How does one find joy, balance, and peace in the midst of heartbreak and loss? Let's explore this profound question with Tammy Marvin, a woman who has walked the tough path of caregiving for her ailing loved ones. Tammy reveals her rollercoaster journey of looking after her mother, father, and sister in their final days – a task that was heartbreaking yet rewarding in its own way.
Is there a way to balance grief with faith? Tammy believes there is and shares how she navigated through these turbulent times. She talks about the importance of having a perspective, finding humor, and maintaining faith in the face of adversity. Equally compelling is the touching tale of her husband's bond with her father in his last days. And through it all, Tammy found having an encourager and someone who has been there before to be invaluable and could be beneficial to others going through a similar journey. Get ready to take away some vital lessons from Tammy's story, which will help you find your own peace even in grief of walking your loved one all the way home.
How does one find joy, balance, and peace in the midst of heartbreak and loss? Let's explore this profound question with Tammy Marvin, a woman who has walked the tough path of caregiving for her ailing loved ones. Tammy reveals her rollercoaster journey of looking after her mother, father, and sister in their final days – a task that was heartbreaking yet rewarding in its own way.
Is there a way to balance grief with faith? Tammy believes there is and shares how she navigated through these turbulent times. She talks about the importance of having a perspective, finding humor, and maintaining faith in the face of adversity. Equally compelling is the touching tale of her husband's bond with her father in his last days. And through it all, Tammy found having an encourager and someone who has been there before to be invaluable and could be beneficial to others going through a similar journey. Get ready to take away some vital lessons from Tammy's story, which will help you find your own peace even in grief of walking your loved one all the way home.
[00:00:00] Rayna Neises: Welcome to a Season of Caring Podcast. This is Rayna Neises, your host. I'm glad that you're here with us today. At A Season of Caring Podcast, where we share stories of hope for family caregivers through the busyness and loneliness of caregiving we want you to see God, even in this season of life.
[00:00:20] Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Tammy Marvin. Tammy is married to the love of her life, Tim. They are a blended family with six adult children and 11 grandkids. You lucky dog. Tammy has spoken in churches for various groups of women on many different subjects.
[00:00:37] She's a mentor to moms in MOPS for over 10 years. She was the music teacher and children's chaplain for a private Christian school for over 25 years outside of ministry. Tammy is a hairdresser by trade for 46 years, and God has used her profession to have many opportunities to share the love of Christ in many different ways.
[00:00:57] Tammy's also currently volunteers at her local pregnancy center. Welcome, Tammy. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:04] Tammy Marvin: Thank you, Rayna, for having me.
[00:01:07] Rayna Neises: Well, I'm excited to be able to have you share. Let's just start off and introduce our audience to your caregiving story. So share a little bit about who you cared for and what that looked like for us.
[00:01:18] Tammy Marvin: Okay, well, it started in 2002 when my mother moved in with me. My mom and dad had been divorced since I was a little girl. So my mother moved in with me, and within a couple of months she had gotten cancer in her face. We had surgery. We we went to the doctors. We tried to get her the help that she needed and thought that we did, but she ended up passing away six weeks after her and I built a little house together.
[00:01:51] And so with my brother and we I love the phrase that you always said together we walked our mom home with our families. And then in 2019, my dad got artery disease in his legs, and he began his journey in trying to find help COVID to and we couldn't be without each other.
[00:02:18] He didn't hear very well so I was his ears at all of his doctor's appointments and so forth. So then he my brother and I, again, with our families helped walked my dad home and we took care of him in his own home. And we were sent a gift with my mom and my dad, a family friend who worked for hospice named Emma.
[00:02:40] And so she was with us during the daytime on both my parents. And so all of us together again, walked my dad home. He passed away May to 2020. So it's coming up on what, two, three years, three years already.
[00:02:58] Rayna Neises: that amazing?
[00:02:59] Tammy Marvin: Yes, time is just flown.
[00:03:03] Rayna Neises: And it's weird. It doesn't feel like that long in some ways, but in other ways, it feels like forever ago since you
[00:03:08] Tammy Marvin: It does. It does. And then four months after my father died, my sister was only 68 and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she lived with her daughter but we had the privilege of having 10 months with her. And then again, helping my niece and her family, as well as our families of seeing my sister home to heaven. So my sister was rough. That was very difficult. Our parents, you know, were older and my sister being so young, that was a really hard loss and hard to see her suffer.
[00:03:52] Rayna Neises: Well, and I think too, it sounds like there was that compound grief that was going on there that it was almost like I could barely take a breath. And then I go from mom being gone to now dad needing help. And when you're in the caregiving role, it's, It's just really a lot of focus and a lot of energy needed to sustain right here and right now.
[00:04:12] And so processing that grief and being able to move forward with the grieving process is really hard to do, especially then to lose dad and move right into realizing you're losing your sister. So a lot in a really short period of time,
[00:04:28] Tammy Marvin: Yeah, it's still hard.
[00:04:29] Rayna Neises: I'm
[00:04:30] Tammy Marvin: It's very hard. Yes. I can't look at pictures or during that time we took a lot of pictures and stuff and it's really hard.
[00:04:39] Rayna Neises: Eventually, there'll be a good thing, but it is a hard thing. I think it's also important to acknowledge that and say. You know, with the grief that you had, that compound grief, one right after the other, the process of really moving through the process of grief, it's not surprising that it's still pretty difficult, but it's something that the Lord's faithful in his timing to help us walk through if we're willing to allow ourselves to do that.
[00:05:07] And I think that can be. Can feel a little tricky as well. So
[00:05:12] Tammy Marvin: it's very tricky. That's why we need him so bad.
[00:05:16] Rayna Neises: Definitely. So thank you for introducing us to your family. And I'm sorry, that's a lot of loss. And I'm sure it's a lot of good memories. And I love that. And that opportunity to kind of come together as a family and really support them is so important. Is there one specific caregiver story that comes to mind that you'd like to share with us?
[00:05:36] Tammy Marvin: Yes, and, and I'm switching it up on you Rayna.
[00:05:40] Rayna Neises: Okay, you're fine.
[00:05:42] Tammy Marvin: So my dad was 93, and he was a man's man lived in the depression, made his way out here to California when he was 16 years old, and he built his own business. He paid every. His bills, even in his end days, he had a hundred percent of his mind, very smart man with only an eighth grade education.
[00:06:07] And so he was a very manly man. He wanted everything to be his way. And on top of that, he was very funny and very charming, very, very strong will. And you know, my husband would come and sleep there at night with me. And my husband would say, you know, Charlie, have, are you okay with the Lord? Do you want to pray?
[00:06:32] Shall we talk about this? Have you, do you know God? And my dad would say, I know God, I know God. Well, one day we all left my dad and went home to take showers and our caregiver, Emma, stayed with him. And so she was kind of bossy and she said," Charlie, we're getting down to business. Have you ever asked Jesus to be the Lord of your life and for, and ask him for forgiveness?"
[00:06:56] And my dad said, well, actually I know God, but I haven't ever done that. So Emma said, "Let's pray." He was 93 years old and he was in a wheelchair and, and he prayed. When he opened his eyes, he said, "Emma, has my house always been this beautiful?" And then he started just it was an electric wheelchair going from room to room and going, why is everything so beautiful?
[00:07:23] So at 93 years old, about 30 days before he closed his eyes to be with Jesus, he accepted him as his Lord and Savior. So never give up hope.
[00:07:35] Rayna Neises: That's amazing. And I love that your husband was that constantly trying to open that door, but it's so amazing how God has the timing of all people to let Emma be the one, but you know, it's okay. We all get to be in heaven anyway. So, but that's amazing that she was just that bold. And I found that caregivers were able to have conversations with my dad that I wasn't as comfortable having.
[00:07:59] So I love that because I do think it just comes right back to the team, everybody has their own role and everybody has their place and how important it is that we make room for everyone. So
[00:08:09] Tammy Marvin: absolutely. Yes.
[00:08:12] Rayna Neises: I like
[00:08:12] Tammy Marvin: Yes.
[00:08:13] Rayna Neises: So what was one thing that surprised you most about caregiving?
[00:08:18] Tammy Marvin: I think that, well, number one, while you're in it and you feel like, you know, the days are very long, when you're looking back, I look at that time as that was so fast. So, what surprised me during the time of caregiving was that I really enjoyed, I knew that my dad was leaving us. Just recently, I knew my sister only had so much time.
[00:08:48] So what was so surprising is how it felt so precious. And then my, my time with each of them was just so precious that what you would intentionally do something like, for instance, I would have to change his feet, but you did it with joy and you did it with so much more compassion because you knew that this was it.
[00:09:16] I hope I'm making sense about being surprised by the hard things, but yet it was so precious and you knew you were doing the will of God at the time.
[00:09:26] Rayna Neises: Just how even the things that were mundane, there was joy in it and there was purpose in it that brought joy. So that's, yeah, I agree. And it is hard because my experience with caregiving was it was a terminal illness, but you didn't really know the end was coming.
[00:09:45] Like, and it sounds
[00:09:46] Tammy Marvin: yes,
[00:09:47] Rayna Neises: with your mom too. It sounds like it was a little, it was a surprise that it came when it did. You felt like you had, you know, that she had been able to tackle it and then all of a sudden it was quick. And that was kind of the way it was with my dad. I always say that I'm like, he was sick for 14 years, but we were surprised when he died.
[00:10:05] That doesn't make any sense, but it does happen that
[00:10:08] Tammy Marvin: make sense though. Yes. Yes.
[00:10:11] Rayna Neises: So it's
[00:10:11] Tammy Marvin: I think being intentional though, like my mother, I remember wanting a strawberry soft ice cream because she didn't have a palate. And so I went all over town and found a yogurt shop at 9:30 at night, and it wasn't, I guess being surprised. It wasn't hard.
[00:10:31] It was like joyous. Because my mother wanted strawberry ice cream. So you found joy in that, that you were going to make her happy and you knew she didn't have much time, but that was a little thing in life that you could do.
[00:10:45] Rayna Neises: Yeah. Very good.
[00:10:49] I know in a million ways. So I asked this question, but how did God show up for you? What, what, what's one specific thing that made you just go, Oh, He's here.
[00:10:58] Tammy Marvin: Yes. Yes. Well, when my mother was sick, it was very special. My son played the guitar and all of our family, my brother and his family would come over at night and my son would play hymns and I would lay next to her in the bed and sing in her ear, even when she was in a coma, and she would respond with her eyebrows. I just could feel the Holy Spirit filling the room and every night we would have prayer. So it was a very tangible Holy Spirit filled night.
[00:11:31] And with my dad, we didn't have that because he had kind of that sundowners. disease where he would start getting very anxious at night and stuff. But even in the dark of, of night, I felt like the Lord was very present because I felt so weak that I knew he was the only one that was helping us get through it.
[00:11:56] Rayna Neises: Be strong. Yeah.
[00:11:57] Tammy Marvin: Yes,
[00:11:58] Rayna Neises: Yeah. It is amazing what we can do when we think there is no more of us left because of his strength.
[00:12:05] Tammy Marvin: that's a good point because so many times you're caregiving on empty
[00:12:11] Rayna Neises: right.
[00:12:11] Tammy Marvin: Yet you know that your job is very important and it's like having a baby, they can't do for themselves and you're in these situations our parents could not do for themselves so it was up to us. So that's very true.
[00:12:28] Rayna Neises: Well, and what a beautiful memory to have of just that sweetness of the Holy Spirit there with your mom and your brother and your son and just all of you being able to really worship together on this side. And that probably makes it even more exciting to think about worshiping again together on the other side.
[00:12:46] Tammy Marvin: Can't wait. Yes.
[00:12:50] Rayna Neises: So what's one thing that comes to mind that helps you to live content? Love well or care without regret.
[00:12:58] Tammy Marvin: Well again. The emphasis of feeling weak at the time is that spiritually I needed to almost be built up so I could do the job of caregiving so I could be over there when he needed me so I could You know, maybe come home, have breakfast with my husband and my husband and I every single day would do devotions together.
[00:13:26] I'd come home for an hour and we would read the word and we would pray because, you know, life didn't stop. There was still other things going on. And so you just have to be. For me to live and be able to even be content in that situation. And yes, I'm not, I wasn't perfect. I remember driving home and seeing my friends out on walks together and go, well, I ever get to walk again, because the nights were so long.
[00:13:53] But, for me to be able to have that time with my husband to read and pray and do devotions would really almost. It was like my food for the day. He is building me up and for whatever is going to happen that day. Because as you well know, things happen like he might not have had a good day or he was in a lot more pain than he was the day before or things like that.
[00:14:19] I felt like I had to be girded up almost with the Word to be able to function and do what I had to do.
[00:14:29] Rayna Neises: Yeah. And I love that your husband was such a supporter, both being there with you physically, as well as then just in girding you up in that spiritual way too, of helping to continue that mentor and to feed you when you needed it. Because I'm sure there were times that it just, you were weak even in going to the Word yourself.
[00:14:48] So to have that partner. To really lift you up and be the one that holds your arms up as, you know, as we did with Moses, you know, of, of in the fight, just having that support when you needed it.
[00:14:59] Tammy Marvin: Absolutely. And I would even watch little videos of comedians like a comedian named Leanne Morgan, who's hilarious. Cause I wanted to laugh too. I knew that life. Was still going on, you know, and my husband had taken care of his dad, so he knew what it was like to take care of of his parents, so he was very supportive and understanding
[00:15:26] Rayna Neises: That's amazing. I love both of those points of just that he had already walked it. And so he knew what it was like to bury them without regrets and wanted that for you. And the other point that you made of just that, that life has to be balanced. And that's a hard word because it's hard to find balance in the middle of caregiving, but we have to create it.
[00:15:44] So finding ways to laugh, finding ways to still engage with people. Such an important thing to do. And we forget that, I know during my caregiving season, I found myself a little irritable, a little, I don't know. And I started talking to the Lord about like, what am I not, you know, what am I missing?
[00:16:01] And it's like my creativity. I love to create and I was sewing and painting and doing all these things before. But then as I was spending half the week with my dad. I wasn't doing those things and it just that reminder of, oh, okay, I haven't done any of that creative outlet. And so I found myself then looking for opportunities and I signed up for an online art self paced thing that I could do that had projects and things. And so it helped me to, I put dad to bed early. That's when he wanted to go to bed. And I had hours anyways, like, why am I not doing something? So finding things to be able to build that creativity. I love that you found videos or people to help you laugh, because I do think that's, it does make such a difference for our hearts.
[00:16:46] So that's a great reminder. So, we're going to wrap up here, Tammy, with one final little nugget of truth that you could share with our caregivers that might offer them some encouragement.
[00:16:59] Tammy Marvin: Well, I love what you, you wrote it in your book and you sent me all kinds of notes during the time of my, my dad being sick and I just ate everything that you sent me. So I pray that you have a Rayna in your life. That will build you up. And if not, then listen to our podcast because it's very encouraging.
[00:17:24] And also, I have to give a shout out so much to our hospice friend, Emma, who lives in our town. And find yourself an Emma. I know that they're hard to find and they're few and far between, but there are people who feel called to the ministry of walking your family home to heaven. And I know that I wouldn't have been able to do it without her.
[00:17:52] And so I'm grateful that God Allowed her to come in and she did a lot of the hard things that I couldn't do with my mother. That my brother and I had to do with our dad but But my mom was just for me. It was just so tender that that my caregiver did it and she was here during the day. So I hope and pray you find yourself a Rayna and Emma to build yourself up.
[00:18:19] And of course, to always hang on to Jesus because it's a learning journey. As long as you're praying for God to open your eyes and to see everything he wants to teach you in that home going of your loved one. Then you feel like it's such a sacred and precious time and you wouldn't trade it for the world.
[00:18:42] And you really are able to say I, I don't have one regret. I did everything I could do because I was focused. I was intentional and I had help. I had the help that I needed with Rayna was precious at sending me excerpts of her No Regrets book. So I was in on some of the reading of that and it was just another way of building up of doing what I was doing the hard stuff. And then, of course, for my friend Emma and then staying in the word.
[00:19:19] Rayna Neises: Well, thank you for the kind words, but I totally agree. You have to find those people that are supporting you. And I love how you knew or you found yourself needing certain kinds of encouragement and that there are all different places and people that can help you with that. So, such a great reminder to really make sure that you are looking at what your needs are and finding a way to get those needs met.
[00:19:43] So many times when I meet caregivers that have regrets and are resentful for their time. It's because their needs were never considered. And it's our job to take care of our own needs as well as help care for our loved ones. So so much wisdom there, Tammy. Thank you so much for joining us. And I really appreciate you sharing your stories.
[00:20:03] So, Tammy, if our listeners would like to get in contact with you and have you as a speaker for their group to be able to share your story, how could they get in touch with you?
[00:20:14] Tammy Marvin: They could get ahold of me through Tammy Marvin at gmail. com and email me and then we could get together and I would appreciate that so much.
[00:20:24] Rayna Neises: Thank you for joining us today for Stories of Hope with Tammy. This episode has been brought to you by Finding Peace in Grief a resource available for you and your family members to be able to really explore what grief looks like. As Tammy shared her story of having caregiving for her mom, her dad, and then her sister. Grief is a big piece of that, both while our loved ones are here and after they're gone. Learning to process that grief is such an important piece, allowing God to come alongside and help us to do that. The resource that I've created is designed to help you consider where you are in your grief process and help you to consider if lament could help you move forward in that. You can learn more at a season of caring. com.
[00:21:11] Thank you again for joining us. The Season of Caring Podcast has been created to share stories of hope for living content, loving well, and caring with no regrets. If you have financial, legal, or medical questions, be sure to consult your local professionals and take heart in your season of caring.