Grief, a Time to Heal, and Living "Uncrushed"

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. Hi, this is Jeff Foxworthy. 65 million Americans serve as a caregiver for a sick or disabled loved one. If you're one of them, then listen to my friend Peter Rosenberger's show.

He's got redneck tendencies, but he's really good at what he does. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. I got to meet a lady from my hometown in Anderson, South Carolina. She is now living up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, which is just right up the road.

I used to backpack all up in there. And her name is Beth Marshall. She's written several books, including A Time to Heal, Grief Survivor, and her new book is called Uncrushed. And Beth is joining me today. We're going to talk about grief. We're going to talk about healing. We're going to talk about hope. We're going to talk about all the things that involve in moving someone through, in, and even out of a place of great sorrow into a healthier, stronger life. You never get rid of the sorrow.

I mean, it's a part of you, but you are not doomed to it. And I believe this is where Beth's heart's going to really come through. So Beth, welcome to the program.

Thank you. This is so much fun to visit Montana without having to get on the airplane. And I get to visit back in the Carolinas. Beth and I understand each other. We don't need subtitles because we are from the same part of the country. The Queen's English is what we call that. We butcher it, but now we can't call it the Queen's English.

We have to call it the King's English. Oh gosh, you're right. Beth and I may lapse into cornbread and Skins hot dogs and all types of other things from our neck of the woods.

So if we do that, you will indulge us on that. But Beth, tell me a little bit about your background. You were with Delta for 25 years.

Were you with Delta always, or did you ever work with Eastern? Oh, thankfully not. Can I say that out loud? They're no longer in existence. Right.

Right. I was from Atlanta. And so Delta, you know, your options were kind of Coca-Cola, the Atlanta Braves or Delta. And after teaching... Or the varsity. Or the varsity. Oh gosh, don't even get me started. Would that be delicious right now? I know it's a little early in your time zone. It's never too early for the varsity.

Never ever. But it was after teaching a couple of years and I realized that I thought that was my dream of my life and was cut out for it until I showed up the first day. And I looked up at the clock and it was 11 o'clock and all these people were still there and they had already eaten lunch.

And I thought, oh boy, this is going to be kind of a long day. But I did enjoy teaching. It was in part of Atlanta.

It was called Meadow View School. And it was interesting. But after the second year, I knew that it was time for something different and applied with Delta. I thought I would hate hotels, which turned out to be the opposite of the truth and thought, well, reservations would be awesome, you know, and be home every night. Turned out that working the in-flight department as a flight attendant, ultimately flying to Europe, which was so it was so much fun.

Just studied some languages so that I could fly to Germany and to France. And so that was very cool back in the beginning. You know, the worst job there is in lost luggage because, you know, those people are going to show up every day and not have a good day. Oh, everybody's mad at you every time.

No one comes in smiling for sure. I think I had it a little easier than that crowd because there would be some there would be a lot of people that would be acting pretty kind and nice. And this was back in the day, Peter, when people would dress up to fly. It was kind of a big deal to fly. And so it was a little bit different than it's gotten.

It was before 9-11, before all the security and all that craziness started. And Gracie still dresses up to fly. Yeah, as we should. She does.

She does not go. She said, look, I'm just that's the way I was raised. Her dad, her grandfather worked for Braniff Airlines. You remember them? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I do remember. A long time ago, but she used to fly, I mean, from as a little child with her grandmother and so forth, and she always dressed up and she still does. Much to my chagrin because Gracie has to have everything in place, all the jewelry and everything. Try going through TSA with jewelry and everything else.

And you also got prosthetic legs. And it just, you know, finally I got her. We kept missing appointments to get her TSA pre-checked. Oh, yeah. Because she kept having hospital visits or doctor visit, whatever.

And we kept missing it. Finally, I got it done because we were back and forth to Denver a lot. And it has made all the difference in the world because the TSA was so thorough with Gracie.

It saved me three primary care visits. I mean, it's just overwhelming when you have somebody with disabilities. And then she has to have big belts with, you know, they look like WWE belts, you know, with, you know, she just she loves jewelry. And she says, look, if you can't see the jewelry from the back row, it's not big enough. That's the way she feels. You tell Gracie I'm on her team. Gracie, if you're around right now, I want you to know I am on your team and you just wear all the things that you need. But I want to be on my team. I'm the one that has to schlep all that stuff with you.

Sorry. I hate it. I hate it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah. At least you don't have to take your shoes off anymore with TSA. Well, one time they wanted to take her feet shells off.

She has foot shells on her prosthetic. And that's when I looked at the guy and he's holding one and I said, no, we're not doing that. And I wheeled her out there and I that was in Orlando where I really struggled with my my Christianity in Orlando Airport. I really did. And Denver Airport is not much better for me, but I'm trying. But getting her pre checked has been a blessing. So I share with you your excitement of flying. And she shares with you your excitement of dressing up for the flight. You got to do what makes you feel fine.

And I'm on her team with that. Sorry, Peter. Well, that's OK.

I'll just I'll just muddle along here. So you did this for a while. Twenty five years, Delta. And then after 9-11, things really, really changed. And I know they did for everybody. But in the airline business, I remember my kids asking me right. And I was home when it happened. And the littlest one said, Mom, do you go to work today? I said, oh, no, baby, I don't. She said, if you had to go to work today, would you go?

I said, no, I wouldn't. And thankfully, Delta and a lot of the airlines were letting people that just needed time away to for a minute to do that. And everything kind of changed. And so after that, I ended up I don't even know the timeframe of years, but ended up going on staff at New Spring Church in Anderson as the care ministry coordinator. And it was a totally different life, but I loved it. I've always felt kind of called to just the hard times.

Never people are struggling. They're the one that I tend to want to talk with. And so I did that for a while. And during that time, started losing some close family members. And that's when and it led to writing some books. But I know we'll probably talk about that later on.

Well, tell me about when you started losing family members. You're the care coordinator at this massive church there in my hometown. And we're that's not your hometown, is it?

No, I grew up in Atlanta and then lived in Boston a little bit, but we ended up in Belton just outside of Anderson where you were. Yeah. And so, yeah, the difference between, by the way, Atlanta and Boston, I'm sure you found out is in Boston. They leave the Rs out of words like five and pack. Yeah.

Oh, for sure. But in Atlanta, we had them back in down in the south, like Winder and Yeller. And so, in fact, the person who introduced me to my husband now was in the in-flight area was a supervisor. And he said, hey, Paul, you need to meet this girl.

She talks just like you. And he was from there. And we were both from the south. And people thought that we needed to meet because we could understand each other.

We had that language we could get. She's wicked funny. Yeah, I love that word.

I love that word. As you started, as you lost one, then multiple had started. It kind of dominoes on you, didn't it?

Yeah, it did. What was my mom was the first one. And then a couple of years later, my dad and then a sister-in-law that was as cool as any sister that's ever been. She's the one that let me drive her dune buggy to high school.

Peter, can you imagine being that cool as a 17-year-old? But anyway, just a really close sister-in-law. It was just several family losses.

The most difficult was really my mom. And I just remember the shock of it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. But the first few weeks were so, I guess we were anesthetized a little bit. And I know most of your listeners have probably been through this where everything is just kind of a blur and you're so busy taking care of things and people coming around. And I think I had gotten in my head that, oh, this is not so hard.

I mean, what's the big deal? Until about two weeks out, everything got real quiet. In the beginning, people were bringing all these flowers and telling you stories about her and just taking meals to you. And I thought, dude, this is awesome. We're going to have chicken pie in the fridge forever. I'm never going to cook again.

And we'll always have these big old Gerber daisies because those were her favorite. And then once people start, and I know that you get this, once people start kind of getting back in their own lives, you can feel like, oh, boy, this is not so easy. And the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I can remember I'd never really experienced it up close because as a child, we were kind of not allowed into the sorrow. It was like, y'all go jump on the trampoline.

We'll be fine. And our parents would go and take care of all the funeral things and visit. So I've never really been part of that. And I would just say to anybody that has children or teenagers, it's a disservice to not include them in this part of real life.

And so I just remember thinking, I don't know how to do this and feeling really stuck and overwhelmed in that. I get that. I've had the opportunity since I've been a kid.

Dad was a preacher there in South Carolina. I've been involved in funerals because I played the piano and I was conscripted sometimes into that and I was cheap labor. But it was, you're right, you do a disservice to folks if you don't engage them because it can be so jarring. And I get that. And I know this audience gets that. And it's also another opportunity to minister, to sit with people.

One of the things I love about the Jewish faith is the shiva that they have. They just sit with them. Don't talk.

You just sit. And if the bereaved want to talk, then they can initiate it. But it's the I am here moment. I am present with you in this where we walk through this as friends, as family, as a group. But we're not sitting there trying to make small talk. We're just being with each other. And I love that. I think that's incredibly healthy.

We're going to take a quick break. We're talking to Beth Marshall. She is an author and fellow South Carolinian, which is why, you know, she had me at South Carolina. And I'm grateful to have her here to talk about her new book, Uncrushed. We'll get to that in just a moment. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Hey, this is Larry the Cable Guy and you are listening to Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberg. And if you're not listening to it, you're a communist.

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An independent associate. I'll never forget walking into the hospital room after Gracie had her second amputation. Both legs are gone now. And she looked at me. She said, I know what I'm going to do.

And I was kind of startled. I said, well, what are you going to do? She said, I'm going to help provide prosthetic limbs to my fellow amputees and tell them about Jesus. And I said, well, baby, can we get out of the hospital first?

But she never let it go. And for almost 20 years, we've been working out of Ghana, West Africa. We treat patients all over there from other countries that come there. We send supplies. We send teams. We sponsor patients. We work with a prison where inmates volunteer to disassemble used prosthetic limbs so we can recycle the parts.

All of this because Gracie trusted God with her heartache. We've got a huge shipment of supplies that is being loaded up right now to go out soon. Would you help us do it? StandingWithHope.com slash giving. StandingWithHope.com slash giving.

There's prosthetic feet, knees, pylons, sleeves, adapters, all kinds of connectors. All of these things we are sending over there so that people can walk. We're going to point them to Christ.

Help us out. StandingWithHope.com slash giving. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We are continuing our conversation with Beth Marshall. She is the author of the new book, Uncrushed, from in-game press. And by the way, we're talking about grief and we're talking about mourning and time to heal.

And then you've got in-game press. And I thought those are not related, are they? I hadn't thought of those three in the same context. But no, we're thrilled to have you. Beth is from South Carolina, where I am from. She lived there for many years. Now she's retired up to, well, you're not retired, but you have sojourned up to the mountains there in North Carolina, where it's just nice and cool in the oppressive summers of the South. I am grateful that I am not participating in that.

I get calls back from my parents, my family that lives back there. You know, the heat index is 1000 degrees kind of thing. We're going to have 70s and no humidity for the next 10 days that I can see.

OK. Do you know how rude that is right now? Well, we make up for it in the winters. I promise you we make up for it in the winters. When you're out feeding the horses, it is 20 below. I had three feet of snow on our deck May 1st.

Oh, OK. That makes you lose your cheerful disposition a little bit, doesn't it? You had flowers on May 1st. I had three feet of snow.

So it gets a little gnarly out here in Montana. As we left to the break, you started losing family members and you didn't know what to do. You didn't know where to go. You felt the vacuum of silence and loneliness.

Yes. What did you do? I didn't do the right thing. I was thinking about your listeners this morning and how it's so easy to get.

Isolated and people really don't know you're there. And I think that's what happened. I was so determined to pretend like I was OK and to keep smiling and try to be cheerful for the kids and my husband. But the minute they would leave in the morning, I'd collapse. And I realized it took me a while.

I was I'm pretty much of a junior varsity greaver. It took a while to figure out you need people, you need people that pray and you need to write. That was the one thing that I felt like I got the biggest breakthrough when one morning it had been, I don't know, nine or 10 months. And I was just not coping well. My mom was a very cool person, grateful of life, and there was no warning.

And so when she was gone, I just didn't really have any tools. And so I started writing. And one morning I felt the Lord nudged me to write about her. And I thought, oh, oh, yeah, that would be fun. And I just started writing stories of growing up in this big, loud house with five kids and two crazy canines. And it was just so much fun and chaos.

And it was a welcoming place. But I wrote the stories down and I started recording them in really my prayer journal. And literally I sat this one day for about two hours and just scribbled and scribbled.

And by the time I was done, I can remember just giggling and kind of laughing a little bit again. And I wrote the story about the day this was before security when she was so sad that I had to fly on New Year's Day. And I didn't care.

The holidays were great fun being with new people and traveling. So I was OK with it. But she said, well, I'm going to bring something to the airport for you. And I said, what, Mom? And she shows up with our family tradition on New Year's Day of sauerkraut and pork and mashed potatoes and all this stuff that our family had. Where were the Black Eyed Peas? Oh, see, my parents are from another part of the country.

They're from Pennsylvania. And so our traditions were a little more German. I've had to learn.

I've had to learn how it's supposed to be celebrated. So you're saying that she showed up without cornbread? Without cornbread, without Black Eyed Peas.

So what was she thinking? But she showed up with this stinky, I know this stinky German tradition. But I love German food.

I love it. My mother, though, used to always speak of stinky collards for New Year's Day. Oh, gross. I'm sorry.

There's just not any excuse for that. Oh, no. There's a whole collard eating group of this audience, and I know I'm going to get letters. Please understand, it's not personal.

I could never get collards. And I am a child of the South. So anyway, I'm sorry. I digress. I told you that Carolina is going to come out at us. I'm so sorry.

I apologize for that. It just does. It just does. Okay, so here I am at the gate. I mean, you could walk straight to the gate, not have a ticket, nothing. And so she meets me right outside of the jetway, practically, and hands me this. And I said, Mom, I got to run, go and pop it in the oven, in the first class oven on the 727, and turned it on full blast and just ran back to do my work. And in about 10 minutes, it smelled like something had exploded on the Delta airplane. And I think we were about to evacuate and blow all the slides. It was so horrible. But I just, I mean, I laugh about it because, well, first of all, it was so generous and so cool of her to not want me to be left out. But this nasty tradition, I was not able to eat it.

It was just so disgusting. But I don't even know if that plane is still in service. It's probably not.

They probably had to send it to the hangar. But there were so many stories that were bringing me great joy. And what I found was that by remembering those things, that it was helping me know that I wasn't going to forget about her and to write them down. And that became kind of a theme of my life, of how I try to help other people with grieving. And even people that you deal with all the time, people that you help, to get a journal and just write scribble down in there. Were you a writer before all this?

Not really. And so I just, well, it started as a prayer journal and I was just scribbling. I just had so much anger and so much worry. And what about what about Christmas? What about forever?

And you'll never know these grandchildren. And what I found that by writing those things down in a journal and just really turning those prayers over to the Lord, it would take them off of my heart and to give me a lightness. And I think there's probably somebody listening who might need to hear that.

You feel like you can't say everything to everybody because you don't want to be complaining your whole life away. But that journal was a place where I could go and be brutally unscripted, unfiltered and just scribble, write it all down. What I saw over the years was I could see a difference in my writing. I could sense that I was actually beginning to heal. The emotions were changing, but that was really the place that gave me one of the greatest breakthroughs during that intense loss. Also, Peter, as just a couple of years later than my dad died, not quite as suddenly, I felt a little more equipped. It was still really hard, but I felt a little more equipped. And I had learned, don't do this by yourself. Don't try to fly solo through some of the toughest moments of your entire life that you need people. And I think we need to say yes and we need to, I don't know, has anybody ever told you that fine is a four letter word?

I was saying fine all the time, not the bad kind that got you in trouble in middle school, but fine is a four letter word because it keeps us stuck. It lets people think, oh, she must be doing great. She doesn't need me to come by. She doesn't need to go get coffee with me.

She doesn't need me to bring her a meal. And I think what I learned over time to just be honest, to quit pretending like everything was OK when it wasn't. And that's when people come in and help you.

That is when. And I think especially for caregivers, I think for many of you I know have been doing this for years and years and years. And you can feel like you've been kind of forgotten. But even just to let a pastor, a counselor, a friend at church, let somebody know, hey, you know what, I'm still struggling. This is kind of hard.

This is really hard. But I think we'll be surprised that people really do want to be there for us. People do want to walk with us. They do. But I think we've got to let them. We need to learn a couple of things about that. And you're right.

First off, journaling is a huge way to do this. And I never had any aspirations to be a writer. You should have seen my my academic record. There is a reason. There is a reason I graduated. Thank you, Lottie.

I just I never dreamed of it. But when I started writing, it helped me organize my thoughts. Yeah. So I had clarity of thought that I did not have before I started writing. And then the other thing is what you said is as fine as a four letter word, we do have this surfacing thing we tell people because we're not really in tune. When I ask caregivers when they come on this program, I always ask callers, for example, how are you doing? They said, well, she just got home from the hospital or we're having a they don't know how to speak in first person singular. Or they say, well, I'm doing fine. And I said, I'm not sold on this.

You want to go deeper? And that's where the stammering and the stuttering and the crying comes because they're not used to using those words. And I want to give them a place on this program. And when I talk with them and I have a caregiver support group, I've started to say, you know, to let the stammering and stuttering be what it's going to be. Let's let's get it out. Yes, because we are right. If you keep this stuff contained, it that is unsustainable. It will come out. It'll either come out in a constructive, cathartic, healthy way, or it's going to come out in a very destructive way. Oh, yeah. And often it's self-destructive. Yeah.

And so I want to switch gears a little bit and we're going to end up going to the break, but that's OK. We'll pick right back up. So you wrote A Time to Heal and you wrote Grief Survivor. Yeah. And now this new book, Uncrushed. Yes.

What was the the impetus behind that one? I think what I've seen over the years is that there are people who when something horrific happens, and I know there's trauma that is undescribable. Indescribable? How do you say it? Thank you. Indescribable. But I'm just along for the ride here, Beth.

Yeah. But people who make the decision, well, this has happened to me. So this is who I am. I and I think there are times when we lose our desire or our ability to think that there would be hope one day. And that is the crowd that that is part of the audience that I hope will read Uncrushed. But what I wanted to do with this book is to interview people, interview people who have had deep, deep loss. Deep love, but who have found a life that they love again. And the common thread.

And this is kind of a secret sauce that I'll tell you more about after the break. But it's the faith. And it's that's the one thing that the people that I've interviewed, the ones who have found a life they love again, are people who believe that God will do what he says he can do. The whole book was based really on Psalm 34 18, where it says the Lord is close to the broken hearted. But he is going to rescue us when we're crushed in spirit and crushed in spirit is what I think a lot of people are feeling right now. Just kind of across the country and people who are dealing with hard things. And so that scripture is true, not just for someone who's lost a loved one, but for someone who's was taken by a huge surprise and is now caring for someone full time or part time.

But I think that the truth in God's word has has helped the people. I think it's maybe 15 people whose stories I tell. And so it's a real easy thing to read. There's a lot of humor in it.

There's a lot of my mom, Bezy stories and some other stories of people who have gone through the deep, deep valley, but they didn't set up camp there. They decided, yes, I'm going through this. But there's hope.

We're going to talk about that when we come back from the break. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll talk with Beth Marshall. Her new book is called Uncrushed. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

We'll be right back. 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. 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 preorder.

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. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. I'm Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us. We are talking with Beth Marshall. She is a fellow South Carolinian, and I'm just thrilled to have her here.

If we sound alike, if we have similar experiences, you'll just have to pardon it while we have a Carolina moment. But she's talking about her new book, Uncrushed. And she was relating in the last segment that the stories that she tells of this, of people she's interviewed. These are individuals who are united by a common theme, and I want her to just unpack that a little bit. So, Beth, tell us a little bit more about what this means. What even gave you the idea of this and then jump into this common theme that united this?

Okay. What gave me the idea, I guess, is just seeing people that really feel stuck and feel like the world has gone on without them. And I, having been through this numerous times, know that there really is hope. And the way I look at it, Peter, what I was looking for in the very early days was when our little girl said to me, Mama, you don't look pretty anymore. You need to get a shower and put on a cute outfit and put on some makeup. We need to go shopping. And she said, just because Beezy's not your mom anymore doesn't mean you don't need to be my mom.

Okay. Well, sweet Amy was 11 and she immediately burst into tears and she realized how hurtful that was. But it was just the kick that I needed to hear. I was so stuck. I wanted the fun mom to be back for my kids. I wanted the person who would let them finger paint literally on the kitchen counter with chocolate pudding. That's the person I was hoping was coming back. And I think that's what I want to help readers and listeners to do to realize that person is still in there, regardless of what you've been through or what you're going through, that that person is still inside of there.

But we've got to find ways to get them back out into practical steps. I think that was the one thing that some of the people I interviewed shared. One was, you may know Clayton King from Anderson. He's a friend. He's an evangelist. He's kind of like Billy Graham's understudy, I think. He just tells people about the Lord. I'm the guy, by the way, that Billy Graham once said, who? That's good.

That's good right there. But Clayton is a person, huge personality. He speaks all over the place, has his worldwide ministry. But then he lost both of his parents within about a year and a half. I can remember it was the hardest thing that I know he ever went through. And some days he might give us a call and say, can you guys just pray? This is so hard because with his life and his ministry, he didn't really have the luxury of just taking time and being still for very long. He took a little minute off, but then he was back on the road and it was really hard. I can remember asking him afterwards. It was about a year or two after the loss of both of his parents. I said, did you have anything that helped you along the road during those really hard months and years?

He said, yeah, I really did. I would set aside time every single day, 30 minutes or 45 if he could do it. I know that's hard to do, but I would go into a dark place. No one could disturb me. Turn off the lights and just do what I needed to do. If it was take a nap, if it was to journal or to pray or to scream or to cry or whatever it was, but to be specific. He would take designated time every single day. He said it helped him instead of weaving and incorporating the sadness into every minute of his day, he could have designated time. I feel like your listeners could probably do that.

Their time might be five minutes because I know getting a little moment of time is really hard for a lot of people. Well, it is. You're right.

It is. But I say to myself, I say this in my book, I say this to fellow caregivers. If we don't take time for stillness, we're going to have to make time for illness. Oh, come on. You could write that down even though- That needs to be on your coffee cup. Say that one more time real slow for the people in the back.

If you don't take time for stillness, you will have to make time for illness. Oh, goodness. I found that out at a very critical point in my life. Last night, I can't do what some people do and I can't take off hours or anything like that, but last night I got out on the horse. I wasn't planning on doing a horseback ride, but when I saw the horse, she saw me and I think we both realized this is a new horse that my brother-in-law just bought and I wanted to try her out.

Nobody's ridden her yet here. I thought we're going to spend some time together. There's nothing wrong with the inside of a man that the outside of a horse can't fix. That's another coffee cup.

That was Will Rogers and Ronald Reagan. That's the kind of thing that Clayton obviously knew that you're going to have to- It's got to be intentional. You have to be intentional on dealing with the heartache that we carry and we all carry it. Or it'll seep out in other ways in anger or crying unexpectedly. That was my big fear. Oh, I don't want to go downtown because it was a small town we were living in in Belton. The store owner of a lady's dress shop said it was two weeks out after my mom. She said, so hey Beth, how's your mom? I thought, bless her heart. I was just a bundle of tears. From that point on, I thought I want to stay home.

I don't want to be around humans because that can happen again. I think when we take some intentional time to let the tears flow. Tears are really great for us. I don't know if you're a big crier. My husband's not a big crier, but whenever he can get a tear up over a Hallmark movie, it makes me feel so happy because I can always cry over them. I think the Lord gave us those tears. I cry if I have to watch a Hallmark movie.

Let me just be brief. I wail though. Please no. Anything but that. Well, I get that. For me, it's music, it's horses. I sit at the piano and I kind of work it out. I get on a horse or a snowmobile in the wintertime and I have to just kind of detach for just a bit.

I can't do it for lengthy periods of time, but I have to. And allow myself to be settled. There are so many distractions and I think it's in the distractions that we find the danger when it comes to dealing with our grief. Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Well, you're not going to be comforted if you're raging or despairing because that's not mourning. Mourning is accepting that this has happened. This is really happening.

This has happened. I'm going to accept this and at the same time, I'm going to look unto Christ the author and perfecter of my salvation. Recognizing that He who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. That means He's going to preserve me in this.

And He's able to present me faultless before Him. But part of the sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and see what you think in the last couple of minutes we have of this. I personally think, and I think Scripture supports this, that part of the sharing in the sufferings of Christ that Scripture talks about is seeing how messed up and how broken this world is. And accepting that this is, but this is what He came to do, is to redeem. And will we put our trust in Him? Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. He put his trust in the Hebrew, it says he put his trust in God.

Can we do that? And this is what the common uniter for these people that you talked about in your book, Uncrushed, is that they put their trust in God. However feeble, they felt like they were doing it. Oh yeah.

They still did it. Right. And I think there are days when you're maybe borrowing somebody else's faith. I think of the words in, I think it's Romans 8, somewhere where it's about when we don't have the words to pray.

We don't know what to say. I can remember those moments. And I've been known to just whisper, Jesus, I need you. But I love the way that, the promise that the Holy Spirit is going to come in there and pray in accordance with what the Lord would have us pray. And it's what we need more than some feeble words that we might come up with. And that gives me such peace to know in those late night moments or when you're waking up in the middle of the night anxious and worried.

And what about tomorrow? It's like, no, let's stop right there. And I'm reminded of one more verse that I love. It's from Philippians 4, 6, and 7, I think it is. But it talks about don't be anxious, which is an easy thing to say, right?

Because I think we're all kind of a little anxious if we're even here today. But to pray with thanksgiving, and the thanksgiving part is the part to me that is so important. The rest of it goes on to say that He will give us the peace of Christ and it's going to guard our hearts.

And that right there, just even that little piece about with thanksgiving, to me just redirects my focus in my mind. Think of all the times He has done wonderful things for us. Look back over the terrific, beautiful miracles that we've seen in all of our lives. But to take that moment when we're praying, when we're not being anxious, but praying with thanksgiving. But to look back at God's faithfulness.

And I feel like nothing is going to strengthen us any faster, any better than those words. And allow us to close our eyes and actually just go to sleep. And turn that third shift. You know that the Lord works third shift all the time? And that we don't really have to? So many times I've tried to think, well I've got to be worrying about this, thinking about it all night long.

And actually getting some sweet rest is one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves in those moments. That's a great word to end on with. We're talking with Beth Marshall. Beth, if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to find out more about you, get a copy of this book.

I know it comes out September 26th. What is the best way for people to get in touch with you? It would be BethGMarshall.com. And that site is just an encouraging site. And it's the books you can find them there to send people to. Well, evidently you can find the book a lot of different places.

BethGMarshall.com if you want to find out more about her. Listen, we've had a great time. We're going to have you back on.

I love having you. You don't have to send me any kind of cornbread or black eyed peas or anything like that. A little sweet tea?

Well, sweet tea is always welcome, but I usually make my own. And I've got a friend of mine in South Carolina who was on the program a while back and sent me up a bunch of Carolina biscuit, you know, the mix for that. So people don't understand how important this food is in South Carolina. It's a thing in and of itself. I love the people that move here from Australia or England and they're like, my body can't do this. Then you go back where you came from.

This is so different. Send them on back. I mean, we didn't make y'all come over here.

If you don't like our food, go on back. See ya. Beth Marshall, it's great to have you here. BethGMarshall.com. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next time.