Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.
This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. You know what? Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. How are you feeling today? As somebody who takes care of somebody, how are you feeling?
Not how are they feeling, how are you feeling? Do you feel healthy? Physically? Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually?
Professionally? Do an inventory. If you're not feeling healthy in these areas, let's talk about that. Let's go there. You don't have to wait till tomorrow to start. You can start feeling healthier today. You can make healthier choices right now.
But sometimes we don't know what to do and what that looks like and that's what this program is all about. Hope for the caregiver dot com. Hope for the caregiver dot com. I want to take a moment, if you don't mind, and talk about an event I was able to attend last weekend. Many of you all know, if you listen to this program, I've had the wonderful privilege of being friends with Joni Erikson-Tada and her husband Ken for many years. It's an extraordinary opportunity for Gracie and I to have friends like them that understand our life and I hope that we provide a source of companionship to them, of somebody who understands some of the challenges of their life.
Joni's been a big sister to me and somebody whose opinion I treasure and has mentored me a little bit as I write and things that we do and in my approach to all that we do on this program and just, you know, great, great friend. When she turned 75 last week and there was a big shindig, I don't like the word shindig, there's a big shindig in, for those of you in McDonkin, that's a party, but there's a big shindig in Thousand Oaks down there where they live in that area and we were invited to go to this birthday party. I was hoping Gracie could go, but it just was not available for her at this point.
Gracie's just not traveling this easily and she's got a lot of things going on. In fact, we, well, I got some, another trip coming up and I'll tell you about it at the end of this program, but I was able to go. It was a fabulous time, beautiful event. Joni and Ken looked great and she just radiated and the food was great. They had a really nice dinner.
The cake was exceptionally good. In fact, y'all can't tell Dale. Dale Richardson's been on this program and she's coached me to lose this 40 plus pounds now and I'm doing well on it, but y'all don't say what I'm about to tell you all, okay?
I don't want any of y'all going out to my website. Her contact information is on my website under Peter recommends and do not tell her what I'm about to tell you, all right? Because she'll call and she'll fuss at me, but I had birthday cake at Joni's birthday. In fact, Joni came over, she was getting some pictures with some people there, right there by our table and I said, Joni, we're going to need some more cake over here. So it was really good. It was really good cake. So I did indulge myself on some birthday cake.
I'm still down over 40 pounds. So there you have it, but y'all keep that quiet. Don't you be telling Dale, I don't want to get any trouble. I don't want to cause any problems, but we had a marvelous time. It was a marvelous dinner and there were some very touching things that happened and I always love being able to talk with Joni and Ken. But the hit for me for the night was listening to the retired CEO of Joni and Friends, which is her organization. His name is Doug Mazza. Doug has a profoundly disabled son and for, I guess over 20 years, he was the CEO of Joni and Friends and shared that journey.
And then Steve Estes got up and spoke. Do you know who he is? He's been the senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Pennsylvania for a lifetime, 35 years. But he and Joni were friends when they were teenagers. I think he was like two years older than her. And I think he was involved in young life, but then he went off to Bible college, same one I went to Columbia Bible College.
Now it's Columbia International University. And he then went on seminary and so forth, but he helped her write her sequel to her book a step further. And then he helped her write what I believe it was the best book on suffering.
It's called When God Weeps. And if you're struggling with something in your life right now, that's very, very painful and there's a caregiver you probably are, that's a powerful book to read. And Steve was there to share his thoughts of this lifelong journey that he's had with Joni.
I mean, he's known her now for well over 50 years and they've been friends. And his comments and so forth are what I want to talk about today, as well as Doug's. Doug headed up the ministry of Joni and Friends.
And under that umbrella, they have several different ministry outreaches. And Doug told the beginning of one of those when Joni was in the Philippines on an evangelistic outreach. This was many, many years ago. And the van they were traveling in had to come to a screeching stop. I mean, just kind of jolted everybody in the van because there was a woman crawling across the road.
Her legs were paralyzed and she was using her hands to crawl across the road. And Joni looked at her and thought for a moment and said, we need to get this woman a wheelchair and a Bible. And that was the origin of Joni's program Wheels for the World. And they have provided these wheelchairs to people all over the world, literally.
Over 200 and I think 75,000 or close to it that they've done since then. And they use a physical therapist to help fit that person, provide them a Bible to tell them about Jesus. We started the prosthetic limb outreach that we have called Standing with Hope alongside a Wheels for the World team.
And we did that in Ghana, in West Africa. And it was the Wheels for the World team that kind of mentored us as we did this because Gracie was lying in her hospital bed following her second amputation. And she was watching a documentary about Princess Diana working with landmine victims who looked just like her. And she realized these are my people. This is who I am.
This is who they are. We're amputees. And I walk in the room and she's still got a bloody dressing on this leg. It's been amputated. She's got bandages all over it. The other one was healed up and she's laying there in bed. And as I walk in, she burst out, I know what I'm going to do. And I was a little bit startled. And I said, what are you going to do? She says, I'm going to put legs on people and tell them about Jesus.
And I asked her if it was okay if we got out of the hospital first. Gracie is rather a force of nature on a good day. But it took several years for that to come to fruition.
But it did. And we did it alongside of Wheels for the World team. And Johnny's whole program of Wheels for the World, Doug shared the story, was started because Johnny had this radical encounter of seeing somebody who looked like her and said, we're going to do something about this. I was struck by this. I've heard a lot of the stories about how all this started with Johnny. I've talked to Johnny about it, but it was different hearing it from Doug who came out of the business role. He was an automotive guy and wasn't used to running a ministry. And what was so deeply moving was to listen to him share his evolving into this role, trying to run a ministry after running a business and seeing the extraordinary faith of Johnny and watching God move and all the business principles that he wanted to implement were sound business principles. He's a good businessman, but he saw all the business tools and techniques and things that he learned come under submission to the work of the Holy Spirit who does not, by the way, operate with bad business. We just don't understand his business sometimes. And he's got unlimited resources. He's not limited to our thinking.
We struggle to have a five-year strategic plan. Can you imagine the strategic plan that he has and knowing that he has that plan gives me great hope as a caregiver. And we'll talk about that more when we come back. This is Peter Rosenberger. Don't go away. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.
This is the program for you as a family caregiver. Who's going to tell them? That is Marvin Winans. And a great song. To ask that question, who's going to tell them? And that's what this program is about today. And this is what I'm talking about, what I saw this weekend from the birthday party for Joni Eareckson Tada, when she said, I'm going to go tell them. And Doug Mazza was talking about the CEO there, and he was giving this tribute to her. And he said, you know, the Luke 14 mandate was to go out to the highways and the byways, the lame, the crippled, bring them in.
And then he said, go out there and compel them to come in. And that's what they've been doing at Joni and Friends. And I thought about that when it comes to Gracie and me and what are we doing here? And I was so inspired. I rarely come back as inspired as I was by listening to these two men share their encounter of working with Joni for all these years.
And even though I knew most of the story and most of the things that they shared, the way it was framed about trusting God with the unthinkable. One of the things that really struck me is when Joni was diagnosed with cancer, Doug said that she was at his office and they were talking. And then Ken knocks on the door and said, I just got the call from the doctor. And Doug says, well, I'll step out.
You guys have your moment. And she said, no, stay here. And Ken said, well, Joni, doctor says you have cancer, stage three. And Doug said the room got very quiet.
And Joni sat there for a moment thinking. And then she said something extraordinary. She said, God must be up to something really big. And Doug asked her about this. He said, how could you say such a thing? What do you mean by this? And she said, look what he's done with my paralysis.
Imagine what he'll do with my cancer. I mean, how do you even respond to that? And, you know, I was, I was struck by that.
And Doug was as well, and his jaw just hit the floor. But that's a life that is singularly focused on trusting God with the unthinkable. I came back and I was, as I flew back and was driving to our home, I had a nurse stay with Gracie so that I could go down. And as I was doing that, I was just thinking on this, on that whole thought of, do we trust God with our infirmities? Do we trust him with the bad news? Do we look at the things in our life that are so scary and so difficult and painful and say, God must be up to something big. Look what he did with this.
Imagine what he could do with this new thing. It goes back to one of my favorite hymns. Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast in our eternal home. One of the greatest hymns ever written.
And in those short two lines, so much spine stiffening doctrine is encapsulated. Oh God, our help in ages past. Do we believe that? Do we look back and see his provision, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast in our eternal home?
I mean, what a, what a statement. And, and this is something Joni knows to her core. And the moment she learns that she has cancer, her headspace goes to, God is up to something big. He will be glorified in this.
This will be extraordinary. And she was willing to trust him again in this new area. And Doug was sharing how this all came about and what it inspired of him to do as a businessman that is running a ministry, running a ministry by an extraordinary woman. And, and I, I thought about this with everything that I do. Am I adopting the same thing?
Do I look at the challenges I face the same way? Joni saw a woman crawling, literally crawling across the road because she was paralyzed. And her organization's program, Wheels for the World, was born because she saw that. Gracie saw landmine victims that were amputees just like her.
And Standing with Hope was born. And we've put legs on so many people now for almost 20 years. And, and recycled limbs through our limb recycling program, where you could send a limb to us and inmates will volunteer to strip it down so that we could reuse those components. CoreCivic helps us do this. A wonderful program out of Nashville that manages private prisons. And they have this with inmates.
Well, guess where I learned that from? Joni! Joni's worked with CoreCivic. Some of the facilities that refurbished her wheelchairs. And that was all done. And again, all these things in a line of, you could, you could trace all this to one woman seeing a need. One woman with a body that wasn't functioning, seeing a need.
And then you see another woman with a body that's a third of it's gone. And she sees a need. And I thought about that. And I thought about that. And I thought about myself and this radio program and how it started and me writing books and everything I do. You know how all this started? Just like Joni sees a woman crawling across the road.
Gracie sees amputees. You know what it was for me to do this? I was trying to check myself into a mental hospital.
I was so burned out. And they wouldn't take me by the way. I argued with them. They should have taken me.
I think they should have, but they wouldn't do it. They said, you're not crazy. You're just burn out.
You need some rest. You need some counseling and some help, but they didn't really know what to say. They did give me a tuna sandwich. You know, you read about that in my book.
I mean, that's it. I really did try to check myself into a mental health hospital. And I really did just get a tuna sandwich. And as I'm holding that little box lunch they gave me, because you know, I'm not going to turn down a tuna sandwich.
And I'm not quite sure that I want to be friends with people that do, but that's another conversation. But I'm walking out of a mental health hospital, holding my little box lunch. And the counselor that spent so much time with me in that great moment of distress said the words that changed my life forever.
I would recommend a book for you to read, but you're the guy to write it. You know, God intersects us sometimes at our absolute worst moments, our weakest moments. Often He does this when we have depleted everything we have. We have nothing on our own. Johnny is paralyzed. She could not do anything for that woman, but she had the vision to do it. Gracie was missing her legs and she was laying in a hospital room. She couldn't do anything for those amputees that she was seeing, but she had the vision to do it. And she had the faith to trust God, just like Johnny did.
I didn't know what to say to my fellow caregivers. I was at the bottom of the barrel, but I believed God. That's all I had. But isn't that all we need?
What else do we need? That's why Paul says, I will boast all the more gladly in my weakness, for in my weakness Christ's power rests upon me. He's made perfect in this. He doesn't require me to be prosperous and healthy and feeling good and happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time. In fact, that's usually when we meet Him in such a profound way as when we're depleted. How many of you are depleted?
How many of you right now listening to this program, feel so empty, so helpless, so frustrated? Well, I've got good news for you. That's where God will meet you right there.
I promise you, He will. See, the goal of this whole thing with me and Gracie and Johnny, we'd all three tell you, it's not so that we do it. It's not so that we do it.
It's so that we be obedient to what God's heart is leading us to do and let Him get the glory. We're not capable of this. I'm a full-time caregiver. I'm not capable of doing a fraction of things that speakers and writers and radio hosts and all that kind of...
I look at these people who have these really big setups that got out there. Man, I can't do it. I'm doing good to do this radio program, but I'm being obedient to what I believe that God has led me to do and trusting that the increase will come by you listening and then you taking that courage and go to do what God is leading your heart to do. We're all cheering one another on as we serve our Savior. There's plenty of work to be done. There's plenty of work to be done. There's plenty of work to be done. So what are we doing about it?
Are we sitting around griping and complaining? I was. I was trying to check myself into a mental hospital. You better have a better story than mine of why you can't get involved because I'm telling you, you can. I know a woman who is paralyzed and has struggled with cancer and has put wheelchairs for thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I know a woman missing both legs who is wrecked with pain all the time and somebody's walking every week. They go walking and leaping and praising God because of that moment that Gracie decided to trust God with that vision in that hospital when she's looking down at a bloody stump and the other leg is gone and she says, I know what I'm going to do. And the reason she says that is because she had confidence of what he can do. And that counselor at that mental health hospital who said one sentence, you're the Gatorade. At clearly one of the lower moments of my life, God uses what he hates to achieve what he loves. And I'm a living testament to that.
Gracie and I are Johnny and Ken and so many others. So I'm asking you as a fellow caregiver, somebody who is struggling with some of the same things that I struggle with. Are you willing to trust him with this? Are you willing to consider that he may be meeting you right now in your worst moments? When I left that mental health hospital, I was not doing radio shows and writing books.
I promise you, I was eating a tuna sandwich. I can't be certain on this, but there's a passage in scripture in Judges chapter six, where the angel of the Lord came to Gideon, who was threshing wheat, but he was doing it in the winepress out of sight of the Midianites. In other words, he was hiding. And the angel of God, and I think this is one of those rare cases in the Bible where there's a heavy sarcasm, and the angel of God appeared to him and said, the Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. He's hiding out. I thought that was hilarious.
But you know what? Isn't that just like God to call us when we are at our absolute weakest absolute weakest? The Lord is with you, mighty man of valor, eating your tuna sandwich outside of mental health hospital. That gives me great hope as a caregiver, knowing that he meets me in my distress and he'll meet you in yours. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.
This is Peter Rosenberger. That is Gracie and Johnny Eric-Santana from Gracie's CD Resilient. And you can go out to the website if you want to get a copy of that or hear more from music. And what a fabulous song for those two women to sing. You know, you think about the life they've had. You've got, see, Johnny's been hurt for 57 years. Gracie's been hurt for 41 years. That's, I mean, that's astonishing what they've done.
And they're singing through it all. So, hey, I've got something for you today. If you want to go out and take a look at it at foxnews.com in the opinion section.
And I'm going to have it on my website as well, peterrosenberger.com. And it's a new article that I've written. I got kind of annoyed at this whole masculinity debate that's been going on. Have you been following this, you know, where you got guys that are too masculine, you got guys that aren't masculine enough and you got, they're just all over the map.
People are just crazy with a capital K right now. And it's, the title of this is called Masculinity Wars Miss The Point. Here's Where The Real Battle Is Being Fought. And Fox News actually changed my title and they went with that one. And so I'm, I'm good with that. If they want to change the title, I'm okay. But I thought you might find the article meaningful because I talk about what else?
Caregivers. So I felt like, I just get irritated sometimes when I see this stupid stuff that's going on. And I think, you know, we, we got to do better than this. I mean, we got some, we got some stupid people in this country that are trying to define the, the conversation. And I'm, I don't know about you, but I'm kind of tired of it, you know, and, and this whole thing of toxic masculinity and, you know, this kind of thing. And it just, it just gets old and they're trying to find those beta males, alpha males and all that kind of stuff. And it's just stupid.
So here's the opening paragraph. On any given day, there's plenty of airtime dedicated to what's apparently the burning issue of our time, how to make men gentler, softer, and more in tune with, well, something. It's almost comical. A parade of bubble dwellers, angry women, and preening men.
I like to use the word preening. Who serve in the military industrial complex of the culture wars, lecturing the rest of us on what masculinity should look like. And this thing in North Carolina and Florida has really driven home the point that we have spent so much of our treasure, our nation's blood and treasure on endless wars that are pointless, that go nowhere. They just are just sucking us dry financially and other ways. And the military industrial complex is getting rich and fat off of it.
Eisenhower told that to Kennedy when Kennedy took office, beware of the military industrial complex. And they have been driving the agenda for this country for way too long. Well, the culture wars, how's that any different? We're spending way too much time on this kind of stuff.
It's stupid and people are hurting and people are struggling. And so I wrote something about it and Fox news decided they wanted to publish it. So I offer it to you for your consideration. And I have many more things available on my sub stack page, by the way, if you want to read stuff that I've written and you could go out to that page, everything is at PeterRosenberger.com and it's all there. The hope for the caregiver domain will go there. We've been having some trouble with that. So I just put everything at PeterRosenberger.com for now.
So if you see something that looks a little different or weird, that's why, because the domain was having some very difficult times on that server. And so we swapped it around. So everything is at PeterRosenberger.com. Y'all know who I am by now, right?
Peter Rosenberg. And you spell it B-E-R-G-E-R not B-U-R. So take a look at it and see. I've got a lot of articles that I've written on various subjects. I think sometimes I just get a little bit irritated and I'm thinking, how do you people have time for this? To sit around and sit around and debate this issue, whether this guy's masculine enough or not. When you're a caregiver, you don't care about that kind of stuff.
You just want help. And that's the kind of foolishness that goes on in our culture. And I think we got to call it out. And also, I do want to make sure that you all vote. Register to vote, please. They're saying like north of 32 million people who call themselves Christians are not going to vote in this election. Is that, I mean, are you one of those?
Please tell me you're not. Okay. We need to vote and don't say, well, it's the lesser of two evils. No, we do this to lessen evil, to be a good steward of this land.
There are people who really want to do dastardly things and that's not going to stop. And we have a responsibility. I mean, we got to look our savior in the eye with all the things that we've been given and we've been given the great privilege of living in this country. And I trust that this audience is one that is civically active. If we're going to vote, I know we can't get out there and go to rallies and all those kinds of things.
I know we can't do a lot of that. And we may not be able to donate money or anything like that, but we can vote. And I think we have a responsibility to, wherever it's possible, live peacefully, pray for the peace of the municipality, the city that you're living in. Scripture says that in many different places, that we work hard to be model citizens. Well, model citizens vote.
And there are people right now that are rabidly voting for things that are directly antithetical to your faith, to what scripture teaches. How are we going to change that? How are we going to stop that? Do we have a responsibility?
I think we do. And listen, I've given God enough to redeem in my life and I don't want to disappoint him anymore. So I don't want to be a bad steward of things. And I think that's our responsibility. So anyway, I wrote this article, I push back against this kind of stuff, try to call it like I see it from my point of view. I mean, nobody cares if I'm a political pundit.
That's not what, you know, people listen to this program for and they don't read my books for. But every now and then you see things out in the culture and you just look with incredulity and say, these people are idiots. I mean, they are just blithering idiots.
They're barking mad. And we've got to say something. We've got to teach people. We've got to help them see a better path and help them lift their eyes above where they are. And as I came back from this time with Johnny at her birthday, you know, the overwhelming thing was the passion Johnny had to go into places where people were not reached, where it was dark. And there's nothing like there's nothing like infirmity and disability to isolate people from community, from feeling like God is in their life.
They feel so abandoned because we have been improperly taught about suffering. And that's why I was so grateful to meet Steve Estes who wrote When God Weeps with Johnny. And he helped really mentor her through this process. And he said, he'd come on the program.
We're trying to work it out. And y'all be sure to thank him for his lack of judgment. But I didn't mind pleading.
And he was a little weird when I was holding onto his pant leg and trying to keep him in the... No, I wasn't. I asked, he's a very kind man. And I wanted to come on because I think it's important for us to properly teach people about God and have a higher view of God in the midst of our heartache and our suffering. That's what I do here on this program, because that's what people have done for me.
And that's what I saw this weekend when I was with this birthday party for Johnny and listening to these men speak about how they themselves grew in an understanding of a higher view of God as Johnny grew in trusting God with her disability. I've learned that with Gracie, as Gracie has trusted God with just these unthinkable things. And you have to wrestle with these things. You can't just have a one and done conversation with it. It's not a situation where it's like, okay, all right, I get it.
Okay, now we can move on. No, it's every day. It's every day, but you grow and strengthen it. And you have to have people that will teach you and people that will help you.
People that will explain things to you in a way that makes sense. The verse that defines Johnny and friends with her organization is Luke 14, where it says, go out into the highways and the byways and bring them in and compel them. For what we do at Standing with Hope for the prosthetic limb ministry, the verse that we reference regularly in Acts, Acts 3, Peter said to the beggar there, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Stand up and walk. And that's what we do at Standing with Hope.
And we've been doing this now for almost 20 years. Somebody gets a leg, week in, week out. And we just sent over a bunch of supplies. In fact, if you go out to the website, you could sign up for our e-letter and we'll send you in our e-letter a featured patient of the month and tell the story, what happened to them, who they are, what's going on, and you'll be able to see them and pray for them as they go walking and leaping and praising God. But what about the caregiver outreach? What's the verse that applies with this outreach, the caregiver outreach?
And you know, I thought about that because Gracie had that moment when she's lying in the hospital bed, she's watching that documentary and she sees people look like her. And the verse, silver and gold have I none. I don't have anything, I can't give any money, but here's a leg.
Stand up and walk. Johnny says, we're going to give this woman a wheelchair and put a Bible under her. Tell her about Jesus. For me, I go to 2 Corinthians 1, 3 through 4. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles. One translation uses afflictions 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.
He's praising God for who He is, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a higher view of God who comforts me so that I can comfort others with the same comfort that I received. You know, and I received great comfort, not from just the tuna sandwich. That was, I mean, tuna sandwich is good comfort food. Yes, I agree.
You were right to bring that up. However, the comfort I have is that God is who He says He is. He is Lord of all. And that brings me great comfort. And I want to pass on that same comfort to my fellow caregivers, because that's what gives me hope for the caregiver. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. That is Whitney Phipps, who has one of the most fabulous voices you'll ever hear singing, of course, one of the greatest hymns ever written.
And I start this segment off with that for a reason. And if you'll indulge me for just a moment, I lost a dear friend the last couple of weeks, and I travel to Nashville next week to play at her funeral. And I'm asking for prayer that Gracie will be able to make it, because Sam, her husband, wants Gracie to sing at the funeral. And I'm hoping that Gracie can do this. So please do pray for Gracie.
I know this is a praying audience that she can make this trip. It would mean so much to Sam and friends and family of Mary Ann Clark, who listened to this program faithfully every Saturday morning. And then after the program aired, I would call Mary Ann while I was making breakfast for Gracie's dad, when he would come down here for our Saturday morning breakfast together or making breakfast for Gracie or doing other things here.
And I would ask her, OK, how did I do? And she would go over the show with me and give me her feedback on it, which was always very meaningful. Mary Ann and Sam were married many, many years ago, and Gracie and I had the privilege of singing at their wedding. And we sang a song called Holy Ground. Mary Ann was listening to Gracie sing Holy Ground. And then a few minutes later, she stepped into eternity.
The pancreatic cancer that she had was diagnosed just recently, and it was very fast acting. And she is safe with our Savior, but we mourn with those who mourn, and we weep with those who weep. She was a godparent to both of our sons. And Sam, before he met Mary Ann, was showing up at the hospital when Gracie got hurt. Sam's known Gracie before I did, because Sam was on a ministry team at the church Gracie was attending in Nashville when she had a wreck. And the sister church where Gracie grew up in Florida called up and said, hey, one of our young students is at Belmont in Nashville, and she's had a terrible wreck, and the family's up there. They don't know anybody.
And could you go over there and spend some time with them? And Sam did, and he became an integral part of our family. And then when he met Mary Ann, and they married back in 1988, 89, I'm sorry. No, it was 88. It was 88. And I'll tell you why I know that, because Gracie was singing, and we had our son Parker, and he was just an infant, and he threw up all over my suit at the wedding.
So I know the date. And if you are at all inspired, helped, fortified, or strengthened by this program and by anything that I've written, then you owe a thank you to Sam Clark, because Sam sat at our dining room table many, many years ago when Gracie's illnesses and challenges became so great that she couldn't go out and do public appearances like she used to. And Sam was very thoughtful.
He looked at me, said, Pedro, Sam has called me Pedro for almost 40 years, and I'm not sure why, because Rosenberger is not exactly a Hispanic name, but nevertheless, here we are. And he said, Pedro, you need to do a show for caregivers, and you need to write a book for caregivers. Sam was on our board at Standing With Hope, and he said, you need to do this. And I said, sure, Sam, I got nothing better to do. But he was very serious, and he said, you need to do this.
You have a wealth of knowledge that would benefit so many people, and I want you to look at writing a book and doing a program for caregivers. You can thank Sam Clark for that, and you can thank Sam Clark for that, and you can lift him up in prayer and his family as he mourns the loss of Marianne. Marianne was extremely funny and vivacious and full of life, and it is indeed very comforting to me to know, as Whitney Phipps sang, that when we've been there 10,000 years, shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise.
And she's there. She's joined that great cloud of witnesses that cheers us all on. Marianne was a strong believer, and her faith was deep. Her passion to serve the Lord was amazing, and she gave such good conversation and feedback about this program. She loved this program. She loved what I did with caregivers.
She was one, and in the end, she needed one. And Sam has shepherded her all the way to Jesus. Sam's an Anglican priest and quite a good one, and I am deeply fond of him. I really can't recall much life without Sam and Marianne in my life.
They've been a fixture for us, and next week we have the deep privilege of singing and playing for them. And like I said, I would ask that you keep Gracie in your prayers. It's a hard trip, but she wants to make it.
She feels compelled to do so. This is Gracie singing her arrangement of Holy Ground. I'm playing it for her with orchestra, and this is for our friend, Marianne, who is truly standing on holy ground. This is holy ground. We're standing on holy ground. For the Lord is present, and where He lives, He is holy. This is holy ground. We're standing on holy ground. For the Lord is present, and where He is, He is holy. On holy ground.
And I know that there are angels all around. So let us praise Jesus now, oh Lord. We are standing in His presence on holy ground. We are standing on holy ground. On holy ground. And I know that there are angels all around. So let us praise Jesus now, for we are standing in His presence on holy ground. On holy ground.
For the Lord is present, and where He lives, He is holy. Have you ever had to change sheets in the middle of the night? Have you ever had to deal with a spill or mishap in bed, wound care issues? We've been dealing with that lately with Gracie's legs. She's got a wound that just does not want to heal up. Sometimes that wound just oozes, makes a terrible mess. You've got to change the sheets. I've been looking around for a product to help with this because, you know, nobody ever told me when I was a caregiver that it involves so much laundry.
But it does. Guess what? There's a company called Peelaways. P-E-E-L-A-W-A-Y-S. Peelaways, just like it sounds. They're fitted sheets with built-in layers of chucks, you know, like liners they put in beds in hospitals. But they're built in.
They're perforated on either side, not at the bottom, not at the top. So in case there's a mishap, you just peel it away, throw it away. You don't have to change the bed. It's that easy. It's that simple. I've tried it myself. I slept on them.
They're very comfortable. And you think this is just too easy. Caregiver is hard enough.
So let's go with too easy. All right. Peelaways.com. Subscribe and save. They'll send you one every month.
You mentioned my name, Peter. Put it in the coupon code. You get a special discount. Peelaways.com. Life is hard enough as a caregiver. Here's something that's going to make your life a lot simpler. It did mine. Peelaways.com.
