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If You're Going To Minister to a Caregiver, Be Prepared To Do This

Hope for the Caregiver / Peter Rosenberger
The Cross Radio
October 14, 2019 9:35 am

If You're Going To Minister to a Caregiver, Be Prepared To Do This

Hope for the Caregiver / Peter Rosenberger

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October 14, 2019 9:35 am

HFTC October 12 2019

Welcome to HOPE FOR THE CAREGIVER on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. We are LIVE and are thrilled to have you with us. This is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver. For those who are putting themselves between a vulnerable loved one and even worse disaster. Maybe it's somebody who's aging, maybe it's a special needs child, maybe somebody who has an addiction issue, whatever the impairment there's a caregiver.

How are you holding up?

How are you doing?

That's what this show is all about. And we are glad to have you with us. 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840 if you want to be a part of the show, and you can also follow along on Facebook Live at Hope for the Caregiver. (www.facebook.com/hopeforthecaregiver )

 And by the way, if we have technical difficulties with the video, I don't know what's going on. But our caregiver cam has given me fits as of late and I've got top men working on it … but bear with me. But you can always follow along there and then go to HopefortheCaregiver.com, our website. And then we'll put the show out on a podcast a little later …it's a free podcast.

Let me just stop for a second. I want to talk about something that has been weighing kind of heavy on my mind.

Some years ago, I was sitting in the hospital with Gracie, my wife who's now had 80 surgeries that I can count, and multiple amputations and it's just been a very long painful journey for her over these many years since her car wreck back in 1983. And she'd had … I don't know what surgery number this was, 50 or something. Who knows? We'd been there doing this song and dance for a long time. And I was just sitting there beside her, I wasn't doing anything, I was just reading a menu trying to think about ordering dinner for that night for her —seeing what she would like.  And me too because the staff there by that time they knew me pretty well —they would bring me a sandwich too, which was always, I thought, was very nice. Anytime somebody brings me a sandwich I'm okay with it.

The room was very quiet—she'd had surgery about two days prior to that and pain management with Gracie’s situation after surgery is always difficult. And I was just sitting there watching, hopefully, she was getting some rest and she was in a pretty good sleep. And then I looked over at her and she was blue! She had stopped breathing.  

I leapt up and I got the nurses in there and all these nurses just started parachuting in and rappelling down the walls. I thought I'd knew a lot of the people there by that time …but there were people there I've never seen before.

All of a sudden, this quiet little hospital room—and she didn't have monitors on at the time, which looking back at it was a mistake, not on my part, but it was a mistake —And this quiet little hospital room we were sitting in I'm sitting turned into a beehive of activity and doctors and nurses and so forth were just descending, alarms are blaring—the whole thing. And they didn't ask me to leave, evidently, they knew who I was. And they weren't concerned that I leave and so I stayed, and I watched quietly while they try to resuscitate my wife. And one doc who was—he was still in surgical garb looking like he just came out of the OR …and he was starting to intubate. I guess he was an anesthesiologist and he was starting to intubate her, and I asked him, I said, “Hey, look, she's a singer, use a small tube.” And he looked kind of over his shoulder, but he can't work and he said, don't worry, Peter. I know Gracie. And I didn't know this guy. I had no idea who this man was. And he obviously knew my wife, and so he was very kind about that— and they got her resuscitated and they started to take her off to critical care.

And the room, which had been quiet 15 minutes prior, all of a sudden as everybody left, this entourage of people pushing my wife's hospital bed left, the room kinda was just empty, and I was standing there by myself watching them leave.  And I looked as the last one left, and I looked out the door across the hall, standing against the wall out of the way, was my pastor, one of my pastors, I had two pastors. And this one had come up, just happened to come up, and he just looked at me.  

When you have an event like that, I don't know if any of you've all been through a situation where you've been with somebody who coded, but it can be a good bit—be very adrenaline driven. And also, there's this kind of deflating moment where you just kind of okay, you know, “what do you do now?” —and I just stood there for a moment as this whole crowd of people left with my wife —taking her to critical care. And this pastor looked at me. Hjust looked at me in the eyes. And I've never seen anybody other than my parents look at me with that level of compassion.

And he didn't say a word. A smaller man than I am, he reached up and he put his hand on my shoulder and he just held my gaze. He just looked at me. And I was so moved by that, I'll never forget the look on his face. He didn't feel the need to explain it, make me feel better or anything else other than just put his hand on my shoulder and just look at me —and he saw me. He didn't rush after Gracie, he saw me. And then we walked down towards critical care.

And I thought, you know, that's really kind of how you do it as pastors, as people who want to minister to caregivers. I think we're often in a situation where we feel this…as believers …we feel this compulsion to wash God's hands and explain why he does these or allows these things in our lives and the lives of others. And I think there's a sign of spiritual maturity when you stop trying to clean up after God, and you recognize that He's working in things that we just cannot possibly understand. And it's okay for us to trust him and we communicate that level of faith and hope and trust and peace in it. My pastor did not fill the air with meaningless words he just simply walked with me to critical care just as our Savior walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

That [event with my pastor] helped form the entire foundation of what I do is as an outreach to family caregivers. I cannot take this away from you and I cannot give words to you that are going to somehow make all this feel better and make you just [say], “okay, I'm okay now. I'm good.” What I can do is point you to safety and walk with you through it, through this medium of being on the air, so that you can hear a voice that speaks “fluid caregiver,” and that you can hear somebody that really truly gets what you're going through.

When you have people that want to somehow explain stuff to you, that's troubling to me. I don't have this-- What are you going to say? What are people really going to say? My wife’s had 80 surgeries, both legs amputated, lives with non-stop pain, and this has been going on since Reagan's first term. What’s somebody's going to say?

You know, in scripture, you look at John when Jesus was at that pool when those-- You remember that guy that was laying there on a pallet and he was struggling to get to the pool and he couldn't get there if the angel came up and stirred it and supposedly you could get healed and you know, all that kind of stuff going on. You remember that story?

What did the scripture say about that guy? He said he'd been there a long time. That's all it says. I mean he’d been born this way evidently and 38 years and it said it was a long time. The scripture didn’t somehow try to make this sound better than it was or explain it, and he’d been there a long time. Sometimes that’s all you do …is recognize, “it is what it is.”

888-589-8840, 888-589-8840 is the number if you want to be a part of the show. Have you been doing this a long time? How are you feeling? We're going to talk about this a little bit more. This is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg. I'm so glad you're with us. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the show for caregivers about caregivers hosted by the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg, and this is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver. And we're glad to have you with us. 888-589-8840 if you want to be a part of the show. We may be having a little bit of software problem there on the phone line, so bear with us if you can't get through. We'll do the best we can and muddle through it. How about those apples? You can also follow along on Hope for the Caregiver on Facebook and we’re streaming the show, and you can follow along from there.

I want to go back to this topic, though, that I was addressing here of how to engage with the caregiver. What does that look like? And I go back to this pastor that sat there and watched me. You know, like I said, he didn't chase after the hospital gurney with Gracie on it as it was going to critical care after she coded. They had a whole team of people doing that. He just locked eyes with me, he just zeroed in on me, put his hand on my shoulder and didn't feel the need to say a lot of things. There's not a lot of things you can say. You know, and I think that's something that we as believers, it's counter-intuitive because we want to somehow just come in there and get some soap and water and clean up God's hands because he's obviously made a mess. And I just think that's bad theology. And I think that we have, as a culture of Christians, been the recipient of a lot of bad theology for a long time, somehow confusing the American dream with the Christian walk.

What we talk about on the show doesn't sell very well in that kind of culture because there's not a bailout for this. There's only fortitude strengthening, equipping and bearing one another's burdens. And you know this “name it and claim it” nonsense that's out there, and this “prosperity and wealth” and all that kind of stuff, you know, those are fine if that works for you, go ahead. I'm not here to just beat up on people about it but I'm talking to my fellow caregivers. And when you come, particularly you as clergy that are listening and hospital chaplains, military-- I've dealt with all these folks. And I think the ones that really have a handle on it that I've seen consistently as a group are the military chaplains. My dad was a military chaplain. And I've known a lot of them, and I have a very close friend of mine, a military chaplain that I talked with, every couple of days …and they understand that there's a war going on. And that ministering to people is not just simply saying, “hey, let's just you know, we're gonna pray real hard and squint your eyes real tight and this will all go away.” It doesn't work that way. And it's all about strengthening and being with people, that's what it is. And if we're not prepared to do that as believers, then what are we offering? And I go back and again, I looked at this pastor who just looked at me.  

And if somebody asks, “Well, how do you minister to caregivers?” Here's how it starts. I'm gonna give you the vocabulary for this.

You look at them, and you quietly say to them, and I mean when I say quietly, I mean quietly. You know, God bless my charismatic and Pentecostal brethren and “sistren,” but you don't go up and start prophesying over these people. You're going to scare them right off the cliff, and they're standing right on a cliff. Be cool, all right? Just be gentle and quiet.

But the thing you want to do is you just look at them and you say, I see you, and I see the magnitude of what you carry, and I hurt with you. Start with that. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. You just see them.

If you've somehow feel like you've got to go in there as a minister, …and we get a lot of ministers that call the show, and I'll take the time with them, but I'm hoping to instruct them a little bit because they don't cover this in seminary. I've talked to too many pastors, they don't have any clue about how to deal with this in seminary. They deal with episodic crisis, but not the long term where it just stretches on for decades, people don't know quite what to say, or do or function. And so what we're trying to do on this show is give a different vocabulary of what it looks like to speak into the suffering. And what you're going to find is if you can speak into the long-term suffering with wisdom and clarity and understanding and compassion, and good theology— then you're going to speak into the short-term stuff as well.

See, when we're confronted with suffering, I've got this theory. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you're going to cry out and you're going to react. Now, if you're alone, you may swear. If you're in front of other people, you may swear under your breath. If you're in front of a lot of other people, you may quote a scripture. That's funny by the way …

Regardless, you're going to react.

But as the pain subsides, the reaction stops. I mean, all of you, try to remember what it's like to stub your toe or hit your thumb or something, or you know, when you're walking barefoot to the house, and you hit it on a piece of furniture, — oh, I hate that.

So, you get that [pain] but you're not still reacting. You can recall that it was uncomfortable, but you can't recall the sensation of pain. Try it. You can't. So, therefore, you're not continually reacting, and you'd be kind of nuts if you were because the pain is not there. It's gone. It subsided, time healed it. Time lessened it. Time minimized it with that particular episode. Eventually, the ink on the divorce paper dries. Eventually there's grass, over the grave. Time has a way of lessening that pain to the point where you're not reacting like it happened just at that moment You may carry the residual echo of it, and the grief of it and so forth and the consequences of it—but the actual shock of the moment it's gone. And speaking of shock, that's when it gets to be so much our bodies will go into shock to deal with that.

Now, let me juxtapose that with chronic pain, chronic suffering, chronic heartache — that doesn't go away, the reaction never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming, and you've got to deal with that reality in a different way.

Now, when you're faced with trauma, go back, and some of you think about some of the trauma you've had in your life for the last, whatever, month, two weeks, a year. When you're faced with trauma, the reaction we have on an emotional level, is sometimes crying out:

“Why God?”

“How God?”

“What are you doing God?”

“What's up with that God?”

And these are questions that actually go to the core of who we are as people of faith. And it questions the very essence of our faith when these moments happen. But as time moves on, the pain of that, the shock of that lessens.

I remember as a collective nation when 9/11 hit, everybody-- We were seeing congress out there on the steps of the capital, they were singing “God Bless America.” They were just in shock and they were reaching out to God—they're struggling with God.

Well, look how much we’ve forgotten. I mean, we’re not only failing to reaching out to God as a collective nation, we've got people running for president that are just downright hostile to the people of God. It didn't last long, did it?

We put those [“WHY”] questions away after the shock is faded because we're moving on. But when the shot doesn't fade, we got to deal with those questions.

When the shock comes back from another episode, we're going to haul those questions back out, and we're going to struggle with that. We're going to somehow try to make sense of God's plan.

But we never really do. Because sometimes the things of God that are moving on this earth don't make sense and won't make sense. And in God's economy, it makes sense to God that Gracie doesn't have any legs. It makes sense to God that Gracie lives with pain all the time. It doesn’t make sense to me and I've asked all the questions. And people come up and they give me a platitude to say well, “God obviously has a purpose, or she wouldn't be here.”

 

Well, thank you, Captain Obvious! How useless is that piece of information to me!?

 

Or they'll come up and say, you know, “Well look at the testimony you guys have or the ministry you have.”

Really? You think I'm that noble? You think Grace is that noble? Yeah, we have a ministry to her fellow amputees in Africa that wouldn't have happened from all this stuff. But we're not that noble. She would rather have a pain free, able-bodied existence.

Those [platitudes] are not helpful. That's us just trying to fill up air with words that make sense to us. That's not what this is about. What we have to do as believers is learn to be able to speak the clarity of the Gospel in this, and sometimes, that doesn't involve words.

Sometimes it’s just like this pastor who put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me and didn't say a word. But I knew that I was being cared for. I knew that I was being comforted. I knew I was being shepherded.

He [God] never said he's going to take this stuff away from us. He never said that we're not going to have these things. He said, He'll be with us. And that pastor friend of mine, his name is Larry. He was simply with me.

This is why I do the show. I want you to have the same care that I got. Larry can't be all over the country, so I'm trying to take what he gave me …which he got from God, and just give it to you in the best way that I can —to let you know that you are not alone. And you do not have to endure this alone. And I'm not going to try to explain it, but I'm going to speak to you. This is what we do as believers. This is Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger and we'll be right back.

[singing]

That is Gracie and Joni Eareckson Tada singing Because He Lives. Isn’t that great? I just-- boy, she can really sing and she's got a CD coming out here very very shortly we're working on feverishly finishing this up. you can get a preview a lot of those things at our website at HopefortheCaregiver.com. Just click on the music tab and you can get some of these things, some of the singles from there digitally right now, and you can get that duet. There's another one she did with Russ Taff that you’ll love, and just all kinds of stuff out there at HopefortheCaregiver.com, and the name of the book is Hope for the Caregiver. My newest book is Seven Caregiver Landmines and How You Can Avoid Them. And we talked about that a lot here because there's so many these little landmines out here that we hit as caregivers. I've hit every one of them, that's why I look the way I look. And don't let this happen to somebody you love. I mean, I am the crash test dummy of caregivers. If you can fail at it, I failed it, but you don't have to. All right? You don't have to. And this is why I do the show because I've had ample time to make so many mistakes on this thing, and that I've learned, the hard way, where some of these pitfalls are for us as caregivers—and for those who want to minister to caregivers.

And what I'm hoping I can do is I can give vocabulary to my fellow caregivers on what help looks like and inspire them to ask for that help and receive that help. And then I also want to give vocabulary to people who want to minister to caregivers, particularly clergy, so that they don't come up and just give platitudes or try to somehow explain this thing away. That we are somehow able to better equip each other to endure with this.

You know, if you go back and look at scripture, there’re so many phrases about endurance, perseverance, steadfastness, “stay strong”, “don't be afraid.” All those kinds of things in there, “It's going somewhere.” “This is going somewhere.”

God is taking us somewhere on this.

The question is, do we trust him? Do we trust him when our wife goes into respiratory risk? Do we trust him when we watch a family with special needs, I was at the prosthetist yesterday with my wife getting her legs worked on, and a lady showed up with her child that had orthotics’ need.  A lot of prosthetists, you know, you have prosthetics and orthotics in the same place. Now for those of you who don't know what all this is that live in McDuncan, for example, Prosthetics are devices to help you to replace something that was taken from you. For example, a prosthetic limb, a prosthetic nose, a prosthetic breast, whatever you've lost …there are prostheses that are made for this. Orthotics are things to help you better stabilize what you have, for example, a back brace, a neck brace or children born with misshapen feet, club feet, that kind of stuff. Those are orthotics.

And there was a very, very, very severely disabled child that this woman was bringing in and she was with this-- and she had lost several-- She keeps adopting special needs children and cares for them. She has this massive van that she brings them in and just loves upon these kids. And you know, there's… what are you going to say? What are you going to say?

This individual who keeps pouring her life into these kids and precious children who are dealing with her horrific afflictions. And when you see things like this, it automatically pricks something in your heart to start asking questions of the Almighty. I've said this for years that when Gracie walks into a room, she creates a theological conversation —and she hasn’t even said anything! Because here's this beautiful woman with this just amazing attitude, and everything else that she has —and she's severely disabled. She's using two canes. She's got two prosthetic legs, the canes are for her back, not for her legs, the legs are fine. The prostheses are fine. It's just that her back is so trashed from all the surgeries and all the injuries and so forth.

And yet, she gets up and sings at church and does all the things she does. She put out a record, she goes to Africa, and helps her fellow amputees, and it creates some kind of theological issue.

There's “Okay, why would God allow such a thing?” “Why would God allow such a thing?” Gracie hadn’t even said a word and people start asking that question in their hearts and in their minds, and then they want to try to somehow answer it and figure that out.

And what I'm hoping that you'll get out of this particular show is that you don't have to figure this thing out. You don't have to explain why God does this. And even if you knew why God does this, is it going to make all of us slap our foreheads and say, “wow, makes me feel better?” All right?

We do not have to know why. The only solace for us, the only comfort, the only strength, the only reality for us is to know “Who.”

And as long as you keep spending a lot of time trying to figure it out for yourself and figure it out for others, you're going to end up frustrating yourself and causing damage for others. That is something that really needs to stop. As caregivers, we can't withstand that kind of onslaught from believers who want to come and constantly try to figure this thing out for us. We just can't do it— it's mind-numbingly frustrating for us.

And so a lot of people just stop going to church and stop dealing with it because they don't feel like having people work out their salvation on them. I've had people do that to me. It makes me fighting mad. I mean, to the point of just spitting mad. “If you had enough faith,” or this or this or whatever, all that just makes me mad. But I have to just keep those people arm's length because they're just hot messes as far as I'm concerned. I don't have time for their craziness. And they're not going to be in there trying to somehow take care of Gracie. They just want to parachute in and somehow say, “Well okay. Here's what we think.”  

And I'm like, “Why do I care what you think?”

You’re tracking with me on this? We don't have to wash God's hands. We don't have to clean up behind him. And so many Christians are just convinced that they do. They just have to explain it so it makes sense to people. It is what it is. And as long as we are somehow trying to make sense of things that we are not equipped to be able to make sense of, we're going to live in frustration. But when we accept what is —and understand our role in this, that's where we can live in a calmer, more peaceful, and even more joyful place. And that's our journey as believers. This is our biblical task.

And again, we've just been the recipient of so much bad theology. I mean, just so much. And I hate that for me, I hate that for you as a caregiver, but I am trying to do something about it. And let you know that the gospel …the good news of the gospel… is not that “this is all going to be taken away from us today and we're going to feel happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time.”

The good news of the gospel is there's a victory that's already been won, and we trust him as we walk through this stuff! That's the gospel! The victory is already done and it had nothing to do with you and me. The only thing we can bring to salvation, I think Chesterton said this, the only thing we can bring to salvation is our sin. That's all we got to offer. Bill Gaither said, “Something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, he understood. All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, but he made something beautiful in my life.”

Do you believe that? Is that important to you? Is that in any way reassuring to you? Are you engaged in that particular mindset where you're realizing that wait a minute, this isn't about me in this sense, this is about God and what he's doing? Do I trust him in this? And if I do trust him, why? Why am I trusting him? How do I know that I can trust him?

See, that's a better question.

How do you know that you can trust this Savior while you're watching a loved one deteriorate, while you're watching someone suffer, while you're watching an addict or an alcoholic in your life spiraling around the drain, while you're watching your wife code with respiratory arrest like I did that day …that I mentioned earlier, while you're watching a train wreck of a life, or this woman yesterday that I saw that was taking care of this special needs child that was in just bad shape? How do you know that you can trust him with these things?

And that's where the cross comes in. That's where the scars that He carries mean more than the scars that you carry. See, my wife has a lot of scars. She's got a lot of scars. She was very, very banged up in this wreck. One of the residents later told her prosthetist she had 200 breaks-- they stopped counting at 200 breaks, a lot of scars, but those scars are not permanent.

One day she’s not going to have scars. But His scars, now those are permanent, and one day we're gonna see those scars. And his scars that are eternal …means something for eternity. That's the Gospel. That's how we know we can trust him in this. How does that sound?

This is Hope for the Caregiver, we'll be right back.

Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me. But over time, my questions changed and I discovered the courage to trust God. That understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana in West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies and with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please, visit StandingWithHope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's StandingWithHope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope.

 

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger, and this is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver, for those of you who are putting yourself between a vulnerable loved one and worst disaster. And it could be a special needs child, it could be somebody with trauma, traumatic brain injury, somebody with addiction issues, alcoholism, all kinds of stuff that are out there. Whatever the impairment and they are usually chronic impairments, there's a caregiver. There's somebody orbiting that individual, mental illness, whatever. It doesn't matter the impairment, there's always a caregiver. And sometimes the caregivers have thrown their hands up or they're exasperated, they're swearing under their breath or they're dealing with depression themselves. They're dealing with all kinds of resentment or whatever. And that's one of the things that I do on the show when I asked every caller, “How are you feeling?” Because I want to get to how you're doing. I don't want to know how your loved ones doing. Okay, that's not cold. That's not mean. That's just not the purpose of this show.

 

The purpose of this show is to talk to you, and I’m really passionate about helping caregivers learn to speak in their own voice. Too many of us don't. I can't tell you how many calls I've had on this show where I asked them how they're doing and they start rattling off their loved one’s chart. We can all rattle off our loved ones’ chart, man, we do that.! You know, we're experts at that. How about rattling off your chart, how about talking about how you're doing?

I have found and it is my experience and I've been doing this for a long time, that when caregivers start speaking in first person singular about how they feel, that's when the tears come. That's when the stammering comes, that's when the heartache spills out of them. They can get real clinical about a loved one. But when it comes to talking about how they feel, and what's going on with them, that's where it gets a little bit ugly and bloody. And that's okay. That's why I do the show. We've got lots of mops and Lysol wipes. God has an entire broom closet, just for us for our messy hearts. Because if we're not being real with it, all we're doing is living in some kind of level of denial, and we're pushing ourselves to the breaking point to not being able to function in a healthy manner. It is what it is. He knows it, you know it. Now let's talk about it. Let's get it out there. Let's deal with it. And let's not try to somehow put it in nice tidy packages.

We don't have to wrap this stuff up. We just don't, we don't have to make it more presentable to other people, and I don't have to make other people more comfortable with my situation. I'm not there to ease their burden. I don't necessarily have to inflict it on them, but if they're going to come up close to me, they need to understand it's going to cost them something. If people want to be in a relationship with Gracie, it's going to cost them something because it is painful to walk with her through these things. And those of you who know her that are listening, and I've got a lot of folks on Facebook and so forth that are watching, listening, they'll know it is painful to get up close to Gracie. A lot of people like to admire her from the stage when she's performing and all that kind of stuff, but it's a whole different matter when you're helping her take her legs off and she's in a wheelchair, and she's struggling and she's hurting and she can't even hardly see straight, she's in so much pain after the event. If you're going to be in a relationship with me, you need to understand that my life is intense. Now, I'm not going to inflict it on you but don't come up next to me and just parachute in and think you can just drop these little pearls that somehow you figured out. This is what I'm trying to help people understand when it comes to caregivers, and too many people that fill our pulpits, this is what they do to those of us who caregive. They found a verse somewhere in Zephaniah or something, and they think, oh, wow, man, I got it. And I'm going to go there and just deposit this on this suffering individual and I’ll feel better about my ministry. And we're over there thinking, “Really?” “Thank you very much[sarcastically]!”

If you want to minister to a caregiver, be prepared to weep. If you want to minister to a caregiver, be prepared to groan. And if you want to minister to a caregiver, be prepared that it's going to cost you something spiritually. You're going to have to wrestle with God and your theology is going to change.  I'm convinced, I am convinced of this, that if you want to have any kind of effective Kingdom ministry in this world, you're either going to suffer or you're going to have to touch a lot of people who do. If you are not personally dealing with this, then you're going to have to be willing and actually touch people that do. And the more you insulate yourself from suffering, the less effective your Kingdom ministry will be on this earth. I'm convinced to that. If you disagree with it, that’s all right, you could be wrong too.

I remember a great quote I heard from Franklin Graham when talking about Samaritan's Purse.  He said this is not the kind of ministry that you can run from behind the desk. You have to get out and smell it. And suffering and poverty and anguish has its own smell. If you don't believe me, you haven't touched it. It costs you something to minister to people, and that's why we should not go into this lightly. Paul says this, don't do this lightly. And so for you, clergy, you military chaplains, you hospital chaplains, you lay leaders, you people who want to do this, be prepared to not try to figure this thing out. Just walk with them. Just stand with them. Just sit with them. Just let them know that you see them.

I remember one of the greatest gifts that I've gotten as a caregiver. Gracie was in the hospital yet again. I mean, when you've had many surgeries as she has …we spent a long time at the hospital. Kids were with grandparents, and I came home to get some clean laundry for her. Gowns and so forth. And I was heading back up to the hospital, and some friends called me and said, “Stop by the house. It's on the way, you stop by here we got something for you.”

So, I swung by their home and I walked in and they pointed me to their kitchen table, I can still see it. And there was a hot bowl of vegetable beef soup, one of my favorites, and a big ol’ piece of cornbread and a glass of tea. And they said, “Your kids are safe, Gracie’s safe, you sit down here, you have the soup and cornbread we're going to stand over you, and you're going to be safe.”

That's how you minister to a caregiver. It’s not exotic, it’s not some kind of “send me on a big cruise or anything.” Sometimes it's just a bowl of soup, and a quiet kitchen table to gather my thoughts …and to know that I'm safe.

Do you feel safe today as a caregiver? Do you feel safe going to church? Do you pastors, do you create an environment where people can come in with trauma and feel safe in your church? If not, why not? What are you doing? Can somebody bring their special needs child into your church that makes all kinds of bodily noises and whatever or looks grotesque on any given day, and do they feel safe to do it? If not, explain yourself. Explain your ministry. Don't just go with your opinion …go on and verify it.

Luke 14, “go out to the highways and the byways and get them in, bring in the blind, the lame, the afflicted.” (Luke 14:21-23) See how well they do. See how well your people receive them. Because if your church is not receiving these kinds of people, then what are you preaching? What are you teaching? People say well, “I feel uncomfortable.” I don't care. Imagine how they feel.

If you feel uncomfortable around their suffering, what does that say about your theology? What does that say about you? I mean, in all fairness, it is uncomfortable to be around it, but that's what we're called to do. And so as we feel uncomfortable about it, that's how we trust him more in it. Honestly, this ain't brain surgery. Do you believe what you preach or not or what are you preaching? Do you believe what scripture says or not? People are suffering. People are bleeding, people are dying, people are hurting. And we as the church, have the hope of the Gospel, and what are we doing with it? Look at our country. It's a train wreck. Where's the church? What are we saying? What are we doing? This is what Hope for the Caregiver looks like … is that we can speak with clarity the gospel into this, that people can live a calmer, healthier and more joyful life even while suffering. Scripture is full of this of saying that very thing. Paul and Silas beaten in prison and they were singing hymns to God. How about you? HopefortheCaregiver.com. If you like what you're hearing on this show, help us do it more go out to HopefortheCaregiver.com today, right now go and take a look at it. We'll see you next week.

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Hopefully caregiver on American family radio, this is we are laughing we are thrilled to have you with this is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver for those who are putting themselves in the world one, and even worse disaster if somebody was a special-needs child. Maybe somebody who has an addiction issue.

Whatever the impairment is a character you that the show is all about and we are glad with this 888-589-8840 888-589-8840 be a part of the show and you could also follow along on Facebook live at home for the caregiver and abundantly. If we have technical difficulties with the video. I don't know what's going on that are caregiver TM is giving me fits.

As of late, and I've got top been working on it, but bear with me, but you can always follow along there and then go to hope for the caregiver.com is a website and then we'll put the show out of the podcast later it's it's a free podcast, we are limited, would you stop 1st to 2nd, I want to talk about something that is been weighing heavy on my mind.

Some years ago I was sitting in the hospital with Gracie my wife Lou Snell had 80 surgeries that I can count in multiple amputations and just you know she's been a very long painful journey for her over these many years since her car.]

1983 should have.

I don't know what surgery number.

This was 50 or something.

Who knows. It was it was we been there do this song and dance for long time and I was just sitting there beside her wasn't doing anything. I was just reading a menu, try to think about ordering dinner for that night for her see what she would like and and me to because the staff thereby that's how they may be pretty well and they would bring me a sandwich to which was always very nice to meet up some he brings me to say which I'm okay with it.

It was very quiet the room and she had surgery about two days prior to that pain management with Gracie's situation after surgery is always difficult and I was just sitting there watching her. Hopefully she was get some rest and she was in a pretty good sleep and I looked over at her and she was blue and she stopped breathing and I leapt up that I got the nurses in their and I I that the always nurses just started parachuting and repelling down the wall that I thought I knew a lot of the people there. By that time, and in newer people that I never seen before. They just also in this quiet little hospital room should have monitors on at the time, which looking back it was a mistake not to my apartment. It was a mistake in this court will hospital room. We are sitting in office and turn into a beehive of activity and doctors and nurses and so forth were just just descending alarms were blaring the whole thing and they didn't ask you to leave.

Evidently they knew who I was and they they weren't concerned that I leave and and so I stayed that I watch quietly while they try to resuscitate my wife and one dog who is still a surgical garb. Looks like you just came out of the OR and he was starting to integrate legacy was an anesthesiologist and he was starting to incubator and I asked was a look. She's a singer use a small to any looked over her shoulder but he can't work. He said don't worry Peter, I know Gracie and I did know this cat.

I had to I had no idea who this man was in any obviously knew my wife and and so he was very kind about that in the they got her resuscitated and they started to take her off to two critical care in the room should been quiet 15 minutes prior, all of a sudden, is everybody left his entourage of people pushing my wife's hospital bed, left they the room, was just empty and obstinate about myself watching them leave and I looked as the last one left and I looked across the that the door across the hall steadily gives the ball out of the way was my pastor warm-up. I said to pastors and discipline and come up just happen to come up and he just looked at me and you even when you have an event like that. I don't know if any of you all been through a situation where you've been with somebody coded, but it can be a good bit be very adrenaline driven and in also the resistance, deflating moment where you just kind of okay what you what you do now and I just stood there for a moment as this whole crowd of people left with my wife taken on the critical care in this pastor looked at me and he just looked at me. Nancy had the I've never seen any buddy other than my parents look at me with that level of compassion and he didn't say a word and uses is a smaller man that I am, and he reached up and he put his hand on my shoulder and just held my gaze. He just looked at me and I was so moved by that I'll never forget the look on his face. He didn't feel the need to explain it make me feel better. Anything else other than just put his hand on my shoulder, and just look at me and he sold me he didn't rush after Gracie. He saw me and then we walked down towards critical care and I thought you don't that's really, how you do it is pastors as people who want to minister to caregivers. I think we are often in a situation where we feel this as believers we feel this compulsion to wash God's hands and and explain why he does these are allows these things in our lives and the lives of others, and I think there's a sign of spiritual maturity. When you stop trying to clean up after God and you recognize that he's working in things that we just cannot possibly understand and it's okay for us to trust and we communicate that level of of faith and hope and trust and peace in it. My pastor did not fill the air with meaningless words, he just simply walked with me to critical care, just as our Savior walks with us to the valley of the shadow of death that help form the entire foundation of what I do as as an outreach to family caregivers. I cannot take this away from you and I cannot give words to you that are going to somehow make all this feel better and and make you just okay. I'm okay now I'm good. What I can do is point you to safety and walk with you through it through this medium of of of being on the air so that you can hear voice that speaks fluent caregiver and and that you can hear somebody that really truly gets what you going through. When you have people that want to somehow explain stuff to it it it that that's troubling to me. I don't have this. What would you say what would people really go to say what was it 80 surges, both legs, a mutated lives with nonstop pain. This been going on since Reagan's first term was somebody going to say you know in Scripture you look at John when Jesus was at that pool with those we met with a guy that was laying there on a pallet any were struggling to get to the pool and and and he could get there but the angel came up and started supposing to get healed of all that, stuff going on with remember that story was Scripture say about that guy.

He said he been there a long time. That's all it says immunity been born this way evidently and in 38 years, and he said it was a long time.

Some have tried to make this sound better than it was her explain it and their longtime just so you say recognizes this. It is what it 880-589-8840 888-589-8840 is an overview would be important to have been doing this a long time.

Are you feeling about this. This is hope for the care is the right for caregivers about this is the nation's number one show for family caregiver and were glad to have you with this. 888-589-8840 if you would be a part of the show we may be having a little bit of software problem there on the phone line so bear with us if you can get through will do the best we can and muddle through it about those apples. You could also follow along on hope for the caregiver on Facebook and switch stream in the show and you can follow. From there I want to go back to this topic, though, that I was addressing here of how to engage with the caregiver. What does that look like and I go back to this pastor that sat there and watched me. You know like is that he didn't chase after the hospital gurney is with Gracie on it as it was going to critical care after she coded in a whole team of people doing that. He just locked. As with me. He just zeroed in on me, put his hand on my shoulder and didn't feel the need to say a lot of things but not a lot of things you can say you don't. I think that's something that we as believers it's counterintuitive because we want to somehow just come in there and get some soap and water and clean up God's hands because he's obviously made a mess in. I just think that's bad theology. And I think that we have as is a culture of of Christians been the recipient of a lot of bad theology for a long time some help confusing the American dream with the Christian walk.

What we talk about on the show doesn't sell very well and that kind of culture because there's not a bailout for this. There is only fortitude, strengthening and equipping and bearing one another's burdens, and you know this naming claimant nonsense that's out there and this this prosperity and wealth and all the Stuff out of those of final if that works for you, go ahead. I'm not here to just beat up on people about it, but I am talking to my fellow caregivers and when you come into it with an in with particular US clergy that are listening and hospital chaplains military draft of that with all these folks and I think the ones that really have the handle on it that I've seen consistently as a group or the military chaplains by dams ability to and I have known a lot of it. I have a very close friend of mine mentorship of the talk with you every couple days and that they understand that there's there's a war going on and that ministering to people is not just simply say that Hegel is just you will go payroll hard and squint your eyes will tighten this all go away. It doesn't work that way and it's it's all about strengthening and being with people. That's what it is in it if were not prepared to do that as believers than what we offering and I go back and get a look at this pastor who just looked at me if you want some us of a Howdy Mr. caregiver.

We are here set starts will give you vocabulary for this you look at him and you quietly say to them, and I mean when I say quietly humming quietly. You know, God blessed by charismatic and Pentecostal brother and sister and but no go up and start prophesied odious people you can scare them run off the cliff and there standing right on the cliff, be cool, right just be gentle and quiet. But the thing you want to do is you just look at them and you say I see you and I see the magnitude of what you carry and hurt with you.

Start with that. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. You just see them if you somehow feel like you got going there is is a minister and we a lot of ministers to call the show and I'll take the time with them, but I'm hoping to instruct them a little bit because they don't cover this in seminary. I've talked to many pastors, they don't have any clue about how to deal with this in seminary. They deal with episodic crisis but not the long-term, where it just stretches on for decades is that people don't know quite what to say or do or function, and so what were trying to do on this show is is give a different vocabulary of what it looks like to speak into the suffering and what you can find is if you could speak into the long-term suffering with wisdom and clarity of understanding and compassion and in good theology and you can speak into short-term stuff as well so we were confronted with suffering I got this theory if you hit your thumb with the hammer.

You go to cry out and you can react now if you're alone, you may swear if you're in front of other people. You may swear on your breath.

If you've a lot of the people you made holy Scripture regarding that's funny well. Regardless, you're going to react. But as the pain subsides. The reaction stops coming all of you imagine if can remember what it's like to stub your toe or hit your thumb or something or your when you're walking barefoot to the house needed on a piece of furniture.

Oh, I hate that. So you get that, but you're not still reacting yet. You can rent. You can recall that it was uncomfortable but you can't recall the sensation of pain.

Try you can't, so therefore you're not continually reacting and in you would be you would be kind of nuts if you were because the pains that they are. It's got it subsided time healed. It time lessened time minimized with that particular episode. Eventually the ink of the divorce paper dress.

Eventually, there's grass over the grave time has a way of lessening that pain to the point we are not reacting like it happened just at that moment that he may carry the residual echo of it and the grief of it and so forth. But the consequences of what the actual shock of the moment is gone. And speaking of shock.

That's when it gets to be so much our bodies will go into shock to deal with that element juxtapose that with chronic pain, chronic suffering chronic heartache that doesn't go away. The reaction never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming and you've got to deal with that reality in a different way than when you're faced with trauma, go back and some of you think about some of the trouble you've had in your life for the last whatever month two weeks year when you're faced with trauma.

The reaction we have an emotional level is sometimes crying out why God how God, what would he do and God. What's up with that God and their questions. It actually go to the core of who we are as people of faith and a question the very the very essence of our faith.

When these moments happen, but as time moves on as it does the payment that the shock of that lessons. I member is a collective nation when 9/11 hit everybody reversing Congress out there on the steps of of of the capital.

They were singing God bless America. They were just in shock and he reached out to God are struggling God.

Look how much we forgot. I mean we we get you know that not only were not reaching out to God is a collective nation. We got people run for president or just downright hostile to the people of God. It didn't last long did it and we put those questions away. After the shock is baited because where we were moving on. But when the shot doesn't fade.

We got a deal with those questions and when the shot comes back from an episode working up all those questions back out of her construct with that will go to some and try to make sense of God's plan, but we never really do because sometimes the things of God move in.

In this earth don't make sense and won't make sense in God's economy, it makes sense to God that Gracie doesn't have any legs.

It makes sense to God. The grace live with pain all the time. It makes sense to me that I've asked all the questions people come up and to give you platitudes that will got obviously has a purpose that she would be here. Thank you Capt. obvious how useless is that piece of information to me or look about him say you will look at the testimony you guys have for the ministry you have really you think I'm that noble you think grace is that noble.

Yeah, we have ministry to her fellow amputees and African would've happened from all the stuff but were not that noble. She would rather have a pain-free able-bodied existence. Those things are not helpful.

That's us just try to fill up air with words of that makes sense to us. That's not what this is about what we have to do as believers is learned to be able to speak the clarity of the gospel in this sometimes. And that doesn't involve words sometimes. Sometimes it just involves just like this pastor who put his hand on my shoulder looked at me and didn't say a word, but I knew that I was being cared for. I knew that I was being comforted. I knew that I was being shepherded. He never said is going to take the stuff away from his. He never said that were not to have these things. He said he'll be with us and that pastor friend bad name is Larry and he was simply with this letter the show. I want you to have the same care I got. Larry can't be all over the country so I'm trying to take what he gave me which he got from God and just give it to you in the best way that I can't let you know that the loan you do not have to do it this try to explain it but I'm speaking this is what we do is believe this hope in the care of the speed Rosenberger will be right back.

That is, Gracie and Johnny Erickson to singing because he lives is in the great I just before she can really say and she go CD coming out here very, very shortly were working on feverishly finishing this up, you can get a preview a lot of those things that are website and hope for the caregiver.com just click on the music tab and you can get some of these things is that some of the singles from there digitally. Right now, and you can get that do with her snow when she did with rust half that your love and that was just STUFF out there that hope for the caregiver.com and the name of the book is hope for the caregiver, the newest book 7 caregiver landmines and how you can avoid them and we talk about that a lot here because somebody these landmines out here that we hit as caregivers hit everyone on the spot look the way I look and don't let this happen to somebody you love, you know, I am the crash test dummy of caregivers. If you could fail at it. I failed at. But you don't have to. I you don't have to and this is why I do the show because I've had ample time to make so many mistakes on this thing that I've learned the hard way where some of these pitfalls are for us as caregivers and for those who want to minister to caregivers and what I'm hoping I can do is I can give vocabulary to my fellow caregivers on what health looks like it inspired them to ask for their help and receive that help and that also will give vocabulary to people who want to minister to caregivers, particularly clergy so that they don't come up and just give platitudes or try to somehow explain this thing away that we are somehow able to better equip each other to endure with this note.

If you go back and look at Scripture. There's so many phrases about endurance, perseverance, steadfastness, stay strong, don't be afraid all those kinds of things in there it's going somewhere. This is going somewhere God is taking us somewhere on this.

The question is do we trust we trust them with your wife goes into respiratory arrest. Do we trust him when we watch a family was specially I was at the prostitutes yesterday with my wife getting her legs worked on and the lady showed up with her child that hadn't orthotics need a lot of prostitutes you know you have prosthetics and orthotics in the same place that for those you don't know what all this is that live in Duncan, for example, you have prosthetics or devices to help you to to replace something that was taken from you for example a prosthetic limb prosthetic nose prosthetic breast. Whatever you you've lost their prostheses that are made for this orthotics or things that to help you better stabilize what you have. For example, by a back brace and neck brace or children born with misshapen feet club feet that come stuff in those orthotics and was a very, very, very severely disabled child that this woman is bringing in an and she was with this to the and she had lost several she keeps adopting the special needs children and cares for them and this massive band that she brings it doesn't just loves up on these kids and you know that there's not what you say we go to say you just sit there and all of this of this individual who keeps pouring her life in the skids and precious children who are dealing with horrific afflictions and in when you see things like this, it automatically predicts something in your heart to start asking questions of the Almighty. I I've said this for years. It would Gracie walks into a room she creates a theological conversation. She said anything because here's his beautiful woman with this is amazing attitude and everything else that she has and she severely disabled. She's used to cane she's got to prosthetic legs. The canes or for her bag not for her legs alleging fun. The prosthesis for fun. It's just that her back is so trash from all the surgeries and and all the injuries and so forth. And yet she gets up and sings a church and and and does all the things she just put out a wreck.

She goes to Africa and helps her fellow entities. It creates some kind of theological issue going on this okay. Why would God allow such a thing. Why would God allow such a thing. Gracie hadn't said a word and people start asking that question in their hearts and their minds and then they want to try to somehow answer it in figure that out and what I'm hoping that you get out of this particular show is that you have to figure this thing out. You don't have to explain why God does this, and even if you knew why God does is is is going to make all of us slap our foreheads and say what makes me feel better.

All right, we do not have to know why. The only solace for us. The only comfort the only strength the only reality for us is to know who it is long as you keep spending a lot of time trying to figure it out for yourself and figured out for others. You go to you going to end up frustrating yourself and causing damage. For others, and that is that is something that that that really needs to stop.

As caregivers we can't we can. It we can't withstand that kind of onslaught from believers who want to come and constantly try to figure this thing out for us. We just can't do it it it's it's mine numbingly frustrating for us.

It's a lot of people just stop going to church to stop dealing with Satan. I don't feel like having people work after salvation on the left-hand people do that to me on it makes me fight in med coming to the point. Just spit in med. If you have enough faith or this this whatever all that just makes me mad that I have to just keep those people arm's-length because they there, they just hot messes. As far as I'm concerned I don't have time for their craziness and they're not to be there not to be in their tribe. Somehow, take care, Gracie, that is what a parachute inland and in some else. Well, okay, here's what we think and I'm like wow I care what you think you track it with me on this. We don't have to wash God's hands. We don't have to clean up behind and so many Christians are just convinced that they do. They just have to explain it, so it makes sense to people. It is what it is and in as long as we are somehow try to make sense of things that we are not equipped to be able to make sense of where you live in frustration. But when we accept what is and understand our role in this. That's were we can live in a in a calm or, more peaceful, more and even more joyful place and that's that's our journey as believers. This is this is our our biblical task and again we've we've just been the recipient of so much bad theology. I mean just so much and and and I I hate that for me. I hate that for you as a caregiver, but I am trying to do something about it and let you know that the gospel, the good news of the gospel is not that this is only to be taken away from us today and were going to feel happy happy happy all the time time time.

The good news of the gospel is there's a victory that's already been one and we trust him as we walked through the stuff that's that's the gospel. The victory is already done. It had nothing to do with you and me. The only thing we can bring to salvation. I think Chesterton said this, the only thing we can bring salvation is our sin. That's all we got off Bill Gaither's something beautiful, something good all my confusion.

He understood all had to offer him was brokenness and strife that he made something beautiful melody believe that is important to you is that in any way reassuring to you are you are you engaged in that particular mindset where you realize in that way to minute. This isn't about me in this, since this is about God and what he's doing. Do I trust him in this and if I do trust why why am I trusting how do I know that I can trust see that that's a better question. How do you know that you can trust the Savior while you're watching a loved one deteriorate while you're watching someone suffer while you're watching an addict and alcoholic in your life spiraling it around the drain while you're watching your wife code and respiratory arrest like I did that day that I mentioned earlier while you're watching a train wreck of a life or this woman yesterday there was that I saw that was taking care of this special-needs child that was just bad shape. How do you know that you can trust with these things and that's where the cross comes it. That's where the scars that he carries me more than the scars that you carry sleep but what is love scars scatological. She was very, very banged up in this Rick, one of the residents later told her process 200 like they stopped Kelly intuitively a lot of scars but those scars are not what they should have, but his scars those are when they were to see in his scars that are eternal mean something in return. That's how we don't trust this is hopefully caregiver will be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you. I'm Gracie Rosenberger in 1983 I experienced a horrific car accident leading 80 surgeries in both legs and became I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me. But over time I questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God that understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with help more than a dozen years we been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people on a regular basis.

We purchased ship equipment and supplies and with the help of inmates in Tennessee prison.

We also recycle parts from donated lambs. All this is to point others to Christ.

The source of my help and strength, please visit standing with help.com to learn more and participate in lifting others that standing without.com I'm Gracie and I am staining with help. Hopefully caregiver All-American February of this view is, but if this is the nation's number one show for the family caregiver yourself and if you could somebody bring the money addiction issues alcoholism all because that are out there. Whatever the impairment. They are usually chronic. There's a cure there's somebody orbiting that individual mental illness.

Whatever doesn't matter the impairment, there's always a caregiver and sometimes the caregivers of throne. There their hands up further exasperated their swear in another breath and their deal with the person themselves. They're dealing with all kinds of resentment or whatever you that's one of the things that I do on the show when I ask every caller. How are you feeling as I want to get to how you're doing. I don't know how your love ones doing okay that that's not cold that's not does not mean just that.

The purpose of the show.

Purpose of the shows to talk to you and and I really passionate about helping caregivers learn to speak in their own voice to many of us don't fit. I can't tell you because of the show or asking how to do it and they start rattling off their love ones chart we can all rattle offered level chart may we do that you we were experts at that about rattling off your chart, talk about how you're doing and I found it is my experience and have been doing this a long time that would caregiver start speaking in first person singular about how they feel. That's when the tears come.

That's when the stammering comes. That's when the heartache spills out of the get real clinical battle of one when it comes to talk about how they feel what's going on with them. That's where it gets a little bit ugly and ability. And that's okay. That's my do the show we got lots of mops and Lysol wipes. God has an entire broom closet just for us for our messy hearts because of her not being real with it. All were doing is living in some kind of level of denial and were pushing ourselves to to the breaking point to not being able to function in a healthy manner. It is what it is he knows it. You know it.

Now let's talk about it. Let's get it out there. Let's deal with and that let's not try to somehow put it in my party packages. We don't have to wrap this stuff up. We just don't we don't have to make it more presentable to other people and I don't have to make other people more comfortable with with my situation.

I'm not there to ease their burden. I don't necessarily have to inflicted on a but if they're going to come up close to me. They need to understand it's going it's going to cost them something. If people want to be in relationship with Gracie. It's going to cost them something, because it is painful to walk with her through these things and those of you who who know her that a listing I got a lot of folks on Facebook and so forth that are watching glycidyl no.

It is painful to get up close to Gracie love people like to admire from stage when she's performing a lack of stuff, but it's a whole different matter when you're helping her take her legs off and she's in a wheelchair and she struggling and she's hurting, and educating order see straight.

She's in so much pain after the event. If you will be blessed with me. You need understand that my life is intense. The market inflicted on you but don't you know come up next to me and just parachute in and think you can just drop diesel pearls that somehow you figured out. This is what I'm trying to help people understand what it comes to caregivers and too many people that fill our pulpits. This is what they do tip to those of us who care.

Give they found a verse somewhere in Zephaniah are something and they think, all while bit. I got it.

I want to go there and just deposit this all the suffering individual. I'll feel better about my ministry it were over there think it really thank you very much if you would minister to caregiver.

Be prepared to weep if you want to minister to a caregiver.

Be prepared to grow and if you want to minister to caregiver.

Be prepared that is gonna cost you something spiritually you're going to have to wrestle with God in your theology is going to change, so I'm convinced. I am convinced of this that if you would have any Effective kingdom ministry in this world you either going to suffer or you would have to touch a lot of people who do.

If you are not personally dealing with this then you're going to have to be willing and actual touch people that do and the more you insulate yourself from suffering, the less effective your kingdom ministry will be on this earth. I'm convinced that if you disagree with SRU could be wrong to member great quote I heard from Franklin Graham was about Samaritan's purse. He said this is not the kind of ministry that you can run from behind the desk you have to get out and smell it and suffering in poverty and anguish has its own smell. If you don't believe me you haven't touched it, it cost you something to minister to people. That's why we should not go into the slightly Paul says it's don't do this, likely it's over you clergy you military chaplains you hospital chaplains you lay leaders. You people want to do this. Be prepared to not try to figure this thing out just walk with just stand with them just sit with just let them know that you see them.

I remember one of the greatest gifts that I've gotten is a caregiver. Gracie was in the hospital he had given me when you've had many surgeries she has was a long time at hospital kids were with grandparents that I came home to get some clean laundry for her gowns and so forth and I was headed back up the hospital. Some friends called me. They said stop by the house, it's on the way stop by here we got some for sauce one brother home.

I walked in and they pointed to the kitchen table still see and there was a hot bowl of vegetable beef soup. One of my favorites in a bagel piece cornbread and a glass of tea.

They said you kids are safe, Gracie safe. You sit down here you have the soup and cornbread were going to stand over you and you're going to be safe. That's a minister to kick not exotic about some kind of send me out a big cruiser anything sometimes is just a bowl of soup and a quiet kitchen table to gather my thoughts, and to know that I'm safe. Do you feel safe today is a caregiver.

Do you feel safe going to church and you pastors do you you create an environment where people can come in with trauma and feel safe in your church if not one of you do. Can somebody bring their special needs child into your church that makes all kind of bodily noises and whatever looks grotesque on any given day, and do they feel safe to do it. If not, explain yourself, explain your ministry. Don't just go with your opinion. Gwen verified Luke 14 go out to the highways and byways and get a man bring in the blind and the lame, the afflicted see how well they do see how well your people receive the because if your church is not receiving these kinds of people.

What are you preaching what are you teaching I feel uncomfortable. I don't care. Imagine how they feel. If you feel uncomfortable around the suffering. What does that say about your theology was that say about you and all fairness, it is uncomfortably rented but that's were called to do and so as we feel uncomfortable about it. That's how we trust him more. And it honestly is a brain surgery. Do you believe what you preach or not or what are you preaching do you believe what Scripture says or not people are suffering. People are bleeding.

People are dying, people are hurting and we as the church have the hope of the gospel and what we doing with our country. It's a train wreck which the church will be saying what we doing this is what hope for the caregiver looks like is that we can speak with clarity gospel into this that the people can live a calm healthier and more joyful life even while suffering Scripture is full of this, saying that very thing. #Imprisoned. They were singing hymns to God, much hope for the caregiver.com if you like what you know the show help us do it more. What hope for the caregiver.com today my miracle and take a look at we'll see next week