3 Things To Avoid Telling Caregivers

This is Peter Rosenberger and one of the reasons I wrote my new book A Minute for Caregivers is because I remember the sinking, despairing feeling of struggling as a caregiver. No one knew what to say to me. I didn't understand and others didn't understand me.

For decades I foraged along and tried to find my path through this medical nightmare that Gracie and I have endured for nearly 40 years. And I've learned to speak the language of caregivers. I speak fluent caregiver. No pastor, no counselor, no medical provider, no friend should ever throw their hands up and say I don't know what to say to that caregiver.

Because I do. Give them a copy. This book is called A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday. They're easy to read, one minute chapters that speak directly to the heart of a caregiver and you can get them wherever books are sold. A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday.

Friends don't let friends care give alone. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Glad to have you with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Oh I wanted to add something to my last section about things you want to do to protect yourself.

Because look, this whole thing is going to get increasingly worse. People are easy prey to this stuff with spam callers, phishing and everything else. Check your social media accounts. Look under Instagram and see who has direct messaged you or who's following you. Look at the people who are following you. It may be nice to have a lot of followers, but if they're filled with a bunch of ne'er-do-wells. I just brought that one.

I dusted that term off ne'er-do-wells. Just check and see. If you don't know them and if they don't look legit or if they don't look like somebody you'd like to have following you, get rid of them. Block them. Delete them. A lot of spam out there.

A lot of fake robo accounts with X, with Instagram, with all of them. Clean it up. Make sure your social media pages and your loved ones' social media pages are cleaned up. You might want to limit how much you use it. If you're not really using it, I mean every day with active engagement or for business or things like that, I'd question whether or not you need to leave the account open.

It's an easy access point for people to get to you. Be careful what you post out there with pictures and so forth. One of the things I respect so much about my daughter-in-law and son is that they are absolutely committed to not putting the faces of their children out on social media. I'm very grateful for that. They are vigilant about this.

There's no compromising. Those children's faces will never be on social media. When they get old enough, they want to do it themselves, that's their business.

My daughter-in-law was pretty firm about that. I'm very grateful. We put more stuff out there than we realize. If you're not willing to put this on a public bulletin board or staple it to a telephone pole in a seedy side of town, then think hard before you put it out there.

If you notice on my Facebook page, most of it, I put out there pictures of horses and the scenery out here in Montana. I'm very guarded in what I do and I would encourage you to do the same. That's my safety tips for today. Let's switch gears a little bit and let's address things you never want to say to a caregiver. We've all been there and I think it's important that we unpack this and then let's talk about why. The first one is let me know if there's something I can do to help. Don't say that to a caregiver.

Let me know if there's something I can do to help. What happens when you say that to a caregiver is that in the caregiver's mind, they're number one thinking, okay, I have a lot of things you can do to help, but I don't know if you would really, really, really, really want to do it. I'm embarrassed or reticent to ask you. Then the second thing that goes on in a caregiver's mind is if I ask you to do this, can you do this? Are you up to this? Number three, are you going to be weird about it if you do it? Then it's going to get our relationship kind of weird. Are you going to mess it up? Then I have to come back and clean it up. Or are you going to do it for a while and then you're going to be like, oh my gosh, what have I got myself into? It's going to be real awkward.

Then you just leave and then it's so awkward that the relationship is fractured. You see the position that a caregiver's put in when you ask that question, let me know if there's something I do to help. I don't know many caregivers who are going to respond in the affirmative to that, who are going to say, oh, I got here something you could do. Most of us are just not going to do that because we don't feel comfortable with it.

It's not the right question. It's not that we don't want your help, the person offering, and it's not that the person offering doesn't want to help. It's not sincere that they'd like to do something, but what we have to do is be intentional when we ask a caregiver about getting involved in their life and rephrase the question. So instead of saying, let me know if there's something I can do to help, how is it different when you say, hey, I'm at the grocery store. Would it be helpful if I brought you some milk?

All of a sudden it's very intentional. It's very specific and it's something that is incredibly doable. Would it be helpful if I took your car and got the tires rotated and balanced or the oil changed and I leave you with mine and just give it to me for an hour or so and I'll get this taken care of. Would that be helpful? If the caregiver you know is tired, looks worn out, overwhelmed and stressed, you could pretty much guarantee that their car and their house are going to be the same way. And so let's be intentional about how we help a caregiver. If you want to help a caregiver, this is what it looks like. Would it be helpful for me to do this? It'd be very specific.

It doesn't have to be elaborate. In fact, sometimes the more mundane, the better because the mundane stuff wears caregivers down. Would it be helpful if I call somebody to come over here and clean your gutters? You know, it's fall.

There are a lot of leaves out. So would that be helpful? I have a service that I know they'd be glad to come out and do it. I mean, cause when's the last time a caregiver got on a roof and everybody said, Oh, Hey, that's a good thing. I've got to get my gutters cleaned out here. We don't have many leaves where we are that fall, but we have one tree back there and it gets right in the gutters, but the gutters not real high with a smaller ladder. I can just reach my hand up. In fact, I don't even have to use a ladder on one part because of the way it's shaped there.

It's just that one spot. But when we lived in Nashville, we had a lot of trees and a lot of problems with leaves in our gutters. And it was pretty much a regular occurrence that I had to get up on the roof. And then I stopped doing that because how many of you all think just by show of hands, that it's a good idea for me to get up on a roof? Any of y'all think that's a good idea?

And so how about you? Is it a good idea for you to get on a roof? So for those who are wanting to help a caregiver, here's what it looks like. Find something extremely specific and say, would it be helpful if I got this done for you? And you don't have to physically do it yourself. There are people out there that can do all kinds of things, services you can contract with or whatever. It depends on how much money you want to spend or what's involved. Sometimes it'll cost some money.

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the caregiver has money that can do it. They'll just give you their credit card and make it happen. Would you do that? Oh, that would save me so much if you would take this car down there and get the oil changed.

Here's my card. I mean, think about that. How difficult is that? And all of a sudden now you've done something and you don't have to change your oil every day. You don't have to rotate and balance your tires every day. You don't have to get milk every day usually. So I mean, little things, and please do not undervalue the little things because for caregivers, the little things are where a lot of the struggles are.

It's like death by a thousand paper cuts kind of thing. And so anytime we can offload some of the mundane, it gives us a moment just to catch our breath. And so those are ways that you can help and avoid saying, let me know if there's something I can do to help. I'll tell you, if you, if you want to know how to help a caregiver, listen to this program. I'll tell you how to do that. Don't ask that of a caregiver.

Okay. They're already stressed enough. I mean, I'm a caregiver, so I'm already stressed enough, but I've been dealing with this a long time and this is what I do, but I'll be glad to provide insights and ideas. And you can certainly go out to my website and hope for the caregiver.com, write me and say, Hey, look, I got a friend of mine.

Here's what's going on. What are some ways that you think would be helpful that I could do this without having them struggle with making decisions or letting it get uncomfortable. Very easy, practical things that we can do for one another to help bear these burdens without getting into drama and all that kind of stuff. I think I told you all the story of a friend of mine who Sunday school class wanted to adopt this family and their community. And he, he called me up and said, we're looking at setting up to bring meals to them.

And then we're going to also start cleaning their home. And it's a mother of two children. And the husband has some significant brain issue going on and it's been going on about five years. And I put the brakes on him pretty fast. I said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, this has been going on for five years.

How long are you prepared to do this with meals? He said, well, I hadn't thought about it. I said, we'll take a moment. And I said, this has been going on for five years.

How long are you prepared to clean their home? And thought about that. I said, we'll take a moment. I said, do you understand the issue? This is not an episodic event. This is not a broken leg or a one-time surgery or one-off.

This is a chronic impairment. And I'll never forget being at a church. I was speaking and I was throwing this conversation topic out and I looked at the congregation. I said, how many of you all think I need help? And they all raised their hands.

I said, how many of you all know what to do to help somebody like me? And one lady raised her hand. She said, well, I can come clean your house. And by that time, Gracie and I had been doing this for about 25 years. And I looked at her and I said, that is incredibly generous and very gracious, but this has been going on for a quarter century for us.

Are you prepared for that level of commitment? She said, no, I didn't think about that again. Take a moment. You have to approach these things differently. And my friend said, well, what should we do in our Sunday school class? What should we do? And I said, well, there are a lot of things you can do. Number one is if you want her home, do you want to help her with housekeeping stuff?

You don't want to certainly get up in her business and get in her house and get in her personal space and everything else that gets uncomfortable, but there are services that you can hire that could come in and do that once a week, you know, twice a week if necessary. And he said, well, you know, she works full time and she has two kids. And I looked at him and I said, you've known me since college. I work full time. I have two kids.

This was the time my kids were in school. And he started laughing. He said, I guess I didn't think about that. I said, well, yeah, take a moment, you know?

And so he thought about that and he said, you know, we could pool our resources and then we can develop a budget and we can help bring someone in to do that. And then he said, what about meals? I said, well, she could cook. And he started to say, she worked full time and has two kids. I said, alright.

And he took a moment to think about it. And I said, but you can stock their pantry. Now that's something you can do. Or you could just have her call in the grocery list and the store will put it all together for her and you pick it up and bring it to the home and help them with that. And that way she can cook the meals herself. Because the moment you guys start bringing meals, the first meal will be real elaborate. Second one would be kind of elaborate.

Third one, fourth one. And by the three weeks into this, you're just dropping off dominoes and the kids are wondering, is somebody coming that night? So one of the things you never want to say to caregiver is, let me know if there's something I can do to help.

There's always something you can do to help. The question is, are we created enough to identify it? Do we know them enough?

Do we spend time with them enough to be able to identify what those areas are and then speak specifically to it? Okay. We'll be back with more of that. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is hope for the caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. That's the whole point of this program. By the way, when I started doing this many, many, many years ago, I set out with that statement in mind, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. People ask me over the top, well, what's the purpose of your program and what are you trying to accomplish? I said, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And they said, well, how do you help a caregiver get healthy? And I said, aha, that's the right question. Now you're asking the right question because so many people don't know what to say to a caregiver.

They don't know the questions to ask. With my new book and this program and all the things that I am working hard to do for family caregivers, that excuse is no more. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, don't worry about it.

I do. That's why I do this program because I want to speak to these core needs. And so today I'm taking a few moments to talk about things you should never say to a caregiver. You should never say these things to a caregiver.

And I'll tell you why. When I unpack each one of these last segment, we had, let me know if there's something I can do. Don't say that to a caregiver. Okay. We talked about that in the last block.

There's other ways to offer assistance that is targeted, that is specific, that is intentional, that hits the mark. And that's what we've talked about. And I'll be glad to readdress this at any time. The second thing you don't want to say to a family caregiver, you want to know, you want to take a stab at it? You want to, you want to guess what that is? Well, I'll go ahead and tell you that. Don't say, I know how you feel because you don't. It is impossible for us to know how someone else feels.

That is a inappropriate choice of words. I understand the sentiment that's trying to be conveyed, but sentiment doesn't help us as caregivers. Would you not all agree? Those of you who are caregivers of this audience, would you agree with that statement? That sentiment doesn't help.

There needs to be something different. Now, empathy does help. Sympathy is always very kind. It's gracious, but it doesn't help. If you go to a family caregiver and say, I know how you feel, you're making it about you. Okay.

That's not, that's not what needs to happen. You all heard me tell this story before. I don't mean to slam the guy, but it was a great illustration of a guy trying to connect. And I appreciated his heart, but it was, well, I'll tell you the story. I'll tell you what happened. And then you tell me, but he came up to me after church one Sunday, this is many years ago, we lived in Nashville. And he said, I heard about your story and I know exactly what you're going through. And I cocked an eyebrow up and I said, really?

I had no idea that anybody in this town, much less this church, had that level of experience. Do tell. He said, yes, I know exactly what you're going through. I know how you feel.

My wife broke her ankle last month. Well now, what do you want me to do with that information? It was hard for, I will have you all know, and you'll be very proud of me. I was gracious. I was very kind.

And I said what every Southern gentleman should say in a moment like this, which was bless your heart. Now, let me be clear. I am not denying this man's pain.

The most pain you've ever felt is the most pain you've ever felt. Okay. I'm not denying this. I am not denying how difficult his life and his wife's life and how, you know, disrupting that event was. But it shows a deplorable lack of understanding to go to a man whose wife doesn't have any ankles and talk about his wife just breaking her ankle and then saying, I know how you feel. I understand exactly what you're going through.

That is a, that's an unfortunate lack of awareness. Okay. I'm not in any way impugning him.

God bless him. And, and, you know, I trust that she's okay. And now this has been of course many years, but he was trying to make a connection. I appreciated that. I really do. But are we trying to make a connection?

Are we, are we throwing things against the wall to see if that's going to work, if that's going to make a connection or can we be more specific? And what is it that a caregiver wants to hear? I want to hear, you know, as I'm going to church and I'm thinking about the things that I'm caring about with Gracie that day, and it was a particularly difficult time in Gracie's life, as if any day is not a difficult time in her life, but that was particularly difficult. And I'm not, you know, I'm learning to have a measure of restraint. You know, there was a time when I was pretty angry and I would have probably popped off and said something unfortunate to him that I would have had to, I would have had to make amends for.

Never speaking of anger, Ambrose Bierce said, it'll be the best speech you'll ever regret. And I don't want to do that. And I don't want to crush his spirit. But at the same time, I want to protect mine.

And also I want to educate people. We're better than this. We can do better than this. And caregivers don't need to know that you know exactly what they're going through. That doesn't really help them. But what they do want to know is that they're seen. They're seen. They're seen. Instead of launching into, I know exactly what you're going through. Why don't you take a moment to quietly look at the caregiver, maybe take their hand in yours and look at them in the eye and say, look, I see you. I see you.

And then very quietly say, I see the magnitude of what you carry. And I hurt with you. And I hurt with you.

Try that. This is taking it out of the arena of this being all about you or whatever. But it's, it's, it's focusing on the person who is crying out, but they don't have the vocabulary to cry out. They don't have the wherewithal sometimes to cry out.

They don't know what to say. You know, there's an old quote. I think Will Rogers said it about veterinarians. He said, veterinarians make the best doctors because they just have to know. The cat and the dog can't tell them.

The animal cannot tell them what's the matter. And so Will Rogers said they have to be the best doctors because they have to know. But as, but as Christians, people who bear the name of Christ, we can walk into painful circumstances of people's lives and with the discerning abilities that the Holy Spirit provides, be able to look at them and see them the way we want to be seen. And we speak into that with clarity, with purpose, with understanding, with empathy, with knowledge. We may know a measure of what they're going through. There's very few caregivers that I'm going to meet that I'm not going to understand a measure of what they're going through. But I'm never going to understand what they feel.

I'm never going to know exactly what they feel. What I can do is let them know that I can see them. That's why I started doing this program because I saw this audience and I see you even though I do this in a room where I'm just looking at a wall. But when I'm talking to you, I see your faces. I have you different people in this audience write me letters. They call me. They reach out to me. I have a Facebook group where people post things and I get to see them and what they're going through.

And I have all of your faces that are in front of me when I do this. I've got a guy in Texas, Carl. He listens every Sunday night and he writes me beautiful letters.

I've got another guy in Jackson, Mississippi who sends me beautiful notes of notes of encouragement. And I can just go through the list of all these people in this audience and I want you to know that years of the faces and the names that I see when I do this, I know what it's like to not be seen. Even though I was out on stages with Gracie, but people didn't see me. They didn't really understand the magnitude of what I carried. I had a pastor friend of mine who listens to this program. He's in a wonderful friend, retired pastor, and he came up to me a long time ago and he said, Peter, you do yourself a disservice. I said, what do you mean?

He said, you make this look easier than it is and people have no idea what you carry. That stuck with me because I realized how many of my fellow caregivers do exactly that. We're high functioning multitaskers and it's very difficult for people to see us. It's very difficult for us to feel seen. And so the first thing I want you to know is that you are seen not by me. I'm just a flawed human being, but you are seen by the most high. To my fellow caregivers, I will tell you that you are seen by the most high. He recognizes this, he understands this, and he does understand exactly what you're going through. He's the only one who can. And he sees this.

My hope for us as Christians is that we will take our cue from our Savior and respond accordingly the way he did for us. You remember what he told, I think it was Nathaniel. He said, I saw you under the fig tree.

I saw you. He's the God who sees, Elroy, R-O-I. That was a name that was given to him by guess who? You remember who that was?

I'll give you a hint. It was in Genesis chapter 16. There's a lady named Hagar and she was the servant to Sarah, Sarai at the time. And Sarah wasn't having the promised child so she came up with an idea and she went to Abraham and said, hey, take my servant Hagar. And then Hagar got pregnant and then she started giving evidently a little bit of a look to Sarai and Sarai got a little upset and she started being abusive and treating Hagar poorly.

It was all Sarah's idea. And Hagar fled and she went out in the wilderness and the angel of the Lord found her, verse seven, by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And the angel said to her, Hagar, serve to Sarah.

What are you doing out here? And she said, I'm running away because she's, you know, she's been treated poorly. And the angel said, you go back.

And he told her everything's going to happen to her son. And so she called the name of the Lord. You are a God of seeing.

In Hebrew it's Elroy. And I think that's the only place in scripture where you have that. But this is a servant woman who was caught up in a lot of mess between Abram and Sarah and doing the best she could to kind of deal with it. And God saw her. He sees you too. You may be in a mess, but he's the God who sees. And that's the model for us when we look at each other.

Are we modeling that? Do we see one another? Not make it about us, but to say, I see you.

Don't tell a caregiver that you know how they feel. Instead, look at them in the eyes and say, I see you. I see what you're carrying. And I'm here. This is Peter Rosenberger.

We'll be right back. Is it any wonder why I love listening to that woman sing? Many of you all know the story of how we met at school in Nashville. She was coming back after recuperating from this wreck.

Already had about 20 something surgeries. And I met her at the student center at Belmont. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful young woman. But then I heard her sing and it was all over at that point. And that song, Martha Manuzzi wrote that song and Gracie did a great version of that because he knows just what you're going through.

He's the only one that does, as we said on the last block. So we're talking about the thing... Oh, by the way, welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us at Hope for the caregiver.com. We're talking about things not to say to a caregiver. The first one was, don't say, let me know if there's something I can do. Don't say, I know just what you're going through.

And the third one is, don't say, well, God obviously has a plan or she wouldn't be here or he wouldn't be here. Don't say that. People have told us that for a lifetime.

Gracie's been hurt now for 40 years. Do you know how many times we've heard that? God obviously has a plan. Well, if it's obvious, you don't need to say it then. Okay.

I don't need people to tell me the obvious. I know he has a plan. That's the whole point of that song. That's the whole point of scripture. Now we may not know all that's involved with this, and I'm not going to try to manufacture a reason why Gracie has to suffer. Okay. I'm not going to try to do that. People say, well, look at the ministry you all have.

Look at the impact you're having. Hey, look, you know, I'm not that noble. Okay. And let's be frank.

Billy Graham had a pretty good run and he had both legs. All right. So that's not why we do what we do. I don't do this radio program and Gracie certainly didn't launch the prosthetic limb outreach in order to give purpose and meaning to the challenges that we face.

Me as her caregiver and she is an amputee with a broken body. That's not why we do this. We're not trying to manufacture some kind of purpose to this.

We're modeling to the best of our ability. Second Corinthians one four, which states he comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. And the last thing that Gracie and I need is anybody to come up to us and say, well, he obviously has a purpose or she wouldn't be here. I have had more people tell me that and it's a bit tiresome. Okay. Would you say that to a non-believer?

If not, why not? Let me think about what we're saying there. Well, God has a purpose for your suffering.

You know, yay God. But where does that leave the person you're talking to? Where does that leave me? Where does that leave Gracie? And think of anybody else. Where does that leave you?

Somebody comes up, well, hey, God has a purpose for this. Yay. I feel better now. Are we, are we addressing the core need? I don't think we are. I think we can do better than this. And sometimes it's a matter of not doing anything.

Sometimes it's just sitting with someone. Now go back and look at the book of Job. And the first couple chapters are hard to read because basically Satan bets God, Hey, look, I, if you, of course he's going to like you because you give him everything. Give me a whack at him. God says, okay, go ahead.

So there's this kind of this cosmic wager, as Philip Yancey says, which I admit is very challenging for me personally to read. And God allows Satan to take a whack at Job and it's brutal. But Job doesn't flinch from serving God. He struggles, but he doesn't flinch. Satan goes back and says, well, yeah, but you know, let me have this and I'll take it personally. He asked for more permission. God gives it to him.

Just spare his life. And this goes on and Job is just taken into the depths of suffering and his friends are just aghast and they come and sit with him. And if you look at Job chapter two, verse 13, his friends sat there silent with him for seven days because they saw his suffering was great. The next 30 plus chapters are the largest display of bad theology in the entire Bible because Job's friends start speculating on why this happened. None of them got it right.

The only one that even came close was this young man who they kind of dismissed. And, um, he was close, but he still didn't get it. And after God shows up to address Job and Job realizes a higher understanding of God, God leaves instructions for Job's friends to make sacrifice and get Job to pray for them lest he bring this on them. That's pretty hard words. I heard a pastor once in a sermon say, people tell you that they believe the Bible until they read it and they find out there's some tough stuff to read in there. And the book of Job is not easy to read, but it gives you an insight on what God thinks of when people speculate on what God is doing. And I think when it comes to that with caregivers, it's not advisable to be glib or to spend a lot of time trying to speculate on what God is doing. We have no idea his ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

He said this very clearly and we don't know. I've lived with Gracie now for a lifetime and I have no idea why God allows her to suffer. I have struggled with this watching someone suffer. I have no idea why God has allowed this for me to go through. I see things that he has done through this to give me a greater understanding of him.

And as I address you here on this program, this is the largest radio program for caregivers in the world. And I see that is a great opportunity, but this is not the reason Gracie suffers. This is not the reason I've gone through all this. There's a much higher reason that we won't know till we get to heaven. And the only thing I do on this program is offer the same comfort that I myself have received from the God of all comfort. I feel that I have a responsibility, a stewardship opportunity to do that. This is what I have received and now I'm extending it to you so that you may know this and others may know this. That's it. But for me to somehow speculate on why God's doing this, I can't.

Who can know this? But what I can tell you is the same thing I told our oldest son when he was nine years old. And I'll never forget that as I was sitting back in his bedroom at our home in Nashville.

And he was really upset. And he looked at me, big brown eyes of his, and he said, why should I trust God to care about my hurts when I see what he allows mom to go through? That's a tough question, would you not say, from anybody. But I would challenge any theologian I know to look at a nine year old with his eyes filled with tears asking that question who has watched his mother suffer. And because God intervened in my life, this did not come from me.

I can promise you this because I know me and I've seen my work. But at that time I looked at our son and I said, son, I do not know why your mother has to suffer. I did not try to give him a reason that God is using her to help fellow amputees in Africa and that I'm going to have a big radio program for caregivers and write books for caregivers and speak around. I didn't give him any of that because none of that mattered.

He's nine years old. His eyes are filled with tears. He has watched his mother lose both legs and he is struggling to understand why he should trust in a good and loving God. And I said to him, son, I don't know why your mother has to suffer and I don't know why we have to watch her do it. But here's what I do know is that God sent his son to bear the penalty of sin. This world is filled with sin, all of these things, to redeem this even with your mother.

But his son bore all of that on the cross. And if he loves us that much, I'm willing to trust him with your mother. I'm willing to trust him with all this pain. I stand by that statement that I made so many years ago. That statement has sometimes been the only anchor that I could hold onto when everything was buffeting me and I was being pulled in all kinds of different directions, stretched thinner than I could ever imagine. And the last thing that I needed anybody to come up to me was to say, well, God obviously has a purpose. I need for them to understand that we serve the purpose driven God and we can trust him because of what happened at the cross. That is what sustains a caregiver.

That is what speaks to the heart of a caregiver. We will never know all of God's purposes. We will never be like him. He is other. He is different. We draw our being from him.

We are separate. We don't have to know. We are invited to point to him. We are invited to point to the one who does know what he's doing and he gives us ample evidence that we can trust him. His revealed word, our scriptures that we have, that we have today, his revealed word is filled with individuals who did not understand and yet they trusted. Go back and look at Genesis 15. We talked about Genesis 16 with Hagar, but look at Genesis 15 and Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Not believed in God. He believed God.

He took him at his word. We are told over and over and over again in scriptures that he is the God who sees that his loving kindness never fails, that he loves us, that he knows us by name, that our names are engraved in the palm of his hand. He knows the hairs on our head.

Consider the birds of the air, the lilies of the field. Are we not more valuable to our Heavenly Father than those? That is what you say to a caregiver, a caregiver who is in distress, a caregiver who is struggling.

You don't say God obviously has a purpose. You point them to the purpose driven God. And that, my friends, is hope for the caregiver. Thank you for spending the time with me today. This is Peter Rosenberger, 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 Core Civic. 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 Core Civic 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 Core Civic 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 conversation 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