Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger and I'm so glad that you are with the program today to journey into all things related to the family caregiver.
How to help those family caregivers stay strong and healthy while taking care of somebody who is not. More than 65 million Americans do this. Are you one of them? If so, glad that you're with us. If not, hang tight because you'll be with us soon. If you love somebody, you're going to be one.
If you live long enough, you're going to need one. That's just the reality of life. That's the human condition. That's just part of it. And people say, you know what, this is kind of a dire subject.
Caregiving caregivers. Nobody wants to talk about this. It's pretty negative.
I don't think so. I really don't. I'll tell you why. The things that we deal with are fairly negative as far as, you know, watching somebody decline, watching somebody suffer, watching somebody struggle with some type of impairment. But we don't have to be negative. In fact, the whole approach to this that I choose to do is how do we live a calmer, healthier, and dare I say it, a more joyful life while dealing with these things. You know, life is filled with painful things. I don't see that as the overarching push that we eradicate all the challenges out of our life, but that we better learn how to deal with them and better learn how to stay calm and stay peaceful, stay content while dealing with them.
And this is what scripture teaches. You hear words throughout all of scripture, endurance, perseverance, fortitude, things such as that, and recognizing that there are painful things that we got to deal with in life, just in life. So as a caregiver, we just deal with them a little bit more acutely. Sometimes it's right up in our face.
And it takes a little bit of doing to step back a little bit, get a better point of view, a little clearer thought, and then let's approach these problems maybe a bit differently so that we can be a better advocate for our loved one and live more contentedly ourselves. I want to start off with, by the way, I hope you had a great Christmas. We did. It was a marvelous Christmas.
It was very quiet up here in the mountains. And it was just Gracie and our youngest son and ourselves. But last year, the three of us were in the hospital.
And so this is still a marked improvement and it's snowing heavily today. So I think, I think that after this program, I'm going to fire up the snowmobiles for the first time this season. What do you think? Do you think I should? I think I should.
I think I must. And we're going to take them out on a test run. My son and I, we're going to see if we can't get these. Sometimes after being in the barn for the summer, they kind of get a little ornery. So we're going to get out here and work on them, see if we can crank them up because it is a lot of fun to ride snowmobiles.
So we're going to work on that today. We've not had a lot of snow out here, which has been unusual for us at this time of year, but we're grateful that it's here today. And we need it because the snowpack is what helps all the ranchers in the summertime with irrigating their livestock.
And then it also helps keep the fire hazard down. So we're grateful for the snow. Let it snow, let it snow. And you know how Gracie loves snow.
I mean, she just loves it. And she's got a great article about that, that I would recommend you reading out at my website on her blog, PeterRosenberger.com, and it talks about snow. And we put that as the quote for next December in our caregiver calendar. And if you want to get a hold of our 2025 caregiver calendar, Gracie's got all of them are filled with pictures I've taken from out here and one of them Gracie put her famous quote that she loves about snow because she looks at it as a kind of a picture of God's grace that covers all the brokenness, all the scars, all the blemishes.
And you all know, I mean, there's nothing like seeing a pristine snowfall. And this is something that that is just deeply meaningful to her. And she grew up in the northwest corner of Florida, in the Panhandle. And she said at Christmas time, it was hot down there and people are in shorts. And she thought that was just a crime against nature. She thought it was heinous. And she wanted to live someplace where she had lots of snow.
Well, mission accomplished. We live in Montana up in the Rockies. We got snow. We got snow. I mean, look, we'll have, it'll look like Narnia before Aslan out here until probably the end of April. So well, most of the country is seeing spring flowers at the middle to end of March. You know, we'll be deep in the throes of it.
So, but I like it. We like the snow. And so I think I'm going to do that. But while we're while I have our sun out here for during Christmas, and I hope you all had a good time. I hope you had a peaceful time. You know, it can be stressful, putting everything together. We were going to go to our favorite restaurant on the other side of the mountain.
And they have a wonderful Christmas dinner. And I really wanted to go. But Gracie had fallen about two weeks ago, about a week and a half ago. So and was not doing very well.
And it was just very uncomfortable for her to go anywhere. So we stayed at home. And we in the old days, when we came out here at Christmas time, when we lived in Nashville, we'd still come out here at Christmas time.
And we would have big Montana sized steaks for Christmas dinner, instead of turkey and dressing and all the stuff that people have. And so we reverted back to that. So and I didn't get any complaints from our son. He looked at me when I showed him the steaks that I was cooking. And he was like, Dad, I just want to love. And we had a good time and sat by the fire. Oh, it was so funny.
I posted this. And y'all would get this. A lot of people may not. A lot of people would not think it's funny. I thought it was funny.
Gray is our youngest son is 32. And real good sense of humor. He's a great, funny guy. And I love him to pieces. And he often tells me, Dad, I love you like a father.
But he's a little bit of a carbon copy. Sorry, y'all. I'm sorry what I did to him. But you know how those Christmas ornaments can be so sharp. And we had one or two of them that fell and broke.
And there were shards of this. And Grayson said, everybody but mom, watch your step. I just thought that was funny. She doesn't get all that worked up about sharp things on the floor. Because she's either wearing prosthetic legs or she's in a wheelchair. And I used to fuss at her about that because she would drop needles and things like that. And it was a bit of a hazard for those of us who cared about getting her foot impaled.
And fortunately, I watched Die Hard. And that scene where Bruce Willis has to run over broken glass scared me straight to wear shoes all the time. So I always wear shoes for the most part. But I've gone barefoot a time or two and been skewered by things that have fallen on the wayside.
And Gracie just doesn't think about those sort of things. But you know, you learn to have a good time and laugh about it. I told you all the story about her getting a manicure, didn't I? Oh, we went to this place in Nashville.
We lived there in the Green Hills area of Nashville. And there was a big shop where all the ladies there went to get manicures and so forth. And Gracie is getting a manicure and the lady is just busily working on her hands and wasn't really even paying attention to Gracie. She's looking around and just doing her stuff and kind of mindlessly doing this. And then she said, you're a pretty lady.
You ought to get a pedicure. And Gracie looked at her and said, I don't have any feet. And the lady without even missing a beat said, okay, maybe next time.
Gracie just kind of hung her head a little bit and just rolled her eyes. You know, what do you say to that? Okay, maybe next time. So you learn to have a good sense of humor.
Gray has that. And I love that when he said, everybody but mom, watch your step. But anyway, we got it all taken care of. There's no more shards of broken Christmas bulbs. But we had a marvelous time here and went out and cut our own tree. And I bought one then. It was probably a little bigger than that.
Grayson said, dad, how did you get this by yourself? And I wanted to have it up before he got here. And so I did. But it was about 10 feet tall.
And I wrestled it into the house. But it was a good Christmas. It was quiet. It was peaceful.
I enjoyed every minute of it and wonderful gifts, just time together. Gracie is doing a little bit better. She just hurts all the time. And we're trying to kind of hold her together till we get to Denver so they can do this remaining series of operations to help straighten her back up a little bit so that she is not in so much pain. So that's what we're going to be doing starting at the end of January.
But in the meantime, you know what, it's Christmas week. And we had a good time. And I am going to do more here on the show.
We got lots to talk about. And then after the show, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go snowmobiling.
That's what my Christmas present to myself is. And that is hope for this caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back. Welcome back to hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.
That is the caregiver keyboard. And I love to do that song. I like to do it when you do the repeats like that.
That part where I do. And you repeat that. And that's just the way I like to arrange hymns. When you have that repetition, it helps build in memory of what the text is saying.
Born is the king of Israel. And I wanted to be able to say that musically, what I'm feeling with it. And so I take a few little liberties with it.
And I throw in some chords that probably you wouldn't normally do. Like when I went to that diminished walk-up. And it's over here. When you go to the. When you hit that.
This is a. How did I even get into it? And you land on this note. And then I want to go to that minor sixth chord. Because when it resolves to that, it just feels so good.
You feel that tension there? So anyway, that's just music theory. That's how I choose to do it.
That's what I do. I love playing these hymns. I was talking to somebody today and I said, oh, that's one of my favorite hymns. He said, you say that about all the hymns. They're all your favorites.
And I said, well, they often are. And I love doing them. And if you're not into music, I hope I'm not boring you. If you are into music and I hope I'm giving you a bit of a theory lesson to learn some few things and have some fun with it. And this has been an outlet for me.
This is how I do it. I play music. And I have people that have told me repeatedly every time I use the caregiver keyboard and I get letters in, I get phone calls from people and texts and emails and they say, you know, we love the caregiver keyboard. I think I'm the only nationally syndicated radio program that has a live keyboard going on a regular basis. Certainly the only one for caregivers. How about that?
I'll just claim that title. Music helps clear my head. Now what helps clear your head?
I was talking to a friend this morning who is dealing with some tough things. And I said, okay, when you solve these problems, when you address these problems, some problems don't get solved, but when you address these challenges and these problems, what do you do that kind of clears your head? That gives you something else to think about.
Churchill said that he would take, he took up art because he said it cooled his brain off from dealing with all the things globally that he was dealing with. And I always found that fascinating. I thought, well, you know, what about us as caregivers?
Can we incorporate that same strategy? Is there something we could do that kind of cools part of our brain off, rejuvenates us? For me, that's music. And I love to play it. I love to discuss it, love to grow and pick it apart and learn and do all kinds of things with it. And I don't know what that is for you. I've got a caregiver support group that I lead out here in our little town.
And, and I've got an eclectic group of individuals who come and bring a wide variety of things they do for themselves. One of them is a guitar player, singer, and banjo player. And I always kid him about banjos because I don't know if it's a sanctified instrument. Oh, I'm just kidding. I don't want to get any letters about that. What's the difference between a banjo and a trampoline?
You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
I'm just, what you say in Nashville years ago, the definition of an optimist is a banjo player with a beeper. And what was the other one? The least asked question in the English language, the most infrequently asked question in the English language. Very few times this question has ever uttered.
You want to know what it is? Is that the banjo player's Porsche? So I kid. My nephew plays the banjo. He's very good at it. And there are, there are amazing talents out there.
I watch them play and it's, it's fascinating to watch. So anyway, but whatever play, and Steve Martin used to do a whole bit. He's a very accomplished banjo player. And he would do a whole bit on that about, you can't be, you know, unhappy while playing the banjo, you know, cause you can't play a sad song on the banjo, at least not very easily.
You can play, you can make people sad by playing the banjo, but you're not going to play a sad song. But what works for you? What does it for you?
Is it, is it gardening? I mean, I'm like, I mentioned in the last block, I like to go snowmobiling too. That's, that's a great stress reducer to be able just to get out in the fresh air and the pristine snow and the powder and and go and see spectacular views and just have a good time. But it's important that we do this and, and this friend has some difficult challenges they've got to face. And it's important to clear your head before you do these things.
Don't take these things on when running as a deficit, if at all possible. If nothing else, just go out for a quick walk or, you know, drink some water, drink to think and take on these projects with a little bit clearer head. And nowhere is that more head clearing, if you will, than in scripture. And if you go back to the Word of God and you'll see things. And so I wanted to spend a little time on this today with Romans 12, 17 through 21. And there's one verse in particular I want to pull out that I believe applies to us very poignantly in our journey as caregivers.
But let me read the text here. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourself, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Now that's Romans 12, 17 through 21.
Now why am I sharing this verse today? Well, go back to what I talked about a couple of weeks ago when I talked about caregiver authority. Caregiver authority. I coined that phrase because I think we as caregivers have caregiver authority. We have authority. We know our loved one.
We may not know the science they're dealing with, but we know our loved one. And this is on my Substack page. You can go out to PeterRosenberger.com and right at the top, you'll see a little button that says Peter's Substack. Just click on that. And I put out every Monday a free post.
It's from my book, A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. And this one's there. You have to subscribe to it, but it's a free post. You can go behind the paywall on some things I put out that require a paywall. But every Monday, I put this out, and I put a bunch of stuff out.
There's a whole library of things out there that you can take advantage of. But this is one about caregiver authorities from my book. What does that even mean for us?
And why am I putting it with this verse? Well, those are very good questions. As caregivers, we're tasked with advocating for someone who can't always advocate for themselves. Not 100% of the time, and that doesn't apply to every caregiving situation across the board, but for the vast majority of us, most of us are advocating for someone who is at a disadvantage of some kind, whether it's intellectual, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, whatever.
It doesn't matter. They're at a disadvantage. And we advocate for them. And in order to advocate for them, sometimes we have to confront certain things. And this is what my friend is having to do, having to confront certain individuals when a mistake is made or something, an unfortunate thing happened, and you got to go in there and you got to deal with it. It's unpleasant.
If you do this for any length of time, you're going to be there. I've had to confront virtually everybody in the medical industry, every job in the medical industry, from hospital administrators, to surgeons, to nurses, to med techs, to physical therapists, name it, I've done it. And I don't help the cause if I go in there with the guns a-blazing. And I know that we get angry and we want to go in there with guns a-blazing. Sometimes it requires us to be forceful. But let this verse be your guide.
Okay? So he says, Romans 12, 18, If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. As far as it depends on you as far as it depends on you and on me, live peaceably with all. That's tough to do in today's world, isn't it? There are some people that are just absolutely committed to cantankerousness and to agitation and to conflict. And there are people that want to harm others.
And this happens. We see this on the news. We're seeing what's going on in our big cities and it's going on everywhere, really.
It's not just big cities. It's wherever, wherever they're human beings. You know the old saying, wherever two or three are gathered, there will be problems.
We are a messed up group of, a messed up species. But by and large, most people want to just go about their business and not have a lot of drama. But when you're dealing with a chronic impairment, you're going to have drama.
Do I see a show of hands for this? How many of you all have had drama in your journey as a caregiver? How many of you have had conflict? I mean, where it's gotten pretty ugly, pretty heated. How about with medical personnel, with the people that are caring for your loved one, whether it's home care or whatever, how many of those have been troublesome at times?
And if you've been doing this for any length of time, we're going to enthusiastically raise our hands. Yes, it happens. Scripture says if possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Well, what if you're a police officer?
Your job is, you're a peace officer, but your job is to deal with things that are very unpeaceable. Does this still apply? Absolutely. Absolutely. And it directly applies to what I call, again, caregiver authority.
And we're going to talk about that more when we come back. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.
Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Joy to the World, written by Isaac Watts, who is the author of so many phenomenal hymns. And the tune is credited to Lowell Mason, but it was really, before that, it was George Frederick Handel, who wrote the Messiah, did this tune, or a derivation.
And Mason, who also wrote an enormous amount of musical scores throughout the hymnal, he adapted it from, I believe, a tune that Handel had written. Have you ever looked at the text, Joy to the World? It's an extraordinary piece that Isaac Watts, who wrote When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, he wrote, what else did he write that was, Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home. But if you look at the text for Joy to the World, Joy to the World, the Lord has come, let earth receive her King, let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing. And we all like to go in heaven and nature sing, but look at verse three. He, no more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.
And what is that referring to? Well, that's way back in Genesis where the curse was placed because of what happened with sin in the garden with Adam and Eve. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. Far as the curse is found. And then the last verse is he rules the world with truth and grace that makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.
It's an extraordinary text. But as far as the curse is found, well, let me tell you something. As caregivers, I could tell you straight up, we get a front row seat to the curse, don't we? We get to see it in all its ugliness. And we get to see the chronic impairment of a loved one. We get to see sickness. We get to see sorrow. We get to see our own sin and our impatience. Everything that is in us that is ugly comes bubbling to the surface no matter what you're dealing with as a human being. If you've got a defect in you, which we all do, it will be shouted out in the crucible of caregiving.
It just pushes it to deafening levels and you're going to see it. And that's the bad news. The good news is far as the curse is found, this is what he came to do.
And Isaac Watts knew this. I mean, we have a treasure trove of hymnals. I use that word a lot, treasure trove. It's a great word.
I can call it something else. We have a Fort Knox vault of great hymns. And you will hear me say this repeatedly on this program. And some of you may get irritated with me for saying it, but that's okay.
Write the letters to peter at the internet dot google. But we've done a disservice to so many people by not picking up a hymnal for two reasons. One of them is, well, three reasons. Let me give you three reasons why you use a hymnal. An actual hymnal.
I'll give you three reasons. Ready? Number one, they don't break. If the power goes out, you can still use a hymnal. Okay? You may have to use a flashlight to see them, but you can still use the hymnal. Okay? You could use a hymnal. They don't break.
You could drop it and it won't break. All right? Second reason is you have this, the music that is in the hymnal is the foundational music for western harmony. And so you teach your people to sing by letting them see the music. That's how I learned how to play the piano, was seeing the music in the hymnal.
My mother used to hold it down for me when I was in church so I could see. I could even read the words. I didn't know how to read, but I could see the notes and the staves.
And I remember the red hymnal that we used. And you could go through and you learn how to play. You learn four-part harmony with the hymnal.
You learn how to voice things. They follow very strict theory rules in music and it's the foundation for it. And if you want to have any kind of structure in music theory as far as western music for sure, the hymnal is a great place to start. It's an easy place to start. So you've got number one, it's foolproof when it comes to electricity.
It's not going to break. Number two, you see the music. You see the text and the music together and you pick it up and you learn how to sing in harmony. How many churches today know how to sing in four-part harmony?
It's a travesty. If you don't hear it regularly, you don't know what you're missing so I guess there's that. But if you've ever heard four-part harmony or eight-part harmony, even better, but if you ever heard a congregation singing in harmony, you will miss it every time. And we've got to teach our people how to sing. It's very important that our congregations learn how to sing. Scripture commands us to do so. And the third thing is, if you run out of things to preach from, you can always preach from the hymnal because chances are a hymn writer has already said it better than we can say it.
So there is that. And Isaac Watts, look at what he said, No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. And that means while you're serving as a caregiver and you're seeing the curse right in front of you, this is what it means to grow sick and have disease and have affliction and brokenness and even death.
That's the curse. And we see it all the time. We see the ramifications, the insidiousness of sin and the toll that is taken on this world by looking at the suffering of somebody we love.
We see this all the time. And if we see this verse, he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. That means as you're taking care of somebody right now, you have the opportunity to see his blessings flow as you look at the results of what the curse has done to human beings. And I'm not just talking about your loved one.
I'm talking about yourself too. I see so much every day of the curse in my own life. God in his mercy doesn't let me see all my sin.
It would annihilate me, but he lets me see enough of it to know, hey, hey, far as the curse is found. But crucifixion didn't stop there. It went on to the resurrection. And we were to be crucified with Christ, but we were raised with Christ for our justification, Paul says in Romans 1.
So that's the good news. And this is what this text is all about that Isaac Watts did. He enjoyed to the world the Lord has come, and then he gets that last verse.
He rules the world with truth and grace. Verse two, joy to the earth. The savior reigns, our mortal songs employ. In other words, hey, let's sing these songs.
Come on, let's sing together. While fields and floods, rocks and hills and plains repeat the sounding joy. And I see this, I got to tell you, I was talking about snowmobiling in the last block. I'll get back to the other thing in a minute. I'm digressing, okay?
It's Christmas, I'm digressing. I once went out in the forest with Gracie. There's a place back behind us, way back in the forest, big, beautiful lake.
And it's up about, I don't know, 7,500, maybe 8,000 feet. And this was during a weekday. There was nobody back there.
And the weekend, sometimes people bring their snowmobiles and they'll park down below and then they'll trailer up to there and then they'll park and then they'll drive into the forest, which is right behind us. Gracie and I went out there one day and we sat there on machines and Gracie, we turned them off. I think we turned them off.
Well, no, I didn't turn off one because I was afraid it wouldn't crank. But Gracie saying, how great thou art, acapella, just lifted her voice. And we're in kind of a bit of a bowl of where we were. And you could hear it reverberating when she gets to, then sings, my soul.
I mean, she just belted it out. And you could hear it reverberating in the snow covered forest all around us, up into the peaks that are above it. It's kind of hard to describe.
I try to put some pictures out on my Facebook page so you could see stuff like this. But I want you to just imagine that in this wilderness. I mean, we're six, seven miles back into the forest.
Okay. We're not anywhere near civilization. There's nobody around.
It's just the two of us. And she is belting out, then sings my soul, my savior, God to thee. And you could hear what Isaac Watts is talking about this while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and planes repeat the sounding joy. It was a moment.
And it was just, it was just a moment. So again, I get caught up in these hymns because I want you to hear this message, maybe in a way that I can't say it as well, but Isaac Watts sure can. And by the way, musically speaking, I told you that that's the fastest way to learn music is pick up a hymnal. You know, the major scale, the C major scale, the joy to the world is in C. So you come over here. That's the C major scale.
Okay. So you get. So if you ever want to know the gospel, you need a quick reminder to remind yourself of the gospel, the C major scale or any major scale. If you want to sing it higher than that, you can go down to go up to the D major scale. It's just a major scale. But if you're playing your scales that I had to practice my scales a lot, mom is listening right now and she said, I didn't practice enough as a child and they had to fuss at me sometimes.
And I'm sorry for that mom. I do practice still now at 61. I'm still practicing, but the major scale play it down. That's joy to the world. The Lord has come. You do it, pick it out at any key. Start at the tonic, whatever note you want to say. If you want to play it in the key of D, start at a D or whatever, and just go down.
That's the major scale. And that is joy to the world. The Lord has come. That is the gospel joy to the world. The Lord has come. That's it.
And it's that simple. And so when we're dealing with the realities we face as caregivers, which are often very harsh, far as the curse is found, we have the opportunity to repeat the sounding joy. And that 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, and I love this hymn.
This is the caregiver keyboard. Oh, come all you faithful. Come let us adore him. And I love everything about this hymn. It is a spectacular hymn. And I love to add, I like the walk-up that you hear there with the chords.
I like to throw in all kinds of different things to just give it more color, more tension, release. And then throw in that one. Throw in that one.
A little flourish there. But they're just spectacular hymns. And I love Christmas music. And thus endeth our Christmas music season of playing. I will put those back for next year. We'll start something new for the first of the year next year.
Every now and then I may visit one throughout the year because I think you could celebrate Christmas all year long if you wish to. Certainly we have theological reason to. So anyway, welcome back to the program. I'm glad that you're with us.
PeterRosenberger.com. We've been talking about caregiver authority, and I've been using the scripture Romans 12, 18, if possible, so far as it depends upon you, so far as it depends on you and me, live peaceably with all. We have caregiver authority. We have the experience of our loved one.
We don't know the science necessarily, but we know them. And we can advocate for them and still live peaceably. We don't have to get into conflict. As I mentioned in the second block, that police officers, they have to deal with very difficult situations, but they remain in control. They don't have to make it personal about whoever they're trying to do. They're trying to contain that person so they don't harm themselves or others. And sometimes it requires force. Sometimes it sadly requires lethal force. But the police officer does not have to lose themselves into that. They don't have to become filled with rage as they do this. They're doing their job to protect.
That's the goal. That's the premise behind having peace officers. And that can apply across the board to all of us. We don't have to go in guns-a-blazing.
Not every situation requires maximum force, and we can use our judgment in this. That's one of the things I learned in martial arts. I studied martial arts for years.
Got to my second-degree black belt. I wish I could train more, but I don't have anybody to train with out here. And you don't want to practice with a bear, because that's never good. But one of the tenets we learn in martial arts is that we remain in control of ourselves. It's all about self-control no matter what's going on around us. We keep our balance.
We keep our breathing. And we are not here to just start going berserk on people. When you see people that fight like that, they don't know what they're doing. They're just going berserk. Now, they may land a few punches. They may cause some damage, but they're going berserk.
They're not accomplishing what needs to be accomplished. And we learned this. I mean, this is going to sound rather graphic.
Sorry for that. But we learned that it may require that somebody gets a broken arm in order to stop this. If somebody's whacked out on PCP or whatever, you know, it may require some extreme measures to be taken, but not done out of blind rage or losing our control. If this is what the situation requires, then we're going to have to do this.
Well, now, can we extrapolate that to being a caregiver? Absolutely, we can. We may have to file a lawsuit. We don't have to start off every conversation with, I'm going to file a lawsuit.
It may have to happen that way. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. If you are filing a lawsuit, if you are lodging a formal complaint, if you're having to have a meeting with an administrator or a doctor or something like that, you don't have to go in there with guns blazing right off the bat, and certainly not acting out in rage or resentment or fear or guilt. But you're doing it because this is what the situation requires. This is the only path that's available to us. There is no reconciliation with this, and there has to be some measures taken. But you don't have to lose your sense of well-being in this.
We don't have to be afraid, and we don't have to be enraged. And those are important things for us to remember as caregivers. We have caregiver authority. We have all the authority we need as our loved one's advocate and as a caregiver.
And then let's go even deeper. We have all the authority we need because of our Savior Christ, that we can go into any situation settled in our spirit, knowing that we're doing what God has asked us to do, which is to the best of what is possible for us, so far as it depends on us, to live peaceably. Beloved, never avenge yourself. Not every lawsuit is about avenging. That's not what this is about. Not every confrontation is about the wrath of God. Sometimes you just have to confront things and deal with them and say things in a way that's going to be helpful to advance the goal here.
What is the goal? And if you're in an altercation like what you saw with Daniel Penney on the subway train, this guy said he was going to kill people. He said, I don't mind going to jail. I'm going to kill somebody today. Well, what's he going to do?
What's Daniel Penney going to do? I mean, he said that in an interview with Judge Janine. He said, you know, I'd have to live with that if he hurt somebody.
I'm right there. I could do something about this. The goal was not to set out to kill this guy. It was to keep him from harming himself and others. Right at that point, he made his intentions that he wanted to harm others.
So something had to be done to prevent that. I take him at his word. He said he wanted to harm others.
I'm taking him at his word. If I'm on a subway car or any kind of public environment and you've got somebody like that coming and I've got Gracie in a wheelchair, I can't outrun the guy pushing a wheelchair. Have you ever tried to flee pushing a wheelchair?
So her safety is paramount. So I have to make hard decisions, but I have to do it out of rage. Sometimes we can do it out of great sorrow, but it has to be done. Sometimes we can confront people in their sin. It's out of great sorrow, not out of shame or rage or anything like that. It's out of great sorrow to go to them and say, we need to have this conversation. And I grieve over the pain it's going to cause, but it has to happen. You follow the train of thought?
You don't go in with any kind of gleefulness or any kind of sense of superiority or anything. We are all confronted in our own sin. But part of being a believer and part of wearing the name of Christ is that we have to be willing to confront things.
Part of being an advocate as a caregiver, we have to be willing to confront things. But let's do it with a clear mind. Let's do it with a clear heart. Let's do it with a sense of we want this to be peaceful. We're not looking to exact revenge.
We're not God's avenging angel. He can do that all by himself. That's what I mean by caregiver authority. That's what I mean by just authority. And anybody that comes in there going berserk, they're not dealing with authority. They're unleashed. That's just wrath and rage. And we're not prepared to wield that kind of stuff. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is self-control.
How can we be exhibiting self-control if we're just going berserk? That doesn't honor God. That doesn't honor God at all. And so that's the goal. That's the standard for where we would seek.
And that's not going to happen unless we spend time studying scripture, getting this in our hearts and our minds, renewing our minds as Paul said. Okay? So you can see more about that at my Substack page, that article on caregiver authority and all the other things I write.
Go to PeterRosenberger.com. While you're there, would you take a moment to look around? There's several things I have I would love for you to take a look at. One of them is it's at the end of the year. If you want to make a gift, the presenting sponsor of this program, Standing with Hope. Standing with Hope is the ministry that Gracie and I founded many years ago, over 20 years ago. We have two outreaches. One is the Prosthetic Limb Outreach. And if you go out to the website, you'll see the patients that we treat. The other is the Caregiver Outreach, which you're listening to right now. If you're finding value in this, if you're finding encouragement, if you're being strengthened and bolstered in this, would you help us do it for more?
If you get involved monthly and just make a recurring payment monthly, 25 bucks or more, whatever's on your heart, we have the caregiver calendar, 2025 caregiver calendar, which I think you'll really like. They're beautiful pictures. If I do say so myself, I just pointed the camera. God made, did all the work.
I just pointed the camera and I took it out here of our, where we live in Montana, the mountains around us and so forth. And I think you'll find it very meaningful. And then we have our tumbler. It says healthy caregivers make better caregivers on it.
And it keeps warm beverages warm and cold beverages cold. And we'd love to send that to you just as our gift for getting involved as a monthly supporter of what we do. Gracie and I started this a long time ago as a way of offering the same comfort that we ourselves have received. When we got out there and started doing it, we did not have it. We're lousy fundraisers. Both of us are. We just do and trust the Lord to bring it in. I'm just making you aware of an opportunity.
If you want to get involved, we'd love to have you. We don't have golf tournaments. We don't have rubber chicken dinners. We don't do anything like that. We focus on putting legs on people and pointing people to Christ to the best of our abilities with what God has given us. We comfort one another with the same comfort that we ourselves have received from the God of all comfort. That is what drives us. And we would welcome the help.
We have done it all by ourselves for many years. And we always welcome the help when people want to come along and say, hey, look, we see value in what you're doing. We like what we're seeing. We like what we're hearing. We think that it is worthy of us getting involved. We would be most grateful. And you could see more about that.
Just go to PeterRosenberger.com. R-O-S-E-N-B-E-R-G-E-R. It's all there. And let us hear from you. Healthy caregivers do make better caregivers. And when we confront, we can still do it in a healthy and even peaceful way. Scripture tells us, and that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll see you next time.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-12-29 12:10:54 / 2024-12-29 12:28:49 / 18