The Caregiving Success Guide: How to Be A Caregiver to Your Spouse, Parent, Child, or Friend... Without Losing Your Mind, Your Hair, or Your Bank Account

By Anneke Marie Brown

Are you overwhelmed with the difficulties of caring for someone suffering from chronic pain or a long-term illness?

Caregivers like you and I encounter deadly pitfalls in the daily struggle to care for our loved ones with ongoing healthcare needs. Read this book to discover a toolbox full of tips, skills, and strategies to conque

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647739942

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THE

CAREGIVING

SUCCESS

GUIDE

Anneke Marie Brown

The Caregiving Success Guide

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2021 by Anneke Marie Brown

All scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible. Public domain.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-64773-993-5

E-ISBN: 978-1-64773-994-2

Table of Contents

Introduction

My Hope

Why, God, Why?

Spiritual

Emotional

Mental

Finances

Physical

Relationships

Stones of Remembrance

Benediction

Introduction

The lights are low. My kids are in bed, and I am praying for you. I know that you feel overwhelmed and alone. You doubt your ability to handle everything in front of you. You can’t do it all. Everyone expects you to do something you are not trained to do: Take care of someone sicker than you feel comfortable with or even know how to care for! You’re supposed to keep track of all the doctors, appointments, medications, insurance claims, and treatment codes? The diagnosis is in Latin; you barely passed English 101! There is a brand-name medicine and a generic; is there a difference? The whole thing makes you want to shut down and sleep for a week. The good news: all of this is normal.

You are doing a great job. The learning curve of caring for someone in physical pain or with a chronic illness is steep and intimidating. This book is written to encourage you: No, God doesn’t make mistakes. Yes, He does give us a life and trials at which we can only succeed when filled with His wisdom, strength, and love. Rest in His love, dear one. Let me help you understand the new world you have entered. We will go together, one step at a time. Feel free to underline and repeat the chapters until they feel as comfortable as your favorite pair of jeans. Come on! You will never be the same, but would you want to? This amazing journey addressing chronic pains and illnesses will strengthen your faith, increase your flexibility and adaptability, make you more knowledgeable, and remind you of the necessity of humility in dealing with the challenges you face.

The Parable of the Hurricane

My uncle was a pilot who flew A6 airplanes into hurricanes in the time before storm-tracking computers. My uncle recorded their diameter, wind speed, and other important factors. He took his airplane over top of the hurricane and flew straight down the eye of the hurricane to take scientific readings. It always impressed me that he was not tossed to his death when he was in the hurricane. But in the eye, there is peace and calm. A friend of mine who lives in Orlando said Hurricane Andrew came and flew right over her house. The trees were falling, and the rain was beating down on her house. She described a sudden thirty minutes of calm. She initially thought the hurricane was over, but the weather forecaster said her area was right in the middle, in the eye of the storm. It was sunny with no rain; the trees were barely moving. Then the hurricane moved, and her house was on the other side of the hurricane because the eye had passed. The winds came back with a vengeance. Sheets of water buffeted the house in a total downpour, and the destruction took the roof right off!

Similarly, when it comes to chronic pain and illness, the eye of the storm is our goal. God promises we will have mountain-sized trials to climb. There will be a certain type of turmoil.

The six bands of the hurricane (storm bands, not guys with weird hair and a good drummer) are the six types of challenges we face with chronic pain and illness. The spiritual, emotional, mental, relational, physical, and financial are the bands of Hurricane Chronic Pain. If we let one of these trials get too extreme, it will whip us right out of the eye of the storm where God’s peace is and wreak havoc on our lives. We will get thrashed around and beaten, exhausted, and confused. It means one or more parts of the trial are out of whack. It is okay to ask God, Why? in the spiritual trial. It is not okay to let chronic pain and illness drive a wedge between you and God. The storm is designed by God to push us toward Him! If we start thinking, "God is not listening, we are being whipped by this hurricane. If our thoughts instead say, I really don’t like this trial, but I will trust You, God," then we are in the eye of the storm. It should push us into the Bible more, toward prayer more, and into thankfulness and worship to fight the negative thoughts in our heads. In the eye, there is both a deep dependence on God and a confidence that He will take care of us. An example of hitting the wall outside the eye? If we start focusing on feeling like we don’t want to get out of bed. If we yell at our spouse and kids, then we are being whipped by the emotional band of chronic pain and illness. But our goal should be to see the red flags for what they are and then press into God until we trust Him again and have peace. We are promised peace in Him because He will provide what we need to get through the hurricane.

My Prayer for You

I pray that this book will start important conversations between you and the people who matter in your life. I pray it will provide thoughts and strategies in your head for dealing successfully with chronic pain and illness in a God-focused way. Most importantly, I pray you will start sitting down with your loved ones and friends and having these conversations. That way, your feelings can be heard, your expectations established, and your family and friends can feel empowered to help you. I hope this is the first day of a fruitful, blessed life. Build and equip your team. Then start a chronic pain and illness support group in your area. Train them, too!

For Pastors

I have such a passion for you! You wanted to get into the ministry to help people, but you are overwhelmed by the need in your congregations. Please use this book for your knowledge and training. Feel free to make it into a nine-week Bible Study. Read the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. Be wise and discerning. Test the fruit of each person suffering from physical pain or chronic illness. All will be worried, overwhelmed, and afraid they’re the only ones facing these things. They will either be bitter or will turn into your best prayer partners and encouragement-bringers.

I am always available to use as a sounding board if you need specific counsel. Please contact me at [e-mail]. May God bless you and shine His face upon you and give you peace!

Important Note On

Everything in This Book

Outside bandaging the usual bumps and bruises of my four kids, I am neither a practitioner of medicine nor a trained medical professional! What does that mean? Well, in short: Everything in this book is created for informational and educational purposes only. This book is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, and before starting any new treatment, discontinuing an existing treatment, or starting a new health regimen. If you think that you are having a medical emergency, immediately call your doctor, call 911 or the number for the local emergency ambulance service, or go to the nearest emergency department. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this book!

If this looks like legalese, it is—and there’s a very good reason for it. Both mental and emotional brain chemistry play an active part in the world of chronic pain and illness, so correctly diagnosing and addressing our biochemistry needs is crucial to proper treatment! Psychiatric, neuro medicine and scientific professionals have written volumes on these subjects. This book is not intended to replace proper medical explanation and treatment of neurochemical, mental, emotional, or other medical issues. Instead, this is information written at my level, acknowledging the basic workings of certain chemicals and my non-medical-practitioner understanding of how these things affect people in chronic illness or pain. I can only address this issue from a level of guiding you toward realizing the very real potential impact of these chemicals and their effects and of informing you about their existence. For that reason, I absolutely advise you to consult a medical professional for all medical assistance, diagnosis, and treatment of these issues.

On with the story…

My Hope

My name is Anneke Marie, and I am intimately familiar with both physical pain and chronic illness as the Patient and the Caregiver. Anneke means full of grace; Marie means bitterness. I was appropriately named, as this is the war I fight every day. Am I going to be bitter about my circumstances, or am I going to accept God’s grace to empower me with strength one day at a time? You cannot be gracefully bitter. Victory is a place, not a feeling or a destination. It is positioning your life by making the right choices.

Consider a Huberman ball: It is a child’s toy, a multicolored plastic ball made of hundreds of interlocking pieces that expand into a giant ball or contract into a hedgehog-shape about the size of a cantaloupe. The Huberman ball is a great representation of chronic pain and chronic illness. With these two continual conditions, illness and pain, it is never just one problem. It is all of them at once. The spiritual, emotional, mental, financial, physical, and relational issues all bombard sufferers and their families at the same time. It can make our lives feel very small and make us seem crushed. If we are in a car accident or contract an acute illness, our ball of life quickly collapses, but we recover soon and go on living. The ball resized without an issue. Compare this with contracting a chronic illness or injury when we are young: We had felt healthy. Everything was fine. But now we have surgery or a complication, and we cannot get that ball to expand back to normal—and we never will. We must now prepare for