Caregiver Welfare Check

What do you say to a caregiver?

How do you help a caregiver? I was talking to this billing agent at the doctor's office and said, how are you feeling? And she said, oh great It's Friday. And before I could catch myself, I said Friday means nothing to me. Every day is Monday. And I felt kind of ashamed of that and I'm sorry for that, but I realized that whole principle of every day is Monday. What that means for us as caregivers, we know that this is going to be a challenging day. And I wrote these one-minute chapters.

You literally could read them in one minute. And I'm really proud of this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. It's filled with bedrock principles that we as caregivers can lean on, that we can depend upon to get us to safety, where we can catch our breath, take a knee if we have to, and reorient our thinking and the weight that we carry on our shoulders. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, don't worry about it.

I do. Give them this book. 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 doing? How are you feeling?

What's going on with you? You know, as caregivers, we're used to the term welfare check when it comes to people with chronic impairments, infirmities, disabilities, aging, and so forth. We've got to do a welfare check on them. How many caregivers get a welfare check? Well, this is your welfare check.

I'm asking. And if you want to let me know how you're doing, hopeforthecaregiver.com, hopeforthecaregiver.com, or you can join our Facebook group. It's Hope for the Caregiver. That's the group name, of course, and it's a private group, and there are a couple of questions you have to answer before admission to the group. So if you invite somebody else to the group, just make them aware of that, that they have to answer questions. You don't just automatically get put into the group. And I do that to screen out to make sure as best as I can that other people don't get in there that are causing all kinds of headaches, and I also try to monitor the conversations.

But it's a good group. It's a very active, engaged group of people who speak the language of caregivers. But if you want to send a direct message to me, go out to our website, hopeforthecaregiver.com, and I try to respond to those things as best as I can. Okay, be patient with me as I do it, but I do. I am a full-time caregiver, just so you know.

So be patient with me as I do that, but I will try to, because it's important that we have welfare checks for us as caregivers. When I started doing this whole thing that I do, with writing books and podcasting and broadcasting and writing op-eds and all the things that I do for the family caregiver, it was always done with the intent of going into the isolation that we as caregivers feel so deeply. It cripples us. And, as I often say, we caregivers can feel isolated in a crowded room. We can feel isolated on a crowded pew. How many of you all have ever felt that way in a crowded room? At a crowded church, you're sitting on a pew and you feel isolated. You feel so alone. You feel so lonely. If you can make it to church, and everybody around you is singing Victory in Jesus, and you're wondering, really?

What do I do with that? This is your welfare check. This is your time to sit down with a cup of coffee and let's talk about this. Yes, it's a little bit one-sided with me doing all the talking. That's the nature of the broadcast and then everything we do.

And I get that, and I'm not trying to, anyway, intimate anything differently. I'm hoping, by the way, down the road, that I'll resume going back to the live call-in. It just was not feasible, particularly when Gracie was having some extensive hospital stays and surgeries. And it was very hard on the producer staff and all that to work with me on that.

We had a lot of flexibility issues, simply because of the nature of caregiving. I'm sure you all understand that. But one day, we're going to get back to it.

And I love doing that, and I try to do the best I can with the parameters that we have. In the meantime, grab a cup of coffee. Sit down for just a minute. Or if you're in the car, and you've got it running through your Bluetooth system on your car or whatever, or if you're walking, you're doing the garden. I listen to stuff all the time. By the way, I finished my course on C.S.

Lewis. I got a certificate and everything. I was so proud of it. And there's an exam that I had to take, and I was taking that at Hillsdale College.

It's a free course. And I do all of that while I am doing my chores. In fact, I can promise you this. I hold the record. I called up a friend of mine, and I said, I can state with certainty that I hold the record, because when I started this course, I was trying to find the septic tank out here. How many of you all have looked for a septic tank?

It's a fun job. I've been in the little cabin here on this property that my father-in-law and mother-in-law owned for many years here, and he's got this little cabin that Gracie and I have renovated to make it more handicap accessible. And he couldn't remember where he put the septic tank. Well, that's a helpful piece of information to have, I'm just going to tell you. And I was determined last fall that I was going to find this thing before snow hit the ground, because the last thing you want, and you can write this down, is to have your septic tank go awry in the middle of February in Montana, when it's 20 below and you have two or three feet of snow on the ground.

That's something you want to avoid. OK, I'll take a moment for you to write that down, because that's a helpful piece of information as well. And so I was in a mild panic to find this thing, which I did. But while I did it, I was listening to my course on C.S. Lewis. And I promise you, I'm the only person digging up a septic tank in Montana last year listening to a course on C.S. Lewis.

I'm going to go ahead and state with certainty that I hold that record. But I did it, and I finished the course, and I was grateful for it. I learned a lot at C.S.

Lewis on Christianity. It's a really good course, and I enjoyed it immensely, and I listen to it while I do my chores. And believe it or not, I iron. I've got a friend of mine, she's a regular listener to this program, and she is a longtime family friend, and she is aghast that I iron so much.

She said, how could you do that? Because I'll iron the pillowcases at times, and the sheets. I do. It's kind of cathartic for me. I enjoy it, and I listen to lectures.

I've been going through my theology classes, systematic theology, and I've been doing that. And then I'm usually on the phone with people, and they'll hear me clattering around and doing stuff, but I never stop. I never just sit down and have a conversation with somebody about that sort of thing, or anything for that matter. I'm always moving around.

I have a standing desk that I don't sit at. So that's just the nature of my life as a caregiver. This is what allows me to do what I do. So as you're listening to this program, chances are you're the same way.

You're cleaning the kitchen, or whatever. Now I know my folks listen to the program. Mom and Dad listen faithfully every week on their Alexa device, and I know that Mom better not be clattering around and doing stuff, because I don't want her to fall, so she could just be real still. She's laughing at me right now and probably making some kind of smart remark to me. I get my sarcasm for my mother. My father does not speak sarcasm, but my mother is rather adept at it. And she has a wicked sense of humor and a zest for life, but Mom, I hope you're sitting down and being still.

That's the point of all of this, is that we don't have the time as caregivers to necessarily carve out, okay, we're going to do this and have these little indulgence moments. So I recognize that we're on the fly. But during this broadcast, during this time with you and me, while you're doing the things you do, I hope that you're able to have a cup of coffee, even if you're doing the dishes or whatever, that you're able to listen and say, okay, I get that. I understand that.

That's the language that I understand. And I'm doing a welfare check on you. So how are you doing? What is going on with you? And you don't have to say it to me.

There doesn't have to be anyone else around. God's there. He's listening.

And it's important for you to vocalize those things. If you go back and read the Psalms, David is speaking in first person singular a lot, you know. He does this.

He's pouring out his heart. And you see this throughout all of Scripture. Jesus does this in Gethsemane.

Scripture's filled with this, with men and women of God who express their lament, their sorrow, their heartache, their frustration, all these things going on in their lives. And they said them whether anybody else was listening or not. And sometimes they were written down.

Sometimes other people wrote them down. But if you go and look at the story, for example, of Hannah, who was praying. And Eli, the priest, heard her doing this.

At first, I think he thought she was drunk. But she was pouring out her heart to God in such a way that obviously caught his attention. But it was a private moment between she and God. She was uttering this lament from her heart. And God heard and through Eli was able to give her a tremendous word that she was going to have a child. And she did.

His name was Samuel. God hears your cry. God hears your lament. God hears you speaking, even while you're doing the dishes, while listening to a guy doing a caregiver show. Or doing the laundry or cleaning up or whatever. I have listened to and done things.

I have cleaned the bathroom while doing media interviews. I get it. But you know what? More importantly, God gets it.

And scripture is filled with how he responds to that. We're going to talk some more about this a little bit on our welfare check for caregivers. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad that you're with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We're talking about welfare checks. And I'm not talking about the welfare system of writing a check for money. I'm talking about checking on you, doing a welfare check on you as a caregiver. OK.

When's the last time somebody did that for you? Well, I'm doing it. So we're going to go through a series of things.

Get out your notepad. Make a checklist of things that need to be addressed for us as caregivers. OK. Let's start with your health. I want to ask you, when is the last time you had a physical? When's the last time you saw your doctor? I'm asking. Go ahead. You can tell me.

It's just you and me. When's the last time you did this? Why is that important? Your body is the body that your loved one is depending upon. If you're not being a good steward of it, what kind of caregiving can you provide in that manner? So you're not being selfish to do this.

You're not being inconsiderate. In fact, one of the greatest gifts you could give to your loved one is for you to take care of the body that takes care of her or him. I'm thinking about in my case, for example, Gracie depends on me to be healthy.

And if I'm 350 pounds, diabetic, high blood pressure, can't breathe very well, all of the above. What good am I to her at that point? I become a liability.

And I don't want to be a liability to her. I can't stop certain things. I can't reverse aging, for example.

That's a foregone conclusion. And we can't fix some of the things that are wrong with us. Some of us are going to just have to deal with certain things. But it's important that we have a check on us to see what's going on. I think you go through the checklist of, okay, what's important?

Your blood pressure, your heart rate, your weight, your body mass index, all these things. And I'm not saying this to put guilt on you. I'm saying this if you don't have an objective pair of eyes on you, we'll go down a path until we're just morbidly obese and in such poor health that we can't function. So we've got to have somebody that helps us steer back. Colonoscopies.

Those are very important over a certain age. We've got to do it. I'm going to do one myself this summer, and I've made the decision. I think I'm going to go ahead and get this bunion on my left foot operated on. I've heard a lot of pros and cons about getting a bunion surgery done, but I think I'm going to have to do it because it's throwing off my walking gait, which hurts my left knee. And I've tried everything I can to accommodate it, but I think I'm going to have to do it. I've just got to figure out when I'm going to do it because I'll have to be on crutches for a while. But I was talking to a podiatrist buddy of mine back in Nashville who I really respect a lot. He said, look, as arthritis sets in, the longer you wait, the less likely you're going to have a successful operation.

So I'm going to have to do it. What about you? What's going on with your knees? What's going on with your feet?

What about your arch supports? All those kinds of things are important. So get a physical. And if you say, well, I don't have anybody to stay with while I do it.

Well, you know what? We'll figure that out. You get the appointment first, and we start down that path and decide it's important first. And then you can figure that kind of thing out by you can call your pastor and say, look, I need somebody to sit with my loved one while I go get a physical. And if your pastor is not willing to help you coordinate that, you probably need a new church, new pastor, because that's incredibly important for your health to be checked on.

So let's do that. Get lab work, get all those kinds of things. What's your diet like? What's your food consumption like? What are you putting into your body? I have to work on that myself.

Over the last year and a half, Gracie's had five operations. Well, guess what? I allowed myself to slip up a little bit in my weight. And I'm not where I used to be. I mean, at one point I got so big.

I mean, if I wore a yellow jacket, school kids would try to board me. I got big, y'all. The bears are hiding their food in the forest, but I go out there.

I got big. But I'm trying to bring that back down, drinking a lot of water, back away from sodas, all those kinds of things. I mean, I still have my kryptonite that I love to eat, but I'm trying to watch that. I got a buddy of mine who has been on this carnivore diet. I don't know if y'all have heard about this or not.

That's the loose name of it. But he does just meat, dairy, eggs, cheese, that kind of stuff. But no vegetables, no fruit, certainly no breads or anything like this. He's lost 61 pounds in six months. And I'm tempted to look at that, but I don't know if that's the right thing for me or not.

There are lots of different plans out there, but it starts with sitting down with your doctor. Have that conversation. All right, now let's switch gears. What about your dental health? When's the last time you got a cleaning checkup? And you'll know real quick if you need one, if you are not flossing every day, you floss one time. And if your mouth fills up with blood, guess what?

You got some issues there. So flossing, brushing, and then getting regular cleanings because some things won't be cleaned by just flossing. You're going to have to have somebody get that stuff off, scrape it off. And it's unpleasant sometimes, but it's got to be done. Now, why is this important?

Well, guess what? Guess what has a straight line to your heart, your mouth, both spiritually and physically. And so if you get infection or you get all this stuff going on in your gums, it's a main line to your heart. And if you're starting to feel run down, chances are you may need a cleaning of your teeth. And get in there and let's get these gums cleaned out and start on a regular process of flossing and rinsing out.

Sometimes with a peroxide, dilution of peroxide, talk to your dentist or your dental hygienist about it. They'll tell you exactly what to do, they'll give you stuff to do it with. But you're going to have to do it.

And if you don't do it, you run the risk of a lot of bad things happening. And I'm amazed, don't take my word for it, Google it up, go ask your dentist, go talk to professionals about it. But from everything I understand, if you don't have good dental health, your symptoms will be fatigue, you'll feel run down, you'll feel kind of weak and irritable.

All kinds of things that are going on with our bodies and can be traced back to dental health. So let's deal with that. You say, well, I don't want to go to the dentist, I don't like going to the dentist where it scares me or they have to, you know, I don't, whatever. Get over it. Okay? It's just part of it. You're going to have to do it.

Just like you, you got to get your blood work checked. You've got to do certain things. Otherwise you run the risk of this thing going down the tubes and you're not being a very good caregiver if you're not taking care of the one person who's taking care of your loved one. Now, I mean, I'll just put it in my situation. You all know Gracie's circumstances. How do I serve her better by being run down because I'm not looking after my own body? If I'm limping around because of this thing on my foot, how am I serving her? I have to take care of my feet because guess what?

Those are the only feet she has to lean on and to count on. Well, who's counting on you? So first step of our welfare check is you get a physical, you check it with your doctor. Well, I don't want to find out certain things. I know people like that.

They won't go because they don't want to find out. How many ways can I say that's stupid? How many ways can I say that's ill-advised?

How many ways can that cause a train wreck? All right. You all know this, but we're just having a conversation among us right now.

We're just sitting around the table talking about this. So you got your checklist. I expect every one of you to have a physical on the calendar within the next six months. Maybe you just had one, so let's get another one on the calendar, but let's get a physical going here because if you don't, what are the consequences? And while you're there, let's go over everything with a fine-tooth comb. Let's make sure your blood work is good. If you're over 50, that colonoscopy, it's time. All right?

All these things, the doctors know what to do. You just have to show up. And then let's get on the calendar for a dental appointment. Some dentists are hard to get into, so don't wait. Let's go.

Go ahead and make the call. Write it down on your calendar first thing Monday morning. Call your dentist and schedule a cleaning and a checkup and get on their regular program. All right. So we got health.

We got dental. Now let's work on diet. What are you eating? What are you drinking? Are you drinking enough water?

There's a phrase called drink to think. Are you doing that? Are you chugging down the diet sodas or any kind of soda? Do you think that's helping your kidneys?

How would you like a kidney stone on top of everything you're dealing with as a caregiver? So we got to look at what we're putting into our body. Find that program. I'm not going to tell you a diet program, for heaven's sakes. There's too many of them out there. But find the one that works for you. Watch the carbs. Watch the intake of these things and certainly the sugars. But with sodas, they have all those chemicals in them and they're really hard on your kidneys. So I used to love sodas like everybody else, but I had to break myself of that. And I do soda water and I drink that and it doesn't have any of those kind of chemicals in it. It just kind of gives me that sensation of soda. But drink a ton of water and we're going to have to drink more. Drink so much water that it just feels like it's just pouring out of you all the time.

But it's good for you. I don't know if you have this problem or not, but it's hard when you're the chief cook and bottle washer to come up with good menus and so forth. Sometimes you have to be a bit creative and there are ways to do that out there. I talked with Graham Care. He's the Galloping Gourmet, formerly known as the Galloping Gourmet, and he is a family friend.

And I got some good advice from him, tips from him. It's all about portions. You can pretty much eat anything you want as long as you watch your portions.

And the more colorful the vegetable, the better for you. So just I passed that on. That's what he told me. And he knows he has invested a lifetime of understanding how food works with our bodies. And so I pass that on to you all.

So doctor visits, dental visit, diet, three D's, DDD, Triple D, doctor, dentist, diet. Let's incorporate that into our welfare check as caregivers. All right. So and by the way, feel free to send it back to me and let me know the same thing.

OK. 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 Rosenberg. Glad to have you with us. Hope for the caregiver dot com.

Hope for the caregiver dot com. While you're out there, check out the new book and also check out the interview I recently did with Colonel Oliver North. I think you'll really like the interview.

It's a lot of fun. He particularly liked a story. He told me this offline in my new book.

It's called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. And they're just one minute chapters. And one of the chapters evidently really struck a nerve with him as a Marine. In the military, they have a lot of great and clever ways of saying things. For example, my brother was talking about sometimes when people are doing things on the fly and I may do a whole segment on this at another point. He said it's like building an airplane in midair. That's what the Army calls it. Building an airplane in midair.

Does that feel like us as caregivers? I mean, we're building an airplane in midair. But anyway, so when he came on to the interview, he said, I got to tell you about chapter 86. And I had to think for a minute, what was chapter 86?

And it was the it was titled Board Certified in What? And that's the title of the chapter. And I will read this to you.

It's only one minute. I'll read this to you. Due to my wife's early morning surgery scheduled, her surgeon instructed me to enter through the emergency room to be with her before the operation. Approaching the security desk at the E.R., I provided my wife's name and shared I'm here for her operation. Verifying her name, the guard stated, you must use the front entrance. And I said, it's closed. The surgeon told me to come here. You have to use the front entrance, she repeated.

It's closed. The surgeon directed me here. I restated slower. The guard repeated herself for the fourth time. And I said, ma'am, where did I lose you?

A lifetime as a caregiver, more than a dozen hospitals. I've encountered plenty of clipboard carrying Barney Fife types. Now, you know the type.

OK, y'all been there, done that. Now, as a side, I've been called Dr. Rosenberger many times over my years with Gracie. And a lot of times I would show up at the hospital in the coat and tie, particularly on surgery days and so forth, just simply because you get more things done if you look the part. And I never told him to call me Dr. Rosenberger. I just didn't tell them not to call me Dr. Rosenberger.

So I used that Rosenberger name and I went with it. So I looked at this security guard who was just prepared to die on that hill that I had to go to the front of the hospital, even though it was closed, even though the surgeon told me to come here. That's where I had to go. And I looked at her with a complete straight face and I said, ma'am, I am board certified in cranial proctology. They called me from pre-op. I need to be there now. Her eyes widened as she waved me through. Finally to myself, I just walked on through. I didn't I didn't crack a smile to her.

I just looked the part and I was able to get to pre-op in time. While cranial proctology isn't an in-demand specialty, except probably in Washington, D.C., I laughingly tell others that I've developed an expertise and use it to help with bureaucratic roadblocks. With a bit of creativity and a poker face, caregivers can often navigate these roadblocks and clipboard carriers without adding more drama to our challenging life. And that was the gist of this. And oh, I put a quote at the end of it from Barney Fife, from Andy Griffith's shows. I ain't got time to stand around here and discuss trivial trivialities. Well, Colonel North liked that story because it reminded me so much of the dialog that goes on with the Marine Corps.

And a cranial proctologist, I'll let you figure out what a cranial proctologist does and how it's able to extricate from that particular discipline, if you will. But sometimes you have to use a sense of humor and a little bit of creativity to keep yourself out of the drama of getting into big confrontations. I've been there with confrontations and that's not fun.

This one could have gone sideways and I made it work for me. And I bet you can do it. I bet you have done it.

So if you've got something like that, you've done it. I'd love to hear it because I think that's funny. Anyway, Colonel North thought it was and you could hear the entire interview on our podcast at HopeForTheCaregiver.com or wherever you download podcasts.

It's out there. And by the way, I'm on Substack as well. Caregiver.Substack.com.

If you want to see articles that I write, podcasts, stuff that I do for Substack, it's all out there. All right. Back to our welfare check. We are doing welfare checks today on us as caregivers. And I don't mean, again, the entitlement system in our country for people that aren't working. I just simply mean I'm checking on your welfare and I hope you'll check on mine as well. So we covered the three D's.

Dr. Dennis Diet. Now let's go to our money. How are your finances? This is a pain point for us as caregivers. I get that because it costs us a lot of money. And you'll even hear in this interview I did with Colonel North, it cost him financially.

He said he never had these kinds of bills and things that have crept up in his caregiving journey. So, yeah, it's expensive. It certainly has cost Gracie and I quite a bit of money. And we have to live a life that is tethered to those costs. That's just part of it.

But it doesn't mean that we have to be out of whack in our finances. And so here are some things that I've learned over the years. One of them is you've got to learn to stretch a dollar and you do some bargain shopping.

And I bet some of you all are pretty good bargain hunters. And you learn to do without certain things and you learn to have to do it on your own. I've been surprised on the skills that I've learned here in Montana when I left Nashville where you could pick up the phone and call all kinds of service providers to do stuff. But out here, help is a long ways away. And if you don't figure it out, it don't get done. So you've got to learn to do some things yourself. But if you can't do them, you've got to learn to lean on others who can help you with it so that you're not just spending out exorbitant costs for things. Something going on with your car that's not major but it needs some maintenance or some things. Maybe there's somebody in your church who is pretty good at that sort of thing.

And before you rush down to the dealer and spend those kind of prices, maybe you can check around and look for someone else that might be able to help. Talk to your pastor about that. The pastor should know. And again, I always send people to the pastor. And if the pastor's not willing to help, then I'm going to send you to a different pastor. Because that's part of shepherding a congregation and being able to see to these kinds of needs.

But that's just a small one-off example here. Let's start with, do you have a good financial advisor? I mean, I'm not talking about just for financial planning, for annuities and life insurance and all that stuff. But do you have somebody that you go to that's pretty good with this sort of thing that you can, yeah, humble yourself a bit, but say, look, I need some help in organizing our finances. Do you have a good accountant or somebody who can help you with QuickBooks or things such as that? Do you have somebody that keeps you on track for that sort of thing? And then, yeah, do you have a good financial advisor? Remember, I've recommended one here on this program, and there are several others out there that you can go to.

And if you need that recommendation, feel free to reach out and I'll send it to you. But these are people that can help you with some long-term care planning. Maybe you need to come up with a special needs trust for your special needs child. Maybe you need life insurance.

Maybe you need some type of investment account. There's all kinds of different things, but we have to ask. And so are you doing your due diligence to ask about this?

And don't put this unreasonable pressure on yourself that you've got to have money in order to go ask people to help you with money. I don't think that's the way it works. Let's learn how to be good with what we have. And part of that is tithing. Now, what is your tithing setup? I've been having to learn this myself here, is that I have a responsibility to tithe. God said to do it.

And He said, you know, test me in this. But it helps you become organized in your finances when you realize, OK, 10% of this is going to my church. 10% of this is going to the work of the Lord.

And watch what happens with that. These are His principles. These are His words, not mine. These are His. So you deal with Him and you hold His word up to God. You're not putting God to the test. You're doing what He said to do. Taking Him at His word. I'll never forget a time that we had a stack of medical bills. I mean, they were serious bills.

And I was like, oh, Lord, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I was talking to my dad. This is some years ago. And he related the story about Hezekiah. Do you remember Hezekiah? He was the king of Judah. This is after the kingdom had split under Solomon's son Rehoboam's reign, who was evidently quite a jerk. But Hezekiah was being threatened by, I think it was Sennacherib, king of Assyria. And he sent this note that basically said, man, we're going to bust you up.

I'm paraphrasing, of course. And Hezekiah was scared. He was truly afraid. And you know what he did? He went to the temple and he laid out that letter. And he said to God, I don't know what to do. And my father said, you and Gracie, sit down at your kitchen table. I have that same table right here in our little cabin in Montana that we brought all the way from Nashville.

And we were in Nashville. He said, you sit at the kitchen table and you lay out all those bills. You lay out all this and say, Lord, here's what we're dealing with.

We don't know what to do. And you know what? We did just that.

And you know what? It worked out. We prayed about it and God started opening up opportunities and doors and things got paid.

Just different types of insurance and all kinds of things. But what it did for us is it refocused where is our source. It helped our brains and our hearts settle down so that we could look at this without fear, but with trust in God and what He's going to do. Now, as I am drawing near to the end of my fourth decade as a caregiver, I can tell you with 100% certainty that God does not do what I want Him to do on a regular basis. He does it. You've heard people say that, you know, the Lord's never late. My dad used to call God the God of 1159. He would always come right before it.

He's not late, but He certainly will pass up a lot of opportunities to be early. And it puts us in a situation where we're going to have to trust Him. Now, can we?

Yeah, we can. And throughout Scripture, He shows us that we can. And the discipline that comes from our part of recognizing, okay, He is over this.

And we can trust Him with it. And when we're doing this out of a sense of stewardship and responsibility and clear thinking, we are less prone to get ourselves into a mess that comes from fear and guilt and obligation. Those are never good things that go along with our money.

Impulse, fear, obligation, resentment, guilt, all those kinds of things. You put that with your checkbook and you've got a problem. But you go to the Word of God with your checkbook and now you have a path. So our welfare check for this hour is your money. Get some people involved to help you if you need them. Let's touch base and make sure we're healthy financially, not just physically, okay? This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. What do you say to a caregiver?

How do you help a caregiver? I was talking to this billing agent at the doctor's office and I said, how are you feeling? And she said, oh, great, it's Friday. And before I could catch myself, I said Friday means nothing to me. Every day is Monday. And I felt kind of ashamed of that and I'm sorry for that. But I realized that whole principle of every day is Monday. What that means for us as caregivers, we know that this is going to be a challenging day. And I wrote these one-minute chapters. You literally could read them in one minute.

And I'm really proud of this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers, When Every Day Feels Like Monday. It's filled with bedrock principles that we as caregivers can lean on, that we can depend upon to get us to safety where we can catch our breath, take a knee if we have to, and reorient our thinking and the weight that we carry on our shoulders. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, don't worry about it.

I do. Give them this book. As a caregiver, think about all the legal documents you need. Power of attorney, a will, living wills, and so many more. Then think about such things as disputes about medical bills. What if, instead of shelling out hefty fees for a few days of legal help, you paid a monthly membership and got a law firm for life? Well, we're taking legal representation and making some revisions in the form of accessible, affordable, full-service coverage.

Finally, you can live life knowing you have a lawyer in your back pocket who, at the same time, isn't emptying it. It's called Legal Shield, and it's practical, affordable, and a must for the family caregiver. Visit caregiverlegal.com. That's caregiverlegal.com.

Isn't it about time someone started advocating for you? www.caregiverlegal.com, an independent associate. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Oh, happy day. Wonderful song, and that brings us to our final segment of a welfare check for you. How is your spiritual life? We talked about the three Ds.

Dr. Dennis Diet, we talked about finances and your money. What about your spiritual life? This is not an exhaustive welfare check today. We need to get into relationships and so forth, but all of this is going to set the table for those in future discussions. Your spiritual life, what's going on with you? What's going on with your heart? Are you at peace? This is a tough conversation for us as caregivers, but it goes back to that song, oh, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away. If that is our anchor point, that we know that we have been forgiven in Christ, that we know that our sins have been atoned for, that we know that He knew our name before the foundation of the world, saw to it that we were born, saw to it that we believed, and will see us through all of this as caregivers, that He is waiting for us in all of these trials that we're going through. None of this is catching Him off guard. Now, do we know these things?

Are we confident of this? Because once that truth apprehends us, it changes everything for us as caregivers. And in the press packet that went out about my book, I was kind of surprised by this, but the publisher put a thing and said, look, you might want to start reading Peter's book from the very last sentence and then work backwards.

And I thought, well, if I know I was going to write it backwards, you know. I appreciate what they said because the last sentence says, I came to understand that Gracie has a Savior. I'm not that Savior. Now, let's unpack that for a minute.

What are the implications of this? Number one, that there is a Savior. Do we agree on that? Do we agree that we need a Savior? See, it's kind of hard to cry out to a Savior you don't think you need. And so when you have people that have surrounded themselves with opulence and fame and all the things that this world can offer, that anesthetizes the cry of their heart. And they've got to do something to keep that anesthesia going. Because when that's gone, that's when things start to fall apart and you realize how much you need a Savior.

And I can go through so many people that I know who were, you know, just friends of mine and people of acquaintances I've met over the years, and then I met famous people who had all the things that we think that would make us happy. And they came up short, and that's when they turned to God. They had tried everything. They had tried sex and rock and roll and drugs and, you know, money and everything. And it came up short.

And it left them when the crisis hit. And there's nothing like dealing with the kind of things that we deal with as caregivers that transcend all those other things. Money would be extremely helpful to all of us, for example. But money's not going to solve this problem. There's no amount of money I could have that's going to take away Gracie's pain.

And there's no amount of money that I have that's going to cause her legs to grow back. I think through that for a minute. So what's the solution? What do we do? Who do we look to? And Scripture says we look to Christ. We trust that He already has seen to us. And that's where our journey starts, where we can settle our hearts down. Again, if our hearts are a train wreck, what kind of caregiver are we going to be?

If we are so mad at God, what kind of caregiver are we going to be? And I would like to recommend you do something if you haven't already done it. I would recommend that you go out and watch certainly the last season, and particularly the last two episodes of The Chosen, season three. And you'll see this unfold particularly with Peter. And the way they wrote a back story of he and his wife. And I don't want to give it away, but Peter was Simon.

They still called him Simon at the time. And he was struggling mightily with something that Jesus was not doing that He wanted him to do. Now how many of us as caregivers have been there? And I've watched Gracie suffer horribly every day.

And right now it's a particularly difficult patch for her. You try to juxtapose that with a good and loving God. And it can be a bit challenging. So how do I know I can trust Him with this?

Why would I even go down that path? And there's a great line that the guy that plays Jesus does a great job in this. And he looks at Peter and it was a very emotional moment and he said, I've got hard things for you. I'm not going to abandon you.

I got you. Keep your eyes on me. And so I would suggest to you as a fellow caregivers, He has hard things for us. We keep our eyes on Him. The author and perfecter of our faith. And again, He saw to it that you were born. He saw to it that you believed.

He'll see you home all the way through this. In theological terms, it's called the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. He's able to keep you.

Jude says it at the end of his epistle. Now unto Him who was able to keep you from falling. And once you anchor yourself in that understanding, you'll see all these scriptures start to just like dominoes, you know, just flood through your brain. You'll see these hymns that I talk about so much that will just overpower you and strengthen your heart. Because when we approach all of these things with that level of clarity about the gospel, then it's going to change the way we approach going to the doctor, to the dentist, what food we're putting in our bodies, how we're dealing with our money, how we're dealing with our relationships, all of the above. But if we are unsettled spiritually, what kind of caregiver are we?

And I want to go even further than this. Gracie deals with hard, hard things. And sometimes the pain is so overpowering to her that she is just in misery. And it's a hard thing for me to tell you this. It's a hard thing for her to live it.

And it's a hard thing for me to tell you. But this is our reality. Now, am I helping her by being miserable while she struggles with this? She's an amputee.

Must I be? Can I be content while she struggles? Can I be at peace while she is in pain? And I'm not talking about in bliss, okay? I'm not talking about just, yeah, I'm just living a great life. Sorry about your pain there, baby.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about learning to be settled in my spirit because I have decisions to make, important decisions. I have health decisions, financial decisions.

I have custodial decisions that I do with her, all these things. Am I going to do that while just messed up spiritually? I can tell you shamefully and with deep regret that I have made horrible decisions in my life while messed up spiritually. And I bear the scars of that, and so does she.

And quite truthfully, probably our children, if you ask them. And I don't want to make decisions like that. If I can anchor myself in Christ, my decision-making is going to flow from that, not from fear and panic and resentment and selfishness and self-righteousness and self-vindication and all the things that lead us down into destruction. Now, my approach to caregivers has changed over the years. And I've told you this a couple episodes back.

I don't remember when, a couple of programs back. But I have always kind of thought of myself as a, hey, don't go down there, that's a bad place. I'm not a there, there kind of guy.

I'm not going to sit there and just pat you on the back and say there, there. I'm a don't go down there, that's a bad place. I've been down there. Well, I have, okay?

I have made every kind of mistake you can make as a caregiver. But I'm not a don't go down there anymore kind of guy, at least exclusively. I'll tell you about some bad places. I say, look, that's a bad place, don't go down there.

But I'm changing that because I want to say, go here, go there. Run to this Jesus. Run to this Jesus. Crawl to this Jesus if you have to.

And I will, I'm out of time, so I'll have to tell you that at another time of a story where I did just that. Because that's where safety is. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. That's where safety is. Safety is anchoring yourself on God's word. Safety is establishing yourself on His promises, on His salvation.

Not your own. My wife has a Savior. I'm not that Savior. The implication is we need a Savior. The implication is we have a Savior. The implication is He is her Savior. He is your loved one's Savior, not you.

He's your Savior. Those implications change everything as we do a welfare check for ourselves as caregivers. They change everything. What does the Apostle Paul say? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the what? Renewing of your mind. How many of you all feel your mind needs to be renewed?

I know mine did and still does and will continue to. And that's what we're doing here is we're reorienting our thinking so that our foundation is always on God's word. It is always on Christ.

The second member of the Trinity is the word. And if we're not found in that, then we're left to our own devices to figure this stuff out, our money, our health, and everything else. So our welfare check begins, ends, and is consumed by are we in Christ? We're going to talk about that more, but today this was your caregiver welfare check.

Just check it on you. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, fiscally, all of the above. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next time. 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 and 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, and that's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prostheses. 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.

Think with 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. Take my hand, lean on me, we will stand.