Elevating the Soul

This is Peter Rosenberger and I'm really excited to tell you about my new book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday.

I compiled a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to my fellow caregivers. Each chapter only takes one minute to read them. I know I timed them. You can read them in order. You can read them out of order. You can flip to any page and you're going to find something on that page that will help you at that moment.

It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book. Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book. And you can sign up. We'll let you know as soon as it's available for pre-order. We'll send you a special bonus feature for it, sample chapter, all kinds of things. Go to Hopeforthecaregiver.com slash book. I can't wait for you to read this book. You're going to love it. 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. I'm really glad that you're with us today and hope you're doing well. How are you feeling?

How are things going with you? This show deals with those who are putting themselves voluntarily, often without training, and often with meager resources between a vulnerable loved one and even worse, disaster that loved one could be suffering from all types of things. There are a lot of different kinds of affliction, but there's always a caregiver.

And this show focuses on the caregiver. You heard me say a while back that I committed to doing songs this year, and that was something that I want to do. And I was going to play a few for you all as they were recorded and you could hear one of them. I played it last week with Covenant Lament, the song I wrote after the shootings in Nashville.

It's a song I'd started writing about the first of January, and I hadn't finished it, but I finished it after that. And I thought, well, okay, I'll put that out there for folks. And I hope it was meaningful.

A lot of people said it was. And I also wanted just to say to you all, to this audience, one of the reasons I'm pushing myself on this is because I want to practice what I preach. I think it's very important for us as caregivers to push ourselves, to create, to do things that express our souls. And I want to give you in this opening segment here, I just want to briefly touch on this, on an event that happened with the writer Kurt Vonnegut. I'm not necessarily holding him up to be a role model or theological example.

He had quite the dark side and a lot of dark humor, but something happened in 2006. This was a year before he died where students at Xavier High School, I believe in New York, they reached out to various celebrities to invite them to come to the school and help pass on wisdom or whatever with the students. And this is the only guy that responded was Kurt Vonnegut, very celebrated writer. And he wrote back, this was a year before he died and he was in pretty bad health and he couldn't come. So let me just read to you what he wrote.

Dear Xavier High School, Mrs. Lockwood, Mr. Perrin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer, and Conglusta, I don't know all these names, but these were the students I think that reached out. He said, I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer in his sunset years. He was 84 when he wrote this.

I don't make public appearances anymore because now I resemble nothing so much as an iguana. He was a very good writer. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long to wit, practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you to make your soul grow.

That's what he wanted to tell them. And he goes on, he says, seriously, I mean, starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Mrs. Lockwood, their teacher, and give it to her. Dance home after school and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes.

Pretend you're Count Dracula. Here's an assignment for tonight and I hope Mrs. Lockwood will flunk you if you don't do it. Write a six line poem about anything but rhymed.

No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Mrs. Lockwood, okay?

Tear it up into teeny weeny pieces and discard them in widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all, Kurt Modigan.

Isn't that a great message for us as caregivers, though? What makes your soul grow? What causes you to come alive? What animates you?

We've talked about this on this program many times. What is it that you love to do? Now, you may not be able to do it at the level you would like to do. I'll tell you, as a songwriter, as a composer, and I actually, I don't think I've ever told you all this, but I entered, I did a part of a soundtrack for a short film that my son did, and he entered it into an Italian film festival and my song won best original song. It was just a musical, it was a theme that I did for it.

If I could figure out where it is, I'd play it for you, and I won an award for it. I love to do music, and I hear things in my head. I hear orchestrations and all kinds of stuff on what can be done. I don't have the outlet for a lot of that. I really don't, but I do what I can. I have a piano, and I do the best that I can with it. I would love to hear more musicians and doing stuff and sitting down with a group and doing that, but I can't.

Not just because I live in Montana, away from everybody else, where the deer and the antelope play, but because being a caregiver doesn't afford you a lot of those kinds of opportunities right now. But it doesn't mean I can't try, and so that's what I did. When I put out that song, Covenant Lament, I did. I had a lady back in the church that I just played the funeral at. Her name is Jean, and she sent me some lyrics she wanted me to turn into a hymn for. You know what I did? I did that. I wrote out the hymn, and I sent it back to the music minister at the church, and I hope somebody will perform it.

I had a friend of mine in Colorado. We went to college together. His niece and his brother-in-law and his sister had a text they wanted me to look at doing for a song, and I turned it into a song, sent it back to them.

I did it with more piano, but they did it with a bunch of guitars and some more folk kind of instruments, and I look forward to being able to play that for you all, see what you think. If they're giving it to me, I'm doing it, and I'm spending the time to do it, because it's part of who I am and it's helping my soul grow. This is Kurt Vonnegut. This is a guy who's not there to advance the kingdom of God, I don't think, in any of his writings or things that he's doing, but he touches on something that is common to who we are as human beings, that we were designed to create, because we're formed in the image of God, and our God is creative, and we were designed to do this, and we stunt ourselves when we don't, and if we give ourselves the excuse of not being able to make a living at it, or nobody's going to care, nobody's going to appreciate it, or I don't have time, that's not a real good excuse, is it? My new book hits at the end of May. It'll be in bookstores all across the country. I've written this book while serving as a caregiver. This is my fourth book that I've written while serving as a caregiver, and I have to write sections of it during odd times and odd places.

There's an article right now in a LifeWay magazine called Mature Living. It's called Quieting the Noise, and I wrote that while in the emergency room with Gracie. I got her down there. I had my laptop with me.

I got one of those trays that they serve meals on. She's sitting right in the bed beside me. They're working on her. They're drawing blood and all that kind of stuff, and we're dealing with whatever's going on. There's nothing more I can do.

I've got her there, so I pull out my laptop and start working, and I wrote this article in the emergency room called Quieting the Noise. If we give ourselves excuses, we'll use those excuses, but if we push ourselves to write, to be clever, to be creative, and I love what Kurt Vonnegut says in this letter. He says, write your poem and then tear it up into teeny weeny pieces.

Discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you've already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. Don't write it to be rewarded. Write it because it's rewarding. Don't do it because you're going to get compensated. Do it because it is elevating who you are.

It's really important that we understand the difference. This theme that you're hearing right now, playing on this show, I co-wrote that with my friend Chris Latham, and I wrote that groove for it 35 years ago. He wrote the melody while he was working at the Ten Lizzies at the old Opryland amusement park before they tore it down and made a mall, which was stupid, but he wrote that melody then way back in the early 80s, and then we got together and we built this, and this is the theme for my show. There's no excuse to stunt the creativity that God has placed in us, so let it out. This is Peter Rosenberg, and this is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. By the way, at Hopeforthecaregiver.com, check out the preview copy of my new book. We'll be right back.

Don't go away. This is Peter Rosenberg, and I hope you're enjoying this podcast. If you are, would you consider helping us do more of it and do it better by going out to standingwithhope.com slash giving. Standingwithhope.com slash giving. Thanks so much.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg. This producer during the break here, I was able to locate that song that I won the award for. This was a theme that I did for my son's short film. It was kind of a cool sci-fi movie, but I went to the piano there.

I remember that I was at the house there in Nashville when we lived there, and I went to the piano. I said, what do you think about this? He said, okay, Dad, you got the job. It's always nice when your son says, okay, Dad, you got the job, but here it is. Go ahead and roll that in, Mr. Producer, and I'll give you all a little taste of this, but I won the award for best original theme, and this was the title theme of this original film.

That's the piece that I composed, and obviously the film festival that he entered this thing in Italy thought it was okay, and they gave me best original theme. I share that not to get applause. I'm sure that I did that while I was a caregiver. In fact, I've been a caregiver now since I was 22 years old.

Everything I've done since then, I've done as a caregiver, so why not you? I've launched a national radio program that is now on over 200 stations. I've written my fourth book. I write award-winning music. I've learned to cook. I've fought with insurance companies.

I have dealt with all the things that I've dealt with as a caregiver, so my question is, how about you? What are you doing? I'm not that kind of anomaly. I've just been doing this longer than most people, but I'm still subscribed to the same belief system that so many that have come before me have is that, you know what?

We can't wait for everything to get exactly the way we want before we decide to start living life and producing no matter what's going on, no matter who applauds, no matter if I get an award for a film festival. When I wrote that out for my son, I just did it for my son. I said, let me take a stab at that.

Let me take a crack at it. I didn't do this to get an award for it. I just did it because I thought it made sense and I love my son and I wanted to do something to offer what I had, and turned out it kind of worked. Same thing with my new book. I didn't set out to write a bunch of books. I mean, my English teachers throughout school could testify that that was not part of my career path, but here we are. I wanted to share with you how some of these things began. Not in the intent of saying, hey, look at what I've done.

It's look at what you can do, what you can do while a caregiver. I opened up in my new book, and you could go out and get a preview of it if you wish, and you'll see that it opens up with me trying to check myself into a mental institution. I don't think I've ever shared this with you all before.

I've shared it in some interviews, but I was there at a place in Nashville and I went in there and I stood there at the counter, and this is the introduction to my book. And they looked at me kind of funny and they said, are you lost? And I kind of teared up and I said, yeah, I think I am. And then I said, do y'all take walk-ins? And they looked at me kind of odd and I thought, really? That's the question they're going to look at me odd for. I mean, it's not like I'm dressed as a Wookie. This is a mental institution.

That's the question? Asking if they take walk-ins, but I kept my mouth shut. I was prudent. They said, yeah. And they took my wallet, took my keys, took my blood pressure and took me back to this dilapidated room that looked like it'd been decorated in early law and order. You ever see those interrogation rooms in the police department? That's what it looked like.

So I'm sitting there wondering, okay, how's this going to go? This is some years ago. And I had recently had a surgery, an appendectomy that went sideways for me. And I bled out on the table just about, I mean, they had to pump a bunch of blood into me. And then after the surgery, I got a post-op infection and I wasn't sleeping. And I felt like I was losing my mind. I was so tired and I just wanted to rest.

And I've spent a lifetime learning how to care for Gracie, but nobody cared for me. Nobody knew what, I never got sick. I mean, I truly don't get sick very often.

And when I do, it's give me a Louis L'amour book, the remote control, some ramen noodle soup and some Nyquil and I'll figure it out. But this time I was sick and I wasn't getting any rest. And I thought, well, maybe they'll just let me come in there and be treated for exhaustion.

It turns out they don't do that. That's only from like the 1940s in Hollywood, you know, he was treated for exhaustion, but I was exhausted. I was tired. And this counselor came in and says, what's going on? And I just kind of let it all out. I mean, I just, you never just verbally vomit, you know, just let it all out on the table. And I just, I let it all out.

About an hour and a half, this lady, she listened to me, very nice lady. And she listened to me. She said, you know, I can't keep you here. I said, well, why not?

I'd really like to stay. And she said, well, you're not crazy. And I looked at her and said, can I get that in writing?

Because there's a lot of people that would really like to see that. And she said, started laughing. She said, no, you're not crazy, but you are burnt out. And I can give you some names of some people to talk to. And, and you know, some counselors I think may be helpful to you.

And I had kind of been down that road with a lot of counselors and I really thought about that, but I quietly took the list of names. I said, thank you. And she said, we've been giving out box lunches today.

Do you want one? The last one is we only got one left. It's tuna fish. Well, I've never turned down a tuna fish sandwich in my life.

In fact, even the worst tuna fish sandwich I've ever had, it was by a lady in our church. I won't give you her last name. Her first name was Mary. And those who grew up with me will know who this woman was. And she was kind of a squirrely lady. And my best friend in life, we grew up together in Dexter James Wesley II. We called him Swoofte.

He's a great American. And he and I used to work for her. We were teenagers.

We were just kids. And we would work for her at her house and with gardening and weeding and all that stuff. And she was, she was kind of an odd bird.

How odd. She was real odd. But she made us lunch.

We've been out there working in the hot South Carolina sun. And she made us lunch and it was tuna fish sandwich. She said, do you boys like tuna fish?

Well, yeah, of course we do. We like tuna fish. But I was a little bit alarmed when I saw her get out the blender. Now I've watched mom make tuna fish sandwiches for a lifetime.

And I've watched other people do it. I used to work as a shorter order cook. I made tuna fish sandwich.

I've never seen anybody use a blender. And she put the tuna in the blender and it did what blenders do and great was the blending thereof. And then she got these tiny pieces of bread. You know they're like Pepperidge farm bread that's really thin. Well, she, she pours this onto that bread and it gives it to us. Well, because I am who I am and my buddy Swoof, we held this up and it's dripping through the bread down our hands and down our arms while we're trying to eat this tuna. But you know what? We committed and we ate the whole sandwich.

We did. And so when this lady said, would you like a tuna fish sandwich? We got this box of lunch. It's tuna fish.

Do you want it? I was hoping that it wouldn't be that kind of tuna fish that had been blended, but I would commit to it. And I, you know, I was in a, I was in a mental institution and so the word commit sometimes could be a little bit dicey, but I was ready to go full tilt tuna here. And so I took my little box lunch and I'm walking out the door and then she said something to me.

She said, I would recommend a book for you to read, but you're the guy to write it. And I left the place. I got my keys, my wallet, and I went back out and set my car. I'm still very tired. I'm holding this little box lunch, opened it up and there's a soda and some chips and an apple and a cookie and this tuna fish sandwich, which is a very good tuna fish sandwich, by the way.

It was really good. And I'm sitting there eating this thing and I'm enjoying my meal, enjoying the peace and the solitude. And I thought about what she said.

I'd recommend a book for you to read, but you're the guy to write it. And I kind of snorted and I said, what am I going to say to caregivers? And then I thought, what am I going to say to myself? And it was in that moment in the car eating a tuna fish sandwich that all of this was born. This whole journey of me speaking to fellow caregivers right outside of mental institution.

I thought about getting a t-shirt that says, I tried to have myself committed and all I got was a tuna sandwich. True story, you know, and yet that's where it all started. And I'm very sad that I did not remember the name of that counselor that I could in any way go back and thank her. But it's amazing how things start. So you may think in your life that maybe I don't have the time or I'm a mess or I'm this, I was doing this in a mental institution with a box lunch and a tuna fish sandwich.

And here I am all these years later, but this is what God has done with it because I said, oh, you know what? I'm going to start saying things to myself and to fellow caregivers that I would want to hear. What is the language of caregivers? What is the language of caregivers? How do you speak to a caregiver? What do you say to a caregiver?

And that's where it all started right there in my car in that parking lot in front of a mental institution eating a tuna fish sandwich. I'd recommend a book for you to read, but you're the guy to write it. And so I say to you, my fellow caregiver, I'd recommend a painting for you to see, but you're the one to paint it.

I'd recommend a song for you to hear, but you're the one to sing it. I'd recommend a garden for you to walk through, but you're the one to plant it. Do you follow where I'm going with this? I'd recommend a book for you to read. And I wrote it.

So after you read by it, then you go, right. You see what I'm doing though? It's in you. Let it out. It doesn't matter if it sells a whole bunch.

It matters that you do it. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is Hope For The Caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope For The Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. HopeForTheCaregiver.com, while you're out there, I hope you will check out the link there to my new book.

You can get a free preview if you want and see what you think. Again, this is me putting myself out there based on all that we've been talking about, not just in the last segment, but I'm talking about for the whole show of saying, okay, I'm going to live. I'm going to produce.

I'm going to be participating in life regardless of my journey as a caregiver. And I've told you I've been writing this book. Sometimes I write it in the emergency room. I work on songs.

I told you that's my thing for this year. I'm going to push myself to produce. And I think that's incredibly important for us as caregivers that we push ourselves to produce at whatever level we can. I'm not asking you to go out and, you know, do the screenplay for an Oscar winning movie. I'm asking you to produce right where you are with what you have. Okay. That's the whole point.

Don't just sit on it and commiserate or somehow think that, okay, I'll just wait until this situation resolves itself and then I'll go out and start living life. That's a mistake. I told you all this. I remember this one lady that she started taking care of her father and she neglected her business and she threw herself into taking care of her father.

Seven years later, he's still going. She's bankrupt. Okay. That's the kind of thing that we as caregivers must fight against. We cannot ensure that we're not going to be overwhelmed by the finances and everything else. There's no guarantee. Okay. There's no guarantee that we're not going to have to walk through some ugly things in our life.

Okay. In fact, there's actually the promise that we will, but we can live our life to better prepare ourselves for it, better equip ourselves for it, to make better decisions in it. Not once we get through it, we don't wait for our good decisions on the other side of this. We start making good decisions now.

And that starts with you pushing yourself, me pushing myself, even though the odds are a bit daunting. And there are always stories out there that, that inspire us to continue on in this and not just in movies and books. I mean, think about this. David, David was anointed King of Israel when he was just a kid and Saul chased him all over the country trying to kill him for what, 20 years or so. And he could have taken Saul's life, assumed the throne and done a lot of things at several occasions. But if you notice, he didn't take Saul out on his own, nor did he go off and hide somewhere and wait for Saul to die out. He lived life. The key is learning to tell the difference between doing it under your own strength or doing it in obedience to God. If you look at Moses, he tried to deliver Israel one dead Egyptian at a time, and that didn't work out too well for him. So he ended up spending 40 years on the backside of the desert tending sheep for a while till he learned to be obedient to God in the midst of it. Jacob wanted to marry Rachel.

Laban tricked him and he ended up marrying Leah and he had to work another seven years for Rachel, a total 14 years, but he kept thriving in it and he was obedient to do it. And it's kind of interesting to watch his story because he was somebody who was a wheeler dealer and then all of a sudden he got wheeled or dealed. You remember that verse in Jeremiah 29 that seems like everybody wants to repeat back to you during times that it seems a bit dicey. I know the plans for you declares the Lord.

Gracie sang a song about it. It's a great verse, but do you know the context of it? This is why it's important for us to study God's Word in context and the context of Jeremiah 29 is not just I know the plans. He's setting this up and the exiles there in Jerusalem were just lamenting.

They really wanted to go back to Israel and they were just torqued about it. And then here comes this verse in Jeremiah 29 4. Okay, this is seven verses before the one everybody else quotes all the time. He says, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Now, let's unpack that a little bit.

Whom I have sent. They just didn't happen to get there. God sent them there.

And here's what he says. This is what Jeremiah is the prophet is saying, the Lord is saying through Jeremiah. Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives, have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters and marriage that they may bear sons and daughters.

Multiply there and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare you will find welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Do not let your prophets and diviners who are among you deceive you and do not listen to the dreams that they dream. For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name.

I did not send them, declares the Lord. For thus saith the Lord, Jeremiah goes on to say in verse 10, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. Okay, now that takes on a little different meaning when you see it in the context and it goes on and God goes on to really lay out this whole plan that he's had for this. This is not something that just happened to these people. He decreed it.

So what does that mean for you and me? Do you think that Gracie's accident caught God by surprise? Do you think that all of these things that have happened in our life were causing God to smack his forehead and say, oh, man, I forgot about Peter and Gracie.

No, of course not. None of that lines up with anything in scripture and we can lament and we can cuss and fuss and scream and cry and holler and everything else that we do as human beings, and sadly I have done, God get me out of this. But God told his own people, be still. I put you here. I will move you when I'm ready because I know the plans I have for you. Do you think that's a one and done thing with God?

Do you think that's a principle that God incorporated just that one time? Okay, this is the way I'm going to do it this time. Everything else, I'm just going to kind of let it just flow.

But no, no, no. And this one I'm going to say to these people, y'all be cool. I got a plan. He's had a plan from before the foundation of the world. We don't always know what he's doing and we may not always like what he's doing, but we trust him in it. Go back and look at the Garden of Gethsemane. You know, Peter took a knife and cut off that guy's ear and Jesus is like, Peter, really? I can call down legions upon legions.

Who knows how many angels that really represented. He was not without the ability to defend himself. That was not his purpose. And you look at James and John when those guys were treating them poorly and they said, shouldn't we just call down fire from heaven to consume them? You know, and I love in the chosen how they kind of showed that scene in Samaria.

It was really, really great scene. And Jesus looked at him and said, you boys don't get what I'm doing here. And I can go through scripture after scripture, Moses killing that Egyptian. Really Moses?

You know, this is your plan? And when David was willing to trust God in this, knowing that he'd be an anointed king and yet he had to go through years of abuse, of being hunted, of treated poorly. His own men at some times got very angry with him.

One time they wanted to kill him. And then he come back to this passage in scripture, Jeremiah 29, and you see a glimpse into God's character and his attributes. I got you. I know where you are. Settle down. Just hang tight. I know where you are and I know what I'm doing.

Now that's what he's saying basically in essence to these Israelites through the word of the Lord that came through Jeremiah. I mean, if I was translating into Southernese, it would say, y'all simmer down. I'll take care of you. I know what's going on. Well, does he say that to you and me?

Does that same principle apply to us? Y'all simmer down. Peter, settle down.

I got that Gracie. I know what I'm doing and I will sustain you in this. That's the whole purpose of the Holy Spirit, the comforter, which to strengthen, not just to console, not to sympathizer, which he does offer those consoling, wonderful attributes of God. And we see them all throughout scripture, but the purpose of the Holy Spirit coming was to fortify, to strengthen, to equip, to help us to endure and groan on our behalf. So yeah, we don't understand. Yes, we feel abandoned. Yes, we feel cast off. You show me a caregiver that doesn't feel that way and I'll show you somebody that hasn't been caregiving long enough. But it's in those moments that we run to this Savior who understands that anguish that we're feeling and has done something about it and invites us to trust him.

Plant vineyards, build houses, find a wife, get married, have kids, find spouses for your kids, have grandkids. That sounds an awful lot like live life in this place that I have you. So my question to you as a caregiver, are you living life in this place that God has you? Or are you sitting around and putting a notch on the wall and waiting for your prison sentence to be over? It does not honor God for us to just mark time as caregivers.

We'll just get through this. And then when mama goes on to be with Jesus, then we'll get out and live life. I don't see anything in scripture that supports that. But I see a whole lot of scripture that encourages us, Ye even commands us to be diligent where we are with what we have.

He provides the increase. You don't need to go start some grandiose ministry or do this or this. I didn't do that. This has just evolved over a lifetime. I've just been doing this a very long time. And so things evolved. Like I told you in the last block, I sat out in the parking lot in front of a mental hospital with a tuna sandwich.

And I just started being diligent with what I had, where I was. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is hope for the caregiver.

We'll be right back. This is Peter Rosenberg, and I'm really excited to tell you about my new book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday.

I compiled a lifetime of experience to offer a lifeline to my fellow caregivers. Each chapter only takes one minute to read them. I know I timed them. You can read them in order. You can read them out of order. You can flip to any page and you're going to find something on that page that'll help you at that moment.

It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. Go to HopeForTheCaregiver.com slash book. HopeForTheCaregiver.com slash book. And you can sign up. We'll let you know as soon as it's available for pre-order. We'll send you a special bonus feature for it, sample chapter, all kinds of things. Go to HopeForTheCaregiver.com slash book. I can't wait for you to read this book. You're going to love it. Welcome back to Hope For The Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a caregiver. This is the caregiver keyboard that I'm playing. And do you know what this hymn is by any chance? It was written by Fanny Crosby.

I'll give you a hint. Well, let me just tell you the story. A lot of you all have expressed to me that you love the caregiver keyboard and love when I talk about the hymns. And I love these hymns that I play.

I just love the hymns. Fanny Crosby was invited to go speak at the Bowery one night and she didn't want to do it. She didn't feel good. She was tired.

She just wasn't feeling great. And she went anyway and the guy came up to her afterwards and said, listen, I appreciate so much you sharing your testimony. And my father died, but he prayed for me for my whole life.

And I was involved in alcohol and so forth. And tonight I've just heard your message and I want to just give my life to Christ. And I'm going to spend eternity with my father. And she went home and wrote these lyrics. Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore, touched by a loving heart, awakened by kindness.

Chords that were broken will vibrate once more. And here's the chorus. You may know this. Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying. Jesus is merciful. Jesus will save you.

Sing it with me. Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying. Jesus is merciful. Jesus will save you.

Rescue the perishing. She didn't want to go down there, but she went anyway. She was obedient.

She was diligent. And in the process, this great hymn was born that night after she encountered that man who said, you know, I was a drunk and I heard your story and I am committing my life to Christ. I'm trusting this Jesus that you're talking about. And I know that as I've given my life to Christ, I'm going to get to spend eternity with him. And I'll see my father who prayed for me. And that's extraordinary. God doesn't wait for us to feel good before he invites us to be obedient.

In fact, quite the opposite. Gracie's favorite verse in scripture is 2 Corinthians 12, 9, I will boast all the more gladly my weakness for in my weakness Christ's power rests upon me. You know, Paul pled with God, take this away from me. Just like those Israelites did when they were in captivity, please let us go back home.

Please take us out of captivity. Paul pled with God three times, take this thorn from me. And God said, my grace is sufficient.

How many of us as caregivers are in that same position? And I would suggest to you that it's a normal position. Jesus pled in Gethsemane, please don't make me go through this. If there's any way, please let this cut pass for me. Not my will, but yours. And when we are obedient to God, extraordinary things happen. We talked about safety over the last couple of weeks. And I heard a great message that I think applies to us as caregivers. You know, safety comes in many different forms for us.

And we think that if we're having the absence of things that we don't like, then we're safe and we're doing okay. But how much different would the story have turned out had David gone to battle instead of staying home and seeing Bathsheba? And the sermon I heard was sometimes the safety is in the middle of the battle. He was supposed to be out in the springtime when the kings went out to war. He was supposed to be out there.

He got bored. The struggle is where we lean on Him, meet Him, encounter Him and are obedient to Him in this. And so our safety tip for today is stay in the struggle because that's usually the safest place. Be diligent to the task at hand. Trusting in Him that He is going to work through this. Jeremiah told those Israelites, be diligent where you are.

Stay put. David, he chose not to be and caused a lot of carnage because of it. Fanny Crosby was diligent to go down and speak, share her testimony, share what God has done in her life. And that man was so moved by this that it jarred him from his life of alcoholism and running away from God that he listened. He heard it. His spirit was quickened within him.

And she was diligent to go and in the process wrote this hymn that evening. Rescue the parish and care for the dying. Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave. Weep over the erring one. Lift up the fallen. Tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save. And how many people have been touched by that hymn? How many lives has God touched through that hymn?

There's no way Fanny Crosby left this earth knowing the impact she had on countless individuals. She was diligent to the task at hand. So my question to you is, where's your safety? Is your safety in getting out of your circumstances, is that what's going to cause you to feel more safe? Or are you willing to be still and trust Him in it and be diligent to the task at hand, knowing that God has indeed a plan for you and in this? That there are things in you, just like what was in Fanny Crosby, that will be used to touch countless lives. You don't know this. And you may think you're struggling along in isolation.

And you may be. The Israelites were struggling in exile. Fanny Crosby was blind going down there to basically a mission. And if you look at biographies of missionaries, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, all these individuals who went at considerable cost and were diligent, they weren't great heroes. A lot of people didn't know who they were until the end of the life and then some.

But they were diligent. I see this all through scripture, trusting in God that He is working through all of these things. You may feel as a caregiver that you are invisible, isolated, forgotten. And a lot of those things are extremely hard to push back on. I know. But I'm telling you that none of that lines up with scripture. None of that lines up with scripture. He is intricately involved in all of these things, even in the suffering you have to watch every day. I see it in my own life. And I see it in the lives of countless others.

And so I'm asking you to be diligent where you are and understand that safety is often in the battle. Because that's where we're trusting in God and being obedient to where He's called us. David gave us a horrific example of what it was like to step away from following God's directive. He had done so well during that time when Saul was king and Jacob and David had maintained his principles.

He had stayed there. But when he became king and he stepped into that role, it's like he just checked out. And it's so tragic.

And it was extremely expensive for him and so many others. We are invited to trust God in the midst of the craziness. We are invited to be still and know that He is God. Zechariah 4.6, not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty. God is not requiring you to be a super caregiver.

He's not. It's His Spirit that is doing all of these things. And it's in our weakness that we can truly boast all the more gladly. Because that's when Christ's power rests upon you. And that's the safest place to be is when you are boasting in your weakness so that Christ's power rests upon you. You go back and look at the great hymn, His Eyes on the Sparrow.

Sevilla Martin wrote that. And she was talking with a couple. The woman was bedridden. The man was crippled. And this went on for years in their life.

He took care of his wife and worked and I think he had a horrible limp and just orthopedic issues. And yet they were just so full of joy. And Sevilla asked him, she said, how is this possible?

How are you doing this? And the lady who was bedridden, she said, well, His Eyes on the Sparrow. And I know he watches me. I don't know if they worked out any copyright issues with that or not, but the point was not lost on Sevilla Martin, that this is a woman of extraordinary faith who was trusting God, being diligent where she was. Her husband who was crippled himself was being diligent where he was. And in the process, God used their story to inspire Sevilla Martin to then change the lives of how many people treasure that song. In fact, when I was back in Nashville at the funeral that I just played at after the covenant shootings, Daniel Fisher and I played His Eyes on the Sparrow. And I heard the weeping from the congregation, from his family as they listened to that. And it started because Sevilla Martin saw this couple who were being diligent to where they had the safety was in the battle. A hundred years later, that song is still grabbing people and pointing them to Christ. That's where safety is, is in the battle.

So that's my safety tip for this time. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com.

We'll see you next week. You've heard me talk about Standing with Hope over the years. This is the prosthetic limb ministry that Gracie envisioned after losing both of her legs. Part of that outreach is our prosthetic limb recycling program. Did you know that prosthetic limbs can be recycled?

No kidding. There is a correctional facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs. And this facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic.

And we met them over 11 years ago. And they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks, all these things we can reuse, and inmates help us do it.

Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville. And I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere, and feet, boxes of them, so forth. And I was doing all this myself and I'd make the kids help me.

And it got to be too much for me. And so I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction. And we'd love to be a part of this.

And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb.

And that's where the focus of Standing With Hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials, and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona, where it's such an extraordinary ministry.

Thank you for that. Inmates volunteering for this. They want to do it.

And they've had amazing times with it. And I've had very moving conversations with the inmates that work in this program. And you can see, again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be. And we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do. And that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with hope. Standingwithhope.com.