Mary Tutterow and The Heart of The Caregiver

Join us more about for the month. Very total from Charleston, South Carolina, and Mary's got a new Bible study on new book out and I want to just share a little bit about her with you as she and her husband when they have two adult children and live in Charleston which is one of the absolute most beautiful cities of the country I grew up in an upstate South Carolina been been to Charleston many times other daughter Mary Addison has cognitive and physical challenges. I she's in her mid to late 20s I think would marry a quick here in a minute and she is also an active seizure disorder. They also dealt with cancer and dementia in their family. They've been doing this for a long long long time. She's a former anchorwoman and marketing executive, and so forth and does all kinds of things and she has rights she speaks and sheep feed leads online and in-person small group for caregivers. She's really infested and has done a lot of this for a long time. In her new studies called the heart of a caregiver.

Somewhere you will you with us this morning. Mary good morning good morning good morning how you feeling different training here in Charleston but I think it may happen can get up and go play golf, hiking it out and get on the radio will listless not whine too much because it's very early where I of two hours behind you that it's it's all right. I grew up on Eastern time zone. Now I'm living in Mountain time and it's a it's a big adjustment a bit of adjustment. A been friends for a while. A while enough followed with great interest.

What you do, tell us a little bit about your life, your journey is a caregiver that will get into this new book you have my heart when I have two adult children had an outline it up and out on his own and when it Mary had a tendency mentally and physically challenged theater disorder, seething really pretty much many times every day and during caring for her. These 27 years. We often cared for his my husband mother and only child to care for his mother through her cancer and dementia and currently we are now caring for his dad were part of the caregiving team, long distance, he doesn't live here with us that way we know a lot about caregiving and it's been one of these journeys that I buy might be able to talk about things today in a voice that you know, 10, 15 years ago I would never dreamed I could be calm and peaceful about the things in my life is just like you being in moving after 28 years in the same house Peter holy smoke moving into a brand-new life. As I got until you I got a go. We with more drama getting rid of stuff that I think that Gracie watched her struggle more. Getting rid of things we accumulated for all these years that I did watch her get rid of her legs is like a couple of baby but I let you take a quick break to be joined for the next segment he was married to talk about her journey and think she's learned along the way. 888-589-8840 888-589-8840.

This is hope for the cure. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver for part of your part of what were doing. Understand that if you try to do this by yourself in general have to be lower here. They didn't 589-8840 will be right back. You will hear a statement will cause you to think was God look for people you love creates means that God is doing for you right now even if you don't know, sometimes I'm sharp with my sin and wonder our God could possibly love me when it's dark and I wonder tell you what he says son I'm not finished using finish reviewing. Trust me on this. I finished product will look like Jesus. Meanwhile. Discouraged with the process.

Okay Steve Brown what you just heard you think about that. Glad that you with this computer. Rosenberg 888-589-8840 888-589-8840 that song coming in because he lives at his my wife Gracie with her dear friend John Erickson taught that is a beautiful version of what they did with that great him and you could hear the whole thing or download it. It's available wherever you stream and download music and all the cost of Amazon iTunes. All I can stuff it got to our website standing with hope.com standing with hope.com if you want to hear it and see this video we put together with us really really great. You can check that out and see about what we do in our ministry and be part of what we do it standing with hope.com which is the present sponsor of the show we talk with Mary Tyrone my friend from trust, South Carolina friend and fellow caregiver. She has been doing this for a long time and I found her to be a will, wellspring of great wisdom. She's journey down the caregiving path for lo these many years. Mary tell us a little bit more of your journey as a mom caregiver and what that's meant to you and some things you've learned in the list. Talk about the heart of a caregiver well started out quite a bit of a career women and we had hired for that part of our first child wouldn't slow down our careers and boy it got have something else in mind because along the baby having 500 seizures a day and not I have been a churchgoer but I had never taken got up on his word. I'd never really ever remember about club. I wasn't a believer and on one night in the nursery as I'm holding this baby who had been sent home to die and are armed. She's just seizing and the tears streaming down my face onto the baby and for the first time in my life. I cried out.

How did Mary the mother of Jesus watch her child suffer and die like I'm watching my child suffer and die and loaded the 27 year journey of just like you said Peter. The beginning of the show. Learning that my Lord speaks caregiver that it's the very calling of Jesus I had never never seen parenting to be be being a servant compared to being a servant, and it changed everything in it. This whole journey is changed the way I have relationships not only with my children with my husband and with my friends with my Lord. It it just changed everything swerves into little bit of stuff that's going on in the political world and ask you questions about it. There's no coordination between Mary on this because I try to not be corrugated anyway finish before bed. It's I can't help but think about when you're when you're talking about this.

The comments of Gov. Northern Virginia and what that must and this is one of the things that I have struggled with what he made those things those comments is that what are parents of special needs children listening to when they listen to this guy.

How are they going to respond to this in and are believers able to counteract that and speak with the with more clarity and a better voice into those families. Like you weren't at that point it in you cumulative if you came along at a very vulnerable time with you with your daughter. Things may turn out much different and in his voice, not just him with just his voice of think it's okay to make a decision quote unquote about this child you know and I I'm just horrified at what's going on in our country and how were devaluing life and in caregivers of special needs children particular who have reached the end of the rope. They don't know what to do little to who to listen to. They don't know how to respond in the world is offering will look at what the world was offered. I would do offering infanticide and you come along as a mother of the child with special needs and your party to the Savior talk little bit about that.

I know I swerved into that and that the problem surprise you with it, but I can't help but think about it because that's what's going on the national discourse right now. Well. No my daughter with your whole having half of her brain removed trying quiet.

And I was five months pregnant at the time and we were having surgery done on the West Coast and my might. My OB/GYN called me in California and my husband and had to go back to the East Coast, all the convoluted thing I'm getting somewhere with the theater waiting ran with my daughter on the table. I get told that my son the testing we done that were having a boy but that he has down syndrome and that I should aborting because what would I like be like with kids, so I immediately call my amazing incredible has been hit that absolutely not doing it with one we can do to and I thank God every day for the power the Holy Spirit speaking to my husband it's very broken terrified young young wife and mother that we have faith that that kind of conversation being the last from the medical community being called. You need to have an abortion you know and I'm I'm in a state of absolute terror, but we were two years along with our daughter.

I'd already had that experience with crying out to God I had already witness the power of the truth behind his where we are the weakest powerful because through this little broken baby. He was absolutely turning the tables on these two self-centered, materialistic, up-and-coming driven yuppies shattered everything we had understood about what it means to be healing and with rebuilding us from the foundation of love and and so I know firsthand how it feels to be one of these young mom for being told the choice you have an and probably choice you need to make the world would be better off with less quote unquote disabled people and yet I that's the prevailing thought in our culture in a world that that is what the world offers. Let's get rid of anything that is undesirable and and we were in that same position to win our seconds. When Grace was pregnant with her second son, and they said same kind of thing to us. Gracie was just I was a look back with just the basement. She said she went off every bit of medication. Cold turkey did and protected that life inside her and I struggled out I got I embarrassingly in grievously struggle because of think okay am already taking care of one person who's disabled, and now they're saying there are child to be born without you know with significant brain damage and the doctor was absolutely wrong. 100% wrong and not only born with a healthy brain and healthy bodies get brilliant and you know and and I look at the medical community and they are just so quick. So many of them that did share this kind of worldview. Let's just get rid of it had a friend must show that with that has down syndrome son 40 years old and he said the most at risk individual in this country is a baby with Down syndrome in the womb. And thank you Lord like your completely medical world and a brilliant young man is perfectly fine will.

I would suggest I would suggest that you know the these children that God brings in your life are perfectly fine. However, he brings them in. It's just we are not perfectly fine with sometimes the things that God does and that's what he works on this please worked out with me and I realize that I'm not perfectly fine messed up and and and I've seen this and this is what I think you have shown in your own life is that you realize that this was God chiseling away at things in your own life and he uses things that the world just is baffled by uses the foolishness of the world to reveal his glory in Scripture says in and in his wisdom, and so this is what is led you to this whole minister you have of the heart of a caregiver and talk about that for having a mother-in-law who is a believer. Scripture put material gave me the time for prayer to be the church did that thing I don't know that the journey would've ended up same. And this is what my passion is Peter. If it went a family that the cross for you and I both know the door that isolation "and you're so much time in the hospital so much time at it bad so much time with the child can't go here. Can't go there you can isolate and in the more you get isolated. The more ugly thought takeover and this is what I'm absolutely passionate about it.

I believe this is a mission field of people right here under our noses, that the church needs to realize who they are and what they need and have the tools to be able to put in their hands and not for the heart of the caregivers all about it. It's not about autism is not about a child with special needs is not about Alzheimer's is not about cancer. It's about the having to lay down their life for someone else and and and just flat out serve you room you come on the show because you kinda have to done this for a long time to understand what the core needs a big silly times. If you do this for a couple years you wrapped up into the disability. The dysfunction and then when you do this for a couple of decades, you start to realize a way to minute. This is the sanctification process.

This is God speaking in a way that I didn't recognize before. This is really about my own dysfunction in my own need. It's not about making sure I learned everything there is.

Like you said about autism or vocational imputation, trauma, and all the stuff.

Those are important things but but it's it's our journey as caregivers of understanding God's provision in it and this is what you just said overthrow statement here won't bounce off of this. If I felt sometimes it caregivers can feel isolated in the crowded room and caregivers can feel isolated on a crowded pew talk about that you didn't. You build a church filled with the theater walking out the door to chart. Yeah, because I really got into a place of what I expected.

What I had planned how I get on with my life because the world is telling you you need to get on with your life still maintain your own life and you need to get a bubble bath lunch with friend baba Vlad like that happened need time, well never did got going.

I'm sorry to quick break will be like that. This is hopefully caregiver will be like that.

This is Jim Stanley general manager of American family radio here to tell you that changes on the year changes will that's true to we got some big changes coming up and you will hear them on the year as I was saying changes are coming and you hear them on the year beginning Monday, June 24 here on American family radio. Today's culture is opting for entertainment rather than biblical enlightenment for those who resist that trend.

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Friends of Israel shares biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah and promote solidarity with the Jewish people. This is talk of the friends of Israel today radio program heard each week and on the station. Here's what's happening in Israel friends of Israel Saturday afternoon at two here on American family radio I'm Peter Rosenberger and this is your caregiver minute noise bombards us every day from 24 hour cable news to traffic to our mobile devices we are inundated with a wall of noise seem to keep so many of us in a state of agitation for caregivers taking a moment to sit quietly and settle our hearts them seems nearly impossible, but it's critical for us to do just that. You see, if we don't take time for stillness were going to have to make time for illness. That constant state of anxiety, stress, and sensory overload. We experience as caregivers will eventually make us sick. Stress kills the way we push back on this is to carve out some time or we can just be still and quiet prayer, meditation, or just clearing our frenetic thoughts. It all helps reboot our minds and hearts and allows us to be a little calmer in the caregiver storm we navigate this is been your caregiver minute with Peter Rosenberger brought to you by standing with hope. A ministry for the wounded and those who care for them. There's more information@standingwithhope.com about caregivers hosted by caregiver. I'm Peter Rosenberger. This is hope for the caregiver American family radio. We are the nation's largest radio program exclusively for the family cared for those you were pushing the wheelchair have a special needs child dealing with aging parents have a spouse that has traumatic issues imputation autism addiction if you got someone in your family and your skin, your orbit, who is an alcoholic or have some type of addiction issue your functioning as a carrier. Make no mistake about it, and we are one of the few people if not the only ones that are doing this on a national level to leave in that whole addiction issue to this because it's a chronic impairment. If there's a chronic impairment. There's a caregiver. How are you feeling how are you doing that's what the show is all about is helping you get to a place of safety back in you away from that cliff and getting you to place a safety 888-589-8840 888-589-8840. We are on the phone here without Mary told Roe from Charleston, South Carolina. Just an amazing individual who has mind, those deep places where the heart of the caregiver is at risk is credibly vulnerable and she has been able to go into those deep places herself as a caregiver for many, many, many years through a very difficult set of circumstances and see the hand of God in ways that she never expected and up Mary, I'm sorry I had a good truffle into the break table talk a little bit more about what you do there because you you when you you you build and that isolation component that affects so many of us at about all caregiver suffer from three as we lose our identity lose our independence we become isolated and in that isolation, dark thoughts can take over and if we are not hearing of the in those isolation with the start thoughts here for not hearing hope in life were to be listening to those dark thoughts, and unfortunately the world as is modeled by the governor of Virginia in the state of New York and all these other people are speaking with great loudness arming only just in these dark thoughts themselves into this, but we as the church have a responsibility to speak life into this and to speak the hope of the gospel and in the hope of the gospel is the only tangible thing you can grab a hold of in this talk a little bit more about that Mary exactly right. And the gospel. You know you can do a lot of things to get get quiet. But if if the church isn't there to help put the caregiver hand back and handed Jesus. Nobody needs Mary Colorado. I love you Peter but nobody really Peter we all servant, the ultimate caregiver and and I believe with all my heart. It is time for the church to step up to answer the questions they're being raised by the race family caregiver act and things like that that are going on that it is the time for the church to shine because the Lord and how the servant changing your perspective on where not here to build a big job a big house big car big life trip.

We are here for his created with a purpose to do and what ever your role in life is we are here for each other. It doesn't necessarily have to be a child with special needs are apparently Alzheimer's but we were created at the body to be here for each other to learn to love and serve one another and we forgotten how to do that we know how to help people in foreign countries, but we forgotten how to take care the people that we rub elbows with and I believe that what God is calling us to through this movement of so many people being weak and wounded. The elderly people, children are born today with some kind of disabling condition is staggering and I believe that the experience is just like what we found with our child and I know you found with Gracie loving and serving get this right back to the heart of our Lord and it gets that's right back to Alan. Why were here and who we are and get off the gerbil wheel of competition and and and accumulation all the things that's the blessing that we have we received so much freedom from this journey to just say what the world is dealing now is not what we have to deal with statement I wanted to let you respond to the statement said this a while back you said there's nothing like doing this is taking care of somebody with a chronic impairment for couple of decades to expose the funk in your own life is. Does that resonate with you. What it on another level, I would rain now and the exit that well anybody anywhere but I was hot you know you go to private pool. You get a fine education go to college or university, you earn a degree.

You have a career and you get married and you have children and your children have to be perfect and you keep your figure and you know all the things you make great meals. You do all the stuff in a long-term child, my daughter preparing my life for my daughter and she's born and overnight. I realize from her profound challenges. He'll never have any of those things never and it made me completely re-shift my perspective on what it must mean to be human because clearly God didn't doubt your disqualified from having a meaningful life because she couldn't do any of those things that the world had told us you have to do and she absolutely shook our world to the core.

Everything was shifting sand there was no solid ground could rebuild everything on what other people thought and on money and on smartphone on everything in the Lord absolutely strictest down to love. It is nothing else but that to hang onto. So it's just I saw that my own life that I had all these ambitions and all these dreams and you do when you when you came for somebody a family moves at the speed of the slowest member and I usually run around about 900 miles an hour was my hero and far and and we grace you have learned is that the West can work within a week. We cannot move faster than this thing and were going to have to deal with it as it is and it's hard to to make those long-term career plans is hard to do the sink, but as we like like in this mover here.

We've kind of reduced everything down to the bare minimum of our life because that's that's how we have to live. That's how we live is caregiver real quickly in the just the last couple minutes talk about your your new book, the heart of the character, caregiver, Church Street, hurting people, caregiver and pocket the ministry we do a lot online small graded webinars and things like that but it is not my story. It God story, the words he spoke to me over 10 years journaling and then 10 years of teaching.

This tooth migrates in my church.

It's the words that actually transform the heart of the caregiver to be able to have a servant heart and allow the Lord in to do this work you have peace and find joy and fulfillment in doing this very hard work but yeah not occur if the gift it really is and and the heart of the caregiver and the second book coming out this Christmas.

The people caregiver are a part of a series of study guides to get people back into God's word to get people back connected to each other, not in the conversation of the disease or disability that in the conversation of our Lord and Savior and who he is a cathartic where can people get this anywhere, books are sold and my website it the heart of de caregiver.com but any bookstore and it's on Amazon in Christian books, all that staff you speak a good bit outside of the trust. I know that logistically that's hard to do you get this you do that, I well I can and that like you said it mean I am in the trenches just like you are on doing it right now. You know, and so a lot of my stuff comes from. I do a lot from home just like what were doing right now will and that's the beauty of this world were living in nails that we can technology engage each other. What used to be was we were condemned to isolation. No were not. And that's why we do this radio show because we know that this can go to places where other people did they just can't get out and and that isolationist is crippling and where were pushing back on that and so are you a love what you do Harry and I've been getting text and people follow Facebook just say and what an amazing guest, you are and and and I have to come back and continue talk about this more of your your welcome call back anytime because I think that those of us who been doing this for a long time when we need to hear the seams and reminders. We we we understand with the real issues are.

Once you and I encourage everyone to learn as much as you can about your love ones impairment really do that is so important as a caregiver. But I also encourage you to learn as much as you can about your own impairment.

That's where the battle is for us as caregivers because his lungs were focused on someone else's stuff. We don't have to deal with her own and and I I can't speak for all you will, but I can speak for myself. I got Lydia's stuff that's way apart from Gracie's juror. I got a lot of stuff that I got a deal with it.

It's this basically it's sanctification. We will… Be blunt about it a minute it is, you know, our salvation occurred immediately at the cross when Jesus said it is finished. That's when salvation occurs the moment we we are we are we are saved in Christ, our glorification will happen when we step into his eternal kingdom permanently just boot right there instantly, but asked sanctification that takes a lifetime of that's that's a little bit more of a bloodied business of through our life to. And God has his legs wrapped the only person you can change our circumstances may not be able to change we can change and when we make the choice to do that hard in her work, and inner healing to function out of love and fear function from a place of love and port from our Savior and to do it alone. Can it not only changes I we want to have a healthy, joyful, peaceful life. In doing that, but by golly it changes people around here for changes are other relationship and we hope to hurting world. Now you know not only given a microphone in the spotlight radio program and all the other wonderful work you every day when you're out and letting you have a struggle to trust God when you see things D I'm Gracie Rosenberger in 1983 I experienced a horrific car accident, leading to 80 surgeries in both legs and became it. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time the questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God that understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing without 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 a Tennessee prison.

We also recycle parts from donated lambs. All of this is to point others to Christ. The source of my help and strength, please visit standing without.com to learn more and participate in lifting others standing without.com.

I'm Gracie. I am staining with help caregiver the nation's number one show for the family caregiver Mary, I'm sorry I had to go to heartbreak. There and I cut you off there, but I appreciate what you were saying that we do get to model this if we're willing to trust God in the midst of this grace to something that would rail against God. It is all it does is just delay our own sense of well-being in our own sense of of of commerce that's available to us through Christ, you know, we were as miserable as happy as we choose to be.

And so your words were were well said, and Samaria wanted. I did want to just send you packing into the to the commercial but thank you for being a part of the show and I would put this out of the podcast a little bit later. One more time on the website. Mary Hart of the program on their if you would