Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 11, 2022 | Expresso - Connie Hall & Teresa Jenkins

Transcript

January 11, 2022 | Expresso - Connie Hall & Teresa Jenkins · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: So let me tell you all a little bit about how tonight came to be.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I I will start by saying, for example, tonight I showed up without a crucial piece of equipment that I needed.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: And also what else happened?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like there were We had copier issues.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: We had copier issues.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we have no decorations on the tables.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: See you wouldn't have noticed if we hadn't said anything, right?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: There was something else just happened, and I was like, oh, okay.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, the bottom line is um that nothing nothing is working.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing works anymore.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I I don't, I barely know what day it is half the time.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um days and weeks go by and I forget to do a lot of things.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of what happened.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I always pray and ask God to help me find espresso speakers, you know, to lay it on my heart who I should ask, to lay it on the hearts of women, you know, because I have had women come up and say, I would really like to share my story, and I always love that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: But he's always provided, you know, sometimes it's been a very last-minute, you know, person, and sometimes it's someone who knew six months ago that, you know, they were gonna speak in August or September or whatever.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had last-minute cancellations and someone jump in and do it, or whatever it's been, it's always worked out until tonight.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so what happened was on December 21st, which is a Tuesday, I was driving to Kansas City to get my hair done before the holidays because that's very important.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it all of a sudden hit me that I don't have a speaker for the January espresso meeting, and it is in three weeks.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I started bawling.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, what happened?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't even have LOL this year.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: I have zero excuses, and I don't have a speaker.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: There is not a woman on the planet I can call right now to say anything that makes any kind of sense except to guilt her into feeling so sorry for me that she comes up here and speaks in front of people.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: I can't call a single person.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought to myself, I have to cancel.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: We're going, for the first time in the history of Espresso, we're gonna cancel the meeting because the person in charge of it didn't do their job, had one job, and I didn't do it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I then also before I called the person to say we have to cancel because of me, also realized I would have to quit ministry.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot be a part of women's ministry anymore because it's just I'm not functioning.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I I picked up the phone to call Patty and tell her.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: I my life is a mess.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: I clearly can't do anything.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not firing on any cylinders, let alone all of them.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so I understand if you need to let me go, but we have to cancel January Espresso.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I had told her why, because it was all caught up in just dealing with the things that were going on with my mom and all of the transitions that were happening and all of the mental and emotional energy that was being poured into all of that, and I didn't even realize, you know, just how much time had gone by or what I had dropped the ball on.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So Patty says, Well, you know, but this is the way I thought of it in my head.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was before I became the Isaac on the altar of espresso.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Patty said, Wait, wait.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I said, okay, I waited for a second, and she said, You know that Teresa has been dealing with a lot of mom issues as well.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: What if the two of you just shared at espresso some of what you've been going through, some of what God's been teaching you?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you think of that?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I was completely relieved.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm ready to talk anytime.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: I can always talk.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: I can talk.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Of course I can talk.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'll do espresso.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, wait, I can't call Teresa.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: She's on vacation.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's I'm I'm back to square one.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can't call Teresa and go, hey, in three weeks, can you sit up there with me and do this?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Patty said, call her.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I did.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: I also like to talk.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, right there, still in my car, still driving to Kansas City because it's a long drive.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I said, I am so sorry to bother you on vacation, but I have a question for you.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, would you be willing to speak with me on caring for our moms and all that you know we've kind of learned from that?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And she thought for 0.1 seconds said, Yes, absolutely.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that God has brought me through all of this not to share it with other people.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: So there it was.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that is how this particular topic came to be an espresso.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Patty said, sometimes when you feel like you're hitting a wall and nothing's working out the way it's supposed to be, God may be trying to get your attention because he wants to do something different.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: So while I was trying so hard to find two speakers, I wasn't trying hard at all because I didn't remember.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: But while I was feeling so bad for not finding any speakers and God didn't drop any in my lap, we realized that he wanted to do something different tonight.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's how this came to be.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna turn it over to Teresa for a few minutes and let her tell you a little bit about her history and her her backstory with her mom and her situation.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I just think this is amazing how God has used this time.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently there's someone here who has there's one person who's had a struggle with their parent, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's one of you here.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to raise your hand.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so this is for you.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're glad.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but really what I want to share what we want to accomplish tonight.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some of our goals are to encourage, like any espresso, to encourage, inspire you, let you know you are not alone in whatever journey you're having with your aging parents.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um we want to do that by sharing stories about things that have happened with our mothers, and so these are things we're still in our journeys.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some espresso talks are about things that happened in the past, and I've got some perspective.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're still in it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so we want to do it in a way that's respectful to our mothers who are still living and honoring to them.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's what we're gonna try to accomplish tonight.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that in mind, more than anything, we want the glory to go to God.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we have to say.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we are not experts.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: We look like experts, but we are not.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: So so just and and and one of the things that you know I've learned certainly because my mom has um Alzheimer's dementia, is that no person suffers the same with that illness compared with another, and it's different through all the different stages.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just learning as we go, and so I I don't want to give off the you know, the um impression that you know we figured all this out, and now we're here to impart our incredible wisdom and experience onto you, and you're welcome.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have that wisdom, come find us.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because we we'll have you speak.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to start by we're gonna kind of go both back and forth in our story.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um we're gonna start with some foundational things that you need to know about the journey, things that that we kind of grew up with, some truths.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we came from.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And with me, I need to let you know, despite anything I might say tonight, overall, I had a pretty good childhood.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Happy kid.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to have a mother who was suffering from severe depression and anxiety.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when I look back at child photographs and I think about my history as a child, it's happy.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at some point, I'd say late grade school, middle school, I started to see that my mom was different from other moms and other people.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anxiety, self-esteem.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was living in the past in her conversations.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: She perceives herself as a victim.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, still still does today.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she can be critical, but but to her, she's telling you the truth.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is more important than anything to my mom, even if it hurts.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've heard a lot of truths over my lifetime.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just put it as that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: However, my mom does have a hard time seeing an accurate picture of herself and areas where maybe she could use some growth.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't I can't uh get anywhere if I take that route with trying to make a suggestion.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where I grew up.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we were close even through all that until the time I was about 10 or 11.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mom bought me, does anyone remember Judy Bloom, the author?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, unfortunately, you know, looking back now, Judy Bloom taught me a lot about myself, probably should have come from my parents.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I had a Judy Bloom diary.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Mom bought it for me for Christmas.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that next year, you know, January, a couple couple weeks later, I started journaling.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And boy, that was fun because I could write about anything, and it was a diary, so it was private and personal.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote my feelings about people and things that happened.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was very honest in my diary.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came home and I found my mom had grabbed my diary and was in another part of the house reading it, and she read something I had written about her, and it broke her heart.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that really, at age 11 or 12, that caused a real rift in our trust.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I ever got it back.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I ever did.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was we I was raised Catholic, my mom's Catholic.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'll say I I did not have a relationship with God at the time.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of Catholics do.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just I wasn't one of them.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that comes later.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so we had trust issues, boundaries were a big deal.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know what boundaries were.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had no concept of that until fairly late uh recently in my life.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but I just knew I didn't like the way I felt around some people, and I would do things to try to make me feel better about them, and even if that meant holding them at arm's length, and I started to do that with my mom.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know how to create healthy boundaries.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never been shown how.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I put space between mom and me, and it started to hurt everyone.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Me, my dad, my mom, of course.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then when I became a parent at about age 30, um, I started to put space between my son and my mom to try to protect him, protect me, and that was hurtful because I didn't know how to do it right.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's kind of what the foundation is.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll come back in a minute and we'll talk about what came after that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Connie's gonna talk about hers.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so my parents were both alcoholics, and I was the oldest of three.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: So in my house, um, I don't really have a lot of memories, to be honest with you.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: I can't really think about, I can't think.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: I see pictures, and and I, and to me, those are memories, but I I can't, I couldn't tell you specific things that that happened growing up in my house.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like both my parents drank to mask their relationship problems.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so then what happened was unhealthy relationships were developed with their children as well.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: And being the oldest, I received the brunt of a lot of the the friction.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my parents never fought in front of us.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if they ever fought.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that my mom ever wanted to confront my dad.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think she was too afraid that if she did, he might leave.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so he was allowed to be our friend and um our hero.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: He called himself the hero.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: He wrote that down.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: Whenever we played cards, he was hero, and we were other or whatever.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he was my best friend, and um, I was definitely a daddy's girl, and that caused a lot of issues with my mom.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even after they quit drinking and and became very involved in AA.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: My dad was my um rock and he was my sounding board, and my mom and I just continued to um separate, and she was always angry.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I know now that she was always angry because she felt rejected by her family.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: She saw my dad at home from work every day when we got home from school, and you know, we're all sitting there watching TV or having snacks or just enjoying each other's company, and then she would walk in the door after working a 10-hour day or something.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: She worked 50 or 60 hours a week.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And these are things that did not occur to me as a teenage girl uh to see her working these hours, coming in the door exhausted, and then us looking at her for what was for dinner.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, and then when she and then she would be angry about that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: But she would take it out on me, and then I would just think, you're a horrible person.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted dinner.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what is wrong with you?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and that that was really um that really kind of summarizes the the dynamic going on in our home.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: So she was always upset with me.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: She was very upset about my relationship with my dad and how close we were and how close she wasn't to either one of us, especially.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was just a lot of resentment, a lot of bitterness, a lot of anger.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I used to tell, I just used to tell people I hated her and that I wanted to run away from home and I and I wanted to get as far away from her as possible.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that because she and she admitted to me that she was harder on me too, my than my other siblings.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: I have a younger sister and a younger brother, and I know it's not a competition, but it's funny that you know you have you have these truths, you have these things you think, these dynamics that played out in your family, but then you talk to a sibling and that's not how they saw it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, you find out from your parent that there were things going on behind the scenes you weren't really aware of.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And although you may have felt an anger, or you felt frustration, or you felt rejection, or you felt my mom was never happy, I could never do enough.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you find out later there was a whole backstory to that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: But it did validate when she told me just a few years ago, less than 10 years ago, we were on the phone and she said, I want you to know how sorry I am, because I know that I was very hard on you.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was harder on you than I was on your brother and sister, and I realized that, and I'm just I'm really sorry.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the craziest moment of my life, probably, honestly, because it's not that I hadn't already forgiven her at that point.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm 57, so I was old.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: But to hear her say that, and that was supposed to be the end of it, like that really, that was it.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: That was the moment.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like God just said, it's good now, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's good now.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I just said, wow, mom, thank you so much for sharing that with me.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: That had to be hard.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: I know you've done a lot of work.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate that.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, we'd grown a lot because I really wanted to say, are you kidding me?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's it?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: After all this time, after all that stuff, but I didn't.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I really didn't actually want to.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was a thing I fought.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: But we we just, you know, so so that's kind of you you take all of that brokenness from the time I left at 18 to go off to my seven-year escapade at K-State and and and finally get married, you know, even though my mom started to get better and our relationships started to heal a little bit, we just didn't spend a lot of time together.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have a lot of conversations, everything was kind of guarded and careful because it was still pretty broken.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And and so things got better just because of time and distance, but not genuine healing for a long time.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean, my my so my dad passed away in 91.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and at that point, I was a single mom.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was living at home in their basement, and that that was kind of the the turning point because um I I lost it.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: I had been able to tolerate my mom and our relationship up until that point.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I was uh 26 when McKenna was born.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: And when God left me on this planet with my mom and took my dad instead, I was absolutely 100% sure he had made a horrible mistake and and that um my life was over.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that just gives you a little glimpse into how dysfunctional I was.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: That at that age I did not know how I was going to carry on in my life without my dad and stuck on this planet with my mom.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: So uh, like I said, you know, after after I married Jeff in '92, and after that, this the distance and the time kind of helped heal some things, and we started moving to a place where we could visit and talk and hang out, and she could be around the kids and everything, you know, was okay for a while.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty much.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think we both lived with okay for a long time.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Until things started to come to a head for both of us.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna kind of talk about that decline.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it took a long time for my mom, mom's decline, if you want to call it that, before we realized what might really be happening.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um in uh 19 1998.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So to give you context, my mom was 50 and I was 28.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: She got a tick bite on a hike.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So to tell I tell you that because if she's healthy enough to hike on a wilderness trail, I mean, she's not she's not running marathons, but she's able to walk and she's fit enough to be going for walks on her lunch break.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: She got a tick bite and she contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I could tell you, I could that could be a whole nother talk.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: But we almost lost her.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: She spent one night in the intern um ICU just so they could monitor her because things were happening so rapidly.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: She went in 48 hours from normal to uh she was just terribly swollen over her whole body.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't move, she had this rash everywhere, a fever, she wasn't making sense.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Her physician was out of town.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I took her to the doctor's office, he'd never met her before.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know what normal looks like.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So fortunately, God intervened and got her to an immunologist immediately when she got to the hospital.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he started started her on an IV drip of some really powerful antibiotics and um some other things that they did to help turn that around.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she did leave the hospital after a couple weeks, but it took months before she was able to get her strength back and energy.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even now, there are what appear to be permanent after you know 20 some years.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: There appears to be permanent, um, no, 30, 30 years, uh permanent damage from that physical.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't aware of what was happening mentally.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So most good daughters would go meet their mom at the hospital and take them home and start, you know, doing all the things that need to be done.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't know how to manage boundaries.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: My response was to pull away.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: She had sisters.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm an only child, by the way.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: She had sisters, she had, you know, my dad had some health issues.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he had had mobility issues, so he wasn't able to help as much with chores and things outdoors.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: But there were other people around to do all that.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I told myself.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't help by not being present, and I own that.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't help how much I got blamed for that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was it just kind of kept feeding on itself.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: This Satan really had a field day with all of that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I came to Christ later, and that was that was part of where that's where the healing really began.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: But at this point in my life, I wasn't there yet.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I need to I need to just make that clear.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um in 2016, I joined the staff here at TBC just at the time my dad was finishing a nine-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we always knew because of dad's health issues, that we that he would go first.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's 10 years older than my mom.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I dreaded that.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as mom called me and told me what was happening, I was very selfish and thinking this is gonna leave me with my mom to care for and no siblings and sisters who are starting to pull away.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing their own bad boundaries because they're experiencing the same thing.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Best friends are pulling away.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't understand.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: why people are suddenly no longer there for her.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it became clear to me that this was some something I was gonna really have to deal with.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: My mom grieved in some really strange ways.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I I that's a whole other talk.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But those of you who've been through that know that grief is very personal and everyone's experience is different.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways it did bring us closer together.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had to be there to do some things for her that I'd never been able to do before.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in that way we grew.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But there was all this past that kept getting dredged up over and over again and we just couldn't seem to get past that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: My mom remarried within a year and a half and fortunately he's a great guy.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so blessed that Rob is in my mom's life.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am very grateful for him.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I can now step back out and let him do all the work but but because he really is a good guy and he cares about her.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's never been married before can you imagine at 70 74 he's never been married before so he doesn't have a lot of baggage he's a saint but they got married and that was that was kind of hard for me because you know I when I lost my dad I felt like I also lost my mom.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's a different person and here she's getting married already.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot just so much going on we bought my mom and dad's house from her in what at the time we thought was a mutually agreeable arrangement.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to put it on the market for X number of dollars.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Justin and I prayerfully got together and figured out what we could do to try to afford that we couldn't so we came at her with an as is you don't have to do a thing.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to hire a realtor offer for X number of dollars minus X number of dollars.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she agreed to that and she was so excited we would be getting her house it was her dream.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then months later she's telling anyone who will listen that we stole her house from her she's telling anyone who will listen that my husband was abusive to her verbally.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was there for the conversation and I could see the look on his face he looked pretty pretty upset.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: My husband is not verbul verbally abusive to anyone except for who's ever playing the Chiefs it's just he's just that kind of a guy.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so her truth was becoming much more different than what the rest of us were experiencing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like it was this huge divergence and it kept getting bigger and bigger and these stories kept getting repeated and people who I didn't even know that well were asking me if I really did that to my mom.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I confronted her about it.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: My mom had a conversation with me it was over the phone I would say in September yesterday it was August of 2019 and um she was when my dad died she put him on a pedestal and she said very very very complimentary things that I'm not even sure were true.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that was her truth.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there might have been a little guilt in that too because she had to be a major caregiver for him and she had some feelings to resolve.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: But when she met Rob her husband her new husband suddenly she couldn't say a nice thing about my dad not even to me.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so to hear her talk about my dad so poorly and say things that I am fairly certain were not true I'd had it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her that I I can't listen to you talk to my to me and my son.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: My son went over to take her some medicine she had shingles and I'm sorry for anyone's had that it sounds like it's terribly painful.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: She was in the middle of a shingles outbreak and my son took her medicine that she needed and at the time he's only 19 years old and she told him that we had stolen the house from her and that Justin had yelled at her and you know if if he wanted to come stay with grandma it's okay.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my rock bottom.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked her to please not say anything to me or my son about my dad anymore that I can't hear that anymore.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was putting up a healthy boundary and it was not what she wanted to hear.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I she shouted at me that you're a horrible daughter you're a horrible daughter and I as calmly as I could hung up the phone I told her that I thought it was best that I stopped talking to her and I immediately called Patty Delberto and asked her to pray with me.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she did we prayed the um armor of God prayer and um I felt like God was saying your mom's hurt all she wants to hear right now is that you understand her that you love her regardless of all this.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote a letter and I read it today while I was preparing I wrote her a letter that night that said you know for the time being I think it's best that we correspond only in writing so we can think about and pray about what we're gonna say and we have a clean record of what we've said I want to thank you for um for giving me big pieces of paper and pens and markers to write and draw anything I wanted to on all the time.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank you for being a room mother not just being the room mother for school but being the one who organizes all of them and bakes the cookies.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being my brownie leader.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming to see all my shows that I was in in high school thank you for and this is a two-page letter of just thank you thank you thank you through my whole life and I just closed it saying I love you you are appreciated and I hope we can find some healing in this and I mailed it a couple days later I got a text I got your letter thank you I love you too not exactly you know what I was hoping for.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then the next time she called me uh a couple days later and acted as if none of that had ever happened so I knew something was going on that needed an intervention I told Justin that year for Christmas all I want is therapy with my mom.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he said yes we will pay for it if whatever we have to do if she's willing to go we will pay for it.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we started we went to go see a Christian counselor.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um the only thing more painful than being yelled at by your mom and being told you're a horrible daughter is when in counseling your mom can't remember that she ever said that to you and that was when I got over my selfish reaction to that I was able to go oh my goodness she doesn't realize she doesn't realize what she's doing because my mom like I said she is all about the truth.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't say I didn't say that she said I don't remember that conversation.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Plus she had shingles so who knows?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know the pain, the fever whatever whatever might have been the cause of that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we went to therapy for a few times and um my mom really wanted she was willing to go because she knew I needed fixing and she was willing to go to make sure the therapist could get her perspective on where I needed fixing and I was fine with that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And after a few sessions mom felt like she wasn't um getting anything out of it anymore and she encouraged me to continue.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a meeting with the therapist and I'm I just kind of went in and I'm like can you even talk to me about my mom when she's not here is that you know patient client and she's like no it's fine we can talk about your mom.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about your mom's history and we trace back to 1998 when she had that tick bite and the Rocky Mountain spotted fever and we looked at her uh what they call the DSM the diagnostic and statistical manual that's on every that's what it is.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes every Connie knows that she has one in her library the abridged version it's called WebMD and and sure enough mental mental decline mental illness mental health issues that is a long term can be a long term side effect of the disease I don't know if that's what caused my mom to have this kind of break but we're going with it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: What's more important is what happened in that meeting was the therapist said Teresa if your mom had cancer or some serious life threatening illness that was something terminal would you treat her differently in your day-to-day conversations?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well of course I would I'd probably be a lot more compassionate I'd be kinder I'd I'd focus on what she needs not what I need out of the relationship.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your mom may have a mental illness if she's mentally ill can you treat her differently and I just I I couldn't I couldn't believe that it had taken until the age of 50 for me to understand that regardless of whether someone has a mental illness or a health problem I think we all deserve to treat each other as if this could be our last conversation as if you're the most precious person to me in the whole world that's what Jesus would have us do.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I regret the fact that it took me 50 years to get there.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that created a huge shift and we'll talk about that in a couple minutes but Connie's gonna share her next part of the chapter yeah so I'm working on road rage now because you never know who could be driving that car.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's someone with a little mental illness going on and here I hated their guts and thought they should be taken off the road I have tried to temper it a little bit I'm working on it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: So um so what happened for us you know in in the in this situation is in 2018 we had all gone to dinner at a place that my mom had been to a thousand times.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: They changed the name but it was still Barbecue Restaurant in Overland Park and we went there as kids so when we were telling her what's in the old Haywards building um she did not remember how to get there.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so my my brother and sister and I all looked at each other like that's weird.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then my sister pulled us aside in the parking lot and said I don't know if you guys have noticed but I think mom's short-term memory is declining.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we hadn't noticed my sister was the primary caregiver at that point she lived 10 minutes away from my mom.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: My brother was 40 50 minutes I was at least an hour and so my sister was doing the running back and forth just checking on her spending time with her.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean my mom was still pretty active at that point so she wasn't stuck at home but um you know my sister being the middle child being the peacemaker being the perfect person that she is um just would always be the one doting on and caring for my mom and buying her flowers and just random things.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: She was just the best daughter ever if she's listening.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: So um we hadn't noticed that my mom's short-term memory was failing.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't talk to her often enough to get it but we were listening.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: So uh fast forward uh a year basically to 2019 uh oh and by the way my sister had tried to talk to my mom about maybe getting some evaluations done and she did have one done and she passed it with flying colors much to her frustration but um so then she never thought she needed another one but in 2019 my sister uh called me in a panic she works two jobs and one of them's a restaurant job she has one day off a week and she was flying by the seat of her pants and she said hey mom's got a doctor's appointment and I've got to pick up Renee and I can't I can't get her there.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Can is there any way on that day whatever could you come from Topeka and take her?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like yeah I don't have a job my kids are grown I have no life I would love to come and help you.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I got in the car and I drove and I took my mom to this doctor's appointment and I don't know why.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: But all of a sudden like just walking into her house everything was wrong.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: She was sitting in um just she she had quit walking she quit moving a lot she'd sit in a chair and eat snacks and put the trash down on the floor next to her and the laundry was starting to pile up and uh she was just it was just unkept and that's not my mom.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so you know I scooped her up and we went to the doctor's office and it was for an INR check and and then I found out that she hadn't and if you don't know that's I don't know what that means.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's not DSM or whatever but um it's it's if you're on a blood thinner you're supposed to be having it checked regularly to make sure that your blood is not too thin or too thick.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she was on warfarin so it was supposed to be checked often and it hadn't been checked in a year.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I have power of attorney over medical I even did then but it never occurred to anybody that I needed to exercise any of that.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: None of us did we thought my mom was handling everything.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you know I'm sure that the the nurse or whatever that that took the reading was just looking at us like where have you guys been your mom's numbers are are off the chart or well actually they were in the tank.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: She was a she was a stroke victim waiting to happen.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so you know that started the pill management honestly at that point then I realized my mom's not taking her medication and so I went back to her house with her and I saw her pill box and I and I started the process which is not worth going into but if you know anybody on pills there were like 10 of them and they were taken at different times and so I just made a big long list and I started managing pills from the phone from Topeka.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: My mom started calling me the pill police very lovingly I you know hey mom it's the pill police making sure you took your medication oh Connie I just got up I haven't even had anything to eat yet oh that's that's fine you know go ahead and get a snack I'll call you back in a few minutes and just I just want to make sure you know we got to stay on top of those numbers.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay well thank you so much thanks for reminding me you bet call her back hey mom it's the pill police oh okay I'll take them hold on you know and and so that's how it was going every day two or three times a day when I couldn't get to Kansas City to be with her which I was trying to do two or three times a week started doing her laundry started picking up around her but she's a control freak and that can be recorded and you can hear this and that's fine.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: She is a control freak she doesn't like you touching her stuff she doesn't want you to throw anything away anything away if you pick up something and you get out of her sight she wants to know what it was that you took and where you're taking it.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: So to clean up around her was a trick but I found ways.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: So uh then the pandemic hit so my husband and I took over Bill Payne and when I say we took over you know he's an account and I had nothing to do with any of that but we took it over.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And when she was still uh you know in her right mind she made him power of attorney for her finances which was in you know total agreement with my brother and sister because we all grew up in the same house and none of us commanded money.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that was great.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: So now it just all the responsibility just started to pile on and then the pandemic hit and my mom was in isolation and so what little memory that she had short term began to to tank.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so like even one day I called her and um you know I I just said hey you know darling make sure you take your pills well I don't have any water here.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay well I I don't have anything going on I'll hold on if you want to go get a glass of water and you can take your pills and we can visit for a little while.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: All right all right just a second then she gets up and she walks across the kitchen and I can hear her getting a glass out of the cabinet and I can hear the water running and then I hear Connie Connie I don't know where I put the phone where I oh my gosh I don't know where the phone is can you yell or something Connie and I'm just sitting there on the phone in Topeka going Mom Mom can you hear me mom and then she gets to the phone and she says I don't know what's wrong with my brain I just think I must be losing my mind so in one of her appointments with the doctor we had made an arrangement for her to have an evaluation and she couldn't remember at that point from one appointment to the next what we were doing and so I'd always have to remind her today you're you know so we're gonna do a they're gonna do a little memory check and so they ran the test and it was just a 15 minute and it has an acronym and I don't know what it is.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: But you know she basically came back and said what your mom is exhibiting is like early signs of Alzheimer's dementia.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: So then I learned like dementia is like cancer like it's a like you can have cancer but there's all kinds of cancers and some are worse than others and and they all affect different parts of the body and all of that stuff but there's all kinds of different kinds of dementia and so this is Alzheimer's dementia.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I so I was like okay I don't know what this means I've seen the notebook I don't know anyone who's had this I've never been around anyone who's gone through it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard it's awful okay so we go home and we start having conversations about what we're gonna do next.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: And she had been talking for decades about moving out of that house.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was our the house we grew up in she's been in it for 53 years but she could never bring herself to downsize she kept she'd go and look at apartments and she had all these specs that she wanted to fulfill but she could never bring herself to actually move.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So now here we were she can no longer really actually care for herself me managing things over the phone from Topeka is so stressful and and sometimes laughable um and so I some of you may have even seen it I posted on Facebook one day hey looking for assisted living facilities you know let me know what you think and I got all kinds of um information so that's where I started and uh we ended up at McCrite and um you know moving moving my mom was uh just shocking really because her memory at that point even was so bad and this was September 27th that's the day that she moved in of 2021 so the year of pandemic had just done so much damage that from day to day now she's not really sure and sometimes from hour to hour she doesn't remember I I can't tell you how many calls I get on any given day hey did I miss a call from you I it look I I don't know how to work this phone.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: It looks like maybe I missed a call and if I didn't I'm sorry I don't have anything to say I'm not doing anything I just want to make sure I didn't miss a call from you I mean three four times a day so so that's you know I I have had to learn to be incredibly gracious to a person who was not gracious to me.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: I would have sworn she didn't like me for most of my life I was not the good girl I was the wicked daughter I was the selfish daughter I was the self-centered daughter and and so we didn't we didn't get along and now it's me and um just the practice of telling her I love her all the time and the practice of oh mom no you're you're doing good you're doing great don't worry about it no that's fine oh yeah isn't that funny you know I mean just just actually curbing every single conversation because the first thing that I learned about dementia and Alzheimer's dementia is that they don't remember what you said.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: They remember how you made them feel and so that's been at the forefront of my mind for over a year now leave her feeling good.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Leave her feeling safe Leave her feeling cared for, leave her feeling loved every single time because she's in the dark now.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: She is.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And every day is uh it's not the notebook because she still knows me.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: She knows my brother and sister.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: She forgot Marshall got married in 2019.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't know who his wife was.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, on the 26th, we went to my brother's and I took her.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny, we're in the car.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're driving from here to Baldwin.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's a back road, it's like 45 minutes, and we're about halfway there.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, Don't tell Ray this, but I don't ever want to go to his house again.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: This is too far.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in the back of my mind, I was like, Yes.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: Thank God.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: She's starting to feel tethered to McCrite.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: That is now her safe place where she's cared for, and her apartment is familiar now, and we're past the I miss my house.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I want to go home.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: I want to go get my things.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: When am I going to my house?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Who's taking me to my house?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're here.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and so we, you know, I didn't tell my brother.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: I told my sister, but I didn't tell my brother.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, but we got there and we had a really great time.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter was there with our new grandbaby, and my mom loves it that we call her Gigi.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: She always wanted a cute grandma name, and she didn't get it.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm not that there's anything wrong wrong with grandma, but she wanted like Mimi or or something, you know, I don't know, Graham Graham.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: It was all these weird things.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing anybody was gonna call her.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so my brother's kids, they started calling her grandma newt after one of her dogs.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: And um, because they had grandma.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it wasn't anything disrespectful, that was just grandma newt.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and then and then Jeff, my husband, and I hope he's listening, he called her Granny, the one thing she didn't want to be called, and that was their little pet name then after that.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: He he just called her granny.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's but but now she's Gigi, and she loves it when I call her Gigi.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also a reminder every time I do that, she has a great granddaughter.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: And when we were at my brother's on the 26th, she got to hold her for a long time, you know, and all of that good stuff.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I promise you, we weren't 10 minutes down the road.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: And she said to me, Now whose baby was that?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I and and uh I think there was a time when my emotions would have been so out of control that I probably would have just lost it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, at this point we've been dealing with it for so long now, and God's been so good to me that I just I said, Oh, it's McKenna's, it's McKenna's little girl.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: She had that baby, yeah.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, she did back in September.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then she says, Oh, well, if I would have known she was McKenna's, I would have taken her home with me.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I know, I know.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess um the thing that I would say has helped me the most, first and foremost, was that in 2020, I read through my chronological Bible for the first time.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was my third attempt, and I finally made it through.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the crazy thing about this, ladies, for me, uh is that the story of God became so foundational for me and my belief and my perspective and the way that I see people in life, that it changed me forever.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: It forever changed me.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that it was not an accident that the timing of it was that I read it that year because of what I was about to face with my mom.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and so understanding the sovereignty and goodness of God and how it applies to this situation in particular was life-changing for me because there's no way I could have cared for my mom the way that I have up to this point, if I I don't if I didn't have that.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: I know it.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: If I didn't understand God, and I'm not saying I understand him, but just the the layers that came off and the way that my eyes were open to certain characteristics about him and how it affected me and my relationship with my mom was life-changing.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other thing that he did was he he placed people in my life that um became such a tremendous encouragement to me.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um so uh Judy's here, um, and she's you know, if you if you saw LOL a few years ago, she did, she was featured there um as someone who had a hoarding problem, and God had set her free from that.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: And she shared some of that experience with everyone.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And Judy and I have known each other since our kids were in middle school, but we weren't necessarily friends.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't hang out, we just loved our each other's boys and always hugged when we saw each other.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: But but it's just so um amazing to me that after God brought her through all of that, then there she was waiting to come and help me with my mom's house.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: She's been there three times.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: She's been there more than anybody else in my family besides me, spending days there helping, just and she's a machine, and I am not offering her up.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do not think, no, that she's mine.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um but and Vicky, Vicky Mech, you know, her mom went through uh dementia, and she has, you know, and I I know there's a lot of people out there who have, but such a comfort for me.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just happened to call her about something else one day, and we got to talking about our moms and some of what she had gone through.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the next thing I know, there's a book on my porch.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the the handbook that she brought me that I just started pouring over page after page after page, and such an incredible resource.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then also, I just happened I was on YouTube looking for something on dementia, and I stumbled across because God is good.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's called Dementia Care Blazers.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: And Dr.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: Natalie is what she goes by on this page.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: She is a doctor who specializes in dementia care, and she puts new videos out weekly on um on tips and strategies for caring for loved ones with dementia, and also how to care for yourself.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started listening to her videos every every chance I got, and absolutely every time I was in the car heading over to my mom's, because it would set my mind frame right for what I was walking into, for what my mom was dealing with.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: She explained so well in so many different ways what is happening to my mom's brain.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so it just, it's kind of like your experience with the doctor.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: What how would you love her differently if she had an illness?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and so that's what happened for me is it just changed everything about the way that I see her.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it was, you know, my son, especially the marshal who lives close to my mom while he did in Overland Park, was who had a hand in caring for her at different times, you know, running over to help her with the remote, you know, her TV broke weekly.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so he would go over and fix it.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: He was amazing.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um but he one day I I was talking to him on the phone about all of it, and he just he he literally just said to me, Mom, what in the hell am I going to do if this happens to you?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, you're gonna get on YouTube, you're gonna go to Carablazers, because they'll tell you everything you need to know about how to talk to me and how to help me, and they will encourage you because this is going to be hard.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if it'll happen to me or not.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: My mom is 80, she'll be 82 this year.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: She thinks she just is old and forgetful, um, which is nice because um the one time I told her that she had dementia, she started sobbing.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: She absolutely broke down because she knows what it is.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: She's seen people with it, and she knows it's a killer.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I learned a valuable lesson that day.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Somehow I just thought, you know, well, we went to the doctor, and this is this is what they diagnosed you with, but it's early.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, now it's you know, mid.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I was just trying to like tell her this is what we're dealing with, and she absolutely was uncontrolled.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: She had to hang up, she was uncontrollable.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't tell her that anymore.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: She says, Connie, I just I don't know what I'm gonna do.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: My memory was always my best asset.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_02: I worked at the hospital for 30 years and I didn't even have to record my sessions because I just wrote it all down after my after my clients left.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: I I took copious notes and I never forgot a thing.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: And my memory was my best asset.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Mom, your memory was never your best asset.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Your best asset was the way you cared for and loved people, and you never lost that.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Connie.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome, Mom.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of how God has just continued to I I feel supernaturally enable me to do things I never would have thought I would be capable of doing, loving her in a way that I never thought that I could love her.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know if I can talk after all that.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had lunch with my husband, Justin, today.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, of all my husbands, he's Justin.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um as I said that I thought that didn't come out right.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had lunch with Justin, my husband.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was the lucky one today.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you It's Justin Tuesday.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Justin Tuesday.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who saw my grammar my post on Facebook about Grammarly, this is why I use Grammarly.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um it told me that I have a new tone, compassion.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: Which I I didn't put on the Facebook post, but did anyone see that I posted that yesterday?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, oh God, what are you doing to me?
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: You have a sense of humor, and I don't find it funny that I'm getting ready to talk about compassion with my mom, and Grammarly tells me, we've detect detected a new tone in your writing.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's compassion.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was a jerk.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: By God, by God.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, but seriously.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked Justin today at lunch, um, like what what have you seen different in the way I am with mom now since therapy?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: What and what have you seen me do that you think is the reason for it?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted his perspective.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's a believer, but you know, he doesn't have this, you know, all these spiritual disciplines.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like he comes to church and he believes in God.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you ask him a question of faith, he can tell you that he he believes.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: And for now, that's just gonna have to be good enough.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you what, sometimes those folks are the ones you need to ask because they're just gonna tell it till you real simple.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, you read two books.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, he didn't mention the Bible.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it was um Winning the War in Your Mind by Craig Grishel.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: It helped me take my thoughts captive, put them on trial, and send them where they belong.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Boundaries by Henry Cloud.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: I finally got healthier boundaries, still a work in progress.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my best friend lost both her parents to dementia in 2020 uh in December within 11 days of one another.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she's the person who I could always go to because we were dealing with similar issues and we could vent about our moms.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when her parents died, I told myself I can't do this anymore to her.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: She would give anything to have her mom back.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that to her anymore.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have got to clean up my thoughts and my words, not just for her protection, for my protection, because I knew I was heading in the same direction that my mom was with being a victim and blaming others and my truth and all that.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so he he really saw those things turn around.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was interesting for him to say that.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And my prayer life.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, where I needed the growth was the prayer life.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed a dangerous prayer after I got done with therapy, and it was God, teach me how to love my mom on your terms, not mine.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he did.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he opened up the opportunity for first Fridays with mom.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is a day when she is the queen.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: I still get the control because I get to plan all the surprises, but everything I choose is something that is something she will love.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: She'll love spending time.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: I go pick her up.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've gone around, we've gone to like a day of Hazel Hill and Cashmere popcorn and just like a food tour of Topeka.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have gone and done art projects at the Glass Studio.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we went and did uh the Fondue Pot in Kansas City.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell we like food?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um it is something, it's something we definitely have in common.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just all about her.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting ready to do a mural tour of Topeka so she doesn't have to get out of the car on a cold day.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is all about her.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it whatever she wants to talk about, she can talk about.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's negative stuff, I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna listen to it.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna try to redirect her.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of my tactics at first.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: I would come up with all these redirects, and God has been good because He has reduced the number of times I have to redirect because I feel like she's going in a bad direction.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so blessed by these.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not ready to do it every day.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: I still have, I still want that boundary.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: I still need to kind of protect myself sometimes, but I can sure do it in a loving, loving and caring way.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wrote down here, our relationship now looks like surrender, but with healthy boundaries.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: There you can have, you can have balance, and God wants you to have balance.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: I really believe that.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I took a huge step forward in faith last month.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I was doing counseling, I would write notes on my phone, you know, my iPhone, to make a note of something that had happened to ask the counselor the next time.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I had this one particular note that had some pretty oh, just stuff I found hurtful that I I was going to ask the counselor.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if we talked about it.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I found that note last month, and this is when I talked about it when we met as a council.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I I said, I'm deleting this note.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to go back there.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: I kept it just in case for over a year.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Even if that happens again, I don't need to go back there because I'm a different person now because of God.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I deleted it.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I even went into my deleted items and deleted it from there.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't, it's gone.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is completely gone.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were to ask me, Teresa, what did that note say?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I have early onset dementia.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot, I cannot remember what the notes were.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: God is so good, so good.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then um an area where I've seen God at work in this, and we'll get ready to wrap it up here.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just since Sunday, on Sunday, four women who are not here right now because they came up to me and said, I can't be there Tuesday.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna video this?
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I explained that we do audio for Espresso, and uh I promised to send them the link.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then they told me their stories.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there's several of you out there who need who need more of this.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them called me to uh yesterday morning and shared with me what she's going through and asked if we have a support group at TBC.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've got grief share, we've got divorce care, uh, we had a cancer support group for a while before COVID.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have a support group for people who are going through these things?
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my answer, because I've been trained well by Doug Will, is to say, hey, but it just takes a courageous volunteer to step forward in faith, just like Jolene with with uh divorce care, to uh step forward and and take a leadership role in that.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm telling this to that person, I'm getting a lump in my throat, and I'm feeling that heavy weight that you feel when you feel like God's getting ready to tell you something.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: And after I got off the phone, I bawled.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because apparently I am the person that is supposed to get that going.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what that's gonna look like.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: You've got um pieces of paper, the blue papers on your table.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's got some of the resources that Connie and I talked about tonight and some others that I found in a just like a 30-minute search of the internet.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the bottom of it, there's a tear-off section.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking two things.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're asking if we were to have some kind of support group, I mean, there's not even curriculum out there, Christian curriculum out there for this.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna kind of just be working with each other.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something you'd even want to know more about?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to commit to it.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just say, yeah, I'd like to know more about it.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then the second part of that is Connie and I know there are stories out here.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to hear them.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you would be willing to share them with us at Espresso, we'd be so blessed by that.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna just throw you out there to tell your story.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's coaching that takes place and listening and helping you build your story and and getting you ready.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like you're not qualified or equipped to share, that could very well be the enemy telling you he doesn't want you to encourage or inspire someone.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: So please prayerfully consider stepping out in faith and saying, yeah, I'll share my story, or at least I'll talk to somebody about sharing my story.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to add anything else before we close it out?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was pretty good.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: We went over by five minutes.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: But we started two minutes late, so it's only three minutes.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I don't know who's running this show, but we'll have to talk to them about you being a little more timely.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think I think um, yeah, I was so on Sunday morning, one of the worship songs that was um if you were in Mulvaine, uh was a song that I I just love.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I had talked to Teresa about maybe playing it tonight, and then she would close in prayer.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'm gonna go ahead and just put that on really quickly because it is um the it's the goodness of God.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: And in the chorus, you know, when it when they say, you know, your goodness is running after, it's running after me.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: I I have just replaced me with my mom, or I've said them, you know, for my children, because God is um at work.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: He is at work in every facet of our lives.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: When we surrender our lives to him, when we surrender our children to him, our parents to him, then we become a conduit of of the Spirit of God, uh, the faith, the gift of faith changing situations.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and I just love this song.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna play this, and and then um Teresa will close us out in prayer, and uh that'll be it.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you guys so much for coming.