Caregivers and The New Year

Happy New Year! This is Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. I am Peter Rosenberger and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans are serving as a caregiver and as we go through the holiday season that's when we often go home and we see family members or connect with family members and see things that we may not have been noticing throughout the year. So the population of caregivers may have just grown a little bit more as you've gone through this holiday season with your family members and you're not sure what to do.

You're in the right place. Hope for the Caregiver is the conviction that we as family caregivers can live a calmer, healthier, and dare I say it a more joyful life even while dealing with often very difficult circumstances. Everything in this program is designed to help strengthen the family caregivers to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not. And most people when they think of caregivers they think of nursing homes but that is the farthest thing from my life and I've been doing this now for more than 35 years.

Caring for my wife through a medical nightmare that has now exceeded 80 operations that I can count and 100 doctors have treated her over these decades since her terrible car accident. And she lives with significant pain and disability. But nursing homes are not even in the equation for us and I know so many others who are caregiving for a special needs child, a family member who deals with the aftermath of a stroke, somebody who is dealing with autism, somebody's dealing with alcoholism or addiction. These are all chronic impairments and wherever you find a chronic impairment you're going to find a caregiver.

It's just that simple. How do you help the caregiver? What happens to the caregiver through this journey? How does the stress affect them?

What is their decision making like? All of these things factor into the person who is providing unpaid care often way beyond our training to a vulnerable loved one and we are all that stands between that loved one and even worst disaster. If something happens to me, my wife's life gets extremely difficult and it's already brutal.

If something happens to you, what happens to your loved one? And I'm also equally convinced that we as caregivers struggle in the heart first and primarily. By that I mean the issues that we deal with as caregivers on a core level are common to the human condition but we just deal with them in a relentless, often unmerciful way where we are forced to deal with the fear and the despair and the resentment and the anger and the heartache and the guilt and the obligation and all of these things that every human being deals with. We just deal with it on a nuclear level and it's compressed into a matter of hours instead of weeks, months or even years. Of course we have to do medical tasks and logistics tasks involving our loved one and a lot of physical things that we must do.

A lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry, running errands and so forth. But those are things that are learned and not forgotten. I don't have to spend a lot of time researching on how to do the laundry every time. I know how to do that. It's a pain but I know how to do it. The things that we struggle with are those things that keep us awake at night, that cause us to sink, our hearts to shake and to quiver, that we feel rage and we clench our fists, that we lose our cool, that we become angry or despairing. All of these things are what troubles the caregiver. Every single day, relentlessly. And if we don't have something to reorient our thinking, to shore us up, to point us to safety, to land on, then we easily get plowed under by the challenges and the demands that we have as caregivers.

And so that's what this show is all about. I want to start off with a scripture since it's the new year. I want to start off with a scripture that I think you may find meaningful.

It's Isaiah 43 18 through 19. I'm going to read it first in the New American Standard. Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth. Will you not be aware of it?

I will even make a roadway in the wilderness rivers in the desert. Now let me read it to you from the message. Sometimes it's a little easier to understand if you read it in several different translations and so forth or paraphrases.

In this case it's a paraphrase. But here's what the message says. Same verse.

Isaiah 43 18 through 19. Forget about what's happened. Don't keep going over old history. Be alert. Be present. I'm about to do something brand new. It's bursting out. Don't you see it?

There it is. I'm making a road through the desert, rivers in the bad land. Isn't that a great verse for us as caregivers to hang onto, to start this year with? You know there's an old quote I like, and I'm kind of paraphrasing for where we are, but don't live the same year over and over and call that a life. You know it may feel like that movie Groundhog Day, but it's not. We are not doomed to that. We can have life right now and do things that are creative, exciting, inspiring, moving, joyful, all those things are available to us.

And that's what I would like to start off my year with as a caregiver and for you as well. There's an old hymn that was written in the 1500s and it was set to a tune, set to several tunes, and one of them, probably the most familiar tune that it was set to, was Elekom. And you may have heard that at Palm Sunday when you hear that song, Hosanna, loud Hosanna sing. You know that one? This text was set to that tune.

But listen to these lyrics. The year is gone beyond recall with all its hopes and fears, with all its bright and gladdening smiles, with all its mourners tears. Thy thankful people praise thee, Lord, for countless gifts received and pray for grace to keep the faith which saints of old believe. Now check out this verse to see if this is not applicable to where we are as a nation, as a world. To thee we come, O gracious Lord, the newborn year to bless. Defend our land from pestilence, give peace and plenteousness. Forgive this nation's many sins, the growth of vice, restrain and help us all with sin to strive and crowns of life to gain. Isn't that a great text for us as caregivers to hang on to and think about what's going on with the COVID, the Delta, the Omicron, or whatever's coming next.

I'm sure they'll think of something next. But needless to say, pestilence has been on the mind of a lot of people. And here's this him that was written so many hundreds of years ago. I think this text was written like at 1500. Well, they really understood pestilence back then too.

And I love this. Defend our land from pestilence, give peace and plenteousness. But the hymn writer goes on to say, forgive this nation's many sins, the growth of vice, restrain.

Restrain that growth of vice because you could see it in our culture right now and help us all with sin to strive and crowns of life to gain. Do you see how this elevates our eyes to see beyond just our own immediate circumstances that we can see the bigger picture? And that bigger picture helps us endure as family caregivers in the midst of sometimes a very dark and lonely road. We've got a lot to cover today. I've got some very special guests that will be with us to share their insights of what they've learned along this way.

All of this is done to help equip you to stay firm and healthy and strong and to keep a perspective when it's so easy to get blown off course. We'll be right back with Shannon Breen with Fox News and there's more to come. Hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com. We're so glad that you're with us. Go out and check out our podcast.

We have over 600 episodes that are free to download. Please take advantage of these. There's no need for you to go through this all by yourself. For so many years, for decades, I had to forage and try to figure these things out on my own. Nobody knew really what to say to me. But now I've aggregated a lifetime of this to be able to offer a lifeline to you as a fellow caregiver.

So take advantage of it. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll be right back. 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 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 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 um as 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 a 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 the this guy right here he needs to go to africa with us i i never not feel that way out every time you know you always make me have to leave i don't want to leave them i i feel like i'm at home with them and i feel like that we have a common bond that i would have been able to come and 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 other ones like it but i know about this one are it's 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 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 please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle standingwithhope.com slash recycle thanks gracie