In this episode of Hope for the Caregiver, I sit down with Lindsay Funches, a mother who has spent nearly two decades navigating life with a medically complex child. Her son, Steele, was born during a military deployment and later diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome, a rare craniofacial condition that has required dozens of surgeries, long hospital stays, and constant vigilance.

We talk about what it's like to push back when doctors don't listen, to raise siblings alongside illness, and to keep a marriage and faith steady through

deployments, uncertainty, and exhaustion. Lindsay reflects on learning when to advocate, when to wait, and how a life shaped by caregiving can deepen joy rather than erase it.

This conversation moves through real moments: kitchen-table decisions, ICU nights, humor in hospital rooms, and the slow realization that "normal" may never return, but meaning still can. It's a candid discussion about caregiving, special needs parenting, military family life, and the faith that sustains people when answers don't come easily.

READ LINDSAY'S ARTICLE

I sat down with Ken and Mary Sue Grein knowing their story would be heavy. I didn't expect it to steady me the way it did.

They were just 22 years old when their son Jacob was born with severe medical complications. Within days, doctors told them he wouldn't live long and encouraged them to let him die. Ken and Mary Sue refused. They chose life, even though no one could tell them what that life would require.

Jacob lived 37 years. (READ HIS STORY HERE)

In our conversation, they speak candidly about what those decades held: long hospital stays, countless surgeries, daily caregiving, isolation, anger, and exhaustion. They don't sanitize any of it. But they also don't frame Jacob's life as a tragedy. What comes through instead is clarity, gratitude, and a hard-won conviction that a difficult life does not have to be a bad one.

They talk about how caregiving reshaped their marriage, formed their other children, and rewired their own hearts. Disability didn't fracture their family. It refined it. Their children grew up compassionate, responsible, and unafraid of suffering. Jacob himself, despite profound limitations, lived with joy, affection, and gratitude, fully present in the life of his family.

As a longtime caregiver myself, much of what they shared felt familiar: the loneliness, the way support fades, the daily choice between bitterness and gratitude. But what stayed with me most was their quiet insistence that every life is worth living, even when it arrives wrapped in fear, limitation, and unanswered questions.

This is not a conversation about pretending suffering is good. It's about refusing to let suffering be the final word. Ken and Mary Sue didn't just care for their son. They learned how to live faithfully in the middle of what could not be fixed, and that is a lesson every caregiver needs.

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A Caregiver's Companion - Scriptures, Hymns, and Forty Years of Insights for Life's Toughest Role

There's a particular look that crosses someone's face when they realize they've just been understood.

I've seen it on a bus driver from Kenya after I spoke a few words of Swahili.
I've seen it on a CNA from Ghana caring for my wife in a hospital room. I watched a hospital housekeeper from Haiti light up when I spoke a few words in French to her.

And I've seen it countless times on caregivers who quietly say, "You just said what I've been feeling."

The response is almost always the same:

How do you know my language?

Caregivers live in a kind of isolation that's hard to describe. It isn't only physical exhaustion, emotional strain, or long-term uncertainty. It's deeper than that. Many of us are surrounded by people who care, who want to help, who offer words—but those words don't quite land. Not because they're cruel, but because they're untranslated.

In this episode of Hope for the Caregiver, I reflect on what it means to speak the "language of the heart." While I learned a few words in several language, I speak "Fluent Caregiver" - and am committed to speaking the language of the caregiver's heart to as many as I can.

I also discuss why music reaches us so powerfully, and why some voices connect immediately while others never quite do. I also look at what Christmas tells us about this kind of connection, and why the name Emmanuel isn't a seasonal phrase, but a profound reality.

This episode moves through stories, music, suffering, compassion, and the gospel itself. It's about caregivers, yes—but also about anyone who has ever wondered what to say, or felt unseen because no one knew how to say it.

If you're carrying something heavy this season, I hope you'll listen.

If you're walking with someone through addiction, disability, illness, or long-term suffering, you may feel pressure to say the right thing. This episode isn't about perfect words. It's about presence.

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is simply stay, listen, and speak with the same compassion we ourselves have received.

If this episode resonated, you may find help in my book, A Caregiver's Companion.

It grew out of the same conviction behind today's program: caregivers don't just need encouragement. We need words that speak honestly to what we're carrying.

The book brings together Scripture, hymns, and lived experience from decades of caregiving, written to sit beside you rather than talk at you.

You can find it here:
👉 https://a.co/d/1l8nZfF