Valentine’s Day in the ICU: Love, Loss, and Caregiving Realities

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.

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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.

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And for more information, go to PeterRosenberger.com. I am very glad to be with you today. How are you feeling? How are you holding up?

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Couple things I wanted to jump into today. First off, I'll let you know I'm still in the Denver area where I will be here for another month as Gracie gets ready for another surgery next week, next Thursday. It'll be our second Valentine's Day in a row that we've spent in the hospital, but that's okay.

We still get to spend it together. She is doing well, but has a long ways to go. She has a tough journey.

She is strong and she's got a good attitude. We've had some great visits with friends. We've got a couple of really long-term friends here in this area.

One is a buddy of mine that I went to college with, and then another one is a couple of friends that I was with in college. This is back in the early 80s, and then Gracie has a lifelong friend that she was in junior high with, that she grew up with. She used to sing with this group called The Continentals. I don't know if you've ever heard of them or not, but one of the tour directors that she went out. There's a lot of groups, I mean a lot of singers and players and so forth, and one of them lives here. A long-time friend and they were very big parts of Gracie's life before her wreck.

So he came by to visit and it was just great. You could tell it just really lifted her spirit. She can't do much. She has to lay flat. They turn her periodically just to keep her from getting bed sores, but it's acute caregiving. I have to help her eat and so forth. I'm staying in a long-term hotel situation extended care right across the street from the hospital so I can walk back and forth. Gracie doesn't like it when I walk. We're not in the best area of the country here. We'll talk about that more as the show progresses. I'm in Aurora, Colorado.

You've probably heard about it when you hear about those Venezuelan gangs and so forth. I've got to tell you, I'm underwhelmed by Aurora. I don't know who's in charge of this place at the city council and the mayor and so forth, but they would serve themselves well by enforcing some of it. There are laws around here. She's right to not have me walk at night. She gets really nervous. She makes me call over there to make sure I get back to my room okay.

It's not that far. I am getting my steps in, by the way. I have a little app on my phone that tracks my steps and I'm getting in 7, 8,000 steps a day.

I'm trying to work my way up to 10,000 and I'm back and forth to the hospital and then going downstairs at the hospital to the cafeteria and come back up. I bring her a coffee. She likes that. I get my steps in, but I came out of the hospital the other night heading over to the hotel and if it wasn't gunfire, it was mighty close to it. I live in Montana, so I'm familiar with what gunfire sounds like.

I thought, okay, in Montana, it's one thing to hear gunfire. It's another thing when you're coming out of the hospital in a crowded city like this. Well, that's unsettling. But anyway, we'll get to that because there's some thoughts that I have on that with the new article that I've written that I think you might find meaningful and so forth. But she's doing well. Her surgeon called me and he said, look, this is going as well as we could hope. So that's a good thing.

He said we're all very optimistic. She has a very tough, tough life. And the fact that we haven't had any kind of significant complications, everything seems to be progressing.

Right along, you know, you stop and give thanks for it. And she has pretty good attitude. I mean, her spirits are pretty good and I try to keep them up. I'm working next to her a lot and I'm helping her with her new book. She does a blog post every month and then that's going to be part of her book. And if you go to it and you can see it at the site, hopethecaregiver.com, just go up to where it says resources at the top and just click on blog and you can see her stuff. And it's in there with it. But if you sign up for our e-letter, we'll send it to you.

Make sure you get it and you'll be able to click on it easily and get to it. It's easy to do. So it's a great thing she's been doing. She dictates to me, she can't write because her hand has got some issues with it. So she can't type and it's very difficult to her to write. So she dictates to me, which she has years of field work dictating to me. Let me just say that right now. My wife is not shy about dictating to me.

Hey, you, come here. That's what she said. No, she doesn't, I'm kidding.

Well, okay. But these are conversations we've been having for a long time about pain, something she knows quite a bit. And she's been storing up these thoughts. She hasn't written a book since 2010. That's when her story was released, 15 years ago. And she's been thinking about this for a long time. And one of the things I think I admire about her and what she's done is that she didn't get out there and put a book out about her journey until she was 25 years into it.

Some people have some kind of dramatic event and they got a book out the next week. And we as a culture, as a Christian culture, tend to make celebrities out of people before it's had a chance to season. And I don't think anybody could say that about Gracie. Her stuff has had a chance to season. And so as she reflects on living with chronic pain, as she has done now for over 40 years, she has some powerful insights. And I think that you would find it not only inspiring, but very profound of what she brings to the table. Gracie thinks about things differently. It's, the way she approaches it is because she's so in it. And in fact, I'll read you a quote.

And let me just preface. I know this is not the best opening to a show to start jumping into chronic pain, but that's where she and I live. And we've learned to live in this, okay? We're not trying to escape this. This is our life. A chaplain came by the room the other day to pray with her and Gracie said, look, I need you to understand, we're not trying to transition into something else.

We know this is our life. And whatever this does for me, it's not going to get me out of pain. It's not going to make my legs grow back. It's just going to ease some of my pain and make it possible for me to walk straighter and live a better quality of life.

But I'm not looking to have a pat on the shoulder and say, let's get you back into life. This is my life, which I thought was, the hospital chaplain, it was a new experience. And Gracie was able to, I think, bring some depth to that conversation that people just don't expect, unless you've lived with it like she has. But here's a quote that she said, pain doesn't just change you. It introduces you to a version of yourself you never knew existed. Now that's rather profound, wouldn't you say? I was like, hey, baby, that's pretty good, you know? But it is interesting to see her interact with people who knew her before the wreck.

I did not. So she's had these friends that have come by, one of them that's known her since literally she was just 12 years old. And they see her in who she's become in this journey.

And all of them just drop their jaws. There's such a depth to her. She's still goofy and all that kind of stuff, and she always will be. But it's extraordinary what she sees and what she feels and experiences and ponders on. And so I'm very excited about this. I think you'll like this blog she's putting out.

And again, you go out to hopeforthecaregiver.com right at the top where it says resources, just go to blog. We're gonna talk some more when we come back. A lot of things going on in the world around us that apply to us as caregivers.

I think you'll find them very meaningful. This is Peter Rosenberg, and this is Hope for the Caregiver. We will be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg, and I am so glad to be with you today. I hope you're doing well. I hope you're having a good time. I hope you're ready to start the day off strong. And if not, I hope you got some good coffee close by.

I know I do. I drink my coffee, Gracie likes, I know exactly how to make her coffee because I stop by a little place there at the coffee shop in the hospital cafeteria, and I get her a cappuccino on the way up because I did have some of the coffee from the hospital. And the food at the hospital's actually really good except the coffee. The coffee is, you remember that scene in the Ten Commandments when Charlton Heston looked at all the people that were worshiping the golden calf and he said, you shall drink bitter waters. That's what the coffee tastes like at the hospital.

It's not good. Gracie likes a cappuccino and she likes it with two sugars, and she likes the raw sugar. Sometimes two and a half sugars, but that's it. I, on the other hand, like black coffee. I like it really black. I mean, like dark, under the bed coffee.

If you get out of the car holding your coffee, the oil light comes on. That's how I like coffee. I mean, I want it black and bitter. Not as bitter as, it's not that, the coffee at the hospital, it's not that it's bitter, it's sour, it's different. You know what I mean? You ever had like sour coffee?

That's what it tastes like. Don't tell them, okay? Because they're nice people, I like them. They got everything else that's good. I'm just not a real big fan of the coffee. That's the coffee that they bring to her room. If I get coffee downstairs, it's pretty good.

And they got this one thing that they have and it's called Red Eye. And it's two shots of espresso inside a cup of coffee. And I took that and Gracie made me leave.

Because I was just bouncing off the walls. But it was, that's my kind of coffee. It's still the best coffee for me. I don't know how many of y'all drink coffee, but the best coffee for me is still Waffle House coffee. There's something about going to Waffle House, holding that mug, I love the weight of that mug, and I like drinking their coffee. And I can't eat that stuff anymore because I'm really trying to watch my weight, which I'm doing pretty well. And like I said, I'm getting my steps in. And I haven't weighed myself because I don't have a scale really that's handy. So I don't know, but I'm judging by my clothes.

I think I'm maintaining at least, and that's good. And, but I do like Waffle House coffee. And it is, when you have that with hash browns, scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, and dice. You know, they got a Waffle House here in Denver, near where the hospital is.

I've given some real thought to it. You know, since it is going to be Valentine's Day here in a couple of weeks, I mean, next week. When is Valentine's Day? Oh yeah, it's next week. It's Thursday. No, it's Friday. It's Friday. Well, that'd be the day after her surgery.

I don't know that she'll probably still, she'll be in ICU again. I wonder if I should bring Waffle House takeout into the ICU. You think I should?

I mean, you know, has it been done before? Has anyone ever brought, well, I have brought Chick-fil-A into the ICU. And, but I wonder if I should bring it for our Valentine's meal together. We should have Waffle, I do take out Waffle House. I think I'm gonna do it.

I'll let you know. I can't promise that they may bar me at the door for doing such a thing. They let, by the way, they let dogs in. I mean, well, she's in a step-down unit.

It's between ICU and a regular room, but it's still considered kind of special care. But they've got dogs that travel around to meet with patients, and they brought in this one English sheepdog. I think I told you about that. I got a picture of it on her Facebook group, and it comes in, and her name is Darla, and they put a little tutu on her, which is kind of weird. But she's a big English sheepdog, and I thought about calling her, you know, well, y'all are gonna think this is silly. Well, of course you will. It's me. But I thought, well, and I said this to Gracie.

I said, look, it's Disney's new movie, The Shaggy PA, and that's funny. But so if they bring a dog into there, I would think that you could bring Waffle House. I don't think there's any kind of law, whether from a spiritual law or a man-made law. I don't think there's a law prohibiting Waffle House. Paul says that, you know, I could eat anything. My father, there's a place, and I wear my little, I got a vest that I wear.

My mom gave me two for Christmas. It says Skins Hot Dogs on it. And I grew up, and there's this, it was a little dive, and all they served was hot dogs and chips and Coke.

That was it. Now they've gone to Pepsi. I don't know what happened, what kind of philistine moment happened. But anyway, Skins Hot Dogs, great place, and our whole family's grown up going there. So every time I'd go home, we'd go over there to Skins, get a couple of them all the way, chili mustard and onion, that kind of thing. But when Dad would go with us, he would always say the blessing, and he would look at these hot dogs with chili mustard and onions on them, and he would always start off the blessing, Lord, I'm conflicted.

And I always thought that was very funny. And that's the way sometimes it is with Waffle House, when you sit down and ask the blessing, Lord, I'm conflicted. But you know, you make the best of it. I mean, it's Valentine's Day, and we're gonna be in the hospital, big, big whoop.

We've done it before, we'll do it again, I'm sure, before this is all said and done. And it's what you make of it. It's how you live your life. Some of you understand that. And if I had to do that, it's some of you, Valentine's Day could be a rather painful day. Do you have to get your own card? If you do, that's okay. Pick out a card that represents the love that you all share, and that is emanating from you.

Okay? You don't have to get weird about it. If your spouse could do it, what's the kind of card that they would get for you?

And that's the kind of card you pick out. It's all right. And if you haven't had to do it yet, and you do it for the first time, you know, it's tough, it's a little sad. But if you focus more on the love, it makes that sadness a little more easier to deal with. And you know, I've done it all, anniversary, birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's, I've had to do it all, and that's okay.

It's all right. Gracie hates it, she absolutely hates it. She gets mad, she cries, and she has friends that pick up cards sometimes and does those things, and she does absolutely the best she can. But I gotta tell y'all, when your wife's in the ICU, you don't really expect her to get a card, okay? And you can let go of that expectation. There was a time I used to think Valentine's Day was just a made-up day by Hallmark.

It may be, but either way, if that's something that's important to you, do it, but do it with that mentality in mind, okay? And I also wanna give a big shout-out to my mother, who will turn, should I tell you what your age is, mom? Well, she's older than me, how about that? She's older than me, and her birthday is the day of Gracie's surgery, so I'm gonna be calling her after she goes into surgery, and I don't know what, mom, I have no idea what I'm getting for you for your birthday.

I mean, you've got everything that you could ever want, I know that, and you're very happy. In fact, you keep giving stuff away, and I am grateful for her. She listens to this program each week. She listens to this station, and then she calls me up and says, "'Okay, Peter, I heard a show that was after you, "'and I really wanna send that to so-and-so.'" And I said, well, what about my show?

Did you wanna send that one, too? She said, well, yeah, but she was listening to, who comes on after me, producer Pat? Oh, it's The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton, and mom called me up after last week, and she said, you know, I just listened for two hours after you were on, and I love that she has this network to listen to and how much it means to her. Mom can't see very well because of macular degeneration, so she can't read like she used to love to read, and she's got a big-screen TV to watch, but it's kinda hard for her to see it, but she does watch Quincy every night.

So, mom, on your birthday, just have a Quincy marathon. I don't know how you see it, but I think you know every episode anyway, but have a Quincy marathon, but she does, there's some great programming here that means so much to her, and she's able to listen to it, and I will tell you one of the greatest compliments she's ever said about this network is that during very low times when she was taking care of dad and sitting with him before he stepped into glory, she said, I could turn on AFR at any point, at any point in the night, and hear somebody telling me about Jesus. Can you think of a greater tribute to this station, to this network, to this group of people that work tirelessly at American Family Association and American Family Radio?

What a tribute. I could turn on AFR any time of day, 24-7, and somebody's gonna tell me about Jesus, and this is a woman who's walked with the Lord for a lifetime. Like I said, she's a little older than me, and she still wants to hear somebody tell her about Jesus in those dark places of the night, and I think, how many people, and I get letters from you all, listeners in this audience who are just so precious, and some of the listeners to this program are incarcerated.

Some are in a hospital. Some of them have just come from a funeral, and it means so much that you take the time to write and tell me what this program means to you. I'm just one beggar telling another beggar where the bread is, okay?

That's all I am, and I would love to take credit for being wise and all those things, but y'all know better. I have seen and watched the hand of God move in ways that are staggering to me, even as Gracie and I deal with these hard realities, and Gracie's life is hard. I mean, it just is hard, but as we deal with those things, we still see God's provision, and we laugh, we cut up, yeah, we cry. We do all those things, but we also know that, and Gracie would be the first to tell you, he has saved her from something far worse than this. She'd be the first to tell you, and that's what gives us that hope.

That's what gives us that strength. That's what gives her that perseverance, that endurance that Paul talks about, and it produces in her something that is exceptional, and me, and you, and the rest of us, knowing that he who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus, even if we spend Valentine's Day in the hospital for the second year in a row, 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. I am Peter Rosenberger, and I'll be your guide through all things caregiver related for this program, your caregiver guide, caregiver companion.

By the way, that is the name of my new book that is coming out this fall. It's called The Caregiver Companion. The Caregiver Companion is gonna be, this is the second book that I've done with Fidelis Publishing, and this is a list of quotes that I've had over the years that I've culled, and I married each quote with a stanza from a hymn or a particular scripture that fits, you know, that really accents the point there, and I have a twofold purpose of this. One is I want to be able to provide caregivers with something they can remember, and I usually come up with these little phrases that I use for myself. I just, that's how I do it.

In the midst of the moment, it's very difficult to think sometimes, and so I wanted to come up with something very quick and pithy that a caregiver could hold onto when it gets a little bit gnarly, and it does. And then I'm also pointing readers to scripture to really underscore the principle of it, and maybe seeing a scripture that you've probably read before maybe not thought of it in these terms, and the life application of that scripture or that hymn text, and also by doing so with the hymns, you know how much I love the hymns, and I want to do for myself and others the same thing I've been doing on this program for 13 years now, which is to have a higher view of God. Can we see a higher view of God in the midst of our troubles and our distresses and our pains and our challenges? And the answer is yes, we can. In fact, I believe we're called to that, and Paul was able to do that from a prison. So surely, and I don't mean to call you surely, but certainly we can do this as caregivers, no matter what we're doing, whether we're cleaning up a mess, whether we're so tired we can't even hardly think straight, whether we are frustrated or angry or distressed or crying, whatever it is that we're going through, can we have a higher view of God in this? And I say not only can we, we must, we must. We've got to lift up our heads, and this is something I wanted to be able to provide, and my publisher is Fidelis Publishing.

They immediately jumped on this. They liked it, and then I've got a book following that that'll be out later on. It's called Will Mommy Be Okay? And it's a children's book that I wrote, and I've been stewing on this for about five or six years, and I remember these questions from my children, and so I wrote that for them.

I think you'll find it meaningful. I kind of processed out some things from a child's perspective of my children didn't have the vocabulary to ask some of the questions, and so I had to kind of walk into those places with them and figure that out so that I could communicate to them in a way that they understood in the midst of their pain and sorrow and loss and all the things that they felt watching their mother suffer, and these are things that just stay very important to me in my heart, and so I wanted to be able to do that so grandparents and parents and teachers and pastors can have that vocabulary of some of the feelings that are going on in children that they don't have the vocabulary to express, but as you read together, and it's really good for seven, eight, and nine-year-olds, and it's really good for 57, 58, and 59-year-olds. Some of us are dealing with the fact that our parents right now are aging and slipping and declining, and Mom told me the other day, she said, I'm getting old, and I thought, well, okay. And you are, Mom, but will Mommy be okay? Will my mother be okay? She's got six children and six sons-in-law, daughter-in-law. She's got 17 grandchildren and their spouses. She's got 26 great-grandchildren, but you know what? She's still a mom, and I want to know, is Mommy going to be okay? And I will tell you that my mother is and will be okay because I know who holds her.

I know who holds her. And ultimately, that's where we're going with this, is to have that assurance to speak into that. So these are things I've got, and then I've got another book. I've been doing all this throughout my time at the hospital over the last couple of years. So when I sit there in Gracie's room and I write, and I've been working on a new book that'll be coming out in 2026, and I'll be telling you more about that later. This is a little bit of a departure for me into an area of pastoral care, and I think you're going to be very pleased with that. So I'm practicing what I talk about all the time on this program, which is to be productive, because I cannot stop being productive, waiting on Gracie to get better or worse.

I mean, that's crazy. How does that help her? Remember what I talked about. I'm no good to her if I'm fat, broken, miserable. So the best way I can serve her is to keep being productive, even if I have to do it on a laptop. I stole her hospital tray a little bit and put her stuff on another different smaller tray, but she was okay.

She gave me permission for that. But I sit there and work there in the hospital. I did an interview the other day with AARP. They called me up and the question that he said, look, I'll call you Monday.

Be thinking about this question. And the question was, what would you say to a spouse who is preparing to care give for their loved one and don't know, they don't know how they feel about it? Which I thought was an odd question.

What advice would I give them? And I said, well, first off, it doesn't matter how you feel about it at this point. I mean, here we are. Now, what are you going to do about it? He said, well, some may feel like they are not up for the job. And I said, well, what are the options?

I said, you have, I think he was a little bit surprised by my answers. I said, you have three possible avenues. You can figure it out.

You can get some help or you can abandon them. But what else are you going to do? I mean, what other path do you see here? This issue was settled when you took vows on your wedding day. And all of a sudden now, you're saying, well, I didn't sign up for this. Well, yeah, you did. That's what it means.

This is what it does. It doesn't mean you're going to be good at it. It doesn't mean you're probably going to succeed at it, but it means you're showing up. And I said to him, the greatest advice I can give to any fellow caregiver is a phrase that I actually trademarked.

I literally trademarked this phrase. It's healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And I put that on our tumblers. We have, Standing With Hope gives out tumblers when people support the ministry, monthly, and we have these wonderful tumblers we had made, and it says on there, healthy caregivers make better caregivers.

And if you want one of those, you can go out to standingwithhope.com slash giving, and that helps us advance this program and the prosthetic limb outreach, the two flagship programs of our ministry. But regardless of which, the healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Now, why do I say that? Not happy caregivers, healthy caregivers.

And the big advice I would tell people is don't try to be happy, don't seek after that. And that sounds odd, doesn't it? But let me explain, or as Ricky would say to Lucy, let me explain. Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, but the ones that do are laughing because that's funny and you know it. But being happy is contingent on what?

What? Something happening that makes you feel good. Now, just a quick show of hands, how many of you in the caregiving audience that is this program feel good about what you're dealing with as a caregiver? I would suggest to you that very few of us do, and our loved ones certainly don't.

I can tell you this, Gracie facing this surgery next week is not feeling good, and she's having to be laying down in a bed and be turned every couple of hours to make sure she doesn't get bed sore. She doesn't feel good. So what are we looking for here? Something that makes us feel good? Because that's what the world does. The world is looking for things that make us feel good. And if it doesn't, remember what they said, if it feels good, do it.

And if it doesn't feel good, get rid of it. That's what is at the core of so much of our society's dysfunction. We have rampant sexual immorality. We have abortion on demand. We have drugs and alcohol.

These are things that are plagues upon us. And it's all stemmed in, I want to feel better. I want to feel better.

I want to feel happy. I'm not happy. Look at the divorce rate. And by the way, the Christian marriages, they're not a whole lot more different than the secular marriages. I don't see a whole lot of vast difference in the divorce rate in churches and Christians, believers and non-believers. I don't see it. It's depressing to look at.

And when you throw in the disability factor, those of us in a marriage with a disability, the divorce rate is almost 90%. That's why I tell you, don't worry about trying to be happy. I have to make things happen or things have to happen that may be on my control that are going to make me feel better, make me feel happy. But I can be healthy right now. I can do something healthy right this moment. I can put down a soda, pick up water. I can put down a candy bar and pick up something that's healthier to eat, vegetable, whatever. I can eat lean protein instead of going through the drive-through at McDonald's.

I can have boundaries in toxic relationships. I can have time alone where I can be quiet with my thoughts. Even if you have to close the closet door or the bathroom door, you can still do it. I could turn off Netflix and instead go to the word of God. We can do those things right now.

I could do pushups. I could go for a walk. I've been counting my steps, by the way.

I've got an app on my phone. I'm telling you about all these things that I'm doing here. And I'm averaging 7,500 steps a day.

I'm trying to get up to 10,000. I can do all those things. And I can be productive while I'm working. I can be healthier.

I can make healthy decisions right now. That is a higher calling for us, not just as caregivers, but as human beings. What good is it to drive ourselves into sickness as we pursue happiness? And here's something I learned. The more I pursue healthiness, the more happiness chases me.

And I'm learning to be content and at peace with God, myself, and others. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

We'll be right back. Peter Rosenberger, he's not a preacher. He's America's caregiver. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver. And I am glad to be with you today.

Oh, happy day. Hope you're doing well. PeterRosenberger.com If you want to find out more about what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and who we're doing it for, while you're there, if you go out to my Substack page, you'll see that link right there on the front page. There are a couple of things I'd like for you to take a look at, if you don't mind.

One of them is my Substack page. You'll see a link to an article that I put out recently. American Spectator picked it up and I went in and put it out on my Substack page because it's, I think that the topic bears a conversation.

And it is about J.D. Vance, his remarks of Otto Amoris, but basically a rightly ordered love because this America first policy that Trump has promulgated has sparked some questions and it's done it across the political and the theological spectrum. You got theologians weighing in on this and saying, no, we need to go love.

We don't need to prioritize like that. We love strangers just as much as we love others, which I think is a little bit odd because I don't think that's what Jesus was teaching. They're referencing the Good Samaritan story and I don't think that's consistent with all of scripture and I don't think that was the context of Jesus's story. And I reference in Timothy where it says, if a man doesn't provide for his own, he's worse than a non-believer. And so we have that, I wove into this conversation and I'll make my point because the left in this country, political and theological left is trying to do anything they can to come against Trump and say this America first thing is wrong. And what Trump is saying, look, we can't take care of others if we can't take care of ourselves. We got people in North Carolina, for example, people listen to this network and they're struggling, they're hurting, they don't have their homes. And yet you see what's going on with USAID and they're sending money over for transgender plays of whatever, comic book stuff, ridiculous stuff. We're spending just insane amount of money on things like that.

And yet the people in North Carolina don't have a home, the people in California don't have a home. And so are we as a country seeing to the needs of our vets? We've got a bunch of guys that were saved. This is something Gracie and I spent a lot of time with early on in 2003, we started going to Walter Reed. We've got a lot of guys that were saved on the battlefield, but saved to what? They saved their life. In Vietnam, they would have been killed with the kind of injuries they had. But now we're able to get to them quicker and we're able to do life saving things, but save them to what?

To a lifetime of neurological and physical challenges. Are we prepared for that? Are we handling that? Because they're showing up now 20 years after the fact and dealing with these things. Do we have the resources to do it?

We're $36 trillion in debt. This is some of the things that I wanted to address in this article. So I wrote it, I hope you'll check it out.

I think you'll like it. But I'll give you a personal example. This week, have Gracie in the hospital and then our son had a pretty significant knee surgery. I couldn't be there for him. Who do I pick?

Who do I pick? Do you see how you have to make a priority sometimes? You can't do it all. And I had to choose. I wanted to be with our son to help him, but that means I would leave Gracie by herself in Denver.

You see how that works? And it's fine if in the faculty lounge, people are having an intellectual debate about this, but it's a whole lot different when you're a caregiver. And prioritizing care is a part of our life.

And I thought you all as an audience would appreciate this probably more than most because you have to live this way. By the way, our son did fine and I worked it out. My sister-in-law was there to help him. And then I had a service that I've used that have helped me with Gracie when I traveled there. And they stepped right up and gave just an amazing amount of help. And he's fine.

He's gonna be fine. And I was able to stay here and take care of Gracie. So there you have it. But it's all there at Substack. And I have a whole bunch of things I put out there on my Substack page. Every Monday, I put out a excerpt from my book, "'A Minute for Caregivers."

It's when every day feels like Monday. So I put that out there as well. And you can get that. It'll be delivered right to your phone or however you choose to do it. That's, it doesn't require a premium. It just, you have to put your email in and it'll do it. It'll send it to you. Just sign up that way. If you want to access premium stuff, you certainly can.

But every Monday you can access the other. And I'm gonna try to put more and more things out there for folks to be able to read and look at. I'm flooding the zone a bit with caregivers because I know how steep the learning curve is.

And I've been talking to a lot of them. I mean, being here in this environment, you're around a lot of people who are dealing with catastrophic issues. This is a, it's a teaching hospital. There's a children's hospital.

So they're here in Denver where I am and they're not insignificant things. If you're at this hotel where I am and most of the people here are staying here because of some type of serious medical condition going on with a family member. And they're nervous. They're scared. They're tired. They're weary.

They're separated, all kinds of things. And the learning curve is pretty steep to deal with the reality of what we deal with as caregivers. I didn't have anybody come alongside and say, son, here's what's gonna have to happen in your life.

And here's what's coming down the pike for you. I didn't have anything like that. And I learned everything the hard way, but I remembered it. I remembered everything I learned and I wrote it down. And I write it down and I talk about it on this program so that others can benefit from some of the things that I struggled with. And I think that's the mandate in scripture, comfort one another with the same comfort that you yourself have received from the God of all comfort.

I keep coming back to that verse. What comfort do I have? I am still a caregiver. Four decades now, I'm still a caregiver.

I have to deal with it all the time. I am here in Denver for how long? I don't know, a couple of months.

I'm having to do my show and my work and all the things I do from a hotel. Where's my comfort? I'll tell you exactly where my comfort is. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Because of what happened at the cross, because of the redemptive work of God, Gracie and I were just talking about this.

I mean, just talking about it. We are saved from something far worse. This is as close to hell as we'll ever have to be on this planet. This planet is as close to hell as we ever have to be. Gracie would be the first to tell you, we've been saved from something far worse than 80-something surgeries and amputation and having to work in a hotel across the street from a hospital. So how can I be all bitter and resentful?

Well, I can be because I'm a fallen human being and I have been in the past, but the more I focused on what God is doing, the less inclined I am for those things. And I got a letter this week from a prosthetist in Ethiopia wanting to know if we could come and help. I can't get over there. Sent a picture of a young man who's a congenital amputee, was born with a mutilated or deformed leg on his left leg and it's got kind of an appendage to it. So it's gonna be very difficult to put a prosthesis on.

And I sent it off to some of our prosthetic consultants to see what they thought. I don't know that I could help this guy. We would sponsor a limb there normally, even though we don't have a team in Ethiopia, but I don't think we can because this is gonna be an incredibly difficult thing to put a limb on.

But the guy's smiling. You know, he lives in Ethiopia. I live in the United States of America. Already there's a huge disparity in our birth. And so how can I be filled with misery and bitterness knowing just I live in this land, this country, even with all the problems that we have in this country, you know, it's not Ethiopia.

And one day I hope to be able to visit Ethiopia, but there's so much poverty and suffering there. And this guy is disabled. His father abandoned him when he was little because he had a deformity. And the prosthetist is asking, can we help him? I don't know that I can't. I mean, that's not in our skillset to do.

He may have to have surgery to fix that limb. And I don't know that I can do that. I don't think I can pull that off, but I was struck by his smile. We are helping a lot of folks with our prosthetic work. And we would ask for your help in doing that. And you can go out and see more of that when you go out to the website, just look at the prosthetic limb part of it and just see, and you could see the faces of the people we're treating. And I look at their faces and I'm thinking, we would not have done this. These people's lives would not have been changed had Gracie and I chosen just to be bitter about all this stuff. And I give a lot of credit to Gracie on that one.

This was her vision. But as difficult as our journey is, the more we focus on the things of Christ, that's what gives us that comfort that I was telling you about. That's what settles my soul. And it allows me then to extend that to others. But if you notice, even in that passage that Paul wrote, when he says, ordo amoris, rightly ordered love, there is the acknowledgement that God comforted me first and then asked me to go and comfort others, comfort one another with the same comfort that you yourself have received from the God of all comfort. I have been comforted.

And I extend that comfort now to others. And that's rightly ordered love. God knows this. This is how he works.

He's the one that sets up the hierarchy. He does this. And we pour as we drink. We're drinking from him, from that everlasting fountain and pouring it out of us to allow others to live and to be able to function and to be able to withstand these things. And so that's what we do.

And that's why we do it. If you want to help, we would welcome it. We're sending a big shipment of supplies here next week. And I would very much appreciate the help. You could go out to PeterRosenberger.com, go out to Standing With Hope there from the links, and you can get involved today. We'd very much appreciate it.

This is Peter Rosenberger, HopeForTheCaregiver.com, Healthy Caregivers, Make Better Caregivers. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.