February 3, 2025 • 37 mins
In this episode, we fill everyone in on where we've been and the detour God has put our family on. 4 weeks ago, Deb's father fell and broke his hip. One of the ripple effects of this has been a new appreciation for one of God's names, Jehovah Jireh. We discuss what it's like depending on God to provide and guide.
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(00:00):
Thank youardease
(00:13):
indio
As always, I'm here with my beautiful wife Deb,
and yeah, this We Missed episode,
we have had quite the January.
Oh gosh, the last four weeks have been a journey
(00:36):
I wouldn't want anyone else still on the path.
Yes, well, you know, it's a journey
that I think a lot of people are actually gonna go down
whether they want to or not.
That's true.
And right after the New Year,
just a few days into the New Year,
your dad fell and broke his hip.
And yeah, tore up his shoulder.
(00:58):
Yeah, tore up his shoulder,
got all sorts of things, he's 93 years old.
He's a tiny man, so there's no cushion to him.
He's just really thin.
And he was mom's caretaker,
so that was kind of the double win.
So all of a sudden, you and I had to kind of divide
and conquer.
Woo.
I had to be mom's caretaker,
(01:20):
and you weren't really a caretaker,
you were more of an advocate for your dad.
That was more your role,
where you were true caretaker cooking and medicine
and this and that,
and the other where you were fighting with doctors
and insurance and-
Fighting with my dad.
Yes.
Yes.
Trying to stand up for your old dad.
Yeah, the healthcare system is quite a shocker
(01:42):
when you see it from that lens,
from the lens of an elderly person.
Yes, especially in Florida,
there's so many elderly people here
that you really are overwhelmed in services,
not top notch, will you say that?
No, I wonder what the ranking of Florida would be
throughout the United States for healthcare.
I bet it's very low for a lot of teens.
(02:05):
Yes.
And I think when you're healthy,
you don't really have any experience with healthcare.
It's when you're advocating for somebody
that needs everything,
and nobody wants to do anything.
It's a battle.
I felt like I was in a war zone for a month.
And what's amazing is,
(02:25):
as always, looking back,
you see how God was in it from start to finish,
and God even showed me things about how he was with us
when mom was in the hospital through dad.
You can get into that a little bit later,
but yeah, it's definitely a season of growth,
a lot of refining.
(02:46):
Yes, I feel very pruned.
I know.
Yes.
Prune is the right, right word.
Nobody likes to be under pressure.
The pressure that we run,
your mom came to live with us.
Oh my.
And you spent at least half of your evenings
at a rehab or a hospital
(03:06):
to try and help dad along.
We haven't slept in four weeks.
We have not slept in four weeks.
None.
None.
So this should be a great episode.
Yeah, we're just full of excitement about it.
This is the type of energy that kicks in
when you're just completely exhausted
and you have nothing left.
(03:26):
But yeah, I guess for the audience,
early January, dad was in his room,
and just kind of fell.
Over and over again.
No, no reason to forget that.
Yeah.
He had just gone to the gym two days earlier.
He was always at least three days a week
(03:48):
and a person at the gym.
Even at 93, he'd do battle ropes.
He'd do, like, he was a joke.
Yeah.
Do everything he could for a 93 year old.
He's in like the top.1% of people for a 24 year old.
So it was one of those things
we were always kind of worried.
We kind of thought mom would fall for sure.
(04:08):
Oh, she's a nasty weight nap.
So mom would fall all the time.
Right, and we kept telling him
all it takes is one fall for everybody's life to change.
And we swore it was gonna be mom
because she's a bull in a time shop.
And she falls all the time.
Oh yes.
Every day she falls.
She's got a cushion.
She does.
She's a big Italian woman.
(04:30):
Aw, yeah, she is.
And she can take a fall where dad is this frail little
83 year old man.
Italian men tend to be smaller when they get older
and Italian women.
Well, I don't wanna tell you this.
I don't know about you, but Italian women tend to get
a lot more cushion.
(04:52):
I guess it's a good thing about an Italian man.
That's true.
Yeah.
But yeah, just immediately we obviously took him
to the emergency room.
He was there in the emergency room for.
Four days.
No, no, no, he was in the hospital.
He was in the emergency room for just maybe six hours
or eight hours to transfer him up to the hospital.
(05:14):
He's in tremendous, tremendous pain.
It was like 10 o'clock in the morning.
He had to use his state work.
Is there nothing you could do that day?
Or is it all you could do is administer pain meds
because when you fall and break your hip,
it's not a doctor you need, it's a surgeon.
Right. Right.
So we had to basically sit there and wait for the surgeon
to get out of surgery.
(05:35):
So I said, you know, just stay at work.
Don't take the time off.
Nothing's happening.
We're just sitting here.
They've got that dosed up on pain meds.
Yeah.
And that was the start of just this crazy month for us.
Like you said, he went up to the hospital for four days.
And then from there, he went to a rehab facility.
(05:57):
And what I find interesting is they call it rehab,
but it's a nursing home.
And it was not like, there were no young people in there
that had like maybe got into a car accident
and they were rehabbing.
It was, unfortunately, it looked like people were going
there to just die.
And that was a shock for him and for me.
(06:18):
You know, I'm thinking he's gonna get, you know,
this is great, dad, we're going from a hospital setting
to rehab, you're gonna get, you know, work done,
you're gonna be able to do exercise.
I'm misinformed.
You know, so had I known it was gonna be the way it was,
I would have tried to keep him under your hospital care
for a little bit longer,
just because I know he would have gotten
(06:40):
the attention he needed.
And from the day we entered that place
to the day we left, it was one battle after another.
The way they treated him was just deplorable.
Yeah, even just getting in the shower was a battle.
A day's worth of battle.
Yeah, they left him, you know, to rot, honestly.
(07:04):
So we definitely depended on God.
This was the season where we,
Jehovah had to earn his name and he did.
He did.
As everyone would expect to know that he would,
he definitely earned that name.
The Lord is my provider.
He is, and he's certainly provided.
(07:26):
Yeah, there was a little incident
that God just gave me a little kiss from him.
And I am intrigued.
I know a lot of people look at God's big picture miracles
and that's such a great lens to look at God through,
but I really enjoy looking through
the smaller lens of detail.
And when you start to do that through scripture,
(07:47):
you can see all these little details
weaving this beautiful tapestry of a story.
And the details to me seem very intimate and personal.
So we had mom and I travel to the hospital to see dad.
And on the way back, I guess we lost a tennis ball
on her walker, which is not uncommon for her
(08:11):
because it's mom, you know?
She's very rough with her walker.
And so she comes to the house
and she's scraping up our floors
and I'm like, oh, I need a tennis ball.
When am I gonna have time to even get to Walmart
to get a tennis ball?
Like, I don't need another task on my list, right?
And so I figured, well, we'll get there.
We'll just pray that the floor doesn't get destroyed.
(08:34):
And then the next morning, we are going to see dad
and I'm making coffee and God says,
pack some Marlboro licks.
I kind of thought that was odd
because he gets breakfast every day.
But okay, God, I don't know, pack some Marlboro licks.
And we drive up and I pull into a parking spot
and boom, there's a tennis ball right on the ground.
(08:57):
It was just like, wow, Lord, okay.
So I get to the tennis ball.
I'm like, wow, Lord, thank you so much.
I walk in to see dad and I'm like, hi, dad.
I brought you some Marlboro licks.
And he goes, oh my goodness, man.
I was bringing a Marlboro licked egg
and the lady just said there was an egg shortage
and she wouldn't give me an egg.
(09:17):
And I had a grin from year to year.
I was like, Lord, thank you.
Just thank you for that.
It was like just a sweet kiss.
And then it says a lot about dad
where he's sitting there in a hospital
with a broken femur.
Technically he broke his femur.
(09:38):
And the only thing he wants is a hard whilling.
And he's such a, both of your parents are such simple people
where they really don't require a whole lot
to, they don't need these nice cars.
They don't need this, that, or that.
They just want, I mean, like this.
Again, again, again, just broke his femur
and all he wants is a hard whilling.
(09:59):
Right.
That's so Johnny.
Yeah.
That's all you can say about it.
But yeah, you know, dad was so thrilled
and what was amazing to me is
we were fighting when mom had her major procedure
as some of our last years.
We went on on the major for her.
(10:19):
She was basically there all June in Orlando.
We part of the reason we were there so long
is because we were fighting to the nail
to get her into rehab.
Right.
And what I learned with dad
and how bad the rehab facilities are,
God didn't answer that prayer
(10:40):
and he answered the true prayer.
Because dad is so much more of a trooper
than he wants to exercise and get better than mom is
that dad was not gonna go to that place and rot.
Right, mom would have.
Mom would have.
She would have sat and watched TV and not exercised
and so the fact that she stayed in the hospital
(11:02):
where she was much more taken care of
was right now in hindsight such a blessing to God.
We were praying that some rehab facility
would accept her.
I know.
And after her procedures and then just the insurance
and I know healthcare just denied everything.
Yeah, we went through three.
Yeah, we went through three appeals.
(11:23):
Yeah.
And it's so nice to see that God like,
of course he knows.
It sounds like a silly thing to actually say out loud.
Of course he knows.
But at the time, I'm like, but God, why?
Yeah.
Why, Lord?
Like I just want her to get help.
And it's because I don't have, you know,
I'm not on my mission.
I didn't know what I, it was uneducated in the process.
(11:46):
And luckily, luckily he was.
He was educated in the process.
And I'm like, no, this is not what I want to know, Arlene.
Yeah.
Because she will just sit in here and, you know,
she has, I think it's due to her dementia
she can get kind of negative, especially on herself.
Yes.
Talk badly where her dad's not so much the case.
(12:09):
Well, dad can be negative for sure,
but it's never about himself.
It's always about others.
Yes, that is true.
But he's more suited for what we experience and what we have.
So just looking back, that was such a lesson,
those unanswered prayers.
Yeah.
Just six, seven months ago that we had.
(12:31):
And yeah, here we are, but we are exhausted.
What are some of the things that you learned during the season?
Well.
What did God show you?
He showed us a lot.
I know.
He showed me a lot through you,
which I'm so grateful for.
But you have this uncanny way of saying,
(12:52):
Deb, you can only take what's in the shovel.
You can't look at the whole pile.
Over and over.
What's in the shovel today, Deb?
What's in the shovel today?
Yes, so you're a list maker.
And so when all this-
You wouldn't let me make a list?
No, when all this happened,
your first natural instinct was give me a head and a pen.
Yes, that's right.
(13:12):
I want to make a list of everything I have to do.
And I knew that list was gonna be so insanely long
that you were just gonna shut down.
So number one on the list is make a list.
And I don't think you ever would've finished cast
number one, but I'll move on to two through 27.
Grateful you know me.
(13:32):
And so I wouldn't let you make a list.
But number two, the reason why I didn't want to make a list
is things literally were changing sometimes
on an hourly basis.
So we would put something on the list,
and by the time I heard nothing,
it wasn't even dry, and okay, scratch that.
The plans changed.
That's true.
And that could be very frustrating.
Yeah.
(13:53):
And in the sense of not having control.
I didn't have control.
And then the list in, I guess, my mind gave me a sense of,
all right, at least I know what I have to do,
and I have some sense of control.
And the reality was I didn't.
And I still don't, you know?
I can only control my reactions to what's actually happening.
Because some of the things that are happening
(14:16):
are wide open doors, and other things are slam shut.
And that always makes you kind of go, oh, oh.
You know, you kind of clench your fist,
and I can't control that.
It reminded me a lot of when you were over in Poland
on the Ukraine border when the war broke out.
(14:36):
Except this, you know, being a character taker
is different, but as far as the opening and closing doors,
it really felt like that.
Because it would be potentially hourly.
And we went on Dad's discharge day.
I knew it.
You showed up at the rematch.
You were supposed to be, what, discharge at 10 o'clock?
Yeah.
And you showed up, and they're like, what are you talking about?
We don't have anyone on the list for discharge today.
(14:58):
And I said, I followed you four days ago.
We had a meeting four days ago.
There were six directors here.
Why don't you have this information?
Yeah.
So even just checking him out, it was tremendous.
There were small detours all over the place.
So I think we kind of had to go into this mindset of,
what can we control, and what can't we control?
(15:21):
And what can we control right now versus what
can we control overall?
And God was so good two weeks, probably, before Dad fell.
We knew that my dad were going to be
resistant towards assisted living
because they have been forever.
Right.
And they were very independent, up until now.
(15:44):
Well, up until 18 months ago.
When my mom started really, really sick,
they were pretty decent.
But when my mom started to get sick,
they were dependent upon us.
But that pressure on me and I had come slowly over time,
more and more and more.
And we knew that there was only a finite amount of energy
that we had.
So we said, and it was true, that we were applying for VA
(16:08):
benefits.
Dad's a veteran.
He was deployed during wartime.
He was injured, all sorts of things.
So we were applying for VA benefits.
And this facility that's only about a mile away
from my dad's place was too expensive.
It was really, really nice.
(16:29):
But through the VA and the benefits
that Dad potentially could get, all of a sudden,
it became an option.
And you went through it, I think, on your own.
You loved it.
Then you brought me, and I loved it.
And so about two weeks before Dad fell,
we kind of went to my dad and said, hey, we
(16:50):
want to go look at this facility.
The VA is willing to cover X number of,
I don't know, X percentage, if we ever
have to get you in there.
Let's just go look at it, because that's about all right.
The VA, you know, those benefits,
it's a government program.
It's always going to be about all for something like that.
Mom and Dad, let's just go see if you even like the facility.
(17:13):
Right.
Before Dad and I even go down the road
chasing after this, if you don't like it,
there's no point in us putting in the work.
So they agreed.
And we went and took a tour, and they absolutely fell in love.
We would've loved this place.
We'll look at it.
I'd look at it in a minute, if I could.
Yes.
That was what they said.
Yeah, that's what they said.
And so, you know, you and I were just
(17:35):
kind of looking at each other with eyeballs, eyes
of saucers, going, OK, I think this might be what we need to do.
It's still very close to us.
It's close to where your son works,
so he can hop in after work very easily.
Just all the win-win-win-win.
Yeah, it was right by the church.
It was ideal.
So now we just need to change Mom and Dad's mind
(17:56):
from living on their own in their house
and into assisted living.
And boom, two weeks later, God does, you know,
allow us to finally fall, and everything changes.
But we immediately turned to Mom and Dad and said,
you know that place you really loved?
(18:17):
Yeah.
When you get out, that's where you're going,
because you'll get the care that you need there.
It's so much better than living in your own home,
where you have to take care of the yard,
where you have to wash your own dishes, cook your own food,
and all that goes away.
Yeah, and it wasn't handicap space.
(18:40):
Now they need that.
Yeah, Dad can't go upstairs, really, not for a while,
and so on and so forth.
But it's just the fact that God was two weeks ahead of us.
And He didn't have to do that.
But it made the conversation with Mom and Dad
so much easier.
(19:01):
And gave them something to look forward to.
Yeah, they gave Dad something to be excited about when
he got out of there.
This is like a passage in a minute, so he's happy.
They have everything.
They have games.
They have card games.
They have free food, which Mom and Dad are very food
motivated.
They're very food motivated.
(19:21):
So to be sad, it really is another example
of how God just really gave us a kiss
and said, I am Joe Vagara, and I'm going to prove it to you.
So right before Christmas, we went to her facility
and moved right after the New Year's Eve falls.
Yeah.
So in what's unpacked earlier, you
were talking about shovel and this, that, and the other.
(19:43):
Let's get more context around that.
OK.
I think kind of what you had initially,
you had the whole list mentality.
And I correlated that list with a mountain.
And I said, how do you move a mountain?
And that's one shovel at a time.
There's lots of different settings along those lines.
But that's the one that you and I were using.
(20:04):
And so talk about that.
Have you always said that you're looking at mountains?
Yes.
Have you ever created mountains?
I don't create mountains.
What, lists are mountains?
No, no.
Lists are not mountains.
They're a way to process information.
Thank you very much.
Oh, OK.
Sorry about that.
But I think the family not being good problem solvers,
(20:29):
probably not having that skill set growing up.
Like, it was always, aw, what are we going to do?
And then they would freeze.
And then they would do nothing.
It's so interesting to me because my family
was always problem solvers.
And my dad traveled a ton.
Yeah, my dad traveled a ton.
He was working.
He was probably traveling three to four days a week.
So I was the man of the house in one sense.
(20:53):
My dad was a great leader.
But when he was gone, if something happened
and it needed to be fixed, I was the next man up.
That's incredible.
And I see that in our marriage.
And I'm so grateful because I don't have that skill set.
And I'm learning it.
Yeah, it's definitely helped me out.
And it really is how important that is.
(21:15):
Until I met you and your family and you guys
don't have that skill set.
And I just go, oh, well, let's problem solve here.
I know.
I know.
I'm watching you with my son, too.
And it's like, he's learning a long way,
which I'm super grateful for because I can't teach him
something I don't know.
(21:35):
And I'm well aware that I don't know it.
And I need to get better at it.
But the list always was like processing.
OK, these are the things that are on the list.
And as you've said to the audience many times before,
you've revealed to me that I am driven by productivity.
And if I don't sometimes have a list, I feel like,
(21:59):
and this sounds dramatic, but I'm telling you how I feel.
So what can I say?
I feel like, what's wrong with you?
Get up and do something.
Do something, do something, do something.
I'm somehow doing something a quite to worse.
And I know that biblically, that's so far off.
But it's one of those deeply ingrained messages
(22:23):
from childhood that needs to be rewired and rewrote.
And I do this with God a lot.
Like, hey, I know that my identity isn't work for salvation.
I know my identity isn't you're going to love me more
if I am successful.
You love me all that you're going to love me.
You love me.
And so seeing that this mom and myself is very kind of like,
(22:49):
oh, girl, you still haven't gotten us yet.
But that's OK.
We'll get there.
One of what's interesting is you can create a list.
And you're listing a bunch of items that are doors
that got us closed.
Do you think I can do that?
No, not you.
Oh, OK.
I'm addressing just when you create
lists, a lot of times you'll come across items
(23:12):
and you get frustrated because you can't cross an item
off the list.
But it's because God's closed that door.
And so lists are good things in certain situations.
But when so much of what was happening
was completely out of our control,
lists are great when things are in your control.
(23:34):
And you just go, here's my tab.
We've got to clean the house because family's coming.
Here we go.
I've got to do laundry.
I've got to change the sheets.
The lists are great in those circumstances.
You don't have to do that anyway.
But when 98% of the situation was completely
out of our control, literally the only thing you can do
(23:56):
is love your mom and dad and serve your mom and dad.
And then that changes the list drastically.
When insurance companies are being difficult
to set up in the other rehab facilities, it's God.
You are a Jehovah driver.
And you love mom and dad more than I ever could.
I need you to open this door.
(24:16):
I'm going to go spend my time loving and serving my dad.
It really, your tasks become so much more manageable
when you just go, I'm here to love and I'm here to serve.
Are our parents going to be better off
after our interaction with them today?
(24:37):
And that's really what you have to focus on.
And really, that's great for life, I think, in general.
Fix people and not situations.
Love people.
Yeah.
But even I do think fix is an appropriate word.
If someone is not focused on God and their feet are walking
(25:00):
across the water and all of a sudden they start sinking,
the fixing can be reorienting our eyes towards Jesus.
OK.
I hear what you're saying.
You know, you can get so, you can't support
the three's type of mentality.
We can back that person up in that situation,
help them get reoriented.
So I do, I think I still would use the word fix there.
(25:24):
But it's certainly been interesting,
because we had to literally wake up each day and go, OK,
what is the usual shovel to have?
What's in my shovel?
And there were days where, a couple of days,
where you woke up and you're like,
I don't have any energy with this shovel.
And it's just OK.
Pro-rest, like tagging in, coming in,
(25:45):
to take your day to go do whatever the heck you want to do.
Yes.
And I think that was something that I wouldn't have done
had you not pushed me out the door to go rest.
Like, I would have taken myself to exhaustion
and I wouldn't have rested.
And then when I did rest, I was like,
well, all I'm doing is griefing.
This is a fun, this is a restful.
(26:06):
And you're like, well, you need to grief.
And I think grief is something that God has shown me
deeply in this past month.
And something that I've dealt with in my life over and over
again is a lesson that he keeps bringing me back to.
And I think humanity as a whole is going to grief.
We live in a broken, fallen world,
(26:28):
and life is not easy.
And the grieving process here is it's
small incremental sadness that just piles up.
If you have a loved one that has a massive heart attack and dies,
it's fast and it's sad.
(26:49):
And there's grief, grief that you
have to deal with in the process.
This is a process of dying, watching your parents slowly
diminish.
Like mom getting up in the middle of the night,
and there were nights where she was having nightmares,
or nights where she was walking around confused
at 3 in the morning.
And it was just like, wow, this is so deeply sad to me.
(27:16):
I'm watching it unfold in such a rapid manner.
Maybe it's not rapid.
Maybe it's because I'm watching it in the mom's clip,
and it just seems overwhelming.
But it's sad.
It's not a kind of sadness.
You can just go, well, I'll wait until the funeral and then
(27:37):
grieve.
Like you're just grieving completely all the time.
And how do you manage doing other things in life
when the pain seems overwhelming to you?
And if you refuse to feel the pain, it will haunt you.
And that's very similar to my story of sexual abuse.
(27:58):
It took me how many years?
Three decades to deal with it.
And in that three decade period of time,
the self-destruction was just immense.
Because I was trying to numb the pain.
Or now I know better.
And now I'm walking through the pain with Jesus and going,
I can't even remember how many times this month.
(28:20):
It's too much, God.
I've said that probably 60 to 70 times.
It's just under my breath, too God, in prayer, on my bed,
curled up.
It's too much, God.
But He is walking me through it.
He is.
And that's what's been so comforting is just,
like you said, the tiny little tent all in the parking lot.
(28:43):
There's just been those little indicators of a copy going,
yeah, not only my Joe and Cara, but I'm here with you.
Yeah.
And the piece of Christ is enough,
even when nothing else is.
And just knowing that He's there with us,
it brings peace to the storm.
(29:05):
This was a turbulent month.
The month of January was a turbulent month
for our family.
You always called them John and Arlene, Hurricane Jarlene.
And it was.
It was like a storm of epic proportions.
This was at least a cat four or maybe a four or a cat five.
And we did serve them well.
(29:28):
We got them into a facility.
And now, we and I can just kind of soul keep for the next week.
We need to just disconnect and take care of ourselves,
just rest.
And get a good night's sleep.
Good Dolly, don't we ever.
But there's a part of me, and I'm going to just confess.
(29:50):
There's a part of me that goes, but there's still so much left
to do.
Soul keeping is very, I didn't realize
how difficult it was for me.
Yeah.
Because your mind can keep racing.
You just have to force yourself to do it.
You have nothing left.
I don't.
I don't have nothing left.
All of those tasks are still running
in the back of my brain.
And it's like white noise.
(30:11):
I can't get rid of it.
Yeah.
So hard.
It definitely, especially when it involves directly
your loved ones.
Yeah.
How do you close that window on the computer?
That can be very, very difficult as a kid.
Right.
How do you close that window?
But soul keeping, again, he rests.
(30:32):
Resting prices.
His teaching rules over the things
that he don't understand.
I don't understand how people make it
without the hope of Jesus Christ.
I have no idea.
Do you have no concept of Jehovah's Witness?
And you're sitting there with a massive pastilist.
And doors are being slammed in your face
because this is that.
(30:53):
And the other insurance or facility doesn't.
What hope?
I would be so full of anxiety.
Right.
And people numb that anxiety through lots
of different self-destructive patterns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's drinking drugs, shopping.
Working.
Working.
Yep.
binge watching TV, eating, all kinds of things.
(31:17):
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
But we definitely learn a lot.
We even need to potentially do a whole special episode
to just educate people maybe on just
what we've learned about health care and better
and better.
I don't know.
So much information.
It's very disheartening.
I don't know that I watched.
Just.
(31:37):
Well, I think it's better if we got
caught with our pants down because there's
so much we didn't know.
Yeah.
There's still a lot we don't know.
No.
That is 100% true.
But to sit and share that information,
what we do know, share that information.
Because part of what makes it so difficult
was if you needed to know how is something going to work,
(32:01):
how is the insurance going to handle the transfer
process from the hospital to the rehab facility,
what does that look like?
Because there's at least three major players.
One is the hospital.
One is the rehab facility.
And the other is insurance.
Right.
How is all that going to go down?
And part of the hardest things that we ran into
(32:22):
was nobody had all the answers.
The hospital would say, well, this is what we need
and this is what we do.
And the rehab facility would say, well, this is what we need
and this is what we do.
If you need an insurance, we can get a phone call
to talk to us.
Oh, yeah.
For how long do you get around?
There were times when you were on the phone with any health
(32:44):
care.
And you would get one story from one representative
and then you call back later and it's completely a story.
Yes.
And then there's a facility here.
What was it?
Senior care?
What was it?
One senior place.
One senior place.
They were so helpful.
That woman saved me like six hours of phone calls.
(33:06):
Did you ever take her cookies?
No, I didn't, yes.
Who has the time to take women's cookies?
We did not have a moment to read.
We were able to take women's cookies.
She helped us understand so much.
And that's part of what made it so difficult is you couldn't
talk to one person and understand the situation.
(33:28):
You had to talk to multiple people
and try to find themes in what they were saying.
You start pulling on that thread of themes.
And eventually, over time, you could piece it together.
And like I said, there were conversations
that we had with insurance where literally every single thing
that was completely wrong.
(33:49):
And you're talking to Bob and Ania.
Bob, yeah.
You're just sitting there going, I just
want to know what's happening with my dad
and how to handle this situation.
And I can't get my questions answered.
So there were times where it could be very, very frustrating.
Yeah, there were times I would make four phone calls in a day
(34:10):
to the health care.
Well, usually it was insurance.
Those were the most frustrating calls.
Yeah.
But I think we need to do an episode just on all the things
that we've learned since we started all of this process.
It's just short learning for everyone else.
(34:31):
Here are the resources you need to pay attention to.
Here's how Medicare and Medicaid truly work.
Here's all that that loaded out.
Because between mom, last year, and dad this year,
we have learned a lot.
Yeah, we have.
But yeah, it's been an interesting January.
We will get back to probably our regularly scheduled programming
(34:53):
in the next episode.
I know we talked about doing another biblical tour.
We talked about all sorts of things,
following some characters we're trying to do
in the next episode again.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
I always like those.
Yeah, those are a lot of fun.
But we definitely need to touch base, get everyone updated on anything
that you've been praying to do.
Thank you so much for prayers.
(35:15):
We've made so many people praying for us.
We're so very supported and very loved.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, it was convicting.
Our friend, Pastor Bill Scott was teaching this last Wednesday
in the book of Daniel when he was talking about standing
in the gap for people.
God is waiting for people to stand in the gap.
And so many times, nobody steps in the gap.
(35:37):
And for those of you guys that will pray for us,
we're standing in that gap.
You're so grateful that you did it again.
That gives you so much hope.
Yeah, it does.
And I know that you have just true prayer warriors
praying for you through all of this.
Not people who cliche say, I'll pray for you.
No.
But people you know are warning for you.
Yeah.
Warring in prayer for your betterment,
(36:00):
for your family's betterment, for God's will to be done.
Yeah.
And I can't thank them enough.
Yep.
Absolutely.
So thank you guys.
You were a brand.
But we will get back to you next time.
We'll hopefully be back on track.
But you never know.
Maybe we'll have another tour in front of us.
Yeah.
Who knows?
But thank you guys for listening.
(36:21):
And we will be back in a couple weeks.
We love you.
Thanks, guys.
Bye.
["CH samples provided by The faculty ofpassenger service."
dates grown 200,000.
(36:44):
worth.
Thank youardease
(00:13):
indio
As always, I'm here with my beautiful wife Deb,
and yeah, this We Missed episode,
we have had quite the January.
Oh gosh, the last four weeks have been a journey
(00:36):
I wouldn't want anyone else still on the path.
Yes, well, you know, it's a journey
that I think a lot of people are actually gonna go down
whether they want to or not.
That's true.
And right after the New Year,
just a few days into the New Year,
your dad fell and broke his hip.
And yeah, tore up his shoulder.
(00:58):
Yeah, tore up his shoulder,
got all sorts of things, he's 93 years old.
He's a tiny man, so there's no cushion to him.
He's just really thin.
And he was mom's caretaker,
so that was kind of the double win.
So all of a sudden, you and I had to kind of divide
and conquer.
Woo.
I had to be mom's caretaker,
(01:20):
and you weren't really a caretaker,
you were more of an advocate for your dad.
That was more your role,
where you were true caretaker cooking and medicine
and this and that,
and the other where you were fighting with doctors
and insurance and-
Fighting with my dad.
Yes.
Yes.
Trying to stand up for your old dad.
Yeah, the healthcare system is quite a shocker
(01:42):
when you see it from that lens,
from the lens of an elderly person.
Yes, especially in Florida,
there's so many elderly people here
that you really are overwhelmed in services,
not top notch, will you say that?
No, I wonder what the ranking of Florida would be
throughout the United States for healthcare.
I bet it's very low for a lot of teens.
(02:05):
Yes.
And I think when you're healthy,
you don't really have any experience with healthcare.
It's when you're advocating for somebody
that needs everything,
and nobody wants to do anything.
It's a battle.
I felt like I was in a war zone for a month.
And what's amazing is,
(02:25):
as always, looking back,
you see how God was in it from start to finish,
and God even showed me things about how he was with us
when mom was in the hospital through dad.
You can get into that a little bit later,
but yeah, it's definitely a season of growth,
a lot of refining.
(02:46):
Yes, I feel very pruned.
I know.
Yes.
Prune is the right, right word.
Nobody likes to be under pressure.
The pressure that we run,
your mom came to live with us.
Oh my.
And you spent at least half of your evenings
at a rehab or a hospital
(03:06):
to try and help dad along.
We haven't slept in four weeks.
We have not slept in four weeks.
None.
None.
So this should be a great episode.
Yeah, we're just full of excitement about it.
This is the type of energy that kicks in
when you're just completely exhausted
and you have nothing left.
(03:26):
But yeah, I guess for the audience,
early January, dad was in his room,
and just kind of fell.
Over and over again.
No, no reason to forget that.
Yeah.
He had just gone to the gym two days earlier.
He was always at least three days a week
(03:48):
and a person at the gym.
Even at 93, he'd do battle ropes.
He'd do, like, he was a joke.
Yeah.
Do everything he could for a 93 year old.
He's in like the top.1% of people for a 24 year old.
So it was one of those things
we were always kind of worried.
We kind of thought mom would fall for sure.
(04:08):
Oh, she's a nasty weight nap.
So mom would fall all the time.
Right, and we kept telling him
all it takes is one fall for everybody's life to change.
And we swore it was gonna be mom
because she's a bull in a time shop.
And she falls all the time.
Oh yes.
Every day she falls.
She's got a cushion.
She does.
She's a big Italian woman.
(04:30):
Aw, yeah, she is.
And she can take a fall where dad is this frail little
83 year old man.
Italian men tend to be smaller when they get older
and Italian women.
Well, I don't wanna tell you this.
I don't know about you, but Italian women tend to get
a lot more cushion.
(04:52):
I guess it's a good thing about an Italian man.
That's true.
Yeah.
But yeah, just immediately we obviously took him
to the emergency room.
He was there in the emergency room for.
Four days.
No, no, no, he was in the hospital.
He was in the emergency room for just maybe six hours
or eight hours to transfer him up to the hospital.
(05:14):
He's in tremendous, tremendous pain.
It was like 10 o'clock in the morning.
He had to use his state work.
Is there nothing you could do that day?
Or is it all you could do is administer pain meds
because when you fall and break your hip,
it's not a doctor you need, it's a surgeon.
Right. Right.
So we had to basically sit there and wait for the surgeon
to get out of surgery.
(05:35):
So I said, you know, just stay at work.
Don't take the time off.
Nothing's happening.
We're just sitting here.
They've got that dosed up on pain meds.
Yeah.
And that was the start of just this crazy month for us.
Like you said, he went up to the hospital for four days.
And then from there, he went to a rehab facility.
(05:57):
And what I find interesting is they call it rehab,
but it's a nursing home.
And it was not like, there were no young people in there
that had like maybe got into a car accident
and they were rehabbing.
It was, unfortunately, it looked like people were going
there to just die.
And that was a shock for him and for me.
(06:18):
You know, I'm thinking he's gonna get, you know,
this is great, dad, we're going from a hospital setting
to rehab, you're gonna get, you know, work done,
you're gonna be able to do exercise.
I'm misinformed.
You know, so had I known it was gonna be the way it was,
I would have tried to keep him under your hospital care
for a little bit longer,
just because I know he would have gotten
(06:40):
the attention he needed.
And from the day we entered that place
to the day we left, it was one battle after another.
The way they treated him was just deplorable.
Yeah, even just getting in the shower was a battle.
A day's worth of battle.
Yeah, they left him, you know, to rot, honestly.
(07:04):
So we definitely depended on God.
This was the season where we,
Jehovah had to earn his name and he did.
He did.
As everyone would expect to know that he would,
he definitely earned that name.
The Lord is my provider.
He is, and he's certainly provided.
(07:26):
Yeah, there was a little incident
that God just gave me a little kiss from him.
And I am intrigued.
I know a lot of people look at God's big picture miracles
and that's such a great lens to look at God through,
but I really enjoy looking through
the smaller lens of detail.
And when you start to do that through scripture,
(07:47):
you can see all these little details
weaving this beautiful tapestry of a story.
And the details to me seem very intimate and personal.
So we had mom and I travel to the hospital to see dad.
And on the way back, I guess we lost a tennis ball
on her walker, which is not uncommon for her
(08:11):
because it's mom, you know?
She's very rough with her walker.
And so she comes to the house
and she's scraping up our floors
and I'm like, oh, I need a tennis ball.
When am I gonna have time to even get to Walmart
to get a tennis ball?
Like, I don't need another task on my list, right?
And so I figured, well, we'll get there.
We'll just pray that the floor doesn't get destroyed.
(08:34):
And then the next morning, we are going to see dad
and I'm making coffee and God says,
pack some Marlboro licks.
I kind of thought that was odd
because he gets breakfast every day.
But okay, God, I don't know, pack some Marlboro licks.
And we drive up and I pull into a parking spot
and boom, there's a tennis ball right on the ground.
(08:57):
It was just like, wow, Lord, okay.
So I get to the tennis ball.
I'm like, wow, Lord, thank you so much.
I walk in to see dad and I'm like, hi, dad.
I brought you some Marlboro licks.
And he goes, oh my goodness, man.
I was bringing a Marlboro licked egg
and the lady just said there was an egg shortage
and she wouldn't give me an egg.
(09:17):
And I had a grin from year to year.
I was like, Lord, thank you.
Just thank you for that.
It was like just a sweet kiss.
And then it says a lot about dad
where he's sitting there in a hospital
with a broken femur.
Technically he broke his femur.
(09:38):
And the only thing he wants is a hard whilling.
And he's such a, both of your parents are such simple people
where they really don't require a whole lot
to, they don't need these nice cars.
They don't need this, that, or that.
They just want, I mean, like this.
Again, again, again, just broke his femur
and all he wants is a hard whilling.
(09:59):
Right.
That's so Johnny.
Yeah.
That's all you can say about it.
But yeah, you know, dad was so thrilled
and what was amazing to me is
we were fighting when mom had her major procedure
as some of our last years.
We went on on the major for her.
(10:19):
She was basically there all June in Orlando.
We part of the reason we were there so long
is because we were fighting to the nail
to get her into rehab.
Right.
And what I learned with dad
and how bad the rehab facilities are,
God didn't answer that prayer
(10:40):
and he answered the true prayer.
Because dad is so much more of a trooper
than he wants to exercise and get better than mom is
that dad was not gonna go to that place and rot.
Right, mom would have.
Mom would have.
She would have sat and watched TV and not exercised
and so the fact that she stayed in the hospital
(11:02):
where she was much more taken care of
was right now in hindsight such a blessing to God.
We were praying that some rehab facility
would accept her.
I know.
And after her procedures and then just the insurance
and I know healthcare just denied everything.
Yeah, we went through three.
Yeah, we went through three appeals.
(11:23):
Yeah.
And it's so nice to see that God like,
of course he knows.
It sounds like a silly thing to actually say out loud.
Of course he knows.
But at the time, I'm like, but God, why?
Yeah.
Why, Lord?
Like I just want her to get help.
And it's because I don't have, you know,
I'm not on my mission.
I didn't know what I, it was uneducated in the process.
(11:46):
And luckily, luckily he was.
He was educated in the process.
And I'm like, no, this is not what I want to know, Arlene.
Yeah.
Because she will just sit in here and, you know,
she has, I think it's due to her dementia
she can get kind of negative, especially on herself.
Yes.
Talk badly where her dad's not so much the case.
(12:09):
Well, dad can be negative for sure,
but it's never about himself.
It's always about others.
Yes, that is true.
But he's more suited for what we experience and what we have.
So just looking back, that was such a lesson,
those unanswered prayers.
Yeah.
Just six, seven months ago that we had.
(12:31):
And yeah, here we are, but we are exhausted.
What are some of the things that you learned during the season?
Well.
What did God show you?
He showed us a lot.
I know.
He showed me a lot through you,
which I'm so grateful for.
But you have this uncanny way of saying,
(12:52):
Deb, you can only take what's in the shovel.
You can't look at the whole pile.
Over and over.
What's in the shovel today, Deb?
What's in the shovel today?
Yes, so you're a list maker.
And so when all this-
You wouldn't let me make a list?
No, when all this happened,
your first natural instinct was give me a head and a pen.
Yes, that's right.
(13:12):
I want to make a list of everything I have to do.
And I knew that list was gonna be so insanely long
that you were just gonna shut down.
So number one on the list is make a list.
And I don't think you ever would've finished cast
number one, but I'll move on to two through 27.
Grateful you know me.
(13:32):
And so I wouldn't let you make a list.
But number two, the reason why I didn't want to make a list
is things literally were changing sometimes
on an hourly basis.
So we would put something on the list,
and by the time I heard nothing,
it wasn't even dry, and okay, scratch that.
The plans changed.
That's true.
And that could be very frustrating.
Yeah.
(13:53):
And in the sense of not having control.
I didn't have control.
And then the list in, I guess, my mind gave me a sense of,
all right, at least I know what I have to do,
and I have some sense of control.
And the reality was I didn't.
And I still don't, you know?
I can only control my reactions to what's actually happening.
Because some of the things that are happening
(14:16):
are wide open doors, and other things are slam shut.
And that always makes you kind of go, oh, oh.
You know, you kind of clench your fist,
and I can't control that.
It reminded me a lot of when you were over in Poland
on the Ukraine border when the war broke out.
(14:36):
Except this, you know, being a character taker
is different, but as far as the opening and closing doors,
it really felt like that.
Because it would be potentially hourly.
And we went on Dad's discharge day.
I knew it.
You showed up at the rematch.
You were supposed to be, what, discharge at 10 o'clock?
Yeah.
And you showed up, and they're like, what are you talking about?
We don't have anyone on the list for discharge today.
(14:58):
And I said, I followed you four days ago.
We had a meeting four days ago.
There were six directors here.
Why don't you have this information?
Yeah.
So even just checking him out, it was tremendous.
There were small detours all over the place.
So I think we kind of had to go into this mindset of,
what can we control, and what can't we control?
(15:21):
And what can we control right now versus what
can we control overall?
And God was so good two weeks, probably, before Dad fell.
We knew that my dad were going to be
resistant towards assisted living
because they have been forever.
Right.
And they were very independent, up until now.
(15:44):
Well, up until 18 months ago.
When my mom started really, really sick,
they were pretty decent.
But when my mom started to get sick,
they were dependent upon us.
But that pressure on me and I had come slowly over time,
more and more and more.
And we knew that there was only a finite amount of energy
that we had.
So we said, and it was true, that we were applying for VA
(16:08):
benefits.
Dad's a veteran.
He was deployed during wartime.
He was injured, all sorts of things.
So we were applying for VA benefits.
And this facility that's only about a mile away
from my dad's place was too expensive.
It was really, really nice.
(16:29):
But through the VA and the benefits
that Dad potentially could get, all of a sudden,
it became an option.
And you went through it, I think, on your own.
You loved it.
Then you brought me, and I loved it.
And so about two weeks before Dad fell,
we kind of went to my dad and said, hey, we
(16:50):
want to go look at this facility.
The VA is willing to cover X number of,
I don't know, X percentage, if we ever
have to get you in there.
Let's just go look at it, because that's about all right.
The VA, you know, those benefits,
it's a government program.
It's always going to be about all for something like that.
Mom and Dad, let's just go see if you even like the facility.
(17:13):
Right.
Before Dad and I even go down the road
chasing after this, if you don't like it,
there's no point in us putting in the work.
So they agreed.
And we went and took a tour, and they absolutely fell in love.
We would've loved this place.
We'll look at it.
I'd look at it in a minute, if I could.
Yes.
That was what they said.
Yeah, that's what they said.
And so, you know, you and I were just
(17:35):
kind of looking at each other with eyeballs, eyes
of saucers, going, OK, I think this might be what we need to do.
It's still very close to us.
It's close to where your son works,
so he can hop in after work very easily.
Just all the win-win-win-win.
Yeah, it was right by the church.
It was ideal.
So now we just need to change Mom and Dad's mind
(17:56):
from living on their own in their house
and into assisted living.
And boom, two weeks later, God does, you know,
allow us to finally fall, and everything changes.
But we immediately turned to Mom and Dad and said,
you know that place you really loved?
(18:17):
Yeah.
When you get out, that's where you're going,
because you'll get the care that you need there.
It's so much better than living in your own home,
where you have to take care of the yard,
where you have to wash your own dishes, cook your own food,
and all that goes away.
Yeah, and it wasn't handicap space.
(18:40):
Now they need that.
Yeah, Dad can't go upstairs, really, not for a while,
and so on and so forth.
But it's just the fact that God was two weeks ahead of us.
And He didn't have to do that.
But it made the conversation with Mom and Dad
so much easier.
(19:01):
And gave them something to look forward to.
Yeah, they gave Dad something to be excited about when
he got out of there.
This is like a passage in a minute, so he's happy.
They have everything.
They have games.
They have card games.
They have free food, which Mom and Dad are very food
motivated.
They're very food motivated.
(19:21):
So to be sad, it really is another example
of how God just really gave us a kiss
and said, I am Joe Vagara, and I'm going to prove it to you.
So right before Christmas, we went to her facility
and moved right after the New Year's Eve falls.
Yeah.
So in what's unpacked earlier, you
were talking about shovel and this, that, and the other.
(19:43):
Let's get more context around that.
OK.
I think kind of what you had initially,
you had the whole list mentality.
And I correlated that list with a mountain.
And I said, how do you move a mountain?
And that's one shovel at a time.
There's lots of different settings along those lines.
But that's the one that you and I were using.
(20:04):
And so talk about that.
Have you always said that you're looking at mountains?
Yes.
Have you ever created mountains?
I don't create mountains.
What, lists are mountains?
No, no.
Lists are not mountains.
They're a way to process information.
Thank you very much.
Oh, OK.
Sorry about that.
But I think the family not being good problem solvers,
(20:29):
probably not having that skill set growing up.
Like, it was always, aw, what are we going to do?
And then they would freeze.
And then they would do nothing.
It's so interesting to me because my family
was always problem solvers.
And my dad traveled a ton.
Yeah, my dad traveled a ton.
He was working.
He was probably traveling three to four days a week.
So I was the man of the house in one sense.
(20:53):
My dad was a great leader.
But when he was gone, if something happened
and it needed to be fixed, I was the next man up.
That's incredible.
And I see that in our marriage.
And I'm so grateful because I don't have that skill set.
And I'm learning it.
Yeah, it's definitely helped me out.
And it really is how important that is.
(21:15):
Until I met you and your family and you guys
don't have that skill set.
And I just go, oh, well, let's problem solve here.
I know.
I know.
I'm watching you with my son, too.
And it's like, he's learning a long way,
which I'm super grateful for because I can't teach him
something I don't know.
(21:35):
And I'm well aware that I don't know it.
And I need to get better at it.
But the list always was like processing.
OK, these are the things that are on the list.
And as you've said to the audience many times before,
you've revealed to me that I am driven by productivity.
And if I don't sometimes have a list, I feel like,
(21:59):
and this sounds dramatic, but I'm telling you how I feel.
So what can I say?
I feel like, what's wrong with you?
Get up and do something.
Do something, do something, do something.
I'm somehow doing something a quite to worse.
And I know that biblically, that's so far off.
But it's one of those deeply ingrained messages
(22:23):
from childhood that needs to be rewired and rewrote.
And I do this with God a lot.
Like, hey, I know that my identity isn't work for salvation.
I know my identity isn't you're going to love me more
if I am successful.
You love me all that you're going to love me.
You love me.
And so seeing that this mom and myself is very kind of like,
(22:49):
oh, girl, you still haven't gotten us yet.
But that's OK.
We'll get there.
One of what's interesting is you can create a list.
And you're listing a bunch of items that are doors
that got us closed.
Do you think I can do that?
No, not you.
Oh, OK.
I'm addressing just when you create
lists, a lot of times you'll come across items
(23:12):
and you get frustrated because you can't cross an item
off the list.
But it's because God's closed that door.
And so lists are good things in certain situations.
But when so much of what was happening
was completely out of our control,
lists are great when things are in your control.
(23:34):
And you just go, here's my tab.
We've got to clean the house because family's coming.
Here we go.
I've got to do laundry.
I've got to change the sheets.
The lists are great in those circumstances.
You don't have to do that anyway.
But when 98% of the situation was completely
out of our control, literally the only thing you can do
(23:56):
is love your mom and dad and serve your mom and dad.
And then that changes the list drastically.
When insurance companies are being difficult
to set up in the other rehab facilities, it's God.
You are a Jehovah driver.
And you love mom and dad more than I ever could.
I need you to open this door.
(24:16):
I'm going to go spend my time loving and serving my dad.
It really, your tasks become so much more manageable
when you just go, I'm here to love and I'm here to serve.
Are our parents going to be better off
after our interaction with them today?
(24:37):
And that's really what you have to focus on.
And really, that's great for life, I think, in general.
Fix people and not situations.
Love people.
Yeah.
But even I do think fix is an appropriate word.
If someone is not focused on God and their feet are walking
(25:00):
across the water and all of a sudden they start sinking,
the fixing can be reorienting our eyes towards Jesus.
OK.
I hear what you're saying.
You know, you can get so, you can't support
the three's type of mentality.
We can back that person up in that situation,
help them get reoriented.
So I do, I think I still would use the word fix there.
(25:24):
But it's certainly been interesting,
because we had to literally wake up each day and go, OK,
what is the usual shovel to have?
What's in my shovel?
And there were days where, a couple of days,
where you woke up and you're like,
I don't have any energy with this shovel.
And it's just OK.
Pro-rest, like tagging in, coming in,
(25:45):
to take your day to go do whatever the heck you want to do.
Yes.
And I think that was something that I wouldn't have done
had you not pushed me out the door to go rest.
Like, I would have taken myself to exhaustion
and I wouldn't have rested.
And then when I did rest, I was like,
well, all I'm doing is griefing.
This is a fun, this is a restful.
(26:06):
And you're like, well, you need to grief.
And I think grief is something that God has shown me
deeply in this past month.
And something that I've dealt with in my life over and over
again is a lesson that he keeps bringing me back to.
And I think humanity as a whole is going to grief.
We live in a broken, fallen world,
(26:28):
and life is not easy.
And the grieving process here is it's
small incremental sadness that just piles up.
If you have a loved one that has a massive heart attack and dies,
it's fast and it's sad.
(26:49):
And there's grief, grief that you
have to deal with in the process.
This is a process of dying, watching your parents slowly
diminish.
Like mom getting up in the middle of the night,
and there were nights where she was having nightmares,
or nights where she was walking around confused
at 3 in the morning.
And it was just like, wow, this is so deeply sad to me.
(27:16):
I'm watching it unfold in such a rapid manner.
Maybe it's not rapid.
Maybe it's because I'm watching it in the mom's clip,
and it just seems overwhelming.
But it's sad.
It's not a kind of sadness.
You can just go, well, I'll wait until the funeral and then
(27:37):
grieve.
Like you're just grieving completely all the time.
And how do you manage doing other things in life
when the pain seems overwhelming to you?
And if you refuse to feel the pain, it will haunt you.
And that's very similar to my story of sexual abuse.
(27:58):
It took me how many years?
Three decades to deal with it.
And in that three decade period of time,
the self-destruction was just immense.
Because I was trying to numb the pain.
Or now I know better.
And now I'm walking through the pain with Jesus and going,
I can't even remember how many times this month.
(28:20):
It's too much, God.
I've said that probably 60 to 70 times.
It's just under my breath, too God, in prayer, on my bed,
curled up.
It's too much, God.
But He is walking me through it.
He is.
And that's what's been so comforting is just,
like you said, the tiny little tent all in the parking lot.
(28:43):
There's just been those little indicators of a copy going,
yeah, not only my Joe and Cara, but I'm here with you.
Yeah.
And the piece of Christ is enough,
even when nothing else is.
And just knowing that He's there with us,
it brings peace to the storm.
(29:05):
This was a turbulent month.
The month of January was a turbulent month
for our family.
You always called them John and Arlene, Hurricane Jarlene.
And it was.
It was like a storm of epic proportions.
This was at least a cat four or maybe a four or a cat five.
And we did serve them well.
(29:28):
We got them into a facility.
And now, we and I can just kind of soul keep for the next week.
We need to just disconnect and take care of ourselves,
just rest.
And get a good night's sleep.
Good Dolly, don't we ever.
But there's a part of me, and I'm going to just confess.
(29:50):
There's a part of me that goes, but there's still so much left
to do.
Soul keeping is very, I didn't realize
how difficult it was for me.
Yeah.
Because your mind can keep racing.
You just have to force yourself to do it.
You have nothing left.
I don't.
I don't have nothing left.
All of those tasks are still running
in the back of my brain.
And it's like white noise.
(30:11):
I can't get rid of it.
Yeah.
So hard.
It definitely, especially when it involves directly
your loved ones.
Yeah.
How do you close that window on the computer?
That can be very, very difficult as a kid.
Right.
How do you close that window?
But soul keeping, again, he rests.
(30:32):
Resting prices.
His teaching rules over the things
that he don't understand.
I don't understand how people make it
without the hope of Jesus Christ.
I have no idea.
Do you have no concept of Jehovah's Witness?
And you're sitting there with a massive pastilist.
And doors are being slammed in your face
because this is that.
(30:53):
And the other insurance or facility doesn't.
What hope?
I would be so full of anxiety.
Right.
And people numb that anxiety through lots
of different self-destructive patterns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's drinking drugs, shopping.
Working.
Working.
Yep.
binge watching TV, eating, all kinds of things.
(31:17):
Yeah.
Pretty crazy.
But we definitely learn a lot.
We even need to potentially do a whole special episode
to just educate people maybe on just
what we've learned about health care and better
and better.
I don't know.
So much information.
It's very disheartening.
I don't know that I watched.
Just.
(31:37):
Well, I think it's better if we got
caught with our pants down because there's
so much we didn't know.
Yeah.
There's still a lot we don't know.
No.
That is 100% true.
But to sit and share that information,
what we do know, share that information.
Because part of what makes it so difficult
was if you needed to know how is something going to work,
(32:01):
how is the insurance going to handle the transfer
process from the hospital to the rehab facility,
what does that look like?
Because there's at least three major players.
One is the hospital.
One is the rehab facility.
And the other is insurance.
Right.
How is all that going to go down?
And part of the hardest things that we ran into
(32:22):
was nobody had all the answers.
The hospital would say, well, this is what we need
and this is what we do.
And the rehab facility would say, well, this is what we need
and this is what we do.
If you need an insurance, we can get a phone call
to talk to us.
Oh, yeah.
For how long do you get around?
There were times when you were on the phone with any health
(32:44):
care.
And you would get one story from one representative
and then you call back later and it's completely a story.
Yes.
And then there's a facility here.
What was it?
Senior care?
What was it?
One senior place.
One senior place.
They were so helpful.
That woman saved me like six hours of phone calls.
(33:06):
Did you ever take her cookies?
No, I didn't, yes.
Who has the time to take women's cookies?
We did not have a moment to read.
We were able to take women's cookies.
She helped us understand so much.
And that's part of what made it so difficult is you couldn't
talk to one person and understand the situation.
(33:28):
You had to talk to multiple people
and try to find themes in what they were saying.
You start pulling on that thread of themes.
And eventually, over time, you could piece it together.
And like I said, there were conversations
that we had with insurance where literally every single thing
that was completely wrong.
(33:49):
And you're talking to Bob and Ania.
Bob, yeah.
You're just sitting there going, I just
want to know what's happening with my dad
and how to handle this situation.
And I can't get my questions answered.
So there were times where it could be very, very frustrating.
Yeah, there were times I would make four phone calls in a day
(34:10):
to the health care.
Well, usually it was insurance.
Those were the most frustrating calls.
Yeah.
But I think we need to do an episode just on all the things
that we've learned since we started all of this process.
It's just short learning for everyone else.
(34:31):
Here are the resources you need to pay attention to.
Here's how Medicare and Medicaid truly work.
Here's all that that loaded out.
Because between mom, last year, and dad this year,
we have learned a lot.
Yeah, we have.
But yeah, it's been an interesting January.
We will get back to probably our regularly scheduled programming
(34:53):
in the next episode.
I know we talked about doing another biblical tour.
We talked about all sorts of things,
following some characters we're trying to do
in the next episode again.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
I always like those.
Yeah, those are a lot of fun.
But we definitely need to touch base, get everyone updated on anything
that you've been praying to do.
Thank you so much for prayers.
(35:15):
We've made so many people praying for us.
We're so very supported and very loved.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, it was convicting.
Our friend, Pastor Bill Scott was teaching this last Wednesday
in the book of Daniel when he was talking about standing
in the gap for people.
God is waiting for people to stand in the gap.
And so many times, nobody steps in the gap.
(35:37):
And for those of you guys that will pray for us,
we're standing in that gap.
You're so grateful that you did it again.
That gives you so much hope.
Yeah, it does.
And I know that you have just true prayer warriors
praying for you through all of this.
Not people who cliche say, I'll pray for you.
No.
But people you know are warning for you.
Yeah.
Warring in prayer for your betterment,
(36:00):
for your family's betterment, for God's will to be done.
Yeah.
And I can't thank them enough.
Yep.
Absolutely.
So thank you guys.
You were a brand.
But we will get back to you next time.
We'll hopefully be back on track.
But you never know.
Maybe we'll have another tour in front of us.
Yeah.
Who knows?
But thank you guys for listening.
(36:21):
And we will be back in a couple weeks.
We love you.
Thanks, guys.
Bye.
["CH samples provided by The faculty ofpassenger service."
dates grown 200,000.
(36:44):
worth.
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