Author Stephanie Hubach Shares Insights For Parents With Special Needs Children

Welcome to Hope as a Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans right now currently serve as a family caregiver.

Maybe it's for an aging parent, maybe for a special needs child, maybe for somebody who has an addiction issue. Whatever the chronic impairment, there's always a caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers, but how do you help a caregiver stay healthy?

How do you point them to healthiness? What does that even look like on a spiritual, emotional, and physical level, financial level? All of these things wrap up in the heart of a caregiver. We don't make good decisions if our heart's a train wreck. And if your mind is a squirrel cage, guess what's going to happen to your wallet?

Guess what's going to happen to your relationships, your job, your body, all those things. And so we go back to the Word of God to anchor ourselves in these truths that are the human condition. We as caregivers don't suffer from anything that is unique to us. We just deal with it in a more amplified way where things just hit us relentlessly. And it's in those times, though, that we get to see the faithfulness, the provision of God fleshed out in ways that we would not normally see it. And one of the things I love about what I get to do is I get to meet with a lot of different folks and interact with them and hear their stories, hear their journeys, and learn from them. One of those is Stephanie Hubach. She is over in Pennsylvania, a long ways from where I am in Montana. But we have connected through the years, and I've followed her journey and her insights. She's a prolific writer, speaker, and somebody who understands the journey as a parent and in other ways as well as a caregiver. And so you're going to really enjoy her. She's got a new book out.

It's called Parenting and Disabilities, Abiding in God's Presence. And this is part of the 31-day devotional series from PNR Publishing. They've got all kinds of topics they've done with this, but Stephanie has just waded into this particular issue with her lifetime of experience to help us learn from this and see insights on the provision of God. It's an extraordinary book, and so I'm glad to have her here. So Stephanie, welcome to the show. Thank you, Peter.

Thank you so much for your patience. We've been trying to do this for a while. Well, we have, and I was supposed to have you on, I don't even remember when, and we just got it all crosswise.

And it's just, you know, I thought 2020 was a tough year, then 2021 came along and said, hey, you know, watch this. It's great to be here. God's timing is always perfect, right? Indeed.

And it's great to be anywhere, I think, sometimes. This book, and this is part of that 31-day devotional series that they do, which are amazing topics that PNR has allowed wonderful authors to speak to. And you took on this one, and I love this book. But before we get into that, tell us a little bit about your journey, your family's journey as a caregiver, and what kind of prompted you to write this book.

Okay, sure. Boy, my husband Fred and I have been married for 38 years, and we have two adult sons. My older son, Fred, who's married to Cecilia, and they have our granddaughter Caroline down in Washington, DC, so not too far away. And our younger son, Tim, it's going to be 30 in January, and he's our son who has Down syndrome. And Tim lives at home with us. He has his own apartment downstairs in our house and is doing really well, has a lot of independent living skills, has two jobs, and plays in the praise band at church and has a pretty sweet life. What does he play? He plays congas, but in marching band, he did bass drum, in concert band, he did snare. And he also has a full drum set, electronic, down the basement. So he has a lot of fun with that, too. Is his timing pretty good? It is, actually. You know, it's one of those fun things about people with disabilities.

Often people focus on where they have a specific need, but people with disabilities also have gifts, just like anybody else, right? And one of Tim's great gifts is his rhythm. And I saw that in him early on when he was three or four, and I thought, you know, if we could actually help him to get connected into a world of music, that could be a great entree for him, for, you know, a social world. And it really has worked out that way.

It's been great. Well, I've been playing the piano since I was five, majored in music and everything else. And Gracie says, she calls me Indiana Peter and the tempo of doom, because she says I'm rhythmically challenged. So I do the best I can. Well, we'll get Tim together with you. We'll get Tim to help you out there.

I do the best I can. But the metronome and I, we're not on good terms. And I've got a few broken ones I've slung across the room.

Well, I think it was marvelous that he plays, and that's great. And of course, that is the one instrument that's a bit loud to play and rehearse in the house with. Well, that's why we now have an electronic drum set. We originally had the full set. And I remember my older son, Freddie's, look on his face the Christmas that we gave Tim that drum set. Really? Like, oh, you have got to be kidding me. Yeah, I thought about doing that for our son and daughter-in-law for their children in front of a drum set, just to mess with them.

But that's, no, I'm not going to do that. Well, that's wonderful. And so, you know, one of the things that right off the bat with Tim, and I've got a very close friend of mine and his son, his son with Down syndrome, he's 42, I think now. The age now that Tim has reached, you know, 30, 40 years ago, that was almost unheard of to find somebody with Down syndrome in their 30s and in their 40s.

It was a very rare thing because there was a lot of different things. The medical sciences come a long ways. Did you guys have to walk through some of those things with hearts and all that kind of thing?

Well, yes, we did. Tim had an AV canal heart repair when he was an infant. And without heart surgery, you know, the vast majority of kids with Down's didn't survive, right, to adulthood. I remember reading early on when Tim was little what the statistics were. And back in the 1920s, the average lifespan of a child with Down's was nine. Oh, my gosh.

Let's think about it. Before open heart, right, and before—what's the word I want, Peter—antibiotics, there we go, right, for kids who are very prone to infections and pneumonia. I was still hung up on rhythm.

I told you it's not— The tempo of doing this stuck in my mind. And worse still, on a more heartbreaking note, a Down syndrome in the womb. It's one of the most dangerous places for a child with Down syndrome is in the womb.

And when you've got a—what's going on in Europe and so forth, they've been pushing more and more. I saw this article that came out about last December about this. They want to basically eradicate Down syndrome by making sure that every Down's child is aborted. Right. There was an article in the Atlantic last year that featured what's happening to people with Down syndrome in the country of Denmark. And I actually wrote a response article to that that's coming out in By Faith magazine in about three weeks.

So maybe about the time this broadcast comes out, that will be out as well. I think that is marvelous, and I really applaud you for speaking to that. I want to get right into some of the things with your book. The way you've got this set up is a theological statement in of itself, in that you've split this up into sections for this 31-day devotional, and you don't have to do this 31 days straight. I mean, it's something you can pick up, put down, pick up, put down, and you mention that in your book. But every section of about four days, roughly, is called the gift of this, the gift of that, the gift of this. This is not a curse.

This is not God's punishment. In fact, one of these days, day five, is disability is not punishment. And for those of us who have lived with chronic disabilities in our family and so forth, we've run into this. You spend any kind of time with this, and church folk can work out some bad theology on you.

You tackle this, and that's what we're going to talk about when we come back from this break. We're talking with Stephanie Hubach, and her book is Parenting in Disabilities, Abiding in God's Presence. And it's an extraordinary book. It's a devotional book that will, I promise you, it will change your life if you read this book.

And her website, by the way, is stephaniehubach.com, and that's Bach, B-A-C-H, like the composer. This is Peter Rosenberg, and this is Hope for the Caregiver. We're going to take a quick break.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is the show for you as a family caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger, and we are so glad that you're with us. That's my wife, Gracie, from her CD Resilient, and she is indeed resilient. Go to hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want to see more about how to get this CD and other music and things that we've done. We're talking with Stephanie Hubach, and Stephanie and I have got to know each other for the last several years, and we've intersected a lot of different things. And I've always admired how she's approached this journey of caregiving as a parent, particularly with their family dealing with Down syndrome with her son, Tim. But the insight she's had—she's dug deep, and she's written some beautiful things to help others get back to the road of safety and trusting God with this. And this new book of hers is called Parenting and Disabilities Abiding in God's Presence.

And I wanted to jump right into day five. Disability is not punishment. Talk a little bit about this, because you understand this in ways that few do. You have wrestled with this particular issue a lot, and we've had to push back on a lot of bad theology out there. Talk a little bit about this, Stephanie.

Sure. Yeah, this is unfortunately one of those places where Christians practice very bad theology, and it's really hurtful to people, right? And fortunately, I don't think it happens as frequently as it used to, but it still happens. It does.

What's amazing, I guess what's comforting about that in an odd sense, is that this is not a new problem, right? And when you look at the story in John 9, where Jesus and his disciples are encountering a man born blind, right? And the first thing the disciples do is turn to Jesus.

They don't talk to the man, they just turn and talk about him. And they said, so who sinned, this man or his parents? The assumption was somebody sinned, which one was it? And the beauty of that story is just how Jesus completely turns their assumptions on their heads and says, no, neither.

This happened that the work of God might be displayed in his life. And I think that's the really sweet story that every parent of a child with disabilities needs to hear, right? First of all, there's no personal sin at play here that brought about this condition, that their child is created uniquely in God's image and therefore has incredible value.

So no matter what combination of abilities and disabilities a parent's child possesses, right? That that person is created specifically that way for God's glory and for their good, for their life to be fulfilled as an image bearer that reflects God's character into the world. And so we have a tendency to want to assign blame when there's difficulty in life, right?

We want to do everything we can to eradicate difficulty and then we want to assign blame when we can't eradicate it. And I just love the example that Christ gives us in John 9 of how he embraces the man born blind and embraces God's story for his life. Well, and I think we can infer on the other side of that that, and I've said this a lot because I remember when over the years with Gracie's situation, actually one lady came into her room, her hospital room right after her wreck, after she'd been unconscious for three weeks. And then when it turns out she was going to live, came in and said, well, what did you do that God would do this to you?

Gracie was 17. I mean, she was just a kid and people have that. And I remember saying this once, I think I was on television, I don't know where I was, but I said it very publicly. If amputation was a sign of God's displeasure, there'd be a whole lot of amputees in this world.

And Hugh Hefner made it an entire lifetime without losing a limb. And you could see it kind of took people back a little bit, but sometimes we have to do that. We have to push back a little bit, not just necessarily for ourselves, but for so many who don't have a voice, who don't have the vocabulary to push back on this. And I kind of look at myself and you as the same way as we're kind of sheepdogs for caregivers because there's so many that don't have a voice. They're in isolation. In fact, that's one of the topics you talk about in this, is that isolation. And then in that isolation, that's where a lot of dark thoughts can come and a lot of dark thoughts about God. And you just systematically go through this in this book and help people understand, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's rethink this a little bit. And I love that.

Here's another one that I loved on day two. Every person has agency. And I got to tell you, I do so much for Gracie that I have often robbed her of her agency at times. And I've had to go back and really make amends for that. I've been a caregiver so long, Stephanie, that I've had an ample opportunity to make every kind of mistake you can make. I'm the Wile E. Coyote of caregivers. I've had more anvils dropped on my head, but this issue of every person has agency.

Talk a little bit about that. So the biblical idea of agency really comes from the creation story, right? Where we're created as image bearers of the living God, right? And then we're given a mission to have dominion over creation, right? And to be fruitful and multiply.

And that means that doesn't just mean procreation, right? That means in whatever we do, in whatever ways God has wired us, we're to live our life fully in a way that reflects his character and draws other people to him. And so again, it's so easy for us to look at the challenges that people with disabilities face and focus on the challenge and not focus on doing everything we can to support their sense of agency, their sense of action, right?

Their sense of leaning into the life that God has given them in order to glorify him with whatever capacities that he has given them. And so that's when it is a good caution point for us as caregivers, whether it's parents or spouse or in whatever way someone is walking alongside of somebody with a disability, is to respect their agency, right? To respect the fact that, for example, people with disabilities have amazing gifts that God has given them as well. But the key is to say, sometimes we don't allow their agency in those gifts because we don't even recognize them because they're packaged differently, right?

And so agency has a lot of different ways that we could unravel it, right? But I think it is a really important thing. And it's closely tied to dignity, right? Well, and I've struggled with this in my own life and had to learn some hard lessons when Gracie started spending more time in a wheelchair, particularly when she has a surgery on her leg or something that she can't wear her prosthetic limbs. And I started making a conscious effort to get down at her level as far as sitting in a chair, getting on a knee and looking at her eye to eye instead of having her look up at me because that robs her of dignity, of agency, of a lot of different things. And I had to struggle with that.

I didn't have to struggle with the concept of it. I just had to remind myself of that. Oh, wait a minute. This is unfair to her. And she deserves to be treated with respect in this. Just because she's in a wheelchair doesn't mean I get, you know, when I have a serious conversation, I will pull up a chair and we'll look eye to eye on this. And those are little things that you learn over the years.

And when caregivers tend to do so much for a loved one, we rob them of whatever independence. And sometimes it's easier. Yes, I can do it faster.

I can do all those things. But the goal is not to do it faster. And I heard a great... It's a way to think about it, right? It is. Efficiency is the enemy of agency, right?

I love that quote. Yeah. Because what happens is when we put a premium on how quickly we can get something done, and for example, this happens a lot with an individual with an intellectual disability, right? The processing is a little bit slower. The speed of that person is generally a little bit slower. So it takes a lot of intentional reining in, right? Of my own sense of urgency, right? Or efficiency in order to allow Tim to exercise his agency, right? Well, I heard a great quote from a friend of mine who said, a family moves at the speed of its slowest member.

And you know, there's something to this. And when you deal with the church, I think we ought to all... That principle gets lost even further than it does with the family. Because some of our members in churches are not going to be as quick. They're not going to be as quick spiritually as others, or they're not going to be... They're not the same place.

So we need to be kind with one another and recognize that the goal is not to get there. You know, every guy can attest to this when we take a trip. I don't know if Fred does this.

You have to verify this. We won't tell Fred about this part of the show. But every guy, when he goes on a long trip with the family, the first thing he does is get out of the car. Well, we've made that in five hours and 14 minutes. You know, the goal is to get there as absolutely fast to break every speed record we possibly can to get there and then brag about the fact that we shaved three minutes off the journey. Doesn't mean that we weren't screaming and yelling at each other the whole time and everybody's eyes are watering because they got to go to the bathroom so bad, but we couldn't stop.

But we missed the opportunity. And I have been guilty of this in untold times. And so what I'm learning over the years is that, you know what, it's okay to slow down and go with the speed that... I can't... Now sometimes when I will... Don't tell anybody this, Stephanie. This is just between you and me.

But I will... Cue in the music. Cue the music. But once I get Gracie in the wheelchair, I will move a little faster once she is contained where I have a little bit measure of control that we could get from point A to point B faster because Gracie will often move at the speed of half the speed of smell. And I'm like, baby, come on. We got to go, baby. We got to go. And so, yes, there are those moments in any family that has nothing to do with it.

That's just family dynamics. But the point that you bring in this devotional is that, you know, let's be thoughtful. Let's be considerate to what's going on with their journey and then also how this affects our journey as we step back and allow and stop being an impediment to them and their learning process and their adaptive process. I thought that was a beautiful thing that you put in this book.

What is something else that surprised you? I'm sorry about the cough. I've been around horses and everything else. It's not COVID.

It's just allergies. And I can't get to my cough button in time. So sorry about that. What are some things that surprised you as you wrote this book before I get into some of the other areas that really grabbed a hold of me? Well, we're going to take a quick break here and I'm sorry for that. I've really appreciated the specificity of what you've got into with this book that you have drilled down in some very poignant places for caregivers to think through this. I think we stay in a very shallow area theologically.

So many of us do until confronted with these things. We'll talk about this more when we come back. We're talking to Stephanie Hubach. Stephanie Hubach.com, her new book, Parenting and Disabilities Abiding in God's Presence. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberg. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. We're so grateful that you're with us. Stephanie Hubach joins us today to talk about her new book, Parenting and Disabilities Abiding in God's Presence.

Stephanie, I'm going to set you up. It's a 31-day devotional, by the way, that she's written. It is really extraordinary. I want to set you up with a conversation I heard that had nothing necessarily to do with what we're talking about, but it touched on it. And then I want to get your thoughts on this. There's a gentleman named Robert Woodson, and he is an American civil rights activist and is a president of the Woodson Center. He's a wonderful thinker. He's an African American fellow, and he was on several shows that he was talking about. And he was talking about our country and the turmoil in our country. And it all stems, a lot of the argument stems, is that America was born with this great birth defect called slavery. And he said, if your child is born with a birth defect, some type of impairment, you don't destroy the child.

You rehabilitate, you nurture, you help equip that child to live as productive of life as possible. He said, why would we do anything different with a country? And that just stuck with me. I thought, wow, that is a very profound thing. And I think we've got this entire mindset in our country where if we don't like it, let's eliminate it. Whether it's children in the womb, whether it's dealing with, I know you were just as horrified as I was with the previous governor of Virginia came out and said, we'll put the child aside if it's born with whatever special needs or whatever, and then we'll have a discussion.

And I was just as outraged about that, I think, as millions of others were. And then we're also looking at end of life issues. If it becomes inconvenient, let's eliminate it.

And it's almost like we have a culture that is wanting to bow down at the altar of convenience. And when it comes to special needs children, there is something extraordinary that God does in families that are willing to trust him with this. And I was wondering if you could just kind of unpack that a little bit. Sure. You know, I think in our country, you know, one of its great benefits is the individual rights that we possess. Right. But it's also one of our sticking points when it comes to living in a healthy way as a community. Right. Is that we have a tendency to focus so much on individualism and individual rights that we really lose this idea that flourishing in a community actually takes place when we actually give up our rights. Right.

On behalf of other people. Right. That's what really the scriptures call us to in Christian community is it's not to defend my rights. Right.

To lay down my rights like Jesus laid down his rights. Right. And then to move into the lives of other people offering ourselves to each other in order to actually promote flourishing in the community. And Andy Crouch has written the book called Strong and Weak. And he does a really great job at laying out these two parts that create flourishing. One being what he calls authority, which he defines as capacity for meaningful action. Right. And the second one being vulnerability, which he defines as exposure to meaningful risk. So he says when you look at the life of Christ, for example, right, he has the highest level of capacity for meaningful action, the highest level of exposure to meaningful risk up until the point of his death on the cross. Right. And so the life he calls us to is one where it's the coexistence of this capacity for meaningful action and this exposure to meaningful risk.

And yet what we tend to think is that if I can just isolate myself from risk and have as much personal control as possible, I'll live a good life. Right. And what kids with disabilities in our midst do is they draw us out of that little, that little huddle that we tend to want to hide in and draw us with their vulnerability.

Right. Draw us into their vulnerability and actually take us to a place of flourishing, which is amazing. I mean, it's so counterintuitive and countercultural, but it's absolutely biblically true of how that works in life.

And and it's a beautiful thing. When you get to be a part of it, you see the beauty of how not only capacity, but also vulnerability work together to bring flourishing. And, but you have to get out of having an individual, individualistic mindset about life, that all of my life is about me and what I want or my goals are.

Right. And live a life that's much more willing to die into self. Well, this is a topic that Gracie and I've had to wrestle with many times. And there's a point when you, you realize, okay, I can't wait for her to improve or get worse before I start living a lifestyle of purpose and meaning and, and even joy in the midst of this. I mean, a lot of people think, well, I'll just get mama through this. And when she dies, then I'll go do this and this and this.

Well, when this has been going on for 35 years in our marriage, Gracie was hurt 38 years ago. And there's a point where you have to learn to live with this. You know, you've got to go make a living. You've got to, you've got to pay bills. You've got to clean the house.

You got to learn how to cook. You know, and eventually I remember one time I had a church group that a friend of mine was in Sunday school and the family member was going through some stuff and they wanted to start bringing meals and, and hire and get going over there and cleaning their home and stuff like that. And I said, well, hold on, let's put on the breaks. This is not episodic, is it? He said, what do you mean? They said, well, this is, this has been going on for some time, right? He said, yeah, they've been doing this for five years. And I said, so you're going to go over there and clean your house for five years because this could go on another five years, another 10 years, you know? And I said, are you prepared for that level of commitment? Cause you know, and he said, well, I didn't really think about that.

I said, well, take a moment. You're going to keep making meals. You're going to do that every night. Eventually what happens, I've found when you have a situation like this is when it's chronic, you know, you can only do meals for so long. The first couple of meals that come are really nice. And then it starts getting into Domino's pizza and they're coming late and you create, you create a level of dependency on the providers, if you will, where you're not teaching them how to cook, how to clean, how to do these things. I had to learn how to cook, you know, and I struggled at boiling water when I first got married. Gracie likes to tell everybody that. And I've become friends over the years with Graham Care, who used to be the galloping gourmet, and he's given me some good tips.

That's a good place to get tips from it. But you know, I didn't know how to do this, but I had to learn and I had to grow. And I had to learn to embrace disability as part of your life.

That this wasn't something you held your breath about and tried to get on the other side of, right? Yes. And this is what you cannot, you cannot, it is, this is our life and it's not a bad life.

It's just a different life. Like your, like your book same. That was a plug for your book.

Your first book. Yeah. Same like different boat.

That would be it. Same like different boat, but it's, it's not a bad life. It's a hard life and it comes with a specific set of challenges, but that doesn't mean that beauty and joy are, are held back from our life because they're not. And Gracie and I live pretty, pretty large.

You guys live large. It doesn't mean you don't have tears, but it doesn't mean you're walking around just all, Oh, you know, one day we'll be free of all that. No, you live in the moment with God's joy right now. And we laugh and cut up and do all the things. You're just a family.

You know, it's just family. When we, you know, when we take our marriage vows, right? Says joy and sorrow, sickness and health, plenty and one, right? There's, there's tensions are, are embedded in an understanding of life there. But then when it comes to living it, we don't want to tensions, right? Um, we want the joy, right? We want, uh, the plenty. We want to be happy. We spend so much time trying to be happy that we're not learning how to be content. And Alison Krauss has a wonderful song said, I'm not looking for bliss. I'm looking for contentment. And Paul says, I can be content in all things. And so I go back and you and I share this same belief system that everything we deal with in our caregiving journey, in our disability journey, every principle, every precept, every struggle is addressed in scripture. The struggle is for, for me is not dealing with insurance companies and all the surgeries Gracie's had and so forth.

That's a one and done. Once I learned those things, I got it. But the struggle for me, and I believe for, for most caregivers is the fear, the despair, the guilt, the, the, the, the, the heartache, the loneliness, all those things. Every bit of that is in scripture. And that's what you have done with this book.

And you've, you've walked people through this. What, what surprised you as you started putting pen to paper with all this? I mean, these are not concepts you're unfamiliar with, but when you start organizing your thoughts to do a book like this, what surprised you in this for yourself personally as a mom and just as, as a, as a child of the Lord? I think about how multifaceted the ways that God is with us are, right?

That it's so easy to think. We know the idea of the phrase Emmanuel at Christmas, God with us, right? Christ came down, was born, became incarnate. We understand that, right? But when we really look at the arc of scripture from Genesis, all the way to Revelation and look at, take that idea of God with us, Emmanuel, and look backwards in scripture to forwards in scripture, right?

And say, what does that actually mean? It just blew my mind, right? When I started to look at that and say, wow, in creation that means that God's given me his image. God is with me and with my child, right? As an image bearer in that he's given us his image in it in a way that can never be taken away, right? And that that he is with us in that particular, very concrete manifestation of our humanity, right? Then we look at farther down the scripture and go, wow, look at how God's God is with us in his faithfulness. You look at the journey of the Israelites, right? Through their enslavement and through the wilderness and then through all the struggles of Israel and Judah and Old Testament, right? And how God was with his people, right? Even through many dark places throughout the Old Testament.

Then we look at, and then of course the incarnation, right? How God is with us in Christ coming to earth and how he's with us in our sufferings. You know, that's a powerful statement when you say God is in our suffering. It's one that I've wrestled with personally with watching my wife suffer. I live with somebody who suffers and she's not known a day without suffering in three and a half decades since Reagan was president, over three and a half decades. That is not an easy statement to make.

Talk a little bit about that. Unpack that theologically of where you've walked in those journeys of recognizing, oh, okay, I'm seeing a bigger picture in my sufferings. I think one of the things is to recognize one of the ways God is with us is that he actually understands our sufferings experientially. That Christ in his incarnation, he identifies with oppression and injustice, right?

You look at disability, it has both the functional part of the body that doesn't work the way it's expected to, but we also have the social dimension and the ways in which people disable people further through the social interactions and that whole aspect of oppression. Jesus understands and identifies with grief and loss. Imagine just what kind of grief he had to go through even just living amongst humanity.

He was acquainted with sorrow and grief. This is Peter Rosenberger. We've got to take a quick break. We're talking with Stephanie Hubock, her book, Parenting and Disabilities, Abiding in God's Presence. We will talk more about this and I've got one more topic I want to really drill down with Stephanie here in when we come back. Welcome back to Hope of the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver.

That is my wife Gracie with Russ Taft from her CD Resilient. The joy of the Lord is my strength and this is something that is an overarching theme of everything that we do is that we are not held hostage by the difficulties in our lives. We are not excluded from joy, from peace, from contentment, from strength, from fortitude, from endurance, by disability, by chronic suffering, by any of these things of this broken world. And that is the message of the Gospel. He came into this to show us that, whoa, wait a minute, you are not prisoners to this broken world. You are not in bondage to it. I am setting you free from this through Christ Jesus.

And that is the whole point of this. And that brings me to my last topic that I wanted to address with Stephanie Hubach from her new book, Parenting and Disabilities, Abiding in God's Presence. She brings in one of the sections, it's towards the end of the devotional, and it's called The Gift of an Unfailing Advocate in Jesus.

And as any caregiver will know, a lot of the job description is being an advocate. When I wrote my book, Hope for the Caregiver, I dedicated it to Christ, Solus Christus, which is one of the five pillars of the Reformation. And I referred to him because I came to understand he is the ultimate caregiver of a wounded bride. And that's who we are as believers. That's who the church is.

We're a wounded bride. And he's the ultimate caregiver. I have a Savior who understands what it's like to care for a bride with wounds. And that gives me such comfort and strength to know that there is a path for this. And then that advocacy that he beautifully models throughout all of Scripture. He is our advocate. And then that in turn allows us and equips us to become advocates in our journey as well for those around us that God brings into our lives, oftentimes with disabilities. And so I wanted, Stephanie, would you close that out for just a few moments and talk about that unfailing advocate in Jesus?

Right, Peter. I think one of the words that you used earlier is where this all ties in so much for caregivers is that idea of relentlessness. I have a friend that says, disability is not like cancer.

You don't get to the other side of it. And that's not meant to minimize in any way the difficulty associated with cancer. But that Jesus is our unrelenting advocate in the face of our relentlessness. That his advocacy is unrelenting. So that no matter how relentless our circumstances, God's love for us is more unrelenting.

And so it's always out-relents us. And then because of how Jesus has modeled to us advocacy, then we can at the same time become godly advocates for our family members or friends who have disabilities that need our assistance. We can look at things like, what is the aim of advocacy? Well, ultimately what we really want to see advocacy change is to change hearts. Because yes, you can change legislation and things like that.

And that's all good and that's fine. But changed hearts is where you see real change in culture and in churches. And advocacy that's rooted in faith, not power and control. That we do the right thing for the right reason. That we live righteously in the ways that we engage other people on behalf of our loved ones. And that we trust God with the outcomes. And that advocacy that basically stirs up the pot in a good way.

That doesn't create destruction of community, but actually builds community in the process of advocating. So I think we look at Jesus' example of how he lived here on this earth and what he does for us before the throne of God. That we can just take heart. That he not only is our advocate, but he also walks with us in our advocacy and teaches us how to advocate in a way that honors him. I think for me as a caregiver, a lot of my journey as an advocate changed dramatically when I realized how much I needed an advocate. When I started to understand what Christ did, does and continues to do as my advocate. My own great neediness before God.

Once I got a better picture of that, it changed everything on how I advocate for Gracie. I had to learn a different way of doing things. When you have truth without grace, when you have truth without graciousness, that's judgment.

And I would be right, but I would be wrong in how I was being right, if that makes sense, even as an advocate. And pretty much in every part of my life. There's this remarkable switch that happens in your life when you see your own great need before God. And how magnificent and massive the grace that was extended from Christ to us. Once that happens, it changes every dynamic of your life. It's unforgettable and it is transformative.

This is what happened to me not only as a caregiver, but it happened to me as her husband. And everything else that I do, one of the things I do with the program here, all the things that I do are designed to reflect that transformative work that happens with the gospel. And helping people understand this.

What does this mean when you're watching somebody go into a seizure for the umpteenth time, or when you're watching them go down the hallway to surgery for her, as she did in September with her eighty-first surgery? How do you advocate in that situation? And the best advocate that I've ever done for Gracie, in the midst of all of her sorrow and her suffering and everything else, is when I point her back to Christ in a way that makes sense in the midst of her suffering. And that only comes when you have had those moments when you were just clinging onto the cross for everything because you have nothing else. And we fill our minds and our lives with things that we think will support us, but nothing does. And there's nothing like disability, there's nothing like suffering, there's nothing like sorrow and heartache to dispel all that veneer and bring us to that point where all we need is need.

Because that's it. It's hard to cry out to a savior that you don't think you need. And that's when I saw that thing about your advocate, I thought, oh my gosh, she's got that, she knows this. Right, because suffering is what drives us into the arms of Jesus, right? Rebecca McLaughlin has this great book called Confronting Christianity, and she has a chapter in there on suffering, and she talks about the story of Lazarus, where Lazarus was dying and Mary and Martha called Jesus, he's ill, please come and help, and says how much he loved Mary, Martha and Lazarus and he waited two days, right?

Those two sentences right back to back. And so what happens in those two days Lazarus dies, right? But where does he meet Martha when he arrives at Bethany, right?

He meets her in that space between where he called for help, but he hasn't received an answer to her request yet, right? And so she has to meet Jesus in that space of suffering in between, and right there he meets her right between the eyes and says, I am the resurrection and the life, right? That all of this suffering, all of this pain, no matter how this turns out, on the other end, it drives you to me, right? That I am your deepest need, not having Lazarus, not having the person who provides for your financial needs, which would be the case in that culture, right?

But I am the resurrection and the life. And so that's where we want all of our caregivers to go, right? That our best place to be ever is in the arms of Jesus, right? You know, I've watched Gracie in the hospital many times and she would sing hymns and when she was struggling she was in so much pain and I go in and she'd be singing.

Precious Jesus. And then she would go, O for Gracie to trust him more. Instead of saying, O for Grace, she said, O for Gracie to trust him more. And realizing that in that moment of agony, which she's one of the few people I know who've actually shaken hands with agony many, many, many times. And in those moments of agony, everything else was gone.

And she would just say, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him. And that's why these, why I love to play all the hymns because you look back and say, okay, here's these Ebenezers that I've seen over my life. Here's these, these, these hills where I've seen God move in such profound ways. And that gives me the strength and the courage to trust him with yet this, because, you know, O God our help in ages past means something. When you look at the things that you're going through, you're facing these things. When sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, you know, and this is the place we as caregivers can journey towards.

I don't think I'll ever own it in this life. I think I will, I will get closer to some things, but I'll be struggling with this all the way to the moment he calls me home. But I see it differently now. And it all starts when I, when I started recognizing how much of an advocate I need, my great need of a savior, that I've got a bigger problem than being a caregiver. I got a bigger problem than, and Gracie will tell you this. She said, I got a bigger problem than amputation. I got a bigger problem than 80 surgeries.

I got a bigger problem than chronic pain. And, and these things mean something as we, as we wrestle with these on a, on a core level for who we are. And you have beautifully laid this out in your book, Stephanie. So we're out of time here and we've got to go, but I want you to know how much I appreciate you being here today. Stephanie Hubach, stephaniehubach.com.

The book is Parenting and Disabilities Abiding in God's Presence. Last 10 seconds, Stephanie, go ahead. That God is with us from Genesis to Revelation throughout the story of scripture. The question is, do we trust him? Do we trust him? Do we trust him? And, and as, as Gracie would sing it, oh, for Gracie to trust him more. Oh, for grace to trust him more. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust you, how I've proved you over and over. It's a great word to end on.

This is Hope for the Caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next time. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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? Please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.