amazing love. How can it be that thou my God would die for me and, and can it be that I should gain an interest in the savior's blood? I mean, it just, um, died he for me, who caused his pain for me, who him to death pursued amazing love.

How can it be that thou my God should die for me? It's a great lyric. Paula, thank you for sharing that story. And thank you for what you do today for so many. Are you, are you at work now? I am arriving at work right now. So, all right, God bless you today. Thank you.

You've got, you've got a busy day, I'm sure. And you've got people that are going to come into your life that you're going to touch. And I think I speak for the audience here when we just are grateful that you're there. We're grateful that you're there to offer a clear path to, uh, to the eternal life of God through Christ. And as people come across your way, they're not going to be given just platitudes.

They're going to be able to hear and feel and see the amazing eternal truth of God through Christ that we have available to us. So thank you for that, Paula. I really do appreciate that. And I think our audience speaks from, I speak for them as well, that we really appreciate what you do. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. Oh, by the way, and Paula, one of the things I've learned is that caregiving doesn't stop at the grave.

And caregivers are left to deal with the residual impact. So I want to just put that in your ear as well as you minister to caregivers. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a, it was Russ Taft and I, I couldn't even remember how to play Russ's big song of praise the Lord that he did with the Imperials. And, uh, but that's Gracie singing with Russ Taft from her CD, Resilient. If you want to get a copy of that or download the song, go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Just click on the music tab, hopeforthecaregiver.com, and you can see how to go about doing that. I love that. I love that song.

Twyla Paris wrote that song and, um, Gracie and Russ just did a great job on that. Hey, I wanted to give a shout out to someone. I was reading some posts that she was putting on her Facebook page. We're streaming live on Facebook today. Facebook is working.

Um, if they ever need a whistleblower on Facebook to go to Congress and really talk about Facebook, it'll be me because I've had such a struggle with our Facebook live, but that's a separate issue. Don't worry about that. But I love what Mary Tuttero is, um, saying, and she is talking about how the father of lies has believing our stories are who we are, but they are just what happened to us, not who we are at our core. We are his. Put on this earth to do good works. He prepared us in advance. He prepared in advance for us to do the good work he prepared in advance for us to do. His spirit fills us to do his work.

He's not a sideline helper. He is our reason, and that helps me keep my identity in focus. And Mary, there are a lot of people out there that are dealing with the caregiving world. And Mary is one of those rare few, like what we do on this show, that really speaks to the heart of a caregiver. In fact, that's the name of her ministry. And if you want to check that out in her books and so forth, she's been on the show before. I have to get her back on.

Mary, I'm gonna have you back on. The heart of the caregiver .com is her website and just an amazing lady who's got a powerful journey and insights. And again, the whole point of this is not to talk about caregiving. We swerve into that as needed because there's always tips we can learn from each other. But the real battle for the caregiving, those are tasks. The real battle is our own hearts. And if our heart's a train wreck, it doesn't matter how good we are at caregiving because it always starts at the core of who we are.

And I'm convinced of this. This is 35 years of experience talking about this. And I've been very good at caregiving and very lousy at caregiver. And I've come to that understanding that I'm going to be wrestling with these issues for the rest of my life. And they are really not unique to me.

My circumstances may be unique, but the heart condition is not. It's the human condition. We all struggle with this. As caregivers, we're often dealing with this relentlessly through the pressure cooker of caregiving. And it forces things to the surface that would normally be dealt with over the course of maybe a lifetime.

We get to deal with it in a week. And it's like having a, this won't mean anything to some of y'all, but some of you will get this. Back in the old days when they had the big wall of sound and they had a whole stack of Marshall lamps up there and the guitar player just cranks it up and it's just this wall of noise that comes out of these massive amplifier stacks. That's caregiving. It's just this wall of noise sometimes. It's overpowering.

You remember that scene at the beginning of Back to the Future when he had that huge amp and Marty McFly hooked up the guitar and he hit that one note and it just blew him backwards, you know, because that huge amp. That's caregiving. And so the noise is very, very loud, but the issue is the same for all of us as human beings. And that's why I go into this on the hymns and the scriptures that are, that are addressing that issue and working from the inside out.

Because if we're, again, if our, if our brain is just a squirrel cage and we keep jabbing a stick into that squirrel cage, what, how are we going to live? So we've got to calm ourselves down and go back to principles. And one of those principles, I talk about this a lot, the three I's, we lose our identity, we lose our independence, and we become isolated as caregivers, the three I's. And today we're just talking about that identity theft that happens with caregivers.

And every time you hear a commercial talk about identity theft, because you hear these all the time, try to connect that dot to talk about your identity theft. Try to make that bridge so that it reminds you every time to rush back to Christ where your identity comes from, because he's the one that all of this flows from. And so that's why I did this particular song today.

And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood. Died he for me. And if you'll notice the author, Charles Wesley, is not saying, you know, and can it be that we should gain. Died he for us.

No, he's saying died he for me. This was very personal to Wesley. You know, and you get to the fourth verse, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night, thine eye diffused a quickening ray, I woke the dungeon flame with light, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. This was extremely personal to Charles Wesley. And he was, he was deeply convicted to write that lyric. You can't write that lyric without some intense personal engagement with the Savior.

It's just not going to happen. And then, then the, the, the author of the composer of the music, Thomas Campbell, wrote this great melody, but it's a hard melody. If you're a pianist, you'll know that it's a hard melody to wrap your fingers around sometimes. Healthy Kickovers make better Kickovers. Hope for the Kickover dot com. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently, Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envisioned 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 Core Civic 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.

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. That 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, hey, 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 Core Civic 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, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Where do they find them? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle.

Thanks Gracie. Say what would you do if you were a new Christian and you didn't have a Bible? It's Michael Woolworth, by the way, from Bible League International and you'd probably say, well, I'd hop in my car, I'd go to a Christian bookstore or have one shipped to me.

What if those weren't options? You'd say, well, I'm new to the faith. I mean, I need to know what it means to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. You know, you would pray that someone, anyone would bring you a Bible and that's exactly the way it is for literally millions of Christians around the world. They're part of our spiritual family. They're new to the faith.

They want to know what it means to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. But God has them planning where it's very difficult to access a Bible. And that's why the Truth Network and Bible League have teamed up to send God's word to 3500 Bible-less believers around the globe.

Our campaign is called The World Needs the Word. Five dollars sends a Bible. One hundred dollar sends 20. Every gift matched. Make your most generous gift by calling 800 YES WORD, 800 Y E S W O R D, 800 YES WORD or give at truthnetwork.com.