Connecting to Normalcy

As caregivers, we have so many things that hit us all the time, and we can't always nail these things down by ourselves. Who helps you?

What does that look like? I'm Peter Rosenberger, and I want to tell you about a program I've been a part of now for almost 10 years, and that's Legal Shield. For less than $30 a month, I have access to a full law firm that can handle all kinds of things. If I get a contract put in front of me, if I get a dispute with something, doesn't matter. I've got a full law firm that can help me navigate through all the sticky wickets that we as caregivers have to deal with, power of attorney, medical power of attorney. I will.

Every bit of it. As a caregiver, we need someone who advocates for us, and that's why I use Legal Shield. So go to caregiverlegal.com. Look on the left-hand side where it says Legal Shield. Just select it.

It turns purple. It says pick a plan. It'll give you some options.

If you don't need any of those, don't select them. Check out and be protected starting today. That's caregiverlegal.com. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you doing?

Glad to have you as part of the show today. This is where we'd love for you to hang out. Of all the things that cripple the family caregiver, isolation remains right at the top. And in that isolation, dark thoughts fester, and we can be isolated in a crowded room, and we can be isolated on a crowded pew. And the way we punch back against that is learning to communicate in our heart language with others who understand it. And I speak fluent caregiver here. So things that I say today, if you're not a caregiver, you'll get something out of it. But if you are a caregiver, you're going to really understand it because I'm speaking in the language of caregivers and we have our own language. I learned how to speak this way. Here's the great news. It's our Savior's native tongue.

This is who He is. And so we're glad to have you with us. HopeForTheCaregiver.com. HopeForTheCaregiver.com. If you want to be a part of the program, there's a little form right there on the website. You can send us a note, whatever's on your heart, whatever's on your mind, and we'd love to hear from you. I try to respond back to folks as best as possible if I can, and if you need me to, and if you want me to, and if you want, I'll be glad to talk about this on the program.

I talk about a lot of things on this program. I talk about not only my journey as a caregiver, but also just my journey as a husband with Gracie. And Gracie is a force of nature. For those of you who are new to the program, let me tell you about my wife, Gracie. She is the most remarkable individual I've ever encountered. I've never seen someone take as much pain and as much long-term suffering as she has. Now, I'm not saying there's not people out there that don't.

I'm just saying I've not met them. I've met people who have very dire circumstances, and I've met people who at any given time have more dire circumstances than her. But she's been doing it now for almost 40 years, and I just stand in amazement of her. She's got this outrageous sense of humor and personality. I tease her regularly, and I do that for several reasons.

One of them is because I like to do it. I grew up with four brothers and a sister, and we spoke fluent sarcasm in my home, and Gracie did not. She has one sister, and it was very quiet in her family. She was the loud one, and she'll be the first to tell you that. But sarcasm was not spoken fluently in her family like it was in mine, and I tease her just regularly.

I will say the most outrageous things to her, and I will flirt with her unabashedly. Our entire married life, our entire adult life, has been framed by suffering. You can't sit around and just cry about that all the time. We have plenty of tears, and Gracie and I decided we're going to live normal life.

We're just a normal couple who are very much in love with each other, but love to just be outrageous. I will say things and do things, and sometimes I even get letters from people. You have permission to say this. Let me tell you something. Gracie gives it better than I give it.

She doesn't need anybody to advocate for her. She will give it out, and she'll tell me one time. I shouldn't say this.

All right, we all keep this just tweaks to us, all right? Don't say nothing, but I remember one time we were talking with a pretty big record company in Nashville on Music Row, and we're sitting there in this office with this guy, and he was a little bit full of himself, and he said, well, you need me to do such and Gracie stopped him. She said, can you make my legs grow back? No?

Well, I guess I really don't need you, do I? And I looked over at her producer, and I was like, well, you go, girl. I was like, burn. What did you say to that? The guy kind of was stunned, but she made her point, and I thought, that's an extraordinary thing.

Now, you could think, well, you could probably do that more diplomatically or whatever. Well, maybe you could, but this is her life, and she lives with enough challenges and enough pain that she doesn't have the wherewithal, the bandwidth, the patience, to deal with self-centered, clueless people. I've watched her go to great lengths to care for people who deal with far less than she does, but out of great compassion because she saw their distress. But I've also watched her tell others who were full of themselves where to get off and how fast to do it. There are several people in this audience who do know Gracie and know her well enough to know what I'm saying is absolutely spot on.

She is a force of nature. I'll give you an example. I may have shared this with this audience, but there are a lot of people joining this program every single week. And so for those of you who don't know, I will share this story.

It still makes me laugh. We tried out Alexa in our home. We have that pretty much all around the house, and it makes her life a little bit easier to be able to do things. You could automate stuff and so forth. Well, while she was getting it initialized and starting to work on this, it became very difficult.

Now, here's the thing. You can easily work with Alexa. And for those of you who have an Alexa device in your background, as you're listening to this program, I'm sorry that Alexa keeps turning on every time I say the name Alexa.

So I'm sorry for that. You might want to mute it. But you have to speak to Alexa in a certain type of vernacular, the commands, the way you do it. You can't hesitate.

You have to get right to it. And you have to say it in a way that makes sense to Alexa. For example, you don't want to give the backstory.

You just want to give the command. Well, when Gracie communicates, she likes to give the backstory of why she's saying this to you. And she, oh, by the way, I want to tell you this. And by the way, while I'm thinking about it, what, you know, and that kind of stuff. And that's fine. That's great. But Alexa and other type of devices can't process those kinds of conversations.

They rely on commands. And Gracie was trying to set up Alexa at the initial time. But I have a witness for this. Okay. I have a witness.

I came home. Gracie was sitting in her wheelchair and just fuming. I mean, just smoke coming out of her ear. She was so angry.

And she looked at me, her jaw jutted out. She said, I have had it with, you know, who she wouldn't say Alexa because she didn't want it to turn on. She said, I've had it. I've just had it. I don't want to deal with it anymore.

I want to trade it in for Google. I listened for a few moments that I looked over at the Alexa speaker and I said, Alexa, how are you doing? This is a true story.

It is a fact. And Alexa said, to be honest, it's been a pretty rough day. I thought Gracie broke Amazon. It was one of the funnies. Even she had to laugh at that. But it was just, you know, it was so funny to watch her do this and just to see the energy she was using.

It was hilarious. And so she, she is who she is and she deals with remarkable stuff. But I tease her and flirt with her and all those things, because I want to connect her back to normalcy, to have a husband and wife relationship, to have a friendship that she's not in a full fledged panic about because of all this other stuff, because we have so much pain in our life.

We have so many things that can lead us into despair. And I, I've watched her with big tears fill up in her eyes and I'll say something so goofy or bizarre and she can't help herself. She'll start laughing. And I figured that's the best I could do for her at times to help point her back to a place of solid ground because the pain is too overpowering. And I do.

And I will, you'd ask her, I flirt with her all the time in front of doctors. I don't care. And she doesn't care either because that's who we are. This is our life. It's not a bad life. It's just a hard life. And that's the life for so many of us as caregivers.

And I want you all to feel encouraged and maybe inspired to find those places of normalcy in the midst of all the abnormal things that you have to deal with as a caregiver. It's okay to be funny. It's okay to flirt with your wife. It is okay to flirt with your husband. It is okay to be a bit zany. In fact, I highly recommend it because this is life and it's a life worth living and a life worth living with great gusto and joy, even in the midst of our challenges. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back.