The median annual cost of a private nursing-home room in the United States continues to climb, according to insurer Genworth’s latest Cost of Care survey. Compare today’s figure to the costs revealed by the company in a couple of recent years: 

• 2014: $87,600
• 2016: $92,376
• 2019: $102,204

 
I did the math: Over the last five years alone, the average median cost of a private room has increased by almost 17%! That doesn’t bode well for the less affluent among us.
 
These prices vary by region, of course; to learn about average costs are in your area, select your state on the map Genworth provides on this same page. In Wisconsin, for instance, the average median cost for a private room is currently $112,788/year.
 
Considering that we baby boomers are only beginning to hit the skids, we shouldn’t be surprised if these numbers continue rising rapidly as the demand for skilled nursing care increases, and as Medicaid reimbursements continue falling short of the actual cost of providing this care. That’s a good reason for thinking twice before spending too much on assisted living. It’s also a good reason for taking a close look at long-term-care insurance.  

The older I get, the more time I spend thinking back on my close-to-perfect early years in small-town Green Bay, Wisconsin. What could be more comforting than recalling the people and places that made for a loving, happy, and endlessly fascinating childhood in the worry-free world of the 1950s?
 
So I’m no stranger to Memory Lane. Which is why it was such a shock, just a few days ago, to find myself awash in tears of regret and longing.
 
Here’s what happened.
 
My husband and I were looking for a 1930s-era cookbook containing a particularly tasty recipe for macaroni and cheese. We didn’t find it, but he did find the cookbook published by my parents’ church in the 1970s.
 
“Maybe the recipe’s in here,” he said.
 
I knew it wasn’t, but started paging through the book anyway. And was immediately blown away by all these names from my childhood—the names of my mother’s closest friends.
 
Cec Evans. Jo Lenfesty. Eva Peterson. Phyllis Zahn.
 
On and on it went—names that reminded me of what I’d left behind when I moved to the big city, and what we as a nation have lost as we left behind the time-tested hopes, dreams and values of the 1950s.
 
I started reading through the recipes, remembering how most of these women—perhaps all of them—viewed housekeeping as both their vocations and their avocations. How they considered their purpose in life to be making loving homes for their husbands and children. And how Jesus Christ and His church were absolutely central to their lives.
 
I guess I’d never really thought about this last point before. When I left Green Bay, one of my happiest realizations was that I’d never again have to set foot in a church. Talk about freedom!  
 
But I thought about it now. My mother had friends outside of her church, but none were as important to her as the sisters in Christ with whom she worshipped and fellowshipped every Sunday and many days in between. 
 
Lucille Hopkins.  Hazel Myers.  Mabel Stiles. Ginny Christensen.
 
I spent some time remembering each of these women.
 
I thought about how blessed they had been, to have lived their lives apart from the corporate rat race, to have had husbands who worked low-pressure 8-to-5 jobs, coming home for lunch at noon and almost always being there for dinner with the family. 
 
And I thought about how blessed their children were, growing up with mothers who were never more than a phone call away should something horrible happen at school. Not that anything horrible ever happened in those days, but still, knowing that Mom could be there in five minutes if necessary was always a source of peace and security.
 
Lois James. Ruth Washburn.  Lucille Ragland. Florence Goedjen.
 
I took a break from my reverie to go grocery shopping at our local megastore. Searching for hot ham and hard rolls, I found the deli department crowded with young women. They were all dolled up in the latest fashions, all waiting impatiently to place their orders, alternately checking their smart phones and glaring at the flustered older woman behind the counter.
 
Sadly, I saw a reflection of myself some 40 years earlier.
 
“Stop!” I wanted to cry. “What are you doing, girls, wasting your lives on jobs that really don’t matter, doing work that may feed your ego today but is ultimately futile? Stop, before it’s too late! Seek God while He may be found. Then find a nice man, one who’ll be a good husband and a good father, settle down and raise up a family. Don’t wait!”
 
Of course, I didn’t say any of these things. The security team would have been on me in a flash. Besides, these young women wouldn’t have gotten it because they didn’t live it.
 
In fact, I’ll wager that most had never even heard of a world centered on faith and family. That most had no idea that safe neighborhoods, small communities and low-cost family vacations had once been the rule for most Americans. That most had never heard a thing about the gospel or their need for the Savior.
 
Instead, they’ve been raised in a culture of pleasure and plenty. They’ve been indoctrinated by an educational system that says there’s no such thing as absolute truth, to live in a world that feeds pride rather than souls and replaces the promise of heaven with the lure of fame and fortune. They’ve never even been tempted to consider metaphysical questions like where they came from, what they’re doing here, and where they’re going.
 
We’ve lost so much in this country over the last half century. Which raises important questions for all believers: How can we reach these young people for the Lord? Is it really too late?  

For way too many of us, Thanksgiving is no longer a day set aside to give thanks to our Creator for all His blessings. Instead, it has become a distraction, a family-, food- and football-filled way to forget all about Him. 

If that sounds a little too familiar to you, take a few minutes to listen to Chris Carrillo's reflections on this great American tradition. It's the message he delivered to the folks at Care-age of Brookfield this past Sunday, and it's a doozy of a wake-up call:

If you're reading this via email, please click on the headline above to be taken to the audio file. Then, if you can't get enough of our preacher's messages, visit our Messages from Chris Carrillo page.

Two years ago, I received a Christmas gift that may be the most brilliant yet--a gift that was made possible by a particularly loving and thoughtful relative of my dear friend Wilma.  
 
Here’s the scoop--only the names have been changed.
 
A recently retired resident of the American southwest, Felicity is an absolute artist when it comes to hand-crafting greeting cards of all kinds, from birthday and Christmas cards to “Thinking of You” notes. And she keeps her elderly Aunt Wilma well stocked with a lovely array of these cards, complete with matching envelopes. In fact, she sends Wilma a large box of handmade cards each year around Thanksgiving, for Christmas greetings as well as general correspondence well into the new year.
 
But Felicity encloses more than cards and envelopes in her Thanksgiving box. She also includes seasonless handmade gift bags, each containing festive tissue paper, each adorned with colorful decorations and an elaborate “Thank You,” and each bearing a tiny envelope and notecard for her aunt to personalize. This, in fact, was the brilliant present Wilma gave me--one of these pretty gift bags with a warm handwritten note and a selection of gorgeous handmade cards.
 
The point being, of course, that Felicity not only fuels her aunt’s letter-writing activities at Christmas and throughout the year, but also enables Wilma to share these unique cards with her friends whenever the occasion warrants.
 
It’s far from the only way that Felicity shows her love to her favorite aunt. But it certainly is one of the most practical and memorable. It’s also one of the most highly coveted, not only by Wilma, but also by all her friends who are fortunate enough to receive one of these special gifts! 

I heard a number of excellent comments following our October Christian Music Hour at Care-age of Brookfield – none more enthusiastic than the review that my dear friend C. gave the message delivered by our own Chris Carrillo, fearless proclaimer of the word of God.
 
“Chris was on fire today,” C. raved. “I loved it. I was hanging on his every word!”
 
With good reason: In a message entitled “It is written,” Chris showed us how Jesus used Scripture to battle Satan; how the world twists the word of God to attack us for trusting in and obeying Him; and how the never-changing Jesus is both God incarnate, and the only way to heaven.
 
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to this powerful message, and to share it with others. 

If you’re reading this via email, please click on the title above to be taken to the audio file. And if you’d like to hear more from this wonderful preacher, be sure to check out our Messages from Chris Carrillo page. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we Christians do not “sorrow as [do] others who have no hope.” And of course, when he penned these words in what would become 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the apostle Paul was speaking of biblical hope, which is to say not “wishful thinking” but “confident expectation.” In fact, we can rejoice in even the most unhappy circumstances, because we know that this life is the blink of an eye and that we’ll be spending all eternity in heavenly bliss.
 
That’s precisely what 86-year-old heroine Sadie came to understand in the novel The Song of Sadie Sparrow. Sure, her husband Ed had died years earlier, and she was hardly a priority for her daughter Dana, and she would be spending what was left of this life in a nursing home. But it was an awfully nice nursing home. A fun Activities Assistant named Meg was about to interview her for a mini-biography. And whenever she thought to turn her eyes upon Jesus, she could scarcely contain her joy.
 
So the Beatles were wrong. Love is nice. But all we really need is hope, as this excerpt from Sadie’s story demonstrates.
​
 
Meg’s questions were definitely intriguing.
         
That night after dinner—even though tablemate Gladys managed to find fault with the carrots and onions, it had been a delicious meal of impossibly tender pot roast and cornbread muffins—Sadie wheeled herself to the built-in desk in her room, flipped on the lamp, and pulled her best pen and a few sheets of stationery out of the drawer. No notes were needed for the “who, what, where and when” queries of “Part One, The Basics”; but “Part Two, Beyond the Basics” included a number of questions deserving some thought, and Sadie didn’t want to attempt to answer them off-the-cuff. Someone—okay, her daughter Dana Sparrow Maxwell, to be precise—might one day read Meg’s report on Sadie’s life, and it might be Sadie’s last opportunity to impact a life that had gone tearing down the wrong path, the path to what Sadie called “dead-end careerdom.”
         
The first of these questions was pretty broad. “Why do you live here now?”
         
Sadie started jotting down the answers in her arthritic hand.

1. Because I have heart failure and need help. Can’t even safely transfer into bed or onto the toilet on my own and that means the retirement home won’t have me anymore.

2. Because living with my daughter was not an option. Her plate is plenty full without adding a helpless old mother to her duties.  

She sat back and thought for a moment. Does that sound pathetic? Dana did not suffer whiners gladly. Imagining the eye rolling these thoughts would provoke, Sadie crossed out her second point and substituted a more positive answer:

2 . Because I wanted to live with people my own age, with the same values and experiences and hope for the future.  

She liked that. It was true, Dana would like it, and it might lead to an interesting conversation with Meg.

3. Because it’s a beautiful facility with a dedicated staff and my daughter made sure the bill will be paid to make up for otherwise ignoring me.
 
Definitely whiney.
 
Sadie put a period after “staff” and crossed out the rest, sighing. It was pathetic that she was framing her answers in order to avoid irritating her so-often-irritable daughter—especially since said daughter would most likely not see her answers until she was cleaning out this room after the funeral (an event which Dana would probably greet with both relief and more irritation, since it would no doubt interfere with some important business meeting).
         
Still, Sadie’s goal here was to plant seeds with eternal impact, and that meant she’d have to set aside all her personal, earthly complaints. She wanted Dana to put down the biography of Sadie Sparrow thinking, “What a woman! I want to be just like her, and spend all eternity with her! How can I be sure of it?”
         
Sadie laughed. Okay, then, she’d settle for a “Gee, she wasn’t nearly as stupid as I thought. Maybe there’s something to this eternity business after all . . .”
         
That reminded her of a favorite song, and she started singing it in her wobbly old voice: “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.”
         
She looked over the rest of Meg’s questions and decided to call it a night. She was tired, and she still had some time to frame her answers before their meeting on Friday. She tidied up the desk and closed her eyes, letting her thoughts drift heavenward on the wings of the old hymn.
         
“Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling ‘O sinner, come home.’”
         
The best rendition of “Softly and Tenderly” she’d ever heard was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s. He had gone on ahead long ago, she knew, not too long after Ed.
         
“Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised, promised for you, and for me.”
         
She wondered if they had met in heaven, maybe had even sung some hymns together. Ed had always been a big fan of Tennessee Ernie’s deep-as-the-ocean bass.
         
“Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon—pardon for you and for me.”
         
Thinking of Ed and Tennessee together was surprisingly comforting. And one day, she would join them.
         
Which reminded her of another old favorite of Ed’s.
         
“Just over in the glory land,” she sang, scrunching up her face just like a Spirit-led gospel singer,
 
“I’ll join the happy angel band. Just over in the glory land!”
         
She was smiling now, almost giddy at the idea of heaven and glory and seeing Ed again.
         
But oh, in the meantime, it was good to be alive!