She Didn’t Call in Sick—She Pointed to Jesus

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. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans right now are serving as a family caregiver. They're doing it without a lot of training, if any, without a lot of strength, without a lot of rest, without a lot of money.

Overworked, overpowered, and underpaid. That's pretty much how most family caregivers are dealing with this program. It's not just this reality.

It's sometimes just one or two of those things, but it's often all three. If that's you, and you say, hey, hey, hey, that's me, then you're in the right place. And I'm glad that you're here. It's a difficult job, and that is the bad news.

But here's the good news. It is not insurmountable. It is something that we can learn to do together. We can learn to swim even when we feel like we're drowning. The goal is not to tread water.

The goal is to swim, to move, to be productive. And all of those things are possible, but it takes a mental shift in our minds to do this. It takes something different to click within us so that we see this is not something that we must endure. It is something that we live with, but we can triumph every single day. We can show productivity, measurable results. We can do these things, but not alone, not without help, not without a different understanding, a new mindset, if you will. And that's what this program is all about. What is hope for the caregiver?

And it is that conviction that we as caregivers can live a calmer, healthier, and dare I say it, a more joyful life. Now how do I know these things? Why would I make such a bold, brazen, audacious statement?

I've been studying a thesaurus lately. Why would I make such a claim? Because I live it. And I have now for four decades. And I'm still in the midst of acute caregiving in beautiful downtown Aurora, Colorado, where my wife is now well into past two months in the hospital, five additional surgical procedures that add to her total now in a lifetime of 92.

It's been a bit of a grind. I don't mind telling you, I would never tell you that it's easy. And I would never expect you to tell me the same.

Anybody that tells you that caregiving is easy, hasn't done it long enough, because it is a very challenging set of circumstances. And yet, we are not doomed to fail. We are not doomed to be miserable.

We're as miserable as we choose to be. I go back to scripture on this one. In Acts, around midnight, Paul and Silas, they were in prison. They've been beaten that day and thrown into prison. They were in the inner chamber. Pretty bleak conditions.

I have it on good authority that they didn't have cable or Wi-Fi. And they're sitting there in the dark, beaten, bruised, scarred, probably bleeding, and just feeling pretty rough. And what does the scripture say they were doing? They were singing hymns. Now, I've got to tell you, I'm married to somebody whose body is broken and is in pain all the time.

She is struggling all the time. I've watched her sing hymns in that state. But it takes something extraordinary to do so. And so I've got to ask you, myself, I just ask, what did Paul and Silas know that allowed them to do such a thing? What was their mindset? And is that mindset still available to us?

Absolutely. In fact, if you look at the discourse that Jesus had with his disciples on the night before he was crucified, and he's telling them, basically, I'm getting ready to leave here and be joyful that I'm leaving because I'm going to send another helper. And it was the power of the Holy Spirit that would equip and enable and propel the disciples into the life that Jesus promised.

He said, that's not going to happen unless I go. Once I go, you may be sad that I'm going, but just wait because your joy is going to be just explosive when you realize what's about to happen here. I'm going to go to the Father, but the Spirit is going to come.

And it's going to come with power and with strength. See, we call the Holy Spirit the Comforter, but we think of a Comforter as something you buy at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Oh, it just feels good to be comforted, to have a nice warm blanket to wrap around us and make us feel better. There is a consolation component to the comfort brought to us by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God.

Indeed, there is. But the word comfort is so much deeper than that. I talked about this before, when it means with strength, come forth with strength. And so, Jesus is telling his disciples, you're going to have strength infused in you to endure, to be confident, to be bold, to stand firm. Don't worry about what you're going to say when you're brought before magistrates and judges and kings and rulers. You don't have to worry about it. You're going to be equipped for this, so that around midnight, after being beaten, the ability to sing hymns will be infused in you because you will understand you will have strength. That's the implication of the message that Jesus is giving you if you go back and look there in the Upper Room Discourse.

This is available to us as caregivers. Did you know that? Are you aware of that? That when you are so bone weary that you feel that there's nothing left on it and you feel depleted, well, you are, but he's not. Now, why is that?

Why is this? What does all this mean to us as caregivers? Because I understand the grind. I truly do. I understand it in ways that I hope you all don't have to. And I understand the bone weariness that comes over you. And Gracie certainly understands the grind. But we understand something else too. We understand that the promises of God are true. You cannot do this for as long as we've done it without a greater awareness.

You cannot. Many of us can stand on our heads for three months, six months, six years. I had a surgeon this week look at me and he was telling me, they were trying to figure out what was going on with Gracie because she's had a lot of swelling going on and it's caused the wounds to open back up. And since last week, she's had another surgery. She had her 92nd surgery this week. And the surgeon said, we're trying to figure out why this is happening. And I told this surgeon, this was the resident that was doing this, and I told her, attending surgeon who's a little bit more experienced, and I said, you know, the first time I heard that from a surgeon, Ronald Reagan was president.

And they had to stop for a moment. The longevity of this thing is mind numbing. I look at all these nurses that are treating Gracie, they weren't even born when she became an amputee, a double amputee. That was 30 years ago this year.

And she got hurt back in 83. As you've had a journey on this level of time, it gives you an awareness, an understanding of a perspective that you wouldn't get doing this for 40 days. And you start to see the things of God in a much different way. And you realize that I have been comforted.

I have been brought strength so that we can sing hymns around midnight. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger, and we will be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger.

That is Rob Galbraith and the Not Ready for First Service Players. And we're thrilled to have you with us. PeterRosenberger.com PeterRosenberger.com If you want to go out and take a look, a little bit of an update, a programming note of what's going on. I have a new sub-stack page that is available for you to take a look at if you want to follow along with what I'm doing. I put a lot of different things out there.

Some audio, some video, some print. And every Monday I do a segment for my book, A Minute for Caregivers. And when every day feels like Monday, that's kind of why I do it on Monday. But this week's is called We've Got This. I think you'll find it very meaningful.

These are just one minute print chapters that I do. And you can do this. You have to register to be able to get it. It's a free subscription for those. And every Monday it will be delivered right to your mailbox.

Again, this is on sub-stack. Caregiver.sub-stack.com Or you can just go to PeterRosenberger.com right at the top that says go to Peter's sub-stack page. And while you're there, why don't you take a look around. We've got Gracie's got a new song out that we're pushing this month. This is our 20th anniversary of Standing With Hope. You can see our patients that we've treated over the years. We've got a blog post of Gracie's that she's been doing even from the hospital.

Where we talk about chronic pain. And this is a real powerful message that she's got there. She's lived with this for a very, very long time. And so you ask better questions.

Longevity does that for you. It gives you an opportunity to cogitate on something. And I think you'll find what she has to say in this to be quite profound. She distills it down to some very basic things. She understands the journey in ways that the vast majority of us never will. Of what it's like to wake up every day. In fact, she told me one time, she said, I even dreamed the other night that I was in pain.

You know, and that's hard to hear. And this is her life. And she would not have you be feeling sorry for her. But she would have you learn from the things she's learning. And she has stewed on and processed and pondered for a lifetime. And when you have somebody who's been in serious pain since 1983.

That's an extraordinary journey. And I look at her doctors and so forth and they're all just kind of scratching their heads a little bit with her. Because you just don't see patients like her. I jokingly talked to the nurses treating her and said, you ought to apply for CEUs. Continuing education units in dealing with her. Because every time you deal with her, it's an education.

I helped her walk yesterday, for example. Well, she's got vacuum tubes going out of both thighs. Where these incisions were to release her hip flexors. They're trying to get the fluid off of her. It keeps weeping there and you want to keep that area dry.

And it's pretty cool. The doc kind of MacGyvered it up a little bit. And so you've got these two vacuum tubes coming out there.

You've got IVs going in. She's got so many machines and everything. You have to get a kind of a trailer behind her when she walks to carry all of the gear.

It's pretty intimidating. I can't do it by myself. I have to have somebody help me with her just to walk in the hallways. And then we've got to get a prosthetist over to adjust her leg a little bit more. There's so many moving parts that you just don't think about it. You can't just get her up and get her walking.

It is a very complex event. And you can either rail against that. You can fight against it. You can be annoyed about it. I understand that and she certainly understands it.

Or you just lean into it and go with it. And it is quite moving though to see all the people cheering for her as she walks the tiny bit that she's able to do in the corridor there at the hospital. Nurses, techs, doctors, patients, family members of patients. You just don't see somebody like her very often who is overcoming tremendous odds. There's a story in our e-letter right now. And if you want to go out and subscribe to that, I would recommend doing so.

That gives an update on that and dealing with her 90-second surgery. And we'll have more and more pictures. I've got some on social media if you want to go join our Hope for the Caregiver group. I post a few of those in there. It's a group you have to apply to join. And I maintain the quality control of that group so it doesn't get out of hand. We've got some really great folks that are part of that group who post things that are very encouraging. I would recommend you going out there.

It doesn't, again, cost anything. But it's Hope for the Caregiver group. I have the Hope for the Caregiver page and I have the Hope for the Caregiver group. And I hope you'll take advantage of that. Why would I be telling you all these things? Just to promote my Facebook group, which I make no money off of?

Or just to promote Gracie's blog, which we make no money off of? Now, this is not self-serving. I have a stewardship responsibility. Because I have learned and experienced and been taught and understood things through this journey. That I have a responsibility to share with others. To comfort one another with the same comfort that I myself have received from the God of all comfort. I am commanded to do this. And the comfort that I have received are the things that we're putting out there. This is what I've received. This is what Gracie has received.

Are we not commanded by scripture to comfort one another? To give as we have been given? And I have learned things that have sustained me.

Gracie has learned things that have sustained her. So this is what we do. And I'm putting it out there.

You decide if it's important. You're listening to this program because I'm putting it out there. American Family Radio has me on their network for that same reason.

And if you listen to this program week in and week out of any time, you're going to hear the same themes. This is a stewardship responsibility that I have. What am I supposed to do with the things that I've learned? Just keep it to myself and just navigate comfortably with me and Gracie? Is that it? Is that all I'm supposed to do?

No. Comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from the God of all comfort. So I write it down. I come on this program and I do this. I say these things. I offer these things.

Gracie offers these things. One day we have to face our Savior and give an account. What did we do with the information we were given? What did we do with the things of God that we learned? How did we assist with others who are struggling, even in our own lack?

I've got to ask you. Do you get a day off when you are in the business of ministering the gospel to people? And I'm not talking about as a vocation. I'm talking about just the call we have on each of us as believers. Preach the gospel and make disciples.

That's what Jesus said in Matthew 28. Now, my question to you is, does that count on weekends? Holidays?

Do we get sick days? When do you clock out from that? When do you clock out? I know a laborer is worthy of his hire and don't muzzle the ox. I know all those things.

But I'm just talking about just in the sense of being able to share the gospel. When do you take a day off from this? And I'll point to a couple of examples, but one of them that stands out is on Monday. Gracie came back from surgery. This was her 92nd surgery.

I want you to put that in context. She's had more surgeries than most people will have birthdays. And she's tired. She doesn't feel good. And she comes back into the room. They finally get her out of pre-op and they come back into the room. And a CNA comes into the room.

We used to call them orderlies, but CNA. And she was not Gracie's CNA. She was not assigned to Gracie. She was leaving for the day, but she wanted to come by and see Gracie and just check on her. She was assigned to the other hallway, but she came by. And Gracie was sitting there getting kind of acclimated back to her room after the surgery, waking up from anesthesia. And she said, how are you doing? And the CNA said, I'm watching this.

I'm sitting in a chair right there beside it. And the CNA's face clouded over. And she's struggling. There's some very serious domestic issues going on in her life with her children, with her ex-husband and so forth. And Gracie took her hand and she said, I just got out of my 92nd surgery.

The same Savior that sustains me through all this will sustain you. And then she added something that Joni Erickson-Tada wrote with Steve Estes in a book called When God Weeps, which I would recommend you reading this book. And it's become a trademark phrase for Joni.

I don't know if it's legally trademark, but it's one of her identifiable phrases. And she took this woman's hand and she looks up at her from her bed after her surgery, her 92nd surgery. She's been here for two months.

And she said, he allows what he hates to achieve what he loves. I took a picture of Gracie holding her hand like that. And I sent it to Joni and texted Joni what Gracie said to her. I mean, she just got out of anesthesia. She didn't take a day off. She didn't call in sick. She took a woman's hand and pointed her to Jesus, a woman who was suffering, not on the scale that Gracie was suffering. Around midnight, Paul and Silas were singing hymns. Around two o'clock in the afternoon, Gracie was coming out of surgery and sharing Jesus. Why?

Remember what I said in the first block. When the Comforter came, it was to infuse us with the ability to be strong as we proclaim the greatness of God, no matter what we were dealing with. And the question we have to ask ourselves is, do we believe this? I saw it on Monday. How many of you all come out of surgery and minister to other people? How many of you have ever seen this? And then how many of you all have seen it after 92 surgeries? How many of you have all seen that when you see someone who's been in the bed for two months, five surgeries just in the last two months? What changed?

What happened? How does she do that? The Comforter has come. That is the work of the Spirit. That is comforting one another with the same comfort that we ourselves have received from the God of all comfort. That's what it looks like. We don't get a sick day.

We don't get to call and say, we don't take a holiday, we don't take a vacation. We are constantly in a place to reflect God's glory, and He strengthens us to do it. One of Gracie's favorite verses is, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weakness.

That's where Christ's power rests on her. How about you? How about me? Do we follow suit? I will. I do. I want to.

I'm not quite there where she is yet, but give me time. That gives me hope for this caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger.

I'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad that you are with us. PeterRosenberger.com PeterRosenberger.com. You know I got a new book coming out this summer.

Did you know that? It's called A Caregiver's Companion. A Caregiver's Companion. Daily Inspiration for Life's Toughest Role.

A Caregiver's Companion. If you want to get preview stuff on this, again, go out to the website, sign up for the e-letters. It's at the bottom where you can sign up for our e-letter. PeterRosenberger.com.

It's right there. We don't send out a lot of mail. Remember, I've told you, we're just a mom and pop, and mostly pop right now. So we don't do that. We just simply recognize that there are people who want to be involved with what we're doing, know what we're doing. We want to invest in you. There are people that support what we do because they see value in it.

And by the way, if you want to be one of those people, today would be the day. This is the 20th anniversary of Standing With Hope's Prosthetic Limb ministry. 20 years ago today, the 29th, we arrived in Ghana, West Africa, and we treated our first patient. It was an exceptional time.

I'll never forget it, and we've been treating hundreds and hundreds of patients since then. And we could use your help, by the way. We really could. If you don't feel like you can go and do some of the things that we've talked about, send us. We're doing it, and you can be a part of that.

There's all kinds of ways to do stewardship, and Standing With Hope's 501c3. We're looking for folks that want to get involved monthly, 25 for 25, 25 a month for the year 2025. If you want to do that, we would welcome the help. We may still have a few caregiver calendars left over. We'll be glad to send you some. And some of the tumblers we have, if you want to get involved, you go out there very easily and see how you can get involved today. And then with the email letter, we'll send you stuff about what's coming up.

So this new book that's coming out is called A Caregiver's Companion, Daily Inspiration for Life's Toughest Role. And it's filled with quotes. You know, I love quotes. I amass a lot of quotes in my life of people. I like to quote hymns. I like to quote scriptures and so forth. But my publisher feels like that I've got some quotes that are worth sharing. The things I've said on the air and in my other writings and so forth that they said, we need to put that out there. So what I did is I've taken all these quotes that I've said over the years and I've married them with a scripture or a hymn stance.

And you know I love the hymns. I'm sorry I don't have the caregiver keyboard. I get so many requests for that.

But I couldn't bring it to Denver for this hospital stay. So I'm keyboard-less and I would very much like to have it to play these things for you. We'll get back to the caregiver keyboard soon. And I do. I get texts.

People say, we missed the caregiver keyboard. Which means, Peter, we really want you to stop talking and start playing. I know what you mean. I know what you're saying.

I feel you. But I put these things down and this is going to be out in August of this year. You'll probably be able to pre-order them early summer if you want to do that. And we'll let you know. Again, just go out to the website.

Sign up. We'll send you a missive about it. We're not going to inundate you. I promise. But we would love to stay in touch with you. We put all kinds of stuff that's available there that you may not otherwise see. And this is a quote from the book.

I'll give you a preview of one today. We'll talk about this. While God's explanations of His actions are rare, His presence is constant. I remember when I wrote that.

While God's explanations of His actions are rare, His presence is constant. And that came out of a season for me where I was just demanding to know why. Why are you doing this? What's going on with this? Why are you allowing Gracie to go through with this?

Why is this happening? And I remember torturing myself and quite a few others with that statement. And it took a long time for me. I mean, when I say a long time, I'm saying a long time.

I mean, I'm thick, but I'm slow. And I've realized that God is not in the business of explaining Himself for two reasons. One of them is He's God. And we're not. But the other one is, if you just think about it logically, what's He going to say that's going to make us feel better about it? That's going to make us smack our head and say, okay, now I know why and I feel better.

I'm okay. Because really, in our core, we don't want to know why. That's not what's going on. We feel like we've been somehow betrayed. We feel like that somehow God has broken this unspoken rule that He's not supposed to allow things to happen to us because of all these other promises we've seen in Scripture. And we feel like we can't trust Him. And that's at the core.

That's at the core of all of those why questions. And again, I watched this being modeled out last week when Gracie went in for surgery. And I was praying with her before she goes in and I said, you know, Lord, 91 is too many. It's too many. And I finished my prayer. I was really struggling with this. And I finished my prayer. And after I prayed, she looked up at me. Again, we're in pre-op at this point.

They've got so many bays for pre-ops because this is a big teaching hospital. And we're in pre-op. And she looks up at me. And she's weak. She's tired. She's in pain.

She's struggling. And she said, it's not too many. 91 is not too many. It's what He feels is necessary. A couple days later, she has to go in for 92. But the same thought process guided her.

It's not too many. It's what He feels is necessary. And she said, do we believe this or not? Do we trust Him or not?

Now, that's a bit bracing to hear from somebody getting ready to have what she's having done to her. But there is this place where suffering and challenges bring what's the real issue to bear. Do we trust Him? And so when I wrote that phrase, while God's explanations of His actions are rare, His presence is constant. And I've come to understand that He's not only with us right now, but He's waiting for us in whatever situation we're going to. He was waiting for her in the O.R.

while He was with her in the pre-op as He was with her yesterday and will be tomorrow. And Exodus, He said, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. Exodus 33, 14. Now, do you know the context of that chapter? This was on the heels of the golden calf debacle, which is the ultimate expression of how we want to have a worship service.

Think about that. That is a seeker friendly worship service. The golden calf debacle, where the seeker is getting what they want out of the service. But they're not there to seek God. God was angry with the people there. God was very angry.

So angry that He said to Moses, you go ahead and lead these people. I'll send an angel with you. You'll fight these people.

You go, but I'm not going with you because you're a stiff necked people and I might destroy you along the way. This is God talking to Moses. And the people heard this and they just mourned. I mean, they were distressed and they took off all their jewelry and any kind of ornamentation.

They kind of basically went into this state of mourning. And Moses went out and pitched his tent outside the camp. He called it the tent of meeting. And every time he would go there to meet with God face to face, like a friend, the people would stand as he went there and then they would stand until he went into the tent. And the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses.

You remember this. Moses is out advocating for the people of God as is His place, His station to do so. He was functioning that way. Jesus is the greater Moses who sits at the right hand of the Father advocating for His people. And Moses said to God, basically, my theologian tutors will have to make sure I get this right. But he says, now, therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people. And what he's saying is, Lord, look, if I really do have favor, teach me how to do this. Show me your ways so I can better know you and continue walking in your favor. And don't forget, these people belong to you, Lord.

These are your people. He didn't want the angel of the Lord to lead them. He wanted God to be with them. And he advocated for that. And God said to him those beautiful words in Exodus 33, 14, my presence will go with you and I'll give you rest. He doesn't always explain his actions, but his presence is constant. Now, why is that?

Why is that? This is what the redemptive work of Christ does. The greater Moses who advocates for the people that God has given to him. Go back and look at the Gospel of John, the ones you've given me. Look at John 17, 9, I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. That's the greater Moses. Do you see the parallel there of what Moses did there at the tent of meeting and what Jesus does by the right hand of the Father?

Isn't that exceptional? And I will give you rest. And I will give you rest. Go.

I'm going with you. God did not send an angel with the people. He went with his presence. And you see that happening right there in the tent of meeting. And when Jesus left this earth, he said, you're going to be so joyful when I leave because the very presence of God, his Holy Spirit, is now going to come with us and go with us through everything we endure. There's not one thing that we will walk through or deal with that we're not going to have the very presence of God with us.

This all happened. You couldn't be more clear, but you have to see it in the overall context of what's going on. That greater Moses that we have, that is Jesus, is in the tent of meeting with his Father, advocating and praying for us, telling God, these are yours. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. In John 17, 6 and in John 17, 9, I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. He doesn't have to explain himself. He doesn't offer explanations.

He offered himself. And that is hope for the caregiver. That quote comes from my new book. It's called A Caregiver's Companion, Daily Inspiration for Life's Toughest Role. It'll be out this summer.

You can go out to the website right now and sign up for our email letter, so we'll be glad to let you know when it's available. I think you're going to find it meaningful. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver.

Go to PeterRosenberger.com. We'll be right back. Oh, 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 Rosenberger, and that is my wife. And that is the song of the month that we have released of hers to just share with you all some of the things that we've done over the years. And I've always loved when she sings this song.

Always. I remember the first time she sang it in public, a solo piece. And we had done it with a duet with a friend of ours named Scatte Springs, who has gone on to glory.

And Gracie's got a duet with Scatte on her CD. But this time we went out, we were singing at a big event in Kentucky. And we had a house band with us there.

And a friend of ours joined in on the B-3, Hammond B-3 organ with a Leslie speaker, for those of you in McDuncan. Gracie got up there at this event and just blistered it. This is back when she could stand up straight and she didn't use crutches. And she walked out on stage.

I'll never forget this. This was a big golf tournament kind of musical extravaganza to raise money for this charity in Kentucky. And we were invited to go and perform there. It was not a Christian event that I'm aware of.

I mean, a lot of Christians there, but that was not the nature of the event. And John Michael Montgomery was the host of this thing, a big country singer. And he had a bunch of different folks there.

And at the beginning of it, you kind of walked out on stage and you tell everybody who you are and so forth. And so John Michael walked out. But he was on crutches. He had gotten hurt. He broke his leg while duck hunting and he shared that. That's why he was on crutches. Well, Johnny Bench, the Hall of Famer baseball player, came out after him and said, you know, you think that's bad? Johnny Bench was a catcher. And he said, I've got seven broken cups at home mounted on his wall kind of thing.

I don't know why he would keep it. Everybody's like, oh. And then Gracie comes out and she's wearing a dress and she's got her prosthetic legs clearly visible.

She didn't wear skin covering. And she said, I've never heard such whining from grown men. And the whole place just erupted.

I mean, it was crazy. So then Gracie came out to sing her song. And nobody, a lot of people really didn't know her that well.

Some people did and didn't know her. And she got out and sang that song, My Life is in Your Hands. And she got to that modulation and she just blistered. I mean, the band was rocking.

I mean, it was something. She was a hard act to follow that night. But she didn't know quite what had happened because she's so worried about falling when she walks because she can't, you know, she's not as steady on her feet as she'd like to.

She has two prosthetic legs. And so she was carefully navigating her way off the stage. And there were a lot of chords there, mic chords, she wanted to make sure she didn't hit. And I stopped her. I was beside her and I turned her around. And she could see, the entire audience was on their feet. And she wasn't aware of it.

She was just trying to get off the stage without falling. It was an extraordinary moment. And I look forward to more of those things.

I think we can have them. And I've told her, I said, Gracie, you've got to get out of here and support me in the manner to which I'd like to become accustomed. So they have on the elevators at this hospital, they have all these different patients that they've treated there that have success stories, full length of the elevator door with these little slogans on it. And I told her surgeons, I said, that is my goal, is that she will be on those elevators standing there at a microphone on stage and just bringing it. And they all said, OK, we're going to make that happen.

You know, I don't know if it'll happen or not, but we'll see. All I know is that she was at a hospital bed. And she was doing something far more important than she ever did on a stage. She was giving God the glory from her weakness, from her infirmity. And in God's economy, that means a whole lot more than being on stage and having applause for men and lights and all that kind of stuff. I don't understand it, but this is what I see in scripture. And that's why Paul said, I will boast all the more gladly my weakness. And that's what she does. And I will give you one more quote from my new book.

This is called the book is called A Caregiver's Companion. I'm giving it to you because you are a special privileged member of this audience and you just happen to tune in today. I'll give you another quote. Hospital rooms have a way of prompting honest conversations about how we feel about ourselves, one another and God. Caring for a declining loved one forces internal conversations that rarely come any other way. It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. Psalm 119, 71. This has been my experience that hospital rooms have a way of prompting honest conversations about how we feel about ourselves, one another and God.

Caring for a declining loved one forces internal conversations that rarely come any other way. When I marry that with that scripture from Psalm 119, it is good that I was afflicted. That is not something that I would say of my own.

It is good that I'm afflicted. Grace, you wouldn't say it either. That is not in us to say that.

But that is the work of the Holy Spirit. And when we get into a crisis moment, particularly hospital rooms seem to be ones that do that a lot. Those crisis moments in a hospital room. We ask ourselves, what is this all about? What do we really believe?

What's really going on? What are we afraid of? What are we not afraid of? There's a sense of our own mortality that is unavoidable when you're in a hospital room for these kinds of events. Now, if you're in a hospital room for something that's a little bit less traumatic, maybe not so.

But hospital rooms, when you're dealing with this kind of trauma, life and death issues, cancer, amputations, 92 surgeries, all those kinds of things, you're going to have some honest conversation with yourself and maybe with someone else. And that's when we go back to scripture. That's where everything anchors for us as believers. Now, if you're not a believer, I'm not sure what you're doing.

I don't know what you're holding onto at that point. And I don't know what sustains you. And I don't know what sustains a non-believer in 92 surgeries.

I don't have any experience with that. But I can tell you what sustains a believer and a caregiver through a 92 surgery ordeal. And that is understanding it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statues. As I said in the last block, he doesn't give explanations, he gives himself. And himself is enough.

C.S. Lewis said that when he wrote in his book, When We Have Faces, he said, he is the answer. He's not giving us an answer, he is the answer.

We're so busy demanding that he explain himself and we completely overlook that he offered himself. Do you see how this changes the way you think? I told you this at the beginning of this program. Your thinking has to change. Otherwise, you're not going to make it through this. Your brain has to be reshaped.

Your whole way of approaching these things has to be put up for inspection and looked at honestly. And so that's when you hear Paul say things like, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who endured the cross. Set his face like flint for it, knowing that this is where God's glory awaited for him, is at the cross. Glorify yourself now, Father.

Glorify me and glorify yourself is what he said to his Father in John, in this hour. And that is not the way the world looks at it. The world wants to see Gracie on stage and audiences rising to their feet and people just enthralled.

That's what the world wants. And I get it. I mean, I was there.

It was quite a moment. But what God looks for is Gracie laying on her sick bed, holding the hand of another woman who is troubled with a fraction of what Gracie deals with, and saying, Let me tell you about Jesus. Do we want the world to applaud us? Or are we looking for God's approval of what we're doing?

Are we giving the glory to him? I didn't learn these things on a stage. Gracie and I have stood on a lot of stages.

We've stood in front of tens of thousands of people. And I didn't learn these things there. We learned these things in a hospital room. We learned these things through tears. We learned these things through giving out of our lack. And in doing so, we learned that it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.

Psalm 119, 71. The book is called A Caregiver's Companion. It will be out later on this summer. You can go out to the website right now, sign up for our e-letter, so you'll get advance notice about when this is coming out. I look forward to you having this in your hands. While you're there, if you have been moved by what we're saying, if you want to help us do more to help others be able to understand these things that we're talking about on today's program, I ain't too proud to say that I could use the help. If you want to be a part of that help, it's very easy to do. It's all at the website. Just click on the donate button. You'll see it. PeterRosenberger.com Thank you for letting me have a little bit of your time this morning. I look forward to each time. And remember this, healthy caregivers make better caregivers. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com We'll see you next time.