Finding God's Beauty in Alzheimer's and Dementia
Focus on the Family with Jim Daly
Focus on the Family
4.8 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah Smith shares the heartbreaking story of navigating her mother’s journey with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease. Sarah’s mom, “Beauty,” was full of life, strong and independent. When she began slipping mentally, she and her husband tried to cover up the problem, and Beauty refused to go to the doctor for years. Eventually, Sarah’s dad had to ask for help and that led to many emotional, physical and spiritual challenges for Sarah’s parents and family. Sarah found comfort in God’s abiding presence, even when the stress and struggles with Beauty seemed overwhelming.
If you've listened to any of our podcasts, please give us your feedback.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | So the circumstances were that I had just given my life to Christ after having been a runaway, |
| 0:07.0 | drug abuser, sexually abused, in and out of mental institutions with a single mom and kind of a distant father. |
| 0:15.0 | Anne's life was a mess. She didn't know the first thing about how to be a good wife or mother. |
| 0:21.3 | So focused on the family was like mana to me. Every day, I needed wisdom. I needed guidance. |
| 0:28.8 | I needed the lessons and the teaching that came every day from 11 to 1130 into my kitchen. |
| 0:36.5 | And I know today that my life has changed because of |
| 0:39.6 | Focus on the Family. I'm Jim Daly. Working together, we can give families hope and equip more |
| 0:46.4 | parents like Anne. And thanks to a special match right now, any gift you send will be doubled. Call 800 |
| 0:53.4 | A Family or donate at FocusOn the family.com slash gift. |
| 1:01.1 | So it's been hard to see my mom decline in recent years. She lost the ability to communicate clearly. She |
| 1:09.9 | couldn't remember words or she just say something spontaneously and we had no idea |
| 1:14.7 | what she was talking about. |
| 1:16.6 | It was hard to watch her decline this way. |
| 1:18.6 | Well, that's a tough journey for any family and it may be that you or someone you know has |
| 1:25.8 | or is right now experiencing that kind of tragedy of dementia. |
| 1:30.0 | This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller and we're going to be talking about |
| 1:34.4 | that topic today on our episode. John, dealing with dementia has to be one of the more troubling |
| 1:40.1 | issues that families face today because the diagnosis is often a surprise and |
| 1:45.1 | something that was not planned for even though the numbers are quite amazing |
| 1:49.9 | dementia is the general term of deterioration and memory and thinking |
| 1:54.4 | behavioral processing and the ability to kind of perform everyday tasks for |
| 1:59.4 | yourself it's estimated that one in three, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Focus on the Family, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Focus on the Family and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.