Playing for Chickens

What do you say to a caregiver?

How do you help a caregiver? I was talking to this billing agent at the doctor's office and said, how are you feeling? And she said, oh great It's Friday. And before I could catch myself, I said Friday means nothing to me. Every day is Monday. And I felt kind of ashamed of that and I'm sorry for that, but I realized that whole principle of every day is Monday. What that means for us as caregivers, we know that this is going to be a challenging day. And I wrote these one-minute chapters.

You literally could read them in one minute. And I'm really proud of this book. It's called A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. It's filled with bedrock principles that we as caregivers can lean on, that we can depend upon to get us to safety, where we can catch our breath, take a knee if we have to, and reorient our thinking and the weight that we carry on our shoulders. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, don't worry about it.

I do. Give them this book. This is Peter Rosenberger and this is A Minute for Caregivers. There's an old story of a farmer who struggled to find ways to help his chickens lay more eggs. After trying numerous techniques, he heard of the beneficial effects of music and tried playing the flute for his chickens to help them lay more eggs. Sitting beside the coop, he diligently spent hours at a time performing beautiful songs in hopes of providing a better egg-laying environment. After doing this for several weeks, he noticed the number of eggs never changed. Although tempted to be discouraged, he continued playing for his chickens. After watching this activity for some time, a neighbor finally asked the farmer why he kept playing his flute for the chickens when it did not affect their laying eggs.

Well, the farmer replied, the egg count didn't improve, but my music did. As caregivers, we may try all sorts of things to improve or help our loved ones. Sometimes we hurl ourselves at it recklessly.

We don't even make a dent in it. Their challenges remain beyond our control. We, however, can improve ourselves in the journey and quite possibly discover beautiful music along the way. Victor Frankl once said, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. This is Peter Rosenberger, and this is a minute for caregivers. There's more at HopeForTheCaregiver.com.