Educating Ourselves as 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 caregiver alone. 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. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. How are you doing? How are you holding up? What's going on with you?

Did you have a good Christmas? These are all questions I'd love to hear back from you on and you can go out to our website Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Let me know. Go to our Facebook group. Post it there. You can join a group if you're not already in it. It's a private group that I maintain and it's at Hope for the Caregiver.

Just look for groups. Hope for the Caregiver and you can join and let me know. We're going to eventually get back to doing live shows where we can have call-ins but it's been a bit difficult here because I've been in the hospital back and forth with Gracie so many times and it's hard to run a live show while you're doing that.

But I'm still in Denver and I'm still doing this now where she is recovering from her 86th surgery. It's a pretty big back surgery she had on November 30th and here we are still with Christmas and with New Year's. By the way, are your Christmas decorations still up? If they are, that's the part of the Christmas event that I don't like is having to take down all the decorations. Some people leave them up until Easter. There's an argument that you should leave them up through Epiphany and I'm okay with that. Gracie actually likes to leave them up until the snow is gone in Montana. That means you leave them up until May. But I'm not going to worry about that this year. She's not real happy with me but I'm going to get rid of all of the Christmas decorations and just throw them away.

Now why am I doing that? Well, I did it in the hospital room and I went and got stuff from Walgreens and put up a little tree and some lights. We had the best decorated room for Christmas.

A friend of mine let me borrow his keyboard and we played Christmas music and I've been playing music for her throughout the time we've been here and started off New Year's Day at the keyboard and I played for her and she sang with me a little bit. Her voice is still a bit scratchy but I let off New Year's morning with This Is The Day and I don't have the caregiver keyboard here with me as I'm recording that. I'll have to put that in another time I guess but I think I do a pretty good arrangement of that. I like it.

I slowed it down a little bit. Put some great chords with it. But we sang This Is The Day. This is the day that the Lord hath made. I will rejoice. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

And I want that to set the tone for everything we do for this year and beyond to recognize we're going to deal with today. Gracie is recovering. It's slow. She has a long journey ahead of her and 86 surgeries.

To describe it, it's just brutal. But she is tougher than a Waffle House steak and I expect her to have a much better year this year than she did last year. What happened was the fusion in her back from two years ago did not quite solidify and then she started to develop a joint that was starting to crumble at the top where they had put the hardware in and so they had to go and put a little bit more and tilt her back a little bit more and then do some more stuff to help this fusion and we're hoping that it will. The doctor feels pretty good about the surgery. Everything is in place that she will be straighter and she will recover better. She has not had a post-op infection, which is the first time ever of a back surgery with her, which is good. They've taken a lot of precautions. She's in very good hands, but there's still been a few bumps along the road and you deal with the odd communication issues and so forth, but she's had a lot of nurses, a lot of doctors during the hospital time. There's a lot of residents that come in.

There are people that want to come in and do a casual drive by. You can't do a drive by diagnosis with Gracie. That's a phrase that Rush Limbaugh used to use about the media. They would just drive by and stick their head out the window and offer their pithy insights to something they really didn't explore and that's pretty much what goes on in the media anyway, but in our case you've got to spend some time with Gracie to understand just the breadth of what she's had to deal with. You've got to remember she was hurt in 1983 and medicine has changed a lot and most of the people that have been treating her were not even born when she was hurt. I mean that gives you some perspective right there and I've learned a few more things as a caregiver through this process and I'm going to share those with you as the show unfolds. One of the things I learned is that I was tired and I started getting sick when I left South Carolina. We went down to be with my folks for Thanksgiving. The day we left I started sneezing and by the time we got to Denver that night I was starting to feel kind of, we checked her into the hospital the next day and I'm staying across the street in a hotel and once she was in the hospital that was about all I could do. I did not realize how tired I was and I don't mind telling you all this. I think it's important that we as caregivers admit the obvious. That's part of our journey as caregivers is to deal with reality not what we'd like it to be and her surgeon and her surgeon's PA, the team looked at me and they said look you got her here. That was your job.

We'll do ours. We got her. You go rest and so you know what I did and there were a couple of days I stayed in bed all day. I was really that sick. I don't know if I got the flu or whatever.

Gracie had had something like this you know several weeks prior. Maybe I got it from her. Everybody seems to be getting sick. It wasn't COVID.

I got tested. I think I was just tired. You know this is her fifth surgery in two and a half years that we've been through and they've been very intense surgeries and that's on a long line of surgeries and I'm pretty good at what I do and I have a lot of experience at this sort of thing but I was tired. I basically held Gracie together with duct tape and baling twine to get her here because we kept getting delayed. She was supposed to really have this surgery over a year ago and it's just been a very difficult process and there was quite frankly nothing left of me and so for the first couple of weeks of this I rested and I trusted her team. She has a good team. She was in ICU for about a week or ten days and then they moved her to a regular room but this is the neuro room so all these people are floor so all these people involved are neuro trained and she's in good hands. They know her. The same physical therapist that worked with her two years ago.

Same group of people so they know her by now and I was able to rest and I did. I can't help but think about those guys that tore up the roof to lower that fellow down to Jesus. You remember that story?

Scripture never states what happened to those guys and how Jesus even interacted with them but it would not be out of character for Christ to communicate to those guys what Gracie's surgeon communicated to me. Hey, you did your job. You got her here. We've got her.

You go rest. And I can't help but think that somehow Jesus communicated that to those men who tore up that roof and in the chosen they actually make a little bit of a nod to that. Obviously somebody else has been asking the same question because the Ethiopian woman who they portrayed as the friend of the paralytic who got him there, Jesus looked up through that torn up roof and looked at her and just nodded. The character, the guy playing Jesus.

Not Jesus. I want to be careful on that. I don't want people to get all upset with me. But I really resonate with that.

Maybe you do too. There's a point when we've done all we can do. And if Gracie's surgeon can look at me and say, you did your job. You got her here.

If his PA can look at me and say, you did your job. You got her here. Now you go rest.

We've got her. Imagine what the King of Kings says to you as a caregiver. As you care for your loved one. When you've done all you can do, you stand.

Scripture says. And you rest. Are you resting today? Not maybe sleeping.

That's different. I'm talking about resting knowing that you're taking God at his word. If you believe God at his word. Not believe in God. Believe him. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. It pleases God when we have faith. When we take him at his word.

Like the old hymn. Just to take him at his word. Let's take him at his word. Let's believe him. What do you say? This is the lesson I'm learning while going through this latest medical event with Gracie.

When to take him at his word. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. I want to pivot just a bit here to tell you about an incident that happened here just last week. Okay. And I'm going to try to be delicate here. Alright.

So y'all just be family. Gracie was in the hospital and I get a text from her. I was on the way over there but I hadn't quite gotten there yet. And she said that some lady came into the hospital room and she was evidently some type of case manager and wanted to know when Gracie was leaving. Well, Gracie is struggling to recover from this very, very serious surgery. And this lady kind of brought up things about hospital won't get paid if she's here and doesn't have a valid reason for being here and yada, yada, yada. Those of you in this world know this.

So if you're listening to this audience with any kind of regularity, you understand that principle. And this is not the first time that's ever happened. And I know she's just doing her job, but Gracie was not in the best situation to have that conversation with her.

She just woke it up. And on a side note, a lot of people come into the room when you're in a hospital and they don't always identify themselves. They just kind of show up and they start talking about very personal matters, but they haven't identified who they are, who they represent, what's going on.

I mean, it could be a resident from so-and-so, it could be, who knows? So for those of you in the medical world that are listening to this that work at a hospital, so forth, please remember to introduce yourself when you walk into a room because your name tag is often twisted and turn. And I don't know what it says. Gracie can't read it from her hospital bed. So we can't be the only people out there having that kind of issue. So please identify yourself. Anyway, this woman came, she left.

Gracie made her leave her card. That's something we worked out a long time ago. When you've had 86 surgeries, you've had this discussion. And I called and left a message. And just as I was doing that, I went down the hall and I saw a lady walking towards me and I could just tell by what she was wearing, because she wasn't wearing a nurse's uniform. She had a badge, but you could tell.

I've gotten used to case managers. I can kind of tell them. And I noticed her name on there and I asked if I could speak with her for a few moments and I introduced myself and I referenced the conversation she had with Gracie about whether or not payment would be made. And you could tell she was quickly backing up.

You know, you ever had that sense with somebody when you confront them politely, but you're confronting them and you're looking at them in the eye and then they are talking really fast and trying to get out of a situation. And she started talking really fast and trying to overpower me with verbiage and mentioned that, well, when we see certain things, we have to ask questions of why is the patient still here? And I said, a better question for you to ask would be, why did she have to come back? And a second question to ask would be, what do we need to do to make sure she doesn't have to come back?

And that caught her short. And then we started having a little bit of conversation about Gracie's history, what brought her here, what we're trying to accomplish, what's going on. And she was like, look, we're really good. We're good. We're good. We're good.

It's good. You know, and she was very, very eager to get out of the conversation. I won't say that I enjoyed watching her discomfort, but I won't say that I didn't. And I'll just leave it at that. I've done this so many times and I've done this with so many people. And so I repeated very slowly the parameters of the conversation and came to a complete consensus and agreement with her and we were good. For caregivers, we can find ourselves in the unenjoyable role of being the confrontational advocate. And we're going to have to do that on many occasions. All right. We're just going to have to. I had to confront one of the residents through this process who made a flippant remark to me.

And I looked at her and I said, nope, not going to take that. Her flippancy, not glibness, but she was just really, again, that drive by diagnosis when they roll down the window and they look out the window and said, oh, this is what's going on. I mean, you see that in the media all the time. It's not like we have real journalism anymore. And they just say it, they get it wrong, but they don't care.

They're driving by. This was the same kind of thing, a drive by diagnosis. And she made this flippant remark and I confronted her on it. And she wanted to push back. And I looked at her and I said, ma'am, I was caring for her before you were born. And that's all I had to say.

And she backed up. I don't relish these things. This is not something I just love to be able to do. But I found in this four decade journey that this is the role I have to play sometimes. And so I've learned that I don't have to be mean at it. Say what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean. Okay, write that down.

Say what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean. I'm not here to elevate myself over any of these professionals. I've been extremely pleased with the care that Gracie has received. It's a teaching hospital. They really know their stuff.

But getting to know Gracie, the learning curve is very steep when you have somebody with her history that is presenting here and they've never seen anybody like her. You know, and I watched the humility and respect that her neurosurgeon showed and his team. And this guy is really, really an astounding surgeon. And he didn't feel the need to be that way. But was very gracious. He took his time.

He really spent the time to understand as much as he could of her journey. And he didn't do any kind of drive by diagnosis. Well, if he could be this way, why can't a young resident do that? Or a case manager, so forth.

And the answer is they can, but they've not chosen to for whatever reason with different patients until they come up along something like this situation with Gracie. And it's my responsibility as her caregiver to help advocate for her without interfering, without being offensive so that I create a defensive situation with her team. And that's a little bit of a trick. And part of that trick is learning to ask better questions. Okay. And that's the journey for us as family caregivers. Sometimes we have to ask better questions. For example, when somebody says, well, why do you think this is all happening with Gracie?

Well, that's not a very good question. She had a car accident 40 years ago. It was a horrific catastrophic car accident.

I know exactly why this is happening. Her body was mangled and broken. That's not the question people want to know though when they ask, well, why do you suppose this is happening? What they really want to know is where's God in this? Why hasn't God done anything? What's kept God from healing Gracie? Or why has God allowed her to live with such horrific pain?

What has brought her to this point? Those are questions people have, but they use different words and obfuscate what's really going on. And so I think for us as caregivers, we have the responsibility to plumb those things. And one of the reasons you're listening to this program right now is because you're giving me the benefit of the doubt of having spent some time looking at this mountain of the issues of really delving deep into what are these issues? And you're putting a level of trust into me as somebody who has done this for nearly 40 years that I have spent some time with these issues in the context of scripture particularly and come to a measure of understanding and insight that will benefit you in your circumstances.

And one of those insights continue to be that we have to learn to ask better questions. Like I asked that case manager. She said, well, I see certain markers. I said, why is this patient still here?

And I looked at her and said, why don't you ask why she came back? It's the same thing with managing Gracie's considerable pain. One of the questions I ask her pain team, what's the goal? The goal is not to get Gracie out of pain.

That's too glib. Can she get out of pain? Can you write something to help her get out of pain?

Can you do this? That's not the right question. Gracie's body is too broken for that to be a realistic goal. For example, Gracie to be out of pain would have to be so sedated or drugged up or numb that she couldn't function. So the question really is how do we better help Gracie carry this pain? Gracie can't always be in the position to ask that question.

She's too busy fighting with the pain. So it falls on me as her caregiver to have clarity of thought and conciseness to what is really going on. There's an old saying in the army that sometimes the guy that remembers where the Jeep is parked is the leader. Now think about that for a moment. We may have a lot of very well-trained people around us, but as caregivers, it's our responsibility to know where the Jeep is parked. This is not my first week in being Gracie's caregiver.

I'm closing in on the end of my fourth decade. So I have a responsibility to know where the Jeep is parked. I have a responsibility to know what the main goal is. And I think scripture gives some great clarity in this issue when it says bear one another's burdens. Paul wrote that in Galatians 6, 2 through 5. If you notice he's not saying solve one another's burdens, alleviate one another's burdens, take away one another's burdens. We bear it. Recognizing that some burdens are not going to leave in this life. But how do we help one another carry those very difficult burdens? And that's our role as caregivers. And it's our role as caregivers in a medical situation to help our loved one's team understand some of those things, those dynamics. But going beyond the medical, it's our responsibility to help fellow believers bear the burdens they have by adequately equipping them with the gospel to understand the teachings of scripture as applicable to their circumstances. So that when I talk to Gracie, I'm not just talking to her to help with all of her pain management and all her team and all that stuff, but also to give her the things of God that equip her to carry the terrible burden that she has to carry. And I've learned over these many years that part of that is learning to ask better questions so that we get down to the root issue with clarity and conciseness and speak hope, encouragement, strength, perseverance, endurance, and wisdom into these situations that can be very fluid and very challenging.

So think about what kind of questions you can ask in your circumstances, but better questions you can help introduce to help move this thing along for your loved one and for you. And we'll talk some more about that at other times. This is Peter Rosenberg. We got more to go. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is the program for you as a family caregiver, hopeforthecaregiver.com, hopeforthecaregiver.com.

That's the Imperials, by the way. And I want to reference another quartet, particularly one man, Joe Bonsel of the Oak Ridge Boys, who announced earlier this week that he was retiring from touring. He has a neuromuscular thing that they have struggled to identify, and it's really caused a lot of problems. He's not in pain, but he can't walk. His legs are not working properly, and he and I have talked about this, and he's been on this program a couple of times, a wonderful man. He spent 50 years with the Oak Ridge Boys. I mean, you think about that.

That's a career. I mean, the things that he has seen and done, and he and I talked about when he was singing at President George H.W. Bush's funeral several years ago, and you think about all the things that the Oak Ridge Boys have participated in for loath these many years, that group was started, from what I understand. Now, you correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, the Oak Ridge Boys, before Joe got there, the quartet itself went up to the Oak Ridge facility where they did the uranium or whatever the nuclear material was that they were doing, and they were very sequestered, so people would travel to them. They would bring in certain groups and acts and so forth for these families that were sequestered in this very top secret thing, and they became known as the Oak Ridge Boys, a gospel quartet.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the history of it, and over the years, they never left their gospel roots, but they expanded into stuff that a lot of pop stuff they did. Bobby Sue, sorry, one of our dear friends is Bonnie Sue, and I would always go buh-buh-buh-Bonnie Sue, too, and of course, Elvira and other things, but you ought to hear their harmonies when they do the old hymns, and they are just marvelous, and Joe, well, he said he just can't do it anymore, and it's time to leave, leaves an amazing legacy with these guys, and I imagine he's gonna be doing a lot of different things. He has a lot of ambitions. He's a wonderful writer, and he's gonna continue singing. It's a part of who he is. He's got an amazing story with his family.

If you get a chance, the book G.I. Joe and Lily, it's about his parents. His father was wounded on Utah Beach, severely wounded during World War II, and Joe's very candid about the journey that he and his sister and his mother had in the relationship with his father who had a lot of challenges. Keep them in your prayers. They're a wonderful family. Love the Lord, just a wonderful family, and I hope to have him back on when things settle down a little bit. We'll have him back on and let him share some more.

Maybe Mary can join him as well. So anyway, I wanted to take a moment to publicly acknowledge Joe and thank him for being a friend to me, and he's been a source of wisdom that I've been privileged to be able to call and ask him his thoughts on things, and so wonderful man, Joe Bonso of the Oak Ridge Boys, and we wish him all the best. Let me pivot a little bit. We're starting the New Year, and you of course hear everybody with the New Year's resolutions, and everybody joins the gym and all that kind of stuff, but I do this at the beginning of the year for myself and my fellow caregivers, and I want to challenge you on something, not to make a New Year's resolution because I think that's a little, I don't know, not to do that. What I do is I determine every year that I'm going to push myself to learn something, to study something, to enhance my life through education, and for the last several years I've been doing just that.

Last year, for example, in addition to other things I do, I took a 30-part class on CS Lewis and Christianity at Hillsdale College, and I did it online. It's an audio lecture. I mean, you could watch it.

There's a video, but it's audio that you can listen to. I can't sit down and read and study like I used to. I mean, I have a lot of chores I have to do as Gracie's caregiver and running a company and all the things that I do. If I sit down and read something, for example, there's always the chores, the laundry and everything else that needs to be done, but I'm done reading, and that kind of weighs on me. So what I do is I just listen to things. I listen to audio books. I listen to sermons. I listen to teachings while I'm doing the dishes and so forth. You know, I've always kind of felt a little bit, I don't know, like I was coming up short because I hear all these other people say, you know, in my quiet time this morning, in my quiet time, and I thought, well, that must be nice, but I don't have that lifestyle. Maybe a lot of you don't have that kind of lifestyle.

I don't know. But for me, sitting down, if I sit down, I fall asleep. But I like to listen to things, podcasts, sermons, and so forth. And I took this class at Hillsdale. It's free. It's a free class on CS Lewis because I'm a big CS Lewis fan.

And I wanted to learn more about it, his journey into Christianity. And there's five modules. Each module had six courses, I mean, or six lectures.

And then you have to take a test at the end of each module, and then you take a test at the end of the course. I passed, I got a certificate, the whole thing. And I enjoyed it immensely.

I actually started it in the fall of 2022. And I was on our side yard where we have a septic tank, but my father-in-law could not remember where he installed this in this little cabin that he renovated many, many years ago on the property where Gracie and I live. And so he and I were out there trying to find this thing, and I was determined I was going to find it because nobody knew when this thing had been emptied. He could remember and so forth. And this was very important to me.

Why is that important? Because you do not want to have a septic tank emergency in February in Montana when it's 20 below and there's a foot of snow out there, okay? So I was really motivated to find this septic tank, and he was out there trying to figure out where it was, and I was digging. And finally I found the surface, and I uncovered the entire thing. I mean, I didn't dig it all out. I just uncovered the top of it. But I was determined I was going to make a path to this thing so that we could do it.

We got it empty. But while I was digging it, I was listening to this class on C.S. Lewis, and I called up a buddy of mine and I said, I think I hold the record for the only person who's ever dug up a septic tank while listening to a class on C.S. Lewis and Christianity from Hillsdale.

So I hold that record. Why am I telling you all this? The class at Hillsdale was not a caregiving class, okay? It was about C.S.

Lewis. But I improved myself. I learned something. I got something out of it that nobody can ever take away from me. I got something out of it. I got education, and I learned about one of the most important figures in Christianity in the last, well, one of the most important figures in Christianity. This guy's a giant, and I learned about him, and I'm better for doing it. Now, it doesn't necessarily change the way I work as a caregiver or do anything else, but it's improving me.

And that's what I want to challenge each of you on. What can you do? I've been going to Ligonier Ministries, and I've listened to almost 150 sermons and teachings from Marcy Sproul and others, and I pay a little bit of money for that.

It's not very much. You could do a pretty reasonable thing here, but I do it because I want to improve my understanding of Scripture. I want to improve my understanding of the things of God, and I want to improve myself and my ability to process thoughts and everything else. This is what I do. And I'll listen to these things while I'm out mowing, for example.

I'll take headphones, not the little earbuds because the mower's too loud. But I'll take headphones, connect them to my phone, stick a phone in my shirt pocket, and I'll sit there and listen to all kinds of things of teachings while I'm doing this. And it gives me something to think about. It pushes me. This is what I do for me as a caregiver. I find things that I can learn and grow. It doesn't always have to be theology. It doesn't always have to be about C.S.

Lewis or anything else. What is something that you can take on this year that you can learn and improve your skills at, your understanding of, your education, whatever. Do you want to know more about gardening? Graham Care, who used to be known as the Galloping Gourmet, he's been on this program, friend of the family. He's got a whole series on Amazon he did years ago that you can go out and download, I think for free with Amazon Prime. And it's all about being a healthier cook. His wife had some severe health issues. He took care of her for a long time. And he blamed himself for a lot of those because the way he used to cook back when he was known as the Galloping Gourmet, he was very hedonistic, a lot of fat and so forth. And he blamed himself for that. And so he threw himself into the task of learning how to make things with great flavor that are easy to prepare, but are heart healthy and so forth.

There's a whole series of these things. If you want to be a better cook, which I do, I like to cook, and I want to be good at it. We live in a time in human history where if you want to learn something, it's available to you. Virtually every school out there offers some type of free class online.

I think MIT offers that, Harvard, but I don't know about Harvard right now, they're a little different. If you want to learn something, it's available to you. And we do not give ourselves an excuse as caregivers to stop learning. We can do this. We can listen to audio stuff.

We can listen to all kinds of things and never miss a beat. I iron. I have friends of mine who make fun of me for that, but iron is very therapeutic and cathartic.

And I iron and I listen to things while I iron. It doesn't matter what you want to learn, learn it. Just challenge yourself to learn something this year that you can look back on and say, you know what? I learned something. And I learned a skill. I learned about a subject. I learned how to do something better.

If you want to learn how to play the piano, there are ways you can do that online. There are so many things available to us as caregivers, and I think it's incredibly important to us for our emotional and spiritual health that we push ourselves to learn that we never stop learning and growing as individuals. And we do not put off just because we are tasked and taxed, if you will, with the caregiving responsibilities.

Yes, I know they're severe. I get that. I am living proof of that. However, this is, I think, an appropriate challenge for us to take up every year, push ourselves to learn something, maybe computer skills as you're managing budgets, maybe learn financial skills and so forth. I'm looking at going online and taking a class on accounting just to be better at it. I'm not very good at it, and I have to lean on people. You pay for what you don't know, by the way. So there's all kinds of things.

Would you join with me and identify something in your life that you could grow as an individual and take it on and educate yourself? And maybe at the end of the year, we'll talk about what we've done this year. Okay?

How about that? This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. We got more to go. Don't go away. 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, hopeforthecaregiver.com. Glad to have you with us this morning. By the way, if my voice sounds a bit different, I apologize for that.

I'm doing this program from a hotel room across the street from the hospital, and it's a less than acoustically desired environment. How about that? And also, I've had a terrible cold. I haven't been able to get rid of this cough. Let me tell you something. When you cough in a hospital repeatedly, you get looks.

I mean, you really do. So I actually went and saw a doctor, and I was asking, I put off going to a doctor because what are they going to do for a cold? I mean, it's not COVID. I got tested. It's not COVID. And even then, what are you going to do for that? And we talked about different cough medicine, and he said, but still the best thing is hot water and tea and honey. So there you go. It's always the things that you did when your mom took care of you when you're little, and it's the same old stuff.

So I am taking some things, but mostly I'm just trying to nurse myself back with hot tea and lemon and honey, and hopefully we'll get through this. I'm used to living in Montana now where the air is rather clean where we live, and I'm here in a hospital in a major city. Air's not too clean. And then the apartment complex, they were building this thing. It's a huge apartment.

It takes up about a whole block. And I walked out of the hospital one day, and the whole thing's on fire. They were almost finished with it. They've been working on it for several years.

We've been watching it go up as we come to Denver for these particular visits with Gracie. And I walk out, and this whole thing is ablaze. So you got, I mean, it was really tragic. Right before Christmas, I mean, there were so many fire trucks, and it's still, it's going to be a mess. They're going to have to just raise it all down to the ground, and that's raised with a Z, not raise it down with R-A-I-S-E, just, you know, I knew that.

So you got ashes and soot and everything else, and so it's a wonder everybody's not sick down here, and I think a lot of people are. So I'm working on the voice. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks you'll see an improvement, and then hopefully we'll be back home and I can do this better in the studio there in our home.

And the audio quality will return to the exceptional audio that you have become accustomed to hearing. That is my hope anyway. So I, as we start this new year, again, I want to reference, today is January 6th. I'm not going to go there with what everybody else says January 6th is. It just happens to be January 6th. I'm not going to delve into the political implications of that date. Those of you who are listening on the podcast later can take down your January 6th decorations and we'll move on.

But in the sixth chapter of my book, A Minute for Caregivers, When Every Day Feels Like Monday, I have this particular chapter, and these again, one minute chapters, and I wanted to take a moment. Some of you may have heard this, but it bears repeating. Before and I may paraphrase some of this, before the famous altercation with Goliath, David expressed anger at the blasphemous giant.

One of his brothers was embarrassed by this. And he was, they were camped out there, and I still don't understand how this all happened, if you indulge me for an aside. That they're all camped around and this guy comes out every day and just starts screaming obscenities at Israel. And these guys are all camped around.

What do they do? Are they just looking at each other? And then here comes David, this young kid. He was bringing something from his father to his brothers on the battlefield. And David just was incensed about Goliath's blasphemy. And he made a big production about it. And his brother got very angry with him, his older brothers.

I can imagine, I am an older brother and I have older brothers and I know how brothers talk. And I would imagine there was, I don't know what the Hebrew word for shut up was, but I would imagine it was reduced at that point. But King Saul heard about this. And then King Saul allowed David to fight this guy. And I'm thinking, wow, no wonder King Saul, I mean, have you ever thought about just playing that out that he said, okay, you go out and fight him.

They are all sitting around too afraid to fight this guy, he's going to send a kid out there. And then he puts his armor on David and it doesn't fit. And David is like, I'm not wearing this. He can't even hardly move in it because David was small, King Saul was tall.

You try saying King Saul was tall, King Saul was tall. But he put all this stuff on him and David said, I'll take it off. So he's going to go out there and David said, I'm going to go out there and fight this enemy the way I have protected the sheep. I've chased off wolves.

I fought lions and probably a bear or so. And David said, I'm going to do it my normal way and I want to trust in the Lord. And in this chapter from my book, I wrote how many try to conquer a Goliath while wearing something that doesn't fit. The conditions of our loved ones serve as formidable giants to us and we can't fight them while trying to be, do and act like something that doesn't fit us. When I go over there to the hospital, when I deal with all these things with Gracie, I'm not a doctor. I have told people I'm board certified in cranial proctology, but I'm not a trained medical professional. I'll let you figure out what that is. I'm not a doctor and I don't have to be.

I don't have to be. My father went through this with my mother when she had a episode with her heart and she was very, very sick. And dad was struggling to keep up with everything. And I looked at him and I said, dad, you didn't go to medical school. You went to divinity school, do something divine. And you know what he did? He got his Bible out and went back to his Bible because that's who he is, is a man of God, a man called to the ministry and that's where his strength and his power and his source lie. He's not trained to be a medical doctor.

He doesn't have to be. I'm not trained to be one. I'm a trained pianist. So you know what I did?

I brought a keyboard into Gracie's hospital room and I played for her because that's what I do. David faced Goliath with his familiar sling and his even more familiar trust in God's abilities. While not a trained soldier, David's love and trust provided the courage to face a giant.

Most of us aren't trained medical professionals as caregivers and we don't have to be. When facing our giants, we can be ourselves and with love and trust, remain confident the battle is the Lord's. And I love that scripture from 1 Samuel 17 47 where it says, all those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves for the battle is the Lord's. That's incredibly comforting to me as a caregiver to know that the battle is the Lord's.

I am not here to fix what has happened to Gracie. I cannot do that. I think for most of us as caregivers, the hardest things we face are the things that we have no control over. If we have control over it, then it's not that hard. But we don't have control over this. And we're forced to admit that we're forced to deal with it. But that's not a bad thing.

David knew that he couldn't fight Goliath conventionally, but he didn't have to, nor do we. So as we begin this year, and I know that the calendar is just a subjective measuring device. I mean, even the date's not even right.

We're off by who knows how many years and days. But caregivers, you know, because January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th really matter. I mean, it's the same set of task for us. But let's just take a moment to acknowledge that, okay, most of us wire ourselves that every first of the year, it's a new year, we're going to start off something different.

Well, let's start off with this. Like I said in the last block, we're going to educate ourselves. We're going to learn something. We're going to push ourselves to be more equipped to do something.

Doesn't matter what. Just better at it. And then we're going to trust in the Lord to fight this battle, not ourselves. It's not by might. It's not by power. It's not by sword. It's not by spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's.

Your loved one and my loved one belong to God. It is way past us. We are stewards.

We are not responsible for fixing this. We are responsible for caring for them to the best of our abilities. And part of that means that we take care of the primary resource that they have on this earth, which is us. I am no good to Gracie if I'm fat, broken, miserable. You've heard me say this many times, and you're not good to your loved one if you're fat, broken, miserable.

So you have a stewardship responsibility to not be fat, broken, miserable. And we go back to Scripture to anchor ourselves in these truths to realize there's more going on here. The battle is the Lord's. It's a tremendous statement of faith that David makes when he says that. Very much akin to what Abraham did back in Genesis 15 when it says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. He took God at his word. David is taking God at his word as he steps out on the battlefield. The battle is the Lord.

He's taking him at his word. Without faith it's impossible to what? To please God. So every time you walk in that faith you're pleasing God. It pleases God for you to take him at his word, for you to believe him. There are a lot of people that say, I believe in God, but that's not what he's talking about. James says that.

He said, well, congratulations. You can be a demon now because even the demons believe. But to take God at his word, that the battle is the Lord's. So as we start this new year, as we launch into whatever we've got going on, remember that you don't have to wear somebody else's armor. You don't have to be something you're not.

It's not by sword or by spear or by somebody else's armor. And that's from my book, A Minute for Caregivers. I am passionate about helping people understand the language of caregivers. It's written in Fluent Caregiver. I hope you'll go out and learn more about it at wherever books are sold and certainly at hopeforthecaregiver.com. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. 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. 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. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

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

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 take my hand. Lean on me. We will stay.