Caregiving is Hard—Humor Helps

Hey, do you know a caregiver in your life who is struggling with something and you don't really know what to say?

Well, guess what? I do. So get them this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers. When every day feels like Monday.

They're one minute chapters. And I'd love for you to put that in the hands of somebody who is struggling as they care for a chronically impaired loved one. And it could be somebody dealing with an aging parent or special needs child. Somebody that has an alcoholic or an addict in their family. Somebody who has a loved one who has had a traumatic experience, mental illness.

There's so many different kinds of impairments. There's always a caregiver. How do you help a caregiver?

How do you help somebody who helps somebody? That's where I come in. That's where this book comes in. And that's what I think you're going to find will be incredibly meaningful to them. And if you're going through that right now, they get a copy for you.

Friends don't let friends care give alone. I speak fluent caregiver for decades of this. This will help. I promise you it'll pull you back away from the cliff a little bit, point you to safety, give you something solid to stand on so that you or that caregiver you know can be a little healthier as they take care of somebody who is not healthy. Caregivers make better caregivers. It's called a minute for caregivers when every day feels like Monday wherever books are sold.

And for more information, go to PeterRosenberger.com. That's the program for you as a family caregiver. I'm so glad that you are with us today. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com if you want to find out more about what we do, why we do it, how we do it, who we're doing it for. And if you are a family caregiver, then that would be you. If you're not a family caregiver, give it time. You will be.

And when that time comes, we'll be here for you as well. More than 65 million Americans right now serve as a family caregiver. They are putting themselves between a chronically impaired loved one and even worse, disaster. How do you help that person stay strong and healthy as they take care of someone who is not? And I'm not talking about just physically healthy. I'm talking about emotionally, fiscally. That's financially for those of you in McDonkin. And spiritually.

How do you do this? What does that look like? And that's what we talk about here on this program. And we're glad you're with us. I am resuming this broadcast from the beautiful town of Aurora, Colorado, where ICE is coming to arrest a lot of people, evidently. There are a lot of Venezuelan gangs not terribly far from us. We're here at the hospital with my wife, who just had her 87th operation.

She will have her 88th in a couple of weeks. I am safe where I am. I'm not too worried about it.

It's on the other side of Aurora, from what I understand. I don't know. I did go to a grocery store the other day, and it was a bit gnarly because, you know, they got everything. I bought some laundry detergent because, you know, we're going to be here two months. So I had to buy some laundry detergent. And you've got to go find somebody with the key to be able to get laundry detergent. And then I went to check out at the front, and they don't have any bags out there. You've got to get somebody to go get the bags because somebody just picks up all the bags and runs out with them. There's an armed officer at the grocery store. And this is just, I mean, less than a mile down the road here from me.

And I felt like I was taking my life in my hands to go to the store. It's called King Super. That's the name of it.

It's owned by Kroger, but it didn't feel so super. I tell you, it just, I try to imagine what Trump would say. Peter! I said, sir!

He said, Peter, you're in Aurora. There's a lot of Venezuelan gangs there, some bad hombres, some bad hombres. You need to be careful. We got Tom Homan coming. Oh, he's a big guy. He's a tough guy. He's a tough guy.

He's a tough guy. We're going to get them out. We're going to send them back.

They're going to go. They don't belong here. Get them out. Get them out of here.

Get them out of here. It's going to be, it's going to be so tremendous, so fabulous, so fabulous. So stay safe so we can get your laundry detergent to you. Get it to you quick. We're going to get you your laundry detergent. How many people want laundry detergent? And we're going to have those higher water pressure washing machines.

We like those. And when you wash your hair, your beautiful hair, Peter, you got beautiful hair. Oh, I've seen your hair, Peter. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. It's tremendous. And we want you to have lots of water pressure to be able to wash that hair and get your shampoo without having to call the manager.

So it was a little bit surreal. Where I live in Montana, there are times I go into the store and honestly, the car running, you know, I've done that plenty of times. It's cold outside, you know, and so I just go in there. We got a little dollar store near us and just leave it running or go in to drop off something. You know, I can't do that here.

And a friend of mine let me borrow his car. And so I'm very careful to lock it up and park in a high visibility. It's been a while since I've lived in a high crime area and they're trying to, you know, gentrify this down here by the hospital a little bit and putting in some nice apartments and condos and so forth.

I think they'll eventually do it. But it's so unnecessary. It's truly unnecessary. You know, what do I say on this program about caregivers? I'm sorry, I'm kind of delving into this a little bit.

I'll get to Gracie here in a minute. She's doing fine. The surgery went well. But, you know, what I say, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Well, what about healthy communities? Healthy communities.

This is not healthy to have this. And you've got such crime and you've got such, it's just awful. And I'm thinking this is no way for us in the United States of America to be living. And we can do better.

And I'm hoping that we will as a country. We've got to get, just like when you're dealing with a trauma, you've got to cut off the bleeders at first and stop the hemorrhaging going out before you can start actually repairing and suturing up and everything else. And so we've got a lot of crime.

And evidently here, they've got these Venezuelan gangs that go marauding about and you've got to deal with them. And so, you know, Gracie says, look, you cannot go, you cannot walk back to the, I said the hotel is just right across the street. She said, you cannot walk back at night. And I don't want you walking back during the day. Well, I need the exercise.

I'm still trying to lose some weight here, you know, and I do need the exercise. But I don't walk back at night. I'll take an Uber.

We don't have Uber where I live in Montana. We have Goober. And that's, you know, that's what we have. And so it's, I'll do that. And then, like I said, a friend of mine now is let me borrow his car. So I feel stupid, though, because it's literally across the street.

I can walk there in less than 10 minutes. And, you know, but at night, it is not safe. I was sitting here last year when we were here for this long stretch. And some guy, there's a holding pond right here between the hotel and the hospital. And some guy just driven his car out into the whole holding pond. I mean, it was kind of crazy. There were so many sirens and so forth and police ambulances. And then the next day, they got him out. They got they had the wrecker out there to do it, but they had scuba gas.

It was in the wintertime. I thought, boy, that's a job I wouldn't want to do. So it's just a different world, but I'm getting used to it. I know this hospital now pretty well. This is our 13th hospital for Gracie to be inpatient in over her 40-year journey of this. And I've lost track of how many doctors have treated her, more than 100, which is, you know, pretty intense.

But she's doing well. She gets great care here. She's been in kind of a step-down unit, not ICU, but not a regular floor. In a surgical step-down, they call it whatever, but she gets a lot of care because she has quite an exotic program to be able to take care of her post-op. You can't go through what she's gone through and just treat her normally. And I really respect the care team that she has. They have given great deference to the level of trauma that Gracie has endured in her lifetime. And they look after her well, but they have just a different philosophy of care. They have service animals that go around with designated personnel. So she's been able to have two different dogs come into the room and just love on her.

And it's so precious. I put those out on social media, if you want. And you can go take a look. I try to put them in the Hope for the Caregiver group, which you can join, by the way, if you're not on Facebook. It's Hope for the Caregiver page, and then there's Hope for the Caregiver group. You have to answer a few questions on that one, and we try to keep that a little tight.

And I'll try to put those pictures out if you want to see them. It's really cute. One of them was a big English sheepdog. And I thought, this dog comes in. He's got a little vest on. Her name is Darla. So she's got her little vest on. But she's a huge English sheepdog.

And the guy that was with her, her handler, was just wonderful. And I thought, Disney's going to make a new movie called The Shaggy P.A. Now, for those of you in the medical world, that's funny. I don't care who you are. That's a very funny joke. That was clever, and I deserve the applause. And I want you to go ahead and just remain seated.

But it's really cute, and it brightens up her day. I've been working on a new book. I've got two books coming out this year that are already in the can with my publisher, Fidelis Publishing.

And then I'm working on a third book that will come out in 2026. And I've been reading some of that to Gracie, and she seems to like it. And she says it's very good. And so I sit there with her, and like I said, the nursing staff is great. I did get her Chick-fil-A the first night she was here, but I haven't done it since.

She's gone back to her program. She said, I've been so sedentary. I don't want to eat a lot of Chick-fil-A.

And that's wise that I'm trying to watch what I eat because hospitals are not known for helping you keep a diet. So we've kind of settled in here. It's all good. This ain't our first rodeo.

This ain't our 40th rodeo. And I use this time wisely to be able to write and produce material and do my show. The audio is going to be a little different, and you may hear the housekeeping staff clinging around at times here at the hotel and people running down the hallways. I have to unplug the refrigerator that I've got in this room because it makes a lot of noise, but it's all good.

It's all good. There's a reason I'm qualified to host a show for caregivers, I guess, isn't there? We're all in this together, and I'm glad you're here with me.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver. Healthy caregivers do indeed make better caregivers, and let's get healthy together. Starting today. Today's a great day to start. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, and I'm so glad to be with you today. PeterRosenberger.com If you want to find out more about what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and who we're doing it for, go out and take a look.

PeterRosenberger.com And while you're there, you'll see a link. You'll see a lot of links. One of them is to my Substack page, and on my Substack page, I have an enormous amount of content. Now, you do have to give an email to be able to get it. I'm not charging you for the vast majority of it. There's a paywall on some stuff. I put out some premium stuff that you can do.

That's entirely up to you. But every Monday, I put out a missive from my book, A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. And it is free, and you can take a look at it.

And I would love for you to do so. And this latest one is one I've talked about on this program a lot. It's from the book, and they're just one-minute chapters. I mean, literally one minute. You can read them in one minute. I timed them all.

Now, if I'm reading it and interrupting myself, it takes a little longer than one minute. Let's just be clear about that, so bear with me. But I wanted you to hear this one. I get an alert on my phone and through our devices like Alexa and so forth.

We have a lot of those kinds of things. People say, you shouldn't have it. And I'm like, oh, no. They say, well, it's listening. And I say, no, no.

Just do it. I have the same issue with my mother, because we were all the same thing with my mother. And I can tell you, my mother and my father spent a great deal of time counseling Alexa on her family issues and things that she'd had problems with with her parents.

That's just my mom and my father. So I'm not terribly worried about Alexa overhearing things and sharing national secrets here at our house. They're going to learn a lot about caregiving.

And they're going to learn a lot about what it's like to be married as a caregiver and a patient for four decades. And maybe Jeff Bezos will do something with that. But anyway, I get alerts on my devices when there's any kind of weather. And just like two days ago, and I got one for our home in Montana.

Even though I'm down here in Colorado, where all the gangs are. No, I get this alert and there was a big fog alert. We just had a lot of very cold winter.

It was warming up. And then we had a fog alert. And you get pretty heavy fog where we are.

And I'm sure where you are as well. Some of the worst fog I've ever had was going down to Fort Walton Beach one time. Gracie and I were driving down there from Nashville to visit her family.

And we ran into a fog bank below Brewton, Alabama, heading down towards that way through Milton and everything else. I mean, it was intense. And then I just looked on the weather, by the way, like almost eight inches of snow in Fort Walton Beach, Panama City area, Destin, all that kind of stuff. It was crazy. Just crazy.

And I thought, man, one week and Trump has already cured global warming. No, I'm just kidding. That's funny.

I don't care who you are. That's funny. And so, what does the weather service say about fog? It says, slow down. That tops the list of the directives from the National Weather Service to drivers encountering fog. Furthermore, they recommend doing what to your headlights when you're in a fog. By the way, if you hear sirens going on, I mean, I'm right across the street from the hospital, so I hear more sirens here one night than I hear all year where I live. But what does the weather service recommend doing with your headlights?

Anybody? Do you have them on high beam or low beam? You have them on low beam because the high beams do what?

They create a glare. Well, caregivers often find themselves in a fog where the actual fog, like you drive in and so forth, consists of water vapor. The caregiver fog consists of fear, obligation and guilt.

F-O-G, fog. Fear, obligation and guilt. Without exception, every caregiver will experience these difficult feelings in their journey. Fear, obligation and guilt. Those of you who have been a caregiver for any length of time, and by that I mean 24 hours, have you had fear, obligation and guilt in your journey?

Any one of those things or all three. They're not mutually exclusive and they're not all hitting at the same time. Sometimes they do. But the National Weather Service directive also applies to us as family caregivers. When we're disoriented by the caregiver fog, what do we do? Slow down. Slow down. What do we do with the headlights? We turn them on low beam. We don't put them on high beam. Why do you use high beam lights? Because you want to see far ahead.

You want to have more visibility. But you can't do that in a fog. You can't do that in a caregiver fog either. You turn those lights on low beam as caregivers. That means you quit trying to look too far down the road. If you do that, you're going to make yourself and others more agitated.

It doesn't work. You're just going to get a glare back. You cannot see that far. We don't know what's going to happen.

Now we know the one who does and we can trust him. Now, this is exactly why you see this over and over in scripture. Thy word is a what unto my feet? A searchlight? No, it's a lamp.

A lamp gives you enough light to see what? The next step. That's it. And that's all we're going to get many times in our journey as a caregiver. People have asked me about this and this and this with Gracie and all the things that we've been dealing with. And I'll say pretty much every time, I don't know. I don't know. And I'm okay with not knowing.

We've got very good people around her. I'm not trying to look long term down this road. I just deal with the next right thing, the next piece of real estate that I can put my foot on. And that's it.

That's all I have. I was talking to a physical therapist yesterday, same one, by the way, that we've had for the last four years that's been down here. And she's just a wonderful lady and loves Gracie and Gracie loves her. And I said to her, you got a plan? She said, yes, I do. And I said, good. Do you know how many times I asked her about what her plan was?

None. You know why? Because I'm not a physical therapist. And I have good people around her that really know their business and they know Gracie.

And I am very comfortable letting them do their job. I looked at her surgeon after the surgery and I said, how do you feel about it? He said, I feel really good about it. It was more of a mess in there than I thought it would be. But we got it cleaned out and I put this right where it belongs.

And I believe it's going to do exactly what it needs to do for her. And you know what I did? I thanked him.

I said, great work. You know, and that's it. I mean, there was a time before I would just fret, but I got to tell you, I will be 62 this year. And I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, Peter, you look a day over 61. Well, I'm not yet, but I will be. And you know, I'm getting too old to be this way, to fret over this. I am. I'm just getting too old for this.

It is exhausting to stay resentful. And if you go slow enough and don't try to look too far in the future, you could still drive even in a fog bank and not be freaked out. You know, a deer may jump out, but if you're going slow enough, you'll be okay. Another car may approach, but if you're going slow enough, you'll be okay.

That's the whole point. And I put a quote at the end of this from Douglas Horton. He said, drive slow and enjoy the scenery.

Okay, that's nice. But he added, drive fast and join the scenery. I do not wish to join the scenery. I do not wish to hit a tree. I do not wish to go off the road, go into a ditch. I don't want to do all those things.

I've done that. It is exhausting. It is expensive. It is painful.

It is frustrating. And the only thing that I can do is to slow down and deal with today as it is knowing that I have a Savior who's waiting for me tomorrow as He is with me right now. Now the question is, do we believe this? Ask Christians, do we believe this? See, it always comes down to this question, this implication of, we say these things, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He restores my soul.

Do we believe this? Gracie and I were singing together in the hospital the other day. That's how she copes. I'm holding her hand. She can't sit up very much at all. She only for like minutes at a time. Then she has to be on her back or rolled on her side because they don't want this leg bending at all.

It's very challenging for her. And so I'm holding her hand, which by the way, she had a lot of lotion on her hands. Her hands felt really soft.

And I was holding her hand and we're singing one of our favorite songs. He is our peace who has broken down every wall. I wish I had the caregiver keyboard here. I don't. And I'm sorry I don't.

But so you'll just have to imagine in your head when I get back to my studio at home that I will be glad to play this. But you know that song. He is our peace. He is our peace. He is our peace who has broken down every wall. He is our peace. He is our peace.

And what does the bridge do? Cast all your cares on Him. For He cares for you. He is our peace. He is our peace. My question is, and that's from the, I think that's from one of Peter's letters.

The bridge is, cast all your cares on Him. 1 Peter 5.7. In the English Standard Version it says, casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. The first part, He is our peace who has broken down every wall. I think that came from Ephesians. But this part, cast all your cares on Him.

For He cares for you. So my question to you and to myself, do we believe this? I mean really, do we believe that? And if so, how would anyone know? What would be the telltale of this? What would be the evidence that we actually believe this?

You know, I mean it's that simple. When we start asking that kind of question of ourselves and others, it changes things, doesn't it? It forces us to deal with this.

And this is the reality we have as caregivers because what we deal with is so in our face and it's nonstop, chronic, that's the whole point of chronic, we deal with it all the time. So I'm sitting here in a hotel room across the street. I'm getting ready to go over to Be With Gracie, recording this show.

I'm going to walk across in this dangerous neighborhood where there's a lot of bad hombres. You know, and I'm going to spend time with Gracie, read to her, just hang out. I may even interview her and just ask her what her thoughts are on some of these things. And we're going to help her heal through this process, get through all of next week. The following week, she has her second surgery of this particular run.

That'll be her 88th operation. And you know how much time I want to waste fretting about this? None. You know why? Because he is our peace.

Who has broken down every wall. Cast all your cares on him for he cares for you. And that is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger and we will be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger and I am very glad to be with you today. Hopeforthecaregiver.com Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

While you're there, by the way, you might want to sign up for our e-letter. We offer it once a month. We don't do a thousand a day. There's some people that do that. Particularly during the election season.

It was crazy that you're just getting all these emails. We don't do that. And we don't sell or give it out to anyone else. It's just to let you know what's going on with us. We have several features that we do every month. We have the patient of the month.

We'll talk about that the next block. We'll talk about a new song that we wanted to share with you. We'll talk about a posting on my blog and then Gracie's blog as well. She's been doing one on dealing with chronic pain. She certainly knows a lot about it. She's been dealing with it since 1983. That's a long time to be in pain, isn't it? So there are a lot of different features out there that we just offer and share with you.

Usually something I have on Substack or other news. But while you're there, sign up for it at Hopeforthecaregiver.com Speaking of Gracie, I recorded just a brief conversation with her in the hospital. She's been in the ICU area following her surgery. Now she's on a regular room. But they are working on her. It's a long recovery and she's got another surgery coming up on the 13th of February. But I thought you'd like to hear from her.

I did this on my phone, so I apologize for the audio quality. There were nurses in the room and so forth. But Gracie, how are you doing? I have breath in my lungs, so right now I'm concentrating on that.

That's a very good thing. The surgery went well, but the recovery is a little bit of a booger, isn't it? Yes, not being able to flex my leg is much more of a big deal than I thought. You've got to lay straight and flat. Of course, you haven't been flat in a long time because your legs would not stretch out all the way in. It's letting you know that it's awake now, isn't it?

Yeah, definitely. Any thoughts you have on this particular surgery, number 87, getting ready for 88? I don't have 87 surgeries would be my first thing. And then secondly, if you have to have this kind of surgery, try to breathe, which for some reason I stopped breathing when I was in a lot of pain.

That's not good. You don't stop breathing involuntarily. You hold your breath.

I tend to hold my breath, so don't do that. I'm saying a lot of don'ts instead of do. Don'ts are good.

I'll say a do, though. Focus. Well, they gave me a little toy bear because I think I was breaking my nurse's hand, holding her hand.

So it helps kind of like a stress ball. I don't let you hold my hand when I notice I still need the caregiver keyboard. I know I've noticed that.

So I learned that a long time ago. You let other people's hands be broken. You know what? We need to get you an artificial hand in here to hold that. You know, we can make that happen.

We can, since we do prosthetics. But so they gave me this little, he's a little cute bear or dog. I miss my baby so much. You got your dog for clarification. Yes, I miss my dog. Don't worry, I speak fluent, Gracie. You miss your dog.

I understand that. But we're going to get you a new dog when we get home because your dog. We're not letting him like try to live on his own or something. No, no, he's gone to that great kennel in the sky. And I believe he is there.

He's on the lap of Jesus. Well, he's waiting for you there, but we'll get you a new one. But I didn't want to have a puppy running around while you're trying to learn how to walk.

Yeah, that would be good. That's not good. But I can't wait to see them. But they bring dogs in here to let you see. I know.

Isn't that kind of neat? Well, I mean, I've been watching Disney and Sadie and Darla with the English sheepdog. And she wears a little tutu.

But she was huge. And I thought Disney was making a new movie called The Shaggy P.A., which is very funny, by the way. And I've already asked for for laughter. Well, nobody gives the laugh track. I mean, I could try that. Except that I have the viking laugh. Yes, you do have a viking laugh. So it would be, you know, you don't have to do it. You don't want me to test that? No, it's OK.

It's a family show, Gracie. He says, what? How would you say it all the time? Drunk viking. Yeah, drunk viking. I sound like a drunk viking. I don't know about drunk viking, but I haven't either. But every time you've said that, people go, well, is your heritage drunk viking? You know, and I'm like, I don't know.

You never know what's in there. Thor or Roosevelt. Or think about my maiden name, Parker.

So Thor Parker. This conversation has gone off. But which is which is more lifelike. Your nurse is here. She's going to give you things to help with this stream of pain in your left hip and leg. But you're doing OK. You've actually done better than you've probably even realized. This has been a very successful surgery for you.

The recovery is just a real difficult recovery because it's painful. And I know that. And I hate that for you. But you and my doctor did a lot of front end work. That's why I'm America's caregiver. That's right.

He's America's caregiver. And that helps a lot. God bless you.

And thank you so much. Yeah, buddy. We had a chaplain that is Gracie.

And I just, like I said, recorded that on my phone. But we had a chaplain come by two days ago that was really kind of funny. I didn't say anything because they're very sincere and lovely people. And this particular chaplain prayed for Gracie and asked God to bless her from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. Evidently, the chart was not red. And I almost said, well, hold that thought.

Let me go across the street to the hotel room and get her toes. But I didn't because I didn't do that. OK, I did. Y'all would have been proud of me for that, that I did not do that. But when you're praying for somebody, you might want to have a little bit of background information.

I don't care who you are. That's funny right there. So, you know, it's been a bit of a journey and she's hanging tough, but she has a hard life.

Just absolutely no question about it. And I found myself asking, you know, some of the nurses and physical therapists and even doctors, you know, that have come by and they're getting younger and younger by the day. I was talking to one of the internal medicine doctors this morning. They're making rounds and I said, look, thank you for the extra attention. She's been doing this a long time. I said, what were you doing in 1983?

Well, none of these people were even born. And that's how long she's been dealing with this reality. And it's a hard journey, but we're going to get her through this.

And we're going to do the next surgery here in a couple of weeks. And I anticipate her left leg being a little more solid and stronger, ready to put on her prosthesis and stand and hopefully stand straight for the first time in a very long time. I don't know if they're going to let her stand before they work on the right leg or not. I really don't know at this point.

They've got a plan, they said, and we're not pushing. They can't let her stay in one position because she'll get sores. So they have to kind of rotate her and turn her every two hours, that kind of thing.

And it's pretty uncomfortable. She's a pretty good sport and she has a goofy sense of humor, as you can tell. Yes, I will take credit for that. When I first met Gracie, she laughed and she was fun, but she was not sarcastic. And I grew up with four brothers and a sister and we speak fluent sarcasm.

I mean, it was spoken around every day. Now, my father did not. My mother does.

Dad, that was not his thing, but the rest of us did and we still do. And Gracie, that was unusual to her. She has one sister who's four years older and so, therefore, she didn't have that kind of boisterous, loud family that I had, where you learn to just tussle and squabble and everything else.

Gracie's house was very quiet and Gracie was a serious person. She was dealing with serious things. And I noticed a lot of her friends and all that, even past boyfriends, and I've met a few of them.

Y'all don't tell anybody what I'm about to tell you, okay? There was this guy she broke up with in high school and he evidently carried a torch for her for a very long time from her hometown. A nice guy, I met him, very nice guy. Very, very nice guy. And I looked at him, this is decades later, and I said, she did you a favor, she'd have killed you, graveyard dead, she'd have killed you.

He didn't know quite how to respond, but Gracie is kind of a force of nature. This old fellow, she did him a favor. But she's learned to be sarcastic and goofy and so forth. I would like to take credit for some of that. I would like to think that I had a part in that. I don't know that the gift of sarcasm is a sanctioned spiritual gift or a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

I don't think it is. But it has served us well in our journey, which has been on a good day, challenging. And on a bad day, it's brutal. And you've got to keep a sense of humor about it and you've got to keep goofy and so forth. And I was with the doctors and they asked if I had any questions. I said, well, is Tourette syndrome a byproduct of this surgery?

Gracie shot me a look. But I do that intentionally. You know why? Because her life is very hard.

And the more I'm able to kind of distract her and hit the barrel, you heard her say, she holds her breath when she gets in pain. And you can't do that. Or as Trump would say, you're not supposed to do that. That's not good.

It's not good. And so when I will kind of distract her or say something outrageously goofy, it helps her explode that air out. And it keeps her breathing more robustly. And that's healthy for her. I mean, I'm not doing it because I'm so altruistic. I'm doing it because my nature is to be just that big of an idiot.

But it has an unintended side effect that it helps my wife because her life is hard and she does not need me over there wringing my hands and crying and fretting and everything else. She needs me to let her know that it's going to be okay. And it is going to be okay. I don't know what it's going to look like in this life.

So far it's been four decades of hard. But I am assured of what it's going to look like in the next one. And we trust him with that. And that's our journey. That's why we do what we do.

That's who we are. All that training I did, extensive training, in developing this amazing gift I have of sarcasm, evidently it paid off. And I'm grateful that I'm able to bring a little levity in her life and, quite frankly, in the lives of others who read my stuff and listen to my program.

I remember when I first started doing the radio show. It was Jeff Foxworthy who told me, he said, Peter, make them laugh. They need to laugh.

It's an explosive valve of release. And you know more than most how painful this is. Make them laugh. So my goal is to hopefully make Gracie laugh on any given day. And hopefully she won't hold her breath. This is Peter Rosenberger, and this is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. MUSIC Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, and are you going to fly away?

I love that song. That's why Gracie and I are able to laugh at a lot of these things, because we know that this ain't the end of the story. If it was, I want to tell you all something.

Don't you ever tell anybody what I'm about to tell you. And I mean that. But I helped Gracie write her first book. We're working on her second right now, but I helped her write her first one. And it's called Gracie Standing with Hope. It's a great book.

I get it. It's a wonderful book. But I promise you this.

When we started writing it, I came this close to making the title of that book. You've got to be kidding. This can't be my best life now. I didn't think Joel Osteen would be all that happy with me. And I didn't want to cause any problems. I wasn't looking for trouble.

I wasn't looking for trouble. But there is a point when you realize, as believers, do we actually adhere to what the Apostle Paul said when he said, the things in this world, the suffering here, the challenges we face, are not worthy to be compared. Do we actually believe that?

And if so, how would people know? What would that look like? And I would suggest to you that it looks like keeping a sense of humor when all this craziness is going on in our life. To keep reminding each other that... Yes we will.

Yes we will. And that's what I hope to do with Gracie. A pastor friend of mine told me that I have the heart of a pastor, but I really only have a congregation of one.

And that's Gracie. And my job is to constantly point her to Christ so that the despair and the heartache and the pain and the sorrow and everything that she carries doesn't overwhelm her. That is my sole mission with her, is to shepherd her through this brutal journey that she has. And I do that on this program for you and others, but my primary is for her. And how am I going to do that if I don't believe it?

How am I going to do this if it hasn't radically changed my life? I've seen people fake it for a while, but you can't fake it for four decades. Let me just put that out there, okay? This is unsustainable apart from Christ, what Gracie and I deal with.

It is unsustainable. There has to be something greater than me. I gave out my experiences, my abilities. Whatever I brought to the table gave out a long, long time ago.

It didn't last hardly any time. But God gives. Oh, it's eternal.

That is the hope of us. Christ in us, the hope of glory, Scripture says. And so Paul was doing this, writing these exhortations to us, while bearing the scars on his own body. Pain, beatings, bruising, stonings, whippings, floggings, shipwreck. I mean, he goes through the whole litany of all the things that he's endured.

And he said, none of this is worthy to be compared. Christ, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, set his face like flint. And these are things that stick with me and weigh heavy on me as I go into Gracie's hospital room every single day here. And then when we get home, as I take care of her, knowing that I have one mission, point her to Christ. Because if I point her to me, she is in bigger trouble, much bigger trouble than she already is. Oh, love that will not let me go, as the hymn writer said. I'm sorry I don't have the caregiver keyboard.

I'd play it for you. It's a great hymn. But you go back and look through the hymnal, and you start seeing all of these texts of hymn writers who arrived at that same place I'm talking to you about. And that's why we do what we do. Because we arrived there because God brought us there to show enough of himself to sustain us in these things. And that's one of the reasons we started the prosthetic limb ministry.

Gracie had that vision herself of being able to put legs on her fellow amputees and tell them about Jesus, to offer the same hope that sustains her. That's what we do. That's why I started this program.

The same hope that sustains me through these journeys as a caregiver. I want to pass on to you all. And you have been gracious enough to allow me to do so. And I'm just telling you, I would love to tell you that I'm wise.

I would love to tell you that I've figured all these things out myself. I haven't. Y'all know me better by now.

Y'all know how goofy I am. I'm not speaking on my own authority. This is what the scriptures say.

This is what I have seen and witnessed. O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the storm He blasted, our eternal home.

You know, Isaac Watts understood that concept. John Newton, through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. Twas grace that brought us thus far, and grace will lead us home. You know, great is I faithfulness, morning by morning, do mercies I see, all I have needed. Now, when Gracie sings that song, and she sings it very well, by the way, when she sings that, you have to understand the context of what she's saying, all that I have needed.

She's missing both legs. She's in pain all the time, and yet she sings that song. Her nephew was telling me this when I was playing a song of hers, that you can hear out on, go out to her website, hopethecaregiver.com, and you can see the music there. It's called Thankful. She did a great job with this, and I would highly recommend you downloading this and just listening to her sing this. It's phenomenal. And he said, boy, when Aunt Gracie sings a song, it really takes on a whole different meaning, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. It absolutely does, because her story is framing everything she's bringing to the table musically. And by the way, if you don't hear a lot of background noises, a lot of high volume of ambulances and all that stuff, I'm running across the street from the hospital, and I'm doing this in a hotel room, and I cannot find a soundproof booth anywhere, so y'all just have to be family, all right, while I'm down here.

Y'all just going to have to be family. But if Gracie's story frames every song she sings, so I want to ask you a question. What is your story framing?

What songs are you singing that is being framed by your story? Is this limited to Gracie? I don't think so. Is it limited to me?

No. I see nowhere in Scripture where it signals Gracie and me out that we are to do these things. We are being encouraged for all of us to do these things. Comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from the God of all comfort, Paul says it very clearly in Corinthians. So my question to you is, what are you doing? When you take on something, does it change everything?

Does the listener of whatever it is you're doing, whether you're reading a passage of Scripture out loud, whether you're sharing a hymn, whether you're making something art, whatever, it doesn't matter, whatever you do, whatever skills you bring to the table, are those things enhanced because of the redemptive work of Christ in your life? And do people see that and resonate with it? It's a good question, isn't it? I think that's the question for all of us. If we really believe these things, how would people know? And there is no doubt. You may not believe what Gracie believes. You may not agree with whatever she purports from her faith. I've seen her perform in an audience all across the country and filled with people that are from all kinds of faiths and no faiths. And they didn't necessarily agree with her. But I'll tell you this, they had no doubt that she believed it.

They had no doubt that she believed it. And that, I think, is a great testament. And I think that's an extraordinary statement to make about anybody, any of us.

Do people have doubts on whether we believe what we say we believe? The reason you listen to this program, that you even give me the time of day to be able to spend this time with me, is because you've had things in your life that are pretty brutal. And you want to hear from somebody who has weathered, an incredible stormy blast, as I referenced that hymn a moment ago. And I've got them.

I'm in them right now. And my hope is that this will give you the courage to take that extra step out and start putting yourself out there. I've told you about this. My father impressed this so much on me with everything of his ministry. God is not doing all the redemptive work in your life to keep you in the workshop. He wants to put you on display. We are His workmanship, and God likes to show His workmanship off. And that's you and me. You say, Peter, I've got a lot of scars.

I'm not much to show off. Let God worry about that, okay? You just be obedient to testify to what you have seen, witnessed, touched, and experienced in the redemptive work of Christ, okay? Hey, listen, by the way, speaking of the prosthetic limb ministry, we're picking up a bunch of supplies from the prison that we work with in Arizona.

CoreCivic runs this. Inmates volunteer to help us disassemble these legs and then use the components to build new legs, and we're picking all that up this week, and we're going to be shipping it over to Africa. If you could be a part of that, we would be very grateful. Go to standingwithhope.com and see how you can get involved today, standingwithhope.com, to help give the gift that keeps on walking. Let's go out and be His workmanship to a world that desperately needs to see it. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com. We'll see you next time.