Caregiving Versus Caregiving

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. How are you doing?

What's going on with you? More than 65 million Americans right now are serving as a caregiver. They're putting themselves knowingly, voluntarily, without pay most of the time, between a vulnerable loved one and an even worse disaster. What do you do to help a family caregiver? How do you help them stay strong and healthy? Is it just a matter of getting their loved one to stop acting out a certain way? Then the caregiver is going to be okay?

Not hardly. When you have a chronic impairment, this is not going to be resolved anytime soon and you have to learn to be healthy and strong in the midst of it. You can't wait for it to get better or worse before you start making healthier decisions for yourself. Otherwise it's going to end very badly. But what does that look like? Where is safety?

Where is solid ground? That's what this program is all about. Caregivers suffer from what I call the three eyes.

We lose our independence, we become isolated, and we lose our identity. Every caregiver is going to go through this. Caregivers simply just lose themselves in someone else's story.

And that's not healthy. If you're constantly talking about someone else and not what's going on with you, think about what the signal that you're sending yourself about, that you don't matter, that you're inconsequential. When's the last time somebody asked you how you were doing? How did you respond? Did you start talking about your loved one?

Did you start rattling off their chart? Well, she had a bad night, or he's not doing very well, or our situation is this, or we did such and such. When's the last time you spoke from your own heart?

How's that working for you? Are you able to express yourself? Well, that's the first step.

And that's why I ask every caller to the show, how are you feeling? And not because we're trying to base this on feelings, but I want the caregiver to start thinking and speaking in their own voice, no matter what's going on. Now, I've done this for a lifetime, and I've learned painfully, most of the things I've learned are painful, that we as caregivers have to regain our identity, maybe even discover it for the first time. I've learned as caregivers we have to stop being isolated. We have to push back against that isolation. We have to gain our independence, regain our own agency, taking control of our actions, our thoughts, our words, our own deeds.

And this is how we push back against this. Isolation is crippling. I had a call the other day with a guy, and he was talking about how isolated he feels as a caregiver for his wife, and what it does to him.

And I've spoken with so many families of special needs children about what happens when they're isolated, because other people, and even, sadly, even churches don't know how to respond, how to welcome, how to connect, what to even say. And so this program is all about helping caregivers develop the vocabulary to understand what help looks like, and then hopefully inspiring each of us to ask for that help. And then the third step is to receive that help. It's not enough to know what help is. It's not enough to even ask for it.

You have to receive it. And that involves a good bit of trust, because sometimes the people giving that help don't necessarily know how to do it in the way you want it, and you're kind of scared that it'll go off the rails or it'll create a bigger mess than that you have to clean up. It'll kind of fizzle out. They'll do it for a while, then they'll leave. There's a little bit of trust involved. And so receiving that help and giving clear boundaries and guidelines and helping people understand what help looks like to you. But you can't help them help you until you understand what it looks like yourself. I hope we also give non-caregivers a vocabulary of what it looks like to help a family caregiver, you know, pastors, counselors, doctors, financial planners, or anyone in any profession that a caregiver interacts with, like a pharmacist.

And I've said this often over my journey. My wife, at one point, her pain management folks were just throwing opioids at her. We eventually got away from that doctor, but during that time he was at a loss to do, and he just kept slinging more prescriptions at her. Just threw a brick of opioids at her and her considerable pain. And it turns out that it wasn't necessarily for mal intentions, it's just they were punching above their weight class.

And we needed to ratchet it up and get in some better experts. They weren't really thinking this through, and I didn't know enough, but the interesting thing during all this, and this is where they did drop the ball, is that not one doctor, nurse, or pharmacist ever pulled me aside and said, hey, we're putting a lot of behavior-altering prescriptions into your wife. You might want to get some help for yourself, and here's where we recommend, or here's something you might want to consider.

Nobody ever said anything like that. And that's why I say it on this program. As caregivers, we've got to have clear direction on where solid ground is, what it looks like to get there, that it's okay for us to seek help for ourselves. Here's what help looks like. And it's not like we're going to have this extended, drawn-out plan and we'll have seven steps and you can accomplish this as a caregiver kind of thing.

No, it's what does help look like right now, today, in this moment? And I'm in the middle of this journey myself, again, in an acute situation in the hospital. I'll be finishing up this program, then I'll head back over to the hospital with Gracia. She recovers from her 80-second surgery and it's a long recovery process.

She's already been in the hospital for over a month. By the way, if you hear audio changes in this program, I'm doing it remotely from Denver, so just be family. But what does help look like for me? What would you say to somebody like me, who's doing this now and I've been doing it for 35 years? You know, I do see, you go out there and do a Google search and many people say that they're caregiver experts. They're caregiving experts, caregiver experts and caregiving experts. And so I look at the stuff and I see people who took care of somebody for a couple of years, their loved one died and they've got some great tips and they want to offer those to you. And I look at those tips and it's important to have good tips.

And I look for those things. You know, particularly if you're dealing with things like wound care and you have to perform nursing functions and so forth, caregiving tips are great, but that's not what keeps me up at night. That's not what causes me to hang my head with weariness and even despair. That's not what causes my fist to clench and impotent fury is my lack of caregiving tips. What tears my heart apart and I've found tears the heart apart of virtually every caregiver I've ever met is that fear that we get into the guilt, the despair, the obligation, the resentment, all of those things that tear our hearts apart.

And it doesn't matter how many tips we have. It doesn't matter what kind of excellent skills we have at wound care or fighting insurance companies or dealing with doctors and all that kind of stuff. None of that matters when your heart is a train wreck. And guess where the greatest resource is for dealing with our heart? That's scripture. Everything I face as a caregiver, everything you face as a caregiver on a core level, on a human level, on a heart level is covered in scripture. Now I've looked through scripture. There's no place where it talks about a guy caring for his disabled wife for 35 years through all these surgeries, multiple amputations and everything else. There's nowhere in scripture that covers that and go look about your own circumstances.

Chances are you won't see anything there that describes what you're living with. But then look differently and you'll see countless passages that talk about fear, anxiety, stress, resentment, discouragement, despair, loneliness, all of those things. I went back to Psalm 23. I learned it as a kid, but I went back many years later and saw it from a caregiver's eyes. And I was stunned by the way it all of a sudden just came to life. It said, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. We caregivers often travel through a very long valley of the shadow of death, but he's not leaving us.

We're not alone in that. And I realized that his presence is with me, to comfort me, to strengthen me, to equip me, to fortify me. That's what this program is all about.

Strengthening the family caregiver. Pointing us back to scripture that God says we're not alone. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back.

Hey, this is Peter Rosenberger. In my three and a half decades as a caregiver, I have spent my share of nights in a hospital, sleeping in waiting rooms, on fold out cots, chairs, even the floor. Sometimes on sofas and a few times in the doghouse, but let's don't talk about that. As caregivers, we have to sleep at uncomfortable places, but we don't have to be miserable. We use pillows for MyPillow.com.

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This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. That is my wife Gracie from her CD Resilient. And I love that song.

She just wails on that song. And if you want to learn more about her music, go out to Hopeforthecaregiver.com and check it out. And by the way, while you're out there, take a look at the podcast. If you're not already signed up for it, subscribe to it.

Please do. It's free. We got well over 600 episodes out there that you can download and some of them are very short. Some of them are full shows.

Some of them are bonus things. I do this thing called Your Caregiver Minute. Sometimes I put stuff out of Gracie singing, of my playing, you know, all kinds of interviews, special interviews, all kinds of things that are out there. So take advantage of this.

Please don't try to do this by yourself. Okay. Friends don't let friends care give alone. And this is why we do the show. This is why we do all of this. Hey, look, by the way, I want to tell you something. Let me switch from our normally scheduled monologue. I want to tell you something that happened while I was in the hospital that kind of surprised me and it gave some, I don't know, it was just kind of one of those moments. I don't think I'm ever going to forget it as a caregiver. You know, I've had ample opportunity to make pretty much every mistake you can make as a caregiver. And I, well, let me back up.

When I came down to this particular surgery with Gracie, I purposed in my mind that I was not going to overreach. I've done that before many times. And it's embarrassing. And I cringe over it. Okay. I am the Wile E. Coyote of caregivers. And I kept to a certain script of what I was going to do and what I was going to say.

And I stayed with it. Postoperatively, they were doing some different medication changes with Gracie and they wanted to see if they could tweak a few things. And this is a teaching hospital, University of Colorado Medical Center.

It's a great place. And they're bringing out the little tiny brushes to work with her. And so they wanted to work with her and try some things to help with her pain. She was having some fever issues. Lots of things were going on. And so they were talking back and forth with her, seeing how she would respond. And she was struggling a little bit with it. And with this one particular pain medicine they were giving her and one particular drug they were using.

And the neurosurgeon was talking to her and so forth. And then he looked over at me and he said, what do you think? Well, now, to be fair, I have offered my opinion many times over this 35-year journey. It has never been requested, though. And that didn't stop me from offering it. But I've learned, and I kind of cringe over this, that it's best for me to just keep my mouth shut unless I'm asked. But he asked. And I thought about this prior to this, of how I would respond to any situation.

And I found myself staying on script for what I purposed in my own heart as a caregiver. And I said to him, well, here's what I've observed. Here's what I've witnessed. Here's what I know. I didn't give my opinion. I didn't speculate. I just simply stuck to the facts.

Here's what I know. Here's what I've witnessed. And you know, as caregivers, that's really our lane. It may sound like a very small lane to be in. But in that lane, we have what I like to call caregiver authority. Okay?

Some of you have heard me talk about this before, but I want you to hang on to this. You have authority as a caregiver. You don't have to know the science of what your loved one goes through. You didn't have to go to medical school. You didn't have to go to learn all these things to know your loved one. Your role is not to do the science, necessarily.

Your role is to know them and care for them and stay in your lane, but wield your caregiver authority. And, you know, I went to music school. They didn't teach me any of this in music school. I'm a pianist. And I often say to doctors, hey, I'm a pretty good pianist.

But that's where my skill sets stop. So I stay back on my little square, my little piece of real estate, which is I know Gracie. I spend every day with her. 24-7, I know her and how she responds to things. There's no way they could ever amass the knowledge about her that I have.

But my job as a caregiver is to be able to communicate that knowledge in a way that makes sense to her healthcare providers with clarity, with conciseness, and say things in a way that give them more information so that they can appropriately do what they need to do. And I said to the surgeon, here's what I witnessed prior to this. Here's what I'm observing now.

Here's what I'm seeing. And he nodded with approval and made some notes, do a couple extra tests, and we moved on. No drama, no muss, no fuss. I stayed in my lane.

But in that lane, I'm unimpeachable. I know Gracie. And you know your loved one. You know your son. You know your daughter. You know your husband. You know your parents. And you are unimpeachable in that lane. And that's where we derive our authority as our loved one's caregiver.

And it's really important to hang on to this. And some people say, well Peter, this is obvious. Well, the obvious becomes obvious right before it becomes obvious.

And for some listing, nobody's ever heard this before. Nobody's ever told them this. Your job as a caregiver, my job as a caregiver, is to be able to articulate what we know in a way that's meaningful to our providers so that they have the necessary information to make decisions. Because our loved ones can't always do it. They don't have the vocabulary sometimes. My brother and his wife, they have a daughter who's 32 years old, has cerebral palsy and severe cognitive impairment. She can't communicate. They have to communicate on her behalf. They know her. They have caregiver authority.

And so do you. The question is, can you wield that authority in a meaningful way, stay in your lane, don't try to get out over your skis, but be a partner in the process. And you can't do that if your head's all squirrely. You can't do that if you're just a train wreck emotionally or you don't recognize certain things and your responsibility is your role. And that's where we live as caregivers. So I want you to hang on to that and then let me translate that into a different place with scripture. You know, see, this is a biblical principle.

You have caregiver authority. But guess what? You also have gospel authority.

Let me explain. In Revelation it says they overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Not their education. Not their knowledge. Their experience. Their testimony of what they have experienced. That's what gives us gospel authority. We overcome the authority by the blood of the Lamb, Christ's blood, and our experiential recounting of our relationship with Christ. That's gospel authority. Well, step it down a little bit. That's the pinnacle.

Let's step it down a little bit. And you have caregiver authority. And if you submit that as well to Christ, and then you're experienced with your loved one, you're giving a firsthand account.

And so these phrases mean something. Here's what I've observed. Here's what I've experienced. Here's what I know. Not what I think. Not what I speculate.

Not what I hope. But what I know. For we know.

And scripture has all these things about what we know. And so this is where the difference is for us as caregivers. And we can do this. We can incorporate this into our daily conversation with all of the people who help our loved one. Now you may use a different word and phrase or whatever, however that works for you, but try it out. Try it out and see if staying in your lane and not overreaching helps you navigate through this better and provides better insight for your loved one's health care providers. We're not there to somehow manage their care from a medical point of view.

That's not what our training is. But we are a valuable part of this process. And I appreciated that surgeon looking at me and asking me. You know, and it took a lot of humility. I've known a lot of surgeons.

And there's nothing against surgeons, but let's be fair, how many are known for humility? And yet that was so refreshing to see. What do you think? Now the invitation was there, but he didn't need me to diagnose her medical condition. He's asking me, in his vocabulary, do I see something that is not registering the way it normally does? Do I see something different?

Have I observed something? He's not asking me to consult with him on the readings of an MRI. So it's very important that we hear this as caregivers and be ready to respond with our authority.

You have authority as a caregiver. Some of you don't feel like you do. And some of you feel very timid about this and very self-conscious about it or I don't feel qualified. I wouldn't know what to say to a doctor. All those kinds of things. That's why I'm glad you're here listening to this, because you do. You can do this.

If I can do this, you can do this. I remember the first time I ever confronted a surgeon. I mean, I must have been 26.

Not much older. I was a kid. You know, and I was terrified.

I even put on a coat and tie because I was so afraid and I felt so unqualified. But she needed me to do this. I had to do it. And I practiced. I had a little script. I kind of practiced what I was going to say. I wrote it out. I know it sounds kind of embarrassing to say, but I did. I was that nervous about it.

Decades later, let's be fair, I don't get that nervous about it. But I've learned to walk in this and learn to be comfortable in this. And you can too. This is what we can do as caregivers. Caregiver authority. Don't ever forget that.

How important that is in your life and in your loved one's life. You have this. And we're going to continue working on the vocabulary so that you can better express this and navigate these waters a little bit easier.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Got a special interview coming up. Don't go away. Be family again if you hear an audio difference.

I'm doing this remotely, so just be family. And thank you for that. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Let's be healthy together. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. And we are so glad that you're with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. If you want to be a part of what we're doing, go out there. You can submit comments, questions, whatever's on your mind.

If he wants to call you from the show, we'll be glad to do it. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. If you've been watching the news, you've been watching this whole thing with the Canadian truckers and all the stuff going on with this. And then there's this company that just showed up on the radar for me.

And I'm sad to say, I didn't know a lot about them, but I went out and investigated them. And it's Give, Send, Go. I've always heard of GoFundMe, but I was very disappointed to see that GoFundMe was playing politics with what was going on with people trying to help support the truckers there in Canada and other things. I thought, why? My goodness, if they're going to shut down something they don't like there, guess what? They'll shut it down over here too.

And I thought there's got to be an alternative. And that's when I discovered Give, Send, Go. And so I have Heather Wilson and she's one of the co-founders. She and her brother Jacob founded this company and she's on the phone with me because I have some things that are going to apply to us as caregivers. So Heather, welcome to the program and thank you for taking the time to call in. Heather Wilson Well, thank you for having me, Peter. Peter Jennings Tell us the story of Give, Send, Go.

Heather Wilson Sure. So about eight years ago, I come from a very large family. So I have 11 brothers and sisters and we were, I know it's a big family and we were sitting around most of the Christian ministry or missionaries, things like that. And we were sitting around talking about what it would look like. GoFundMe had just kind of come on the scenes.

It was like, you started to see a lot of things and we thought, wow, this is really cool. What a cool idea that people come together to meet other people's needs. Like that's what the church should be doing, we thought.

And we started to discuss what it would look like. Is there any Christian alternative out there? And so me and my brother Jacob and my sister Emily, we said, let's start this company, we'll call it Give, Send, Go, and be an alternative to platforms like GoFundMe because we saw that GoFundMe was doing a great job of allowing people to raise funds. But as Christians, we knew that funds, financial things, yes, they help in the immediate situation, but people have needs greater than finances.

And that's the hope we know that Jesus can give. And so we thought, let's create a platform that may help and hope come together. And so Give, Send, Go was founded. We started walking it out.

And around six and a half years later, we found, you know, we grow year over year, people coming on from mission trips and medical bills and all those type of things. And then about two years ago, we found ourselves in the middle of a political battle, because a young man named Kyle Rittenhouse came to our platform. And he had been deplatformed off everywhere else. And he was looking to raise money for some legal fees for some trouble he found himself in. And we said, yeah, you should raise money for legal fees, you're presumed innocent until you go to court.

And we allowed him and that set us into this position. And recently, the most recent, we have the this trucker convoy that went there, GoFundMe. Everybody, when they saw this trucker convoy go to GoFundMe, they said, what are you doing? GoFundMe over the last several years has made it very known that they put their political ideology into what they allow and don't allow. And sure enough, we saw it play out where, where GoFundMe decides that it doesn't go against, it goes against their terms of service and, and stops the campaign.

And so the trucker convoy came to give them Go and has since raised almost $10 million, surpassing the $8 million that was raised over on GoFundMe. Well, that is extraordinary. And I saw that you guys were in the thick of this. I did not know that you were in the middle of this thing with Kyle Rittenhouse. And how are you, how are you doing navigating through these political waters? What's anchoring you?

How are you guys doing with that? You know, when we started, I actually have used this analogy a lot. I feel like David, you know, in the Bible, when he was a child and his mom said, hey, I want you to go bring some food to your brothers who are on the battlefield.

And he starts just walking out in obedience to bring his brother some food, like a good thing he's obeying his mom. And I feel like we did that. And so for the first years of Give Thank God, we were just walking obedience. We felt like God wanted us to start this platform. But then we arrived in the middle of a battlefield. And we said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? Just like David, he showed up. And there was a giant bear mocking God. And he said, No, no, we're not, why isn't anybody standing up to this?

This is God is greater than this. And we found ourselves, you know, thrust into this battle. And we said, we're going to stand for freedom.

It hasn't been easy. People on both sides hate us. Christians, we get emails from Christians that say, you shouldn't be in politics. And then we get emails from non Christians and people on that hate some of the campaigns that are on our site. And we say, you know, we don't agree with every campaign on our site, but we'll stand for freedom for those people wanting to raise funds. You know, I look at the the efforts being pushed by so many in our society that want to just shut down any type of dissent. If you don't agree with it, shut it down, as opposed to, you know, what you just said, letting people express however they're going to express it. And you certainly have guidelines that you do that you have very, very firm boundaries that you don't allow people to do things, porn and all that kind of stuff, and funding, anything like that. But I wanted to specifically kind of pivot a little bit into some of the things that I feel like my audience would find this meaningful, is that this can help with medical, significant medical challenges that are going on with people and talk a little bit about that. Do you see a lot of that going on?

It gives in go. Yes, we do. It's actually one of our major categories, because a lot of times people find themselves in the middle of having tremendous medical bills that they weren't expecting or hadn't planned for, and they feel alone in it. And the cool thing about crowdfunding is that it doesn't take one person with $10,000 to give it takes 10,000 people with $10, right? Or and you get a big crowd of people each giving a little and you can make such a tremendous difference in the world. And that's what we're seeing is that people are looking for community.

And that's what Give Then Go does. It says here, come to give then go start a campaign, share it with your community, let them know the needs, let them know what you're walking through, and allow them to be a part. A lot of times we're afraid to ask people for help.

And there are people going, I wish I had known, I wish I knew you were going through this, I would have been happy to help, you shouldn't have to go through it alone. When give then go we one of our first teams that we hired was a prayer team. And what that prayer team does that every campaign that gets started on give then go get the call from a prayer partner. So if you were to start a campaign, you're a caregiver, and you're finding yourself having more and more medical bills or bills that you just weren't expecting you didn't plan for.

And if you start a campaign on give then go to raise funds, you would get a phone call from someone that says, Hey, I see that you're raising funds that you're a caregiver for maybe your mom or whoever. And can I just pray with you right now that God is just with you through this journey that you're going through. And we have found people just blown away. Even people, you don't have to be a Christian to come on give then go.

You don't even have to have any sort of faith at all. Our whole goal is to share hope in people, what oftentimes feels like hopeless situations. I'm just really moved by this Heather, because I think about all the people that listen to this program who are struggling and they need a break. They need some kind of respite care. They need something, but they don't have the funds to pay a service to come in or something like that. Even if it's just one day a week kind of thing, something as simple as respite care can be available to a family caregiver, to a family that is struggling with needs and just put it out there. Let the community hear about this. And like Heather said, somebody's going to call and pray with you about this.

They're going to see that you have a need. This is what scripture talks about in bearing one another's burdens. And this is such a magnificent display of this and what these folks have done.

And it's doing this to promote what Christ has said to each other. You know, when I was sick, I was naked, hungry, whatever, but we can't give if we don't know about it. And so I wanted to introduce this wonderful service to this audience. Give, send, go. Heather, in the last couple of minutes, what's something that you'd like for everybody to know about you all and what's the best way people could just start this process?

Sure. So it's a really simple process. You can go to give, send, go.com and just hit start now. You'll be walked through a couple steps of creating your campaign, choosing a recipient. You don't have to be the recipient of the campaign.

You can choose somebody else to collect the money if you're raising funds for somebody else. And then you start sharing your campaign with friends and family in your social circles and let them know. I feel like today and today's day and age that community, you know, with the last few years with COVID and all the restrictions and things like that, we've lost that. And we need to get back to knowing that we have a community of people that are supporting us and praying for us and, and just there to help out when things are rough and we all go through those rough times. So come to give, send, go, start a campaign.

It's an easy way to allow friends and family and you're, you're the people in your circles to know what you're going through. We have a pray now button on our site. So if someone can't give to your campaign, they can click pray now and they can leave you a prayer message. So even if someone's maybe not able to give, you're getting these encouraging messages of people lifting you up and letting you know that you're not alone. So give, send, go.com. Start your campaign today.

That's wonderful. Just on a technical matter here, if the money is distributed out, will it be taxable and do they need to make sure they coordinate this with some type of tax professional? So, you know, crowdfunding is in a weird space right now of the government not really regulating it as much and trying to figure out how they're going to regulate it. Um, if you raise over at rate at this current time, I always tell people to check with a tax professional, but um, rate at this time, if you raise over $20,000 from, from over 200 people, um, you'll get a 10 99 cent by our processor to you.

Um, but we've talked to with people and, and pretty much tax advisors. What they're saying is if everybody's giving small gifts, you're not, you might get a 10 99, but you just show, look at, here's all the people that gave gifts. These are just small gifts. This is not, you know, um, people, that's not income for me. These were gifts. And so there's ways, you know, again, talk with a tax professional. You have to raise over $20,000, um, with over 200 givers and that changes all the time.

And so I would definitely check with a tax professional. Um, but there are ways around of saying these are like little gifts from individual people, um, which is allowed, which is allowed in the United States. Great, great. Well, you've heard it here and you don't have to do this for yourself. Maybe you know, a family that is really struggling and they could benefit from some, some, some help and they may not have a big network, but you do start a, give sin, go campaign today for that family.

Tell the story about it. Let's bond together as believers and let's do this and let's show the world what, what it looks like for Christians to do this. Heather Wilson, thank you so much for being a part of this.

Give the sin, go.com Heather. I very much appreciate it. We're going to have you guys back on. Loved your story. Love your passion. Love what you guys do. Appreciate you helping get the word out with, with, uh, fellow caregivers of what they can do to help themselves and to help other caregivers. Thank you for having me.

Yes, ma'am. This is Peter Rosemary. This is hope for the caregiver.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

This is the program for you as a family caregiver. That is Gracie with Russ Taff, the joy of the Lord. And I love listening to that. I'm going to play that whole song probably, I don't know, maybe next week. I'm trying to do a song a week and I'm going to play one. I'm going to close the show out today with a song from Gracie and Johnny Erickson Tyler that I'll share with you in just a moment. Go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want to see more of Gracie's music, her music or books or podcasts. Again, I'd really encourage you to sign up for the podcast. It's free and I've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes that I think you'll find meaningful. Also today, I think it'll be up today.

It may be tomorrow. Uh, but or whenever you're listening to this, you can go out to foxnews.com and you'll see a new article that I've written out there, uh, called it's just life. And I think you're going to like it a lot. The, um, I've written quite a few things for Fox over the years and the editor wrote me back that I set this up to and, and, um, I've worked with him for a long time and, and she said, this is, this is a really good piece. We're going to run this. I know there's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now.

And she says, I think this is going to be very meaningful to a lot of people. So check that out at foxnews.com and if you want, just do a search. You could, there's a little search box here. You could just type in my name and you find all kinds of articles that I've written up there for Fox over the years. And I have other articles out in various places, uh, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, WebMD. There's all kinds of places out there where I write things. And I write a lot in the hospital, uh, with, um, with Gracie that just kind of, she's sleeping, resting, recovering. I'll spend time just writing and it helps me kind of clear my head and I'm working on my new book that I think you're going to find very meaningful.

I write a weekly column in several papers and then I also, um, do what I do periodically for opinion pieces, commentaries that I put in major news outlets, but it just, it helps me organize my thoughts. And that goes back to some of the things we talked about in the B block today of the program of just keeping that clarity. I also want to give a big shout out to the folks that give sin go and thank you again for being understanding about the audio.

Um, we just needed your, we needed your grace on that, uh, too, because it was just, it was a little bit challenging, but, uh, what a great, what a great work they do and what a great way to, to share the gospel in a meaningful way to let people know what, what scripture means when it says to bear one another's burden. So please take advantage of that. And again, if you're not a caregiver, but you know of somebody who is struggling with that, you could set this up for them. You can set the parameters, you can do all of those things for them. So go out to give sin go and if you have any questions, they'll be glad to help you with it. It's very easy.

It's very intuitive. And these are people who are pushing against what the world is doing, um, to try to censor and to cancel people and everything else. I think, I think by now you realize that you cannot trust these big tech companies, you know, we'll use their services, but you can't trust them. They're got their, they've got their own agenda and they're going to exercise that agenda and you really don't get a vote.

I think we've seen that now. So let's support these different organizations that are out there doing this to help people that are in desperate need. And this is a great way for you to do this. Maybe you're going on a short term mission trip or whatever, but you know, I know that everybody's got it in their head, Brandon, you know, go fund me, but give sin go. I think that's a better path for us. So let's continue to do that. Support local Christian businesses and things such as that in your area and support this network. You're, you're listening to this for free. Support it.

Okay. Don't, don't just be a con just a partaker of this. Give, give back to it. Give, give generously to it. It's 24 seven that you get to hear this network. Are you supporting it?

Please do. So those are just little things that we can do along the journey. And it doesn't take a lot.

I love what Heather said. It doesn't take one person doing $10,000. You know, let's go for 10,000 people doing 10 bucks and you can be a part of all of those things right now. And I would encourage you to do so.

You'd be amazed what it does to you when you are investing in others like that. And if you don't, if you're listening to this program for the first time and you thought, well, I'm not a caregiver. I bet you know one and here's a great way that you could help one. And you don't have to have all the understanding of, you know, their situation. You just know that they have a need.

Let's put the need out there and let's help individuals. I'm going to close up with a song that is very special to me. We, we heard it a million times from a lot of different folks. I first heard it back in the seventies. A friend of mine who I grew up with lived down the road. He's a little bit older than me, but we were great friends with the family. Still are. His parents are still alive.

They're in their nineties. He was a hemophiliac. And I remember when AIDS hit and we realized that, you know, blood transfusions and transmissions of HIV. And this is a very scary time.

Some of you have no concept of this. You may be too young to remember this, but this is a very scary time for a lot of people, not just the homosexual community, because that's where everybody thought it was, it was, you know, exclusive to that community, but it wasn't. It was blood transmissible. And I asked him one time about this, you know, are you, are you afraid? He said, well, I either die or I die. He was a very brave young man and wonderful singer. And he would sing this song at church. An entire plasma supply was contaminated by HIV back in South Carolina in the eighties. And every hemophiliac in the state got it.

And every one of them contracted AIDS and every one of them died, including my friend. Gracie sang this song at the funeral of this young man. And I remember her, his father walked across after she finished singing, she was up at the choir loft, and after she finished singing, he walked across in front of the casket of his son and came up to the choir loft and just held Gracie. And, you know, it was just, they just wept.

It was an extraordinary moment. And Gracie recorded this with Johnny Erickson Tada. And I want you to hear these two women sing this amazing song through it all. Between the two of them, they have 90 years of disability and suffering. And listen to what they, what they have to say in this song. This is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

We're going to end with Gracie and Johnny Erickson Tada. I've had many tears and sorrows. I've had questions for tomorrow. There have been times I didn't know right from wrong. But in every situation, God gave blessed consolation that my trials only come to make me strong. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust in God. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to depend upon His Word.

Now I've been to lots of places, and I have seen so many faces. There have been times I felt so all alone. Oh, but in my lonely hours, yes, those precious lonely hours, Jesus lets me know that I am His own. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust in God. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to depend upon His Word.

I thank God for the mountains, and I thank Him for the valleys. I thank Him for the storms, He's brought me through. So if I'd never had a problem, I would not know if Jesus could solve them. I'd never know what faith in God could do. That's when, through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust in God. Through it all, oh, through it all, I've learned to depend upon His Word. I've learned to depend upon His Word. I've learned to depend upon His Word. 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 legs. And arms, too.

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 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 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? Please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.