Strength, Sanity, and the Heidelberg Answer

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. PeterRosenberger.com and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. For those of you who are willingly, knowingly, voluntarily, and often without pay. That's pro bono for those of you in MacDunkin. Putting yourself between a chronically impaired loved one and even worse disaster.

You're doing it without training, often a lack of sleep, and often a lack of support from others. If you're a first time listener, welcome. Glad you're here. You're in the right place.

If you're not a caregiver, welcome. Glad you're here. You're in the right place. If you're listening for the thousandth time, welcome. Glad you're here. You're in the right place because there's no graduation from this. We're all on this same journey to deal with this every single day. I listen to my own program and I've been doing this for four decades. We're all on this journey together and if you love somebody, you will most likely be a caregiver. If you live long enough, you're going to need one and those are the facts. Right now in this country alone, there are 65 million Americans who are serving as a family caregiver and the numbers worldwide are astronomical because it is the human condition.

It's part of it. So the question I ask for this audience, for myself, for any caregiver I deal with, how do you help someone stay strong and healthy as you take care of those who are not? And that is what we're here to explore and we cover a variety of things and I'm glad you're with us.

PeterRosenberger.com If you want to see more and I would heartily recommend you going out there. There's some things for you right away to point you to safety today, right now, not six months from now or a series of tasks and steps that you have to do. There's things right now that you can do that's going to settle your heart down a bit more.

How do I know these things? Well, let me tell you, I am still in Colorado where I've been for the last two months now as my wife has endured this latest round of surgeries that has developed a complication. And part of that complication we dealt with this week, which is she had to go back into surgery twice to address an infection issue and a swelling issue in the wound site of where she had this, on her left side, the hip flexor release to be able to straighten her up.

She did it on both sides and it's been a bit of a grind. I noticed yesterday I came in at the towards the middle of January or so towards the end of January, I guess. And there are leaves starting to bud on the trees now here in Aurora, Colorado, where we are at the University of Colorado Medical Center. This is where we bring Gracie for these levels of surgeries. And we live in Montana.

For those of you who are new to this program, we lived in the south for many years for those of you who recognize a southern accent. And in Montana, they don't have the facilities to deal with the kind of complications she has. You have to go to a teaching hospital where they have these types of resources and so forth to deal with this. And it's been a very complex journey. So this week, she underwent her 90th and her 91st surgery in her lifetime. I've been with her through 70 of those. And when I met her, she was 21 into this and that we could count.

It's really kind of hard to go back and get an accurate count of these things. There's been so many, particularly in the early days when she got hurt back in 1983. And we've been married now this year 39 years.

And it's been quite a journey, quite a journey. And I, she's doing well. Okay, she's doing she's doing well as well as can be expected. Actually, I think she's doing better.

I don't know what I would be like if I dealt with a fraction of what she deals with. But she's in very good hands and she's resolved and she's committed to it. You know, I told her the other day, she's like, Well, you know, we need to hurry up and get home. And I said, baby, home is where we are.

And right now, this is where we are. And it's going to be okay. It's been a bit of a grind for her, though, I won't kid you on that. She's, she's tired. As you can imagine, she's tired of it.

And so, you know, and I gotta ask you, what, what do you think bolsters her? What would you say? I know what everybody says on the first visit.

What about the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th visit? What do you say to somebody like her? Well, I'll tell you exactly what I said to her.

It was, I took words. Some of you may know this, written in 1563. And the question is, what is your only comfort in life and in death? And the answer is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation because I belong to him. Christ by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Do you know what that is? That is from the Heidelberg Catechism, written in 1563. Sometimes I think we're so busy trying to find that next new teacher, that next new thing, that next new doctrine, or the next new movement of God, when we fail to recognize that God never stopped. And these things were written down for us to be anchored in. That is, what is our only comfort? I mean, think about that.

Think about the context of what I'm saying. How do you comfort somebody like me? How do you comfort somebody like Gracie? What do you say? She's not known a day without pain since Ronald Reagan's first term.

We've been doing this for a lifetime. So what is our comfort? Pain medication? Her legs are still gone. She's still in pain. You can give her enough pain medication to get her out of pain, but that would leave her sedated.

She wouldn't be able to function. So what is our comfort? This is our comfort, that I am not my own, but I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Why does that comfort me? Well, what does comfort mean? We look at comfort now as like a comforter, or we wrap around to make us feel better.

But it really comes from comforte. A piano is not called a piano. When it was originally built, it was called a pianoforte. Soft piano was the word for soft, Italian. So when I want to play something a little softer, piano, or very soft, pianissimo, forte, play it loud. That's when you see the little F's. The forte is one F. Triple forte.

You're playing that, you're rocking out at that point. But with strength, actually, where we get the word fortitude. Comfort. So it comes with, with, come, strength. Jesus said the comforter, the Holy Spirit. Again, we look at it as something to assuage us, but that's really not the best translation of that. The best translation is to equip and strengthen us in the moments of trial, so that we wouldn't have to worry. As Jesus alluded, when you're brought up before kings and magistrates and so forth, you don't have to worry about what you're going to say, because the Holy Spirit will be there with strength. And when we face the 91st surgery, the Holy Spirit is there with strength.

This is our only hope in life and death, that we belong, body and soul, to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. That's how you comfort people. But in order for you to be able to extend that comfort, you have to understand that comfort, to receive it. That's what Paul said, comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received.

Have you received this? We're going to talk about this more because that is hope for the caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver, helping you learn to swim while you feel like you're drowning. Is that an accurate description of what we're doing here?

I think it is. I learned a long time ago, nobody was coming to bail me out. Nobody was coming to solve this problem for me. So even though I felt like I was drowning, I had to learn to swim. And that's what we're doing here is teaching one another to swim while you feel like you're drowning.

And that's what I talked about in this last block. What is comfort? I mean, I think when you've stared at this mountain for as long as I have, you start asking better questions.

I'd love, again, I'd love to take credit for being wise, but there's way too many people in this audience that know better. But longevity has its way of imprinting things on your brain and on your soul that you would not normally contemplate. So when I asked the question in the last block, what is our comfort?

Well, I have to think about that. What has comforted me in this? Money? Pain relief? What comforts me? What truly brings me comfort? There are things that feel better. It certainly feels better when you dive into a cool pool on a hot summer day. When I get out on a horse. These are things that are enjoyable. But what brings me strength? What strengthens me? Again, that word comfort in the English language has been diluted. We keep thinking it's going to make me feel better.

What's going to make me feel better? What's going to make me, oh, that's just lovely. That's why I don't like when people who don't understand this journey try to somehow speak into it. One person actually said this to me one time, wouldn't you love to be able just to go on a cruise? And I said, are you out of your mind? If I feel like going on a cruise, I'm putting on a Hawaiian shirt and going to the Golden Corral.

It's the same thing. There's nothing about a cruise. I see the ads on television and I'm thinking, I'm trapped on a boat with a bunch of people who can't wait to get to the buffet and want to party and drink all the time. What in the world is comforting about that?

People are looking for escapism. They're looking to feel better. And I've said this over and over and over on this program for the last 13 years. It's not about feeling better. It's about being better. Now how can I be better in this? How can I be better as I care for Gracie through this? And the benefit I have that many of you don't is that I've just been doing it for so long that I've had to wrestle with these issues that a lot of people haven't.

It takes time to deal with this. It takes seasoning to deal with this. How many of you all use an iron skillet? How many of you all put it in the dishwasher? You don't put an iron skillet in the dishwasher. You don't even put it in the sink. You're supposed to use kosher salt if you want to be precise about it. And put kosher salt in it and use a paper towel or something like that and get it out that way and clean it that way.

That's it. And if you do happen to get it wet, you quickly dry it off. Why? Because it's seasoned.

And it takes time to do that. By the way, I only cook on an iron skillet. I love iron skillets. To me it's the best way to cook.

I've got all kinds of different old ones too. I mean just a little tiny one for eggs or something. And the big ones I cook a roast in a big dutch oven or whatever you call it. I love iron skillets. And you can't tell me that there's anything better than iron skillet cornbread.

And if you do tell me that, I'm not going to believe you anyway. Because iron skillet cornbread is... Look, AFR is located, American Family Radio broadcasts out of Mississippi. There are a lot of folks in Mississippi and I get a lot of letters from people in Texas.

Well, quite frankly I get letters from Louisiana too and all over the south. And every one of y'all right now just put your hand over your heart and thank the Lord that you've been privileged to cook with an iron skillet. Because y'all know what I'm talking about. You don't treat an iron skillet like you do another pan. It's seasoned. It takes time. If you're going to make a good roast in it, it takes time. You don't microwave a roast.

It takes time. And God is interested in seasoning us. Everything in scripture testifies to this. He is interested in sanctifying. That's what seasoning is. It's sanctifying it. It's setting it apart.

It's burning out all the other stuff so that it has even greater value. I mean that's not a technical theological term, but you get the picture. I've got a friend of mine who's my theological tutor and I get calls from him after Mike calls me after the show every week to give me my grade.

He hasn't sent me out in the hall or sent me to the detention yet, but I think I've skirted that line a few times. No, I'm not drawing the exact correlation of those things, but that's the principle that's at play here. And God uses those kinds of principles throughout all of scripture. Salt. We are the salt of the earth. But if it loses its flavor, it's trampled underground.

He uses agriculture metaphors and pictures of all these things. It takes time to wrestle with these things. If Gracie and I had been doing this for just four months, you guys wouldn't be listening to me and I wouldn't have a program and I wouldn't have anything to say. And I've seen this with people get out there and they do this for a very short amount of time, a year, two years. And then they go out and write a book about it.

To me, you've got to let things cease. And by the way, I know that more than just the South uses iron skillets for cooking. I mean, heaven sakes, I know that. But not many outside the South use iron skillets for cornbread.

So seasoning is everything. And God has this way of seasoning us for his service. And if he asked our opinion, we wouldn't do it. I promise you, we wouldn't do it.

None of us would do it. And that's not just a theological construct because Scripture says no one seeks after God. He makes us willingly to seek after him. He equips us to be able to even do that on our own because of the nature of sin.

We wouldn't do it. But putting that in perspective, also just with human nature, none of us want to endure things of discomfort. We will avoid pain at all costs.

And yet is that the goal for us? You know, I heard a great quote from Martin Luther that applies here. Peace if possible, truth at all costs. Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

Yes. And you can extrapolate that same principle. You'd love to have comfort and peace and settledness and everything going your way. But it cannot come at the expense of truth. And the truth is, in this world, we will have very difficult things. But God, and here's the difference, as I said in the Heidelberg Catechism that I said in the last block, under God's sovereignty, all of those things will work together for our good, for our salvation, for our sanctification.

All of those things. He uses sin sinlessly. Now, don't get me to explain that. But this is what the text says. And go back and look at Genesis where Joseph is talking to his brother.

He said, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. That's a powerful statement. And so we can become discouraged in these things. We can become angry about it. We can even become resentful about it.

But ultimately, if we will look at the scriptures, we will recognize that God is, this is not punishing us. You know, Gracie's not being punished. This is not God's wrath poured out on Gracie to have 91 surgeries.

For whatever reason, he's allowing it to endure. We know why she got hurt. She had a car wreck. She had an accident. I know why Johnny Todd is paralyzed.

She dove off a dock into shallow water. The challenge for us is why doesn't God alleviate this, mitigate it, somehow interrupt it, give relief? Or as Jerry Clauer said, shoot up here amongst us. One of us has got to have some relief. Some of y'all know that story.

Why doesn't he do that? I don't know. All I can do is speculate, and speculation doesn't bring me any comfort.

I wrote about that in my book, Hope for the Caregiver. I call it the consolation of speculation. And then you see that in, which by the way is available wherever books are sold.

I'm sorry. That makes me laugh. You go back and look at the book of Job. The vast majority of that is speculation. God allows all 30-something chapters to be of speculation of why this happened to Job. And never felt the need to explain why it happened. We as readers know what happened.

And it's very uncomfortable. Philip Yancey talked about this in Disappointment with God. It's a good book, by the way, if you want to read it. But God says to Satan at the beginning of it, Have you considered my servant Job? And Satan, I'm translating here, but Satan basically said, But I didn't turn him. God said, I bet you can't. And then we have 30-something chapters of Job and his friends commiserating and trying to speculate on why God was doing this. And then at the end, when God shows up in the whirlwind and tells Job to stand up, I'm going to address you like a man, he says, Where were you? God never told Job what was going on.

All that speculation was for nothing. We don't understand. We don't.

We can't understand. So what does God do? Well, he gives us himself.

That's what the word Emmanuel means. God with us. When Jesus left and ascended, he said, It's better for you that I go so that the other comforter, the other paraclete, the other advocate, my spirit can come and be with you. So these are things that I've learned over these four decades that bring me tremendous comfort to know that as I sent Gracie into that operating room one more time. He was already in the operating room waiting for her.

He's already there. He was there with us as we walked down that corridor. I'm holding her hand while she's in the hospital bed. And he was waiting for her in recovery.

He was waiting for her all along while walking her to where he's waiting for her. Christian, what brings you comfort in this life? These are things that I've learned and I am learning.

I'd love to tell you I own it, but I'm just beginning. But that is what brings me hope. Hope for this caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us. PeterRosenberger.com. If you want to go out there and sign up for our newsletter, which I would recommend doing because we don't send that many of them out. I've told you all this.

We're just a mom and pop and mostly just pop right now. But we do put out stuff that I think would be very interesting to you. This blog post of Gracie's that she's been doing every month on dealing with chronic pain. There's a particularly powerful one out there right now. I would really recommend you reading it at the website.

PeterRosenberger.com. And there's also we're doing a song a month that we're releasing from she or me, but mostly her right now of music she's done and has had in the can. We want to do more, but some of these things we have not released yet. And more of that coming and we'll let you know about that through our e-letter and we'll show our patient of the month.

All those kinds of things. It's free. Just go out there and sign up for it. And we won't sell it or give it away, your address or anything. And we won't hit you up with a bunch of stuff every four hours kind of thing. It's just usually once a month. And then my podcast and so forth and on my Substack page, which I started doing this a while back and putting out stuff.

Substack, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like an online newsletter, but you do video, audio, print, everything. It's a combination of things. And I delve into other issues, primarily caregiver related, but not always. And if you'll pardon me for just a moment, I want to tell you about a new article I just posted out there.

And it's called The Planet Will Live With You. And it stemmed from several conversations I've had with younger people, Generation X and Z. I never know which generation it is. They're young, younger than me. And I've noticed a trend with a lot of young people. And a lot of the people taking care of Gracie in the hospital, these nurses, Gracie's been dealing with this stuff since before most of them were born, and a lot of her doctors. The attending surgeon certainly has some experience and years with him.

He and I are about the same age and just a wonderful man. But all the residents and so forth, these are all very young people. And in various conversations I've noticed how unsettled a lot of them are about life. And a couple of them have asked me, you know, how are you able to sustain and what do you deal with? They're not asking me for advice on how to make money. I mean, that's, and for good reason, you know.

That's not my wheelhouse. But they're asking how Gracie and I have survived. What keeps us going? What keeps us optimistic, hopeful? You know, when you find out that you're taking care of a patient who's had 91 surgeries, you got questions.

How have you done this? And I've talked with a couple of young men in particular who were a bit on the aimless side. And I came to understand something, that we preach doom and gloom to an entire generation. And the news was just reporting on the predictions that Al Gore made that by the year 2014, this and this and this and this would happen. And all this climate change stuff. And I don't know where you are on this, but in the last administration, Joe Biden came out and said often that climate change is an existential threat to humanity. We're going to die. They use that word existential threat a lot. We're going to die.

And John Kerry, who's said that too, by the way, and I don't think a whole lot of John Kerry, but regardless, he said it. That seems to be the mantra. We're going to die. It's an existential threat. Look, that means we're going to die. It's a threat to our ability to exist. And when you tell this to kids over and over and over about how evil corporations are polluting everything and you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die, well, is it any wonder that they don't know how to live?

We've been obsessing over carbon footprints, but we haven't taught people how to stand. And that's what I wrote about. If you want to go out to my subset at the top of my page, there's a link there to it. Some of it is behind a paywall there. You have to subscribe to it.

Some of it is free. You take a look at it and see what you want to do. I'd love for you to take advantage of it. I put out a lot of material in there to offer things I've just learned by dealing with hard things for a very long time. And I think you'll find it meaningful.

And I hope it'll be a blessing to you. But I wanted to tackle this particular subject because I look at the hypocrisy of this whole we're going to die mentality that we've been fed. And these celebrities, like movie stars and so forth, have been saying that the planet's going to die, we're going to die, the seas are going to rise. And they've been saying this since the 70s. They started off calling it global warming, but a couple of good winners made them change their name. So it's climate change. We've got climate change. And everything's climate change.

Remember, I mean, Joe Biden preached this every single day, it seems like, and John Kerry certainly has, and Obama and all of them did. It's just climate change. Now, I'm not going to argue the merits of climate change. I'm just going to point out some facts, okay? And you do what you want to with it.

But I have a point for all this, and this is what I laid out in this article. You've heard the Obamas talk about climate change. Did you know that he has a home on Martha's Vineyard?

Ocean View Home on Martha's Vineyard. Now, if you believe that climate change is an existential threat and that this is going to kill us and the oceans are going to rise, we're going to flood, I've got to ask you, why are you buying oceanfront homes? I live in Montana. I live up in the Rockies. So if the oceans rise, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good.

But he's not. You want to weigh in on that? And I look at Joe Biden. He likes to go to Delaware, where he's from. Well, if the oceans rise, Delaware's not going to be around much longer. So how serious are they about this?

Are they just virtue signaling? Now, let's flash forward to everybody loves Elon Musk, everybody loves electric cars, and this is the way of the future. We're going to save the planet by driving an electric car, and now they're burning electric cars. So evidently, and then this astronaut, I forget which one, is one of the twin brothers. You know, he trades in his Tesla for a GMC, a Tahoe or something, and he makes a big deal about it, puts it out there on social media, and he talks about this. He's the senator from, I don't know where he's from. He was an astronaut, and he gets out there and he just makes a derogatory thing about Elon Musk, and he trades in his Tesla and he gets this. Now, there's another electric vehicle he could have gotten, but he wanted this one. And so you kind of wonder, how serious are they about climate change if this is what to do? I remember Al Gore, you know, his big old house there in Nashville, and you drive by and he's out there preaching about power and everything else.

He's got burning more electricity to turn the lights on that place. It's ridiculous. All of these guys are multi-zillionaires, and they're all riding around on private jets and doing these things, and they're saying that it's an existential threat. And they've been telling this to kids for years, and now kids don't know how to function. How do you plan if the world's going to end in 10 years? Because they've been saying since the 70s the world's going to end in 10 to 15 years, that kind of thing.

You've heard it. I remember Leonard Nimoy, Spock, he was doing commercials like that back in the 70s and doing TV shows that would be called infomercials today for the leftist agenda. He stopped doing it after a while, but they're all bought into this thing, and they keep saying, and they keep bringing out different celebrities and cartoons, which are, by the way, sometimes interchangeable. And they keep saying the same thing, but here we are in 2025. Now, again, go back to what I said in the last block about longevity gives you perspective. I've been seeing these same commercials, same message, same fear, just different faces since the 70s.

What's changed? How serious are they? If you're not out there, and I'm not talking about just the ones who are burning the Teslas, I'm talking about the ones who are not condemning it, coming out incredibly passionate about, say, stop this, they're not doing it, because that suits their agenda. And you realize that they're just virtue signaling. They're not committed to this cause. They don't even believe it. If they believed it, their life would reflect it.

They wouldn't buy oceanfront homes if they really believed it. But they are putting so much fear into young people that they don't know how to function. They don't know how to sustain their life. They worry about sustaining the planet, but they're not sustaining themselves. And you see it in the way they act. They're defacing art instead of making art. They're gluing themselves to highways instead of driving them and exploring life.

And you see this everywhere. We as Christians have a responsibility to step into that situation. We have a responsibility to speak with clarity to this. And so when these young people ask me, how have you been able to sustain in this? What an invitation for a conversation.

And I realize God has been seasoning me and Gracie in ways that we didn't expect. And I go back to that original statement. And I want to teach them about what the Heidelberg Catechism says. Now I'm not going to necessarily say it's the Heidelberg Catechism because that'll make their eyes kind of glass over. They'll be thinking I'm an academic class. But I can teach them the basic principles of all this. Let me tell you what sustainability really looks like with God.

Heaven and earth will pass away. But my word, He says, and all of a sudden if you start speaking in a language they understand and addressing that felt need because they're scared, they're uncertain, they feel despair. Look at the mental illness that is gripping these young kids and the crazy things that they're doing. The way they're piercing their bodies and actually just in rampant tattoos. I'm not talking about just mom on your shoulder there. By the way, I don't have a tattoo that says mom. My mother's listening. So mother, I do not have a tattoo that says mom. Did you know that Chuck Norris' mother has a tattoo that says son on it? No, I'm kidding, but that's just funny.

I don't care who you are. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about their entire bodies are covered. I look at nurses that are coming in to take care of Gracie. They're young kids. They're in their 20s. And they are so tattooed and pierced and, I mean, not just an earring. I'm talking about nose rings and all kinds of things.

And I'm thinking what's happened? If you've got nose rings and tattoos and all that stuff, I'm not here to diminish that. But I see this sense of defacing and marking up and trying to find value or establish oneself or be heard or be seen or have something that identifies you. I've got doctors that are having their pronouns on their ID tags of what they identify as. And they're doctors. If you ain't figured out by now what you identify as, buddy, I'm not so sure.

I really want you operating on my wife. So it's into that kind of overall confusion and so forth that I stepped in with this article. Take a look and see what you think. We'll talk about it when we come back from the break. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver. We'll be right back. You don't have to worry, don't you be afraid. Joy comes in the morning, troubles they don't last always. For there's a friend named Jesus who will wipe your tears away. And if your heart is breaking, just lift your hands and say, Whoa, I know that I can make it, I know that I can stand. No matter what may come my way, my life is in your hands. Cause with Jesus I can take it, with him I know I can stand. No matter what may come my way, my life is in your hands. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosberger. That is Gracie basically singing what I talked about in the first block with the Heidelberg Catechism. No matter what may come my way, my life is in your hands.

Now the question I have to ask you is again, Christian, what do you believe? Because there's a world out there of people who are doing insane things because they don't feel that there's any purpose or meaning other than this lie that's been told to them that they've got to save the planet. And by people that will build oceanfront homes and burn electric cars and fly around on private jets. Do you see the ludicrousness of this? And so what has it done to these young people?

The only purpose they have is some sense of aimlessness to, My life is not really worth anything because we're going to die in about ten years unless I go out and glue my hand to the freeway. And so I ask you, I mean the mental illness is just abounding and that's where caregivers come in. How many of you right now are in a relationship, a family relationship with somebody like that who is thinking that they can change their gender? I'll never forget one time I was with some friends of ours at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and they'd asked me to come over, a friend of theirs was in a terrible wreck and they asked me to come over and the family gathered around, so I'm talking to my friends and here's the extended family of this individual. This is some years ago. And this was the first experience I had with somebody kind of like this. And this young man was there, he was the grandson of the man who had been hurt and I'm trying to be very polite and just, my friend asked me to just come to be with the family and so I did, I'm just talking with him. And this young man was 6'4", 6'5", I mean big guy. Looked like he was a linebacker.

He had me by 50 pounds easy, big young man. Found out he was 22 years old and he's getting his master's degree. And I said, oh what are you studying? He said, I'm getting a master's in gender studies. Well I never heard of such a degree at the time. And I looked at him and I said, well there's only two.

How difficult a program could that be? And my friend over there evidently was on the inside track and knew something was, you know, they, well, they put their head down real quick. They kind of, oh, you know, what is Peter going to say? And this guy said, well I have three sisters but I identify as male. And I looked at him and I said, buddy was that a problem? What precipitated that particular conversation?

What tipped you off? And he tried to explain to me the convolution of gender. And I just, you know what I said, I said, well bless your heart. You know, I just extricated myself for that conversation. Because I truly had no idea that this was a thing out there. I was a little bit involved in other things and I wasn't really worried about the gender studies program going on in schools. And I guess I should have been.

And I am now and I see that. But I look at this ridiculousness that's going on and they've got young people's minds so besmirched. They don't know what, and they tell them the world's going to end and they can tell them boys can be girls and vice versa. And men can get pregnant. We've got a Supreme Court justice who couldn't define what a woman was. And I'm thinking, wow, have we really come to this place?

And yeah, we have. But I look at the virtue signaling that's going on by the people at the top of this ideology. And they will say these things and then take advantage of these young people whose minds are like oatmeal and they haven't really coalesced yet and they're feeding them this pablum. And you're seeing this a lot, particularly with young girls when they go off to college and they get fed into this system and they come out with just insane ideas. And they're aimless.

The world's going to end. And then how do you speak to them? But I go back to what I said just before the break in the last block. As Christians, are we promulgating virtue signaling of our own? And let me explain to you what this means and why I'm telling you this. I've had a lot of people virtue signal to me over the years about what I deal with with Gracie. And they've given me the script of what they heard in Sunday school or from a motivational pastor or whatever.

They've given me rehearsed lines. Well, you just need to trust Jesus with this. But God is in control. How is that any different than telling a young kid that climate change is an existential threat? You're saying something, but what do you really mean by this?

What does this look like? Why is this? And if you believe this, how would I know? Does your lifestyle reflect what you're saying you believe?

Now, think about that for a moment. If you're telling somebody God is in control, does your lifestyle reflect that? And this is something I've learned in the ICU. So when I take Gracie's hand in the ICU and I say to her, Christian, here is your only hope in life and death, that your Savior, Jesus Christ, has bought you with His own blood, that you belong to Him, and that not a hair falls from your head, that He is not sovereignly over, and that He preserves you.

That's called the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, that He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. I don't own that statement. That statement owns me. And I have watched for a lifetime of God moving with this situation with Gracie and me, and I have railed, I have fussed, I have cussed, I've done it all.

The length of failures that I have in this is epic. But God. And that's why I land on that great hymn by Isaac Watts, O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home. That's why I lean on that hymn beneath the cross of Jesus. A fan would take my stand and say, and from my smitten heart with tears to wonders, I confess the wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness. I understand this now in ways that I didn't understand before. I don't virtue signal and tell people, well, just trust Jesus. I look them in the eye and say, let me tell you a little bit more about Jesus.

My father was this way, and my mother just told me this, and I'm going to end with this, because He's always present on my mind. I've been writing this book. It's a new book that's going to come out. I've written almost 40,000 words since I've been sitting here with Gracie in the hospital for these last two months. And this book, my publishers and my agent, I'm very excited about, and I'm going to tell you about it more, but it's been heavy in my mind because a lot of it has to do with my father.

And my mother told me this just days ago. She said, your father was never suspicious of God. When things were going awry, he was never suspicious of God. He was always suspicious of himself because he knew God.

He knew God to be who He says He was, and we can count on that. That is our anchor holding within the veil, as the hymn writer said. Do I suspect myself before I suspect God? I used to suspect, oh, God's doing this to me. God's this way, and God's this way.

No. Thou changest not. Thy compassion's they fail not. Great is thy faithfulness, Thomas Chisholm wrote. No, I suspect myself because He's seasoning me.

He's sanctifying me. And if it takes Him, and I was praying with Gracie just before she went in with her 91st surgery, and I said, Lord, we've been here before. There's too many. And after I prayed, she looked up at me, and she said, there's not too many. He knew how many there'd be. He knows what He's doing. That's a woman saying that going into her 91st operation.

Should I just let that hang there for a moment? Now, how many of you all think that that level of awareness and conviction and resolve is needed in today's world? How many of you all are offering it? And if not, why are we not? We are the seasoning for this world. That's what we're called. It is not enough for us to just feel better.

We need to be better. And that comes from walking through some very painful things. I was texting with Johnny Tata, who checks on Gracie every day. And I said, you know, God has asked a hard thing of you and Gracie. But He asked a harder thing of Himself.

And that's why He went to the cross. And that's what gives me hope, hope for this caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. Would you go out and be a part of what we're doing? Sign up for that e-letter, get involved. And if you like what you're hearing, help us do it more.

It's all out there at the website, PeterRosenberger.com. I thank you for letting me take a little bit of time with you today. I'm going to go jump into some more acute caregiving today. Don't ever forget, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. And today's a great day to start being healthy. We'll see you next time. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com.