The Real Public Servants

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This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. If you want to be a part of the program, go out there. There's a little form you fill out. You've got a comment. You've got a question.

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Hopeforthecaregiver.com. I was doing an interview this week on a radio program and it swerved into the political. I'm a political junkie. I'm very much involved in what's going on. I pay attention. I read a lot and I immerse myself in it, but that is not my message for this program or the other things that I do.

I do write some things, but it's always from a caregiver standpoint. Number one, stop expecting Congress to do anything and start demanding that they do it. But if you want to know what you can expect from Congress, you can expect Congress to act in its own self-interest.

They are interested in perpetuating their own kingdom that they've created around themselves, this bubble they live in. And they're not going to do anything about it, otherwise we'd have term limits. And they don't miss a paycheck. When the government shuts down, they don't miss a paycheck. paycheck.

Nothing happens to these people punitively, and a lot of them go there with marginal means, modest means, and they come out as multi-zillionaires. Explain that, because we know how much the salaries are. And you see this systemic problem inside the beltway in Washington. And he, this guy, went on to the conversation, and I didn't hold back.

I mean, you know, I think I have legitimate reason and I can document why I say these things. I can't explain all the little policy nuances. All I say is just follow the money.

When you see somebody who makes roughly $200,000 a year, and within five years they're worth $20, $30 million, you do the math and figure it out. And they're going to come up with all kinds of ways to shield themselves and not have to play by the same rules that other people do. We saw this. We've witnessed it.

This is not new. But he referred to something, and it just caught my ear for a moment, and it brought me back into the world of caregivers, because I don't want to swim too long in the pool of politics, because first off there's not a lot of chlorine in that pool. But he said that, you know, these public servants, and I stopped him, and I said, they're not public servants. First off, they're neither public nor servants. Public implies that they're doing things for the good of the whole.

And these people are not doing this. And you all know, they're barking at the bequest of whoever pays them and whatever their special interests are. And as far as servant, that implies you're doing something that is benevolent out of your own lack sometimes.

And you're not being compensated per se, certainly commensurate with what you're doing. And these guys aren't servants. I mean, I think you all see that. I mean, I don't know anybody that looks at these people and say, oh, they're servants.

They've got real servants' heart. As a collective whole, no. And I've been around a lot of people in Congress. And as a collective whole, they don't. They preen and spout off things to perpetuate their election cycles. And I stopped him and I said, and I'm sorry if I'm a little bit harsh with this, but I've been watching what's happening with our country and it does inflame me a little bit.

So I have to back away because that's off message for me. But the term public servant just kind of rankled me. And I said to him, you know who the public servants are in this country? It's caregivers of wounded warriors, first responders, fire paramedics, rescue police officers, people who put on uniforms and rush to danger. Those people are serving the collective good in their profession and the people that care for them after they receive tremendous wounds, injuries, disease, mental illness issues. I know too many cops who struggled mightily with years being on the force and just the PTSD.

And I don't know what they call it now, but they used to call it PTSD. And family members who are left to pick up the pieces of that, that are untrained and unpaid. And I said this to this host, I said, to me, those are public servants. Those are the people that are putting themselves between that individual and a horrific end. And I know people right now who are taking care of family members, young kids that went over to Iraq and shot up people with 50 caliber weapons and they can't process it.

It's overwhelming to them and they're not able to function very well and they're battling terrible demons over this. I spent a lot of time at Walter Reed at the beginning of all this was going on. Grecian and I were up there a lot when stuff was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I saw family members there at Walter Reed taking care of their loved ones, kids that have received terrible wounds that are going to last a lifetime. I look at the wounds that Gracie has received and you know, we're decades and decades into this.

And I know the kind of wounds that will last a lifetime. We get these kids over there that we saved their life, but they have terrible traumatic brain injuries. We get police officers who are dealing with stress and unbelievable things they've had to see. We have child and family protective services and these people have to see terrible things that are done to children. And who cares for them? They have a wife, they have a husband, they have kids, they have a father, a mother, a family member, a friend that sees to them because the blackness just overcomes them, the despair overcomes them.

They can't fight against that enemy. And they're doing it without pay and they're doing it without training. They're public servants. And maybe it's just a little bit of a, I don't know, maybe I'm being a little bit, you fill in the blank if I'm being too harsh.

Let me know. I don't mean to be, but it just rankled me that these people of privilege and elitism who dictate from on high how the rest of the country should live and they don't follow the same rules themselves. And yet they call themselves public servants. They call themselves honorable. Raise your hand if you think that they're honorable.

Raise your hand. I mean look at the approval rating of Congress and they posture and they genuflect all to each other and yet right now I can rattle off names of people who are taking care of some of the bravest people that I know. And they're weighing over their heads.

And they can't, they don't even know what help looks like or where to go for it. And I keep them in mind when I do this program. I talked to a buddy of mine who was really passionate about going out to help with the number 22, which was these vets every day that would commit suicide. 22 a day. And when I lived in Nashville, right there near Fort Campbell and I would hear so many stories of these young men and women coming home from the battle and young husbands and their wives would wake up at night and see him holding a loaded.45.

And she's completely unprepared for this, to deal with this. My dad's a military chaplain. He's retired now, but he, you know, he spent a lot of time with a lot of service men and women and their families. Still does, you know, throughout his entire ministry.

I mean he, I don't think you ever stop being a minister, certainly of the caliber he is. And even though your body is frail and you can't do a lot of things to get older, it's still in you to speak it life into those who are struggling. And we as a nation owe it to these people to speak life into their lives and to let them know that they're seen and they're heard. And so I'm just asking you as a, I don't know, I'm just, it's a little bit of a rant on my part, but when you hear the term public servant, would you help direct people to who are really doing the public service in the sense of they're doing it out of lack, out of no compensation. They're just caring for someone who cared for a lot of people.

I know too many cops who have retired and they're not sure how to function in normal life. I got a buddy of mine that way. He said it's taken years to bleed off what he went through and the relationships that suffered along the way. And I look at these young men and women that we were able to get to. They called it the golden hour.

I've talked to a lot of folks at Walter Reed, a former commanding general Walter Reed's a good friend of mine. And they called it the golden hour. They were able to get to these kids within a certain time frame and save their life. And otherwise the body count would have been much higher in Iraq and Afghanistan like it was in Vietnam. We couldn't get to them in time. We couldn't save them from that. But we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Medical technology has come a long way, the way we do things. But we've saved them to a lifetime of neurological trauma.

A lot of these kids got their bells rung pretty hard. And the families are left to take care of them. And I just wanted to let you know that if that's where you are today, if you are one of those family members that are doing that, please know how important you are and that you are truly serving this country in a way that is so deeply important and honorable. And there is help available for you. Get a hold of a chaplain. If you're a social worker that deals with family and protective services with children, please know that what you're doing has great value. And I implore you to seek counseling and help for yourself because I appreciate the pain that you have to witness and see. And if you're caring for someone that does this, please, please seek out counseling for yourself because what they're caring is too big for you to be able to carry with them as well without some professional help. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Let's be healthy together. And thank you for being true public servants.

Thanks for indulging me on that one. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver.

We'll be right. 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. 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 that these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg. I thought of wooden legs.

I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there, what does that do to you just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there and I wish that I could be able to go and say, 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. you