Daly Focus Blog
It’s been called “the long goodbye.”
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most unsettling situations a family can encounter.
An estimated 5.4 million people in this country have Alzheimer’s.
One in three over 85 are diagnosed with dementia of some sort.
For adults over 65, the number is one out of nine.
Every 66 seconds, another person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Dementia is an umbrella term that encompasses many different diseases, of which Alzheimer’s is the largest group.
Sheri Rose Shepherd was crowned Mrs. United States in 1994. That’s quite an achievement for anyone. But for Sheri Rose, it was a long, hard journey.
She didn’t deserve recognition, applause, or self-worth. At least, that’s the message everybody kept driving like a spike through her soul.
Her English teacher once told her, “Sheri Rose, you were born to be a loser. You will never amount to anything in life.”
Her mother mailed her what Sheri Rose thought was a gift.
Some parents will understand these comments by Dena Yohe so personally and intimately they’ll feel like they could have written them themselves. Of raising a troubled child, she said:
“We had so much guilt and shame as parents, especially because our children were our ministry. We took our parenting seriously. I chose not to work. I stayed home, so I could focus all of my attention, my effort, and my energy into who our children would become.
Kathleen Fucci met, John, her future husband, on a blind date. She was 38-years-old at the time, had never been married, and didn’t have children.
The mutual friend who arranged their date began his description of John by saying, “Um … why don’t you sit down?”
He told Kathleen that John was a widower with three children. His wife, Jeanine, had died from cancer the year before at the age of 34.
Despite the uncertainty Kathleen and John felt going into that first encounter, their relationship blossomed.
Dr. Gary Chapman never asks troubled couples, “Do you want to work on your marriage?”
Wanting something is a function of the emotions, and emotions rely on desire to get things moving.
That’s why Dr. Chapman asks troubled couples, “Will you work on your marriage?” The will involves decisions, not feelings. If a couple can say yes to that question, then good things can happen with the right guidance.
Some couples are headed for a divorce because they don’t know any other way to resolve their conflict.
Sharing a blog post from a few years back… the sentiments are the same, and the content is timely given the start of school for many kids around the nation. -J.D.
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Summertime is drawing to a close, so I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite teachers from down through the years. I have many; here are memories of just a few.
In kindergarten there was Mrs. Smith. I went to school that first day with my heels in the pavement and then didn’t want to leave by the time the bell began to ring.
How do you define success?
Everybody probably has a slightly different answer. The late Zig Ziglar once said that whatever else success may be, you can’t truly be successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
Mark 8:36 says, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
We’re all pulled in different directions, and we can easily lose sight of what’s most important in life.
When do you plan to retire?
Notice I didn’t ask, “When do you hope to retire?”
According to financial planner Chris Hogan, retirement is a function of our finances, not our age. And good financial strategies are all about telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.
Chris helps people learn how to do that by boosting their “Retirement IQ” with these three questions:
How much money do you want to live on per month?
Are you stuck?
A lot of us are. We’ve got a friend … a spouse … an in-law … a coworker who is tough to be around. And we want to get unstuck.
But we don’t know how.
On our radio program today and tomorrow is Dr. Daniel Nehrbass, who will share more in-depth about the nine choices you can make to change the course of the complicated relationships in your life:
Listen
Emotional appeal
Teaching
Boundaries
Compromise
Sacrifice
Leaving
Repent of your role in the relationship
Do nothing
Each of these nine have what Dr.
What would you do if your child was diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), ADHD, ADD, and ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder)?
I like how Sally Clarkson responded. When her son Nathan was little, she wasn’t sure what she was dealing with, but she knew there was something about him that was different than other so-called “good” kids.
He frequently got into trouble and needed to talk – to argue, to ask questions, to complain. He was constantly moving, wiggling, and fidgeting with anything and anyone around him.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
