fbpx

How to Arrange Care for Your Family When They’re All Sick

Jeremy:
So, what do you do when your wife and all your kids get sick and you have to head out to work? James asks, he’s part of our Facebook group. How to arrange care for your family and kids when they’re all sick at the same time and you still have to go to work for a long day? What does that look like? And we’re, right now, sitting in the middle of the Coronavirus scare.

Jeff:
Yes.

Jeremy:
What do you do when there’s all this sickness? There’s so much this time of year. So, James, first of all, the first thing that comes to mind is that this is a very strong, modern problem in that we tend to be very under resourced. So, it doesn’t take-

Jeff:
Yeah, we’re very fragile. Always on the edge of collapse.

Jeremy:
With extended family units living together with aunts and uncles and grandparents and multigenerational, extended family everywhere, supporting each other, this is actually almost a benefit because anytime a particular small immediate family starts to go down-

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
… It just fires up the extended family to come in and save the day, which is a beautiful experience. Now, a lot of us live apart from extended family, but I would say it’s important to just call out, we’re not supposed to be this fragile. It’s supposed to be okay for you to take a long day of work and for others to come in. I would say that beyond extended family, this is when a Christian community is really critical. It’s important that wherever you are, you are building deep relationships with other believers. And again, it’s important to boast in your weakness and that is to be able to send off an SOS to your Christian community and say, “Guys, this is the moment for our family. We need help. Come in and help us. I got to work. My wife’s sick. All the kids are sick.” So, that’s the next sort of, I think, safety net that we all need to be cultivating before a crisis like this occurs.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
Cultivate extended family relationships, cultivate extended family style relationship with your Christian community. Are there people in your life that will bring over a meal at the drop of a hat?

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
And again, that is a beautiful experience. It is important for us to demonstrate weakness and to let our neighbors and our friends and our believing brothers and sisters come in and swoop in and you just fire off that text, fire off that email and just see what the Lord does. And it’s a beautiful thing. I would say that there are, of course, situations where you haven’t cultivated that community, you have no real strong extended family, then I would say the next safety net is money.

Jeff:
Yeah. Totally.

Jeremy:
You got to leverage financial resources-

Jeff:
All your resources.

Jeremy:
… And basically buy some of those support structures and get people in there that could possibly help you. Use a babysitting service and obviously, if you have to negotiate with a boss or figure out how to figure that out. And sometimes there is just survival mode.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
You want to avoid survival mode, but we’ve definitely had seasons where we just fall into survival mode for … It’s critical if you do fall into survival mode, where you’re just like, yeah, we’re just going to take a huge hit, that you try to make that crisis last as short as possible. Survival mode is not healthy to be in for a long periods of time, but it’s okay. And then use that to motivate you to begin to create more safety nets and contingency plans for your family.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Jeremy:
That’s your job as a father, but there are times where you’ve moved to a new city, you have no extended family, haven’t cultivated community, you’re low on funds and this stuff happens.

Jeff:
Yeah. No, I think you nailed it. I wouldn’t add anything more to what is needed except for two things. One, let the … It’s like what you said, when this happens, it shows you where the relational equity is that you have. It kind of shows you what you have. So, I think let that speak to you.

Jeremy:
Like an audit.

Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s like an audit and let that speak to you for the next time.

Jeremy:
Yeah.

Jeff:
And not just for sickness, but I think anytime life happens, right? Of like any hardship, anything happens, let the audit speak to you of like, oh, I don’t want to feel this empty or lack of resource in my community a year from now. So, then how can you start building that? And the one thing I would say is yeah, I think the community one is so strong. We live in such a special, awesome community in Maui. And I remember there’s even been times not where I’ve been sick or anything, but I’ll be traveling, because I was telling you, even before we start recording, I don’t tend to have this circumstance because I can just drop everything some days and help, but there is been some times where it’s even worse than going off to work where I’ll be across the country.

Jeremy:
Right.

Jeff:
So, I’ll be miles away or thousands of miles away and I can’t just get home. So, there’s been a couple of times where I remember, I can’t remember if it was a sickness or just a hardship or something, but I just started a group text between me and five other wives in the community, which it sounds weird when you say that, and I just literally said, I think I didn’t even tell Alyssa, because I wanted her to feel like it was just them, and I said, “Hey, she’s struggling or one of the kids has an ear infection,” I don’t remember what happened. Someone was sick, something was happening. And I just said, because we were so close, I didn’t even give a bunch of examples, I just said, “Hey, can you all just step in and help? Can you just check on her? Make some meals?”

Jeremy:
Awesome.

Jeff:
Basically, I trusted all them. So, I just said, “You guys do your thing. I know you guys can take care of it.” And our community is awesome and they did. Right? And then what’s cool is then it does something for the guy too.

Jeremy:
That’s right.

Jeff:
Because then I feel very less stressed and anxious. I’m like, okay, I’m not feeling like I’m letting my family down.

Jeremy:
Yes. Yeah.

Jeff:
And that actually it’s allowing someone else to rise up and to show the power of community and the strength of community.

Jeremy:
Yes.

Jeff:
And so, that’s what I would say is tap into community, but also make sure you’re building that so you can tap into it.

Latest Episode

Listen To Our Latest Podcast

LISTEN NOW

image

Start Building a
Multigenerational Family Team

Live events

LIVE WORKSHOPS

FAMILY INC

RESOURCES

ISRAEL TOURS

START HERE

// //

OUR FREE GIFT TO YOU

Family scouting report