089: Abiding Caregiver Advice to Carry Us into Our Next Season
This is episode 89, and today we’re catching up and talking about what’s ahead!
Quick Links:
Episode 006 Decrease Decision Fatigue
Episode 065 Go First in Friendship
Episode 008 Create Habit Triggers
Episode 042 Practice Benevolent Attachment
Abiding Caregiver Facebook Group
Episode 005 Live Within your Boundaries
Transcript:
Hi friends, this is self care and soul care for the caregiver, and I’m your host, Sandra Peoples. This is episode 89, and today we’re catching up and talking about what’s ahead!
You may have noticed we were a little sporadic about releasing episodes in February and March. I missed getting to chat with you each week! We were in a season as a family when everything felt hard, and I had to focus on what was necessary to get us through. When I thought about sharing caregiving advice, I felt a little like a phony. How could I encourage you when I didn’t feel like I was doing anything well? I realized that was part self-protection and part pride. The truth is, opening up during seasons of struggling helps us not feel alone. The enemy wants us to feel isolated when we are struggling. We are still figuring out how to help James feel more comfortable, and we’ve had to make some adjustments to our commitments and routines. Those adjustments include the future of this podcast.
Last fall when I brought on Lauren as a cohost, I had hoped that we would do the podcast together for a year and then I would hand it over to her to continue. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it if I went back to school, but I felt like the message and the community were important enough to keep going! In our last episode, Lauren shared the changes in her life that required that she step away. So I had a couple choices: keep going on my own until the time I had planned to stop or wrap it up now. I prayed about it for weeks and have decided to go ahead and make this our last episode. In this challenging season for our family, I’m having to make some tough decisions. As we’ve talked about, there are things only we can do and things anyone can do. As much as I love this podcast, it takes time away from things only I can do. So I have to let it go.
As I thought about what I wanted to share in the last episode, I thought about the most important lessons we’ve learned together. Which topics have we talked about that have made the biggest positive difference in my life? I thought it would be helpful to hit those again and share how they are working for me in our current season. So let’s jump in with the final advice I have for abiding caregivers:
4. Practice Benevolent Detachment
5. Live Within your Boundaries
I hope these final lessons are helpful. They are what I’ll be carrying with me into my next seasons. Even though we won’t be connecting here every week, I’m still on social media! I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The links are in the shownotes at abidingcaregiver.com
Let’s end our episode in prayer like we always do.
God, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak encouragement into the lives of the caregivers who have listed over the last few years to the 89 episodes we’ve released. Each time you put a calling on our lives you are asking us to be faithful, not perfect. I hope I have been faithful in this opportunity. I want to pray the words of Paul in Colossians 1 over my friends today as we wrap up our time together: 9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Help us to live a life worthy as we abide in you. In Jesus name, amen.
