Ep 18: God's Plan For Your Pain

The harder the things that God allows us to go through, the bigger the task he has for us. Welcome to the Run to the Heart podcast, where we're here to remind you that God doesn't promise us a life free from suffering, but he always brings healing and restoration on the other end. Our goal is to inspire you to face life's trials with courage and trust in God's plan. And oh yeah, run to the heart that God allows. Folks, honoring our loved ones helps keep their legacy alive. If you're new to our podcast, I lost my beautiful wife Michael just two years ago after aggressive cancer took her body in just four short weeks. Today's episode is a heartfelt tribute about my wife Michael and I hope it brings comfort and inspiration to those who need it. For me October 9th marks the anniversary of our particular tragedy and I know many of you have a date on your calendar that holds a very deep significance. Whether you're navigating grief, looking for hope, or simply need a reminder that you're not doing this journey alone. This episode's for you. I'm sharing an interview with my very good friend, Wendell Brown, on his podcast. He runs a ministry called Tragedy Into Triumph, where he's featured powerful stories from well-known public figures, many that you've heard about, who, through finding Christ, Finding Christ has turned their darkest moments of tragedy into triumphs. I had the honor of telling Michael's story again, but from the perspective of a friend who not only married us, but walked beside us through our greatest triumphs and even our darkest tragedies. For more about Wendell's ministry, Tragedy into Triumph, we're going to leave his website link in our show notes, so please be sure to check those out. Thank you. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Tragedy into Triumph podcast where we believe that tragedy never defines us. Triumph in God is the thing that can define our life, give us purpose, and ensure that this life on earth is lived to the best of our ability. I am so glad today to be joined by a great friend of mine, a guy that I have known for a lot of years for everybody that's been a part of tragedy and to try and through the years. He's actually a guy that's helped us and participated in mission with us even behind the scenes in planning and in prayer and in resourcing. And so we are honored today to have my good friend with us, Curtis Christopher. Curtis, how are you today, man? I'm good, thanks, man. Good. It's been good hanging out, just catching up. Yeah. It is. Curtis, you and I have been through some fires together. We've had some struggles together. We have. We've even believed God together for some things in the years. Yes. Yeah. And I know that you have a particular story that our audience, probably some of them have heard, but not everybody. And so to our broader audience, I really want them to understand what God has done and is doing in your life. And you and your first wife, you were a part of my church. You and I met at a college that you were on staff at and that I went to a long time ago. Years ago. A long time ago. And share a love for basketball and all those things, and sports in general, and maybe cars. But you and your wife, I are coming to my church in Circleville, and by all practical purposes, you walk through the door, the Christophers walk through the door, and everybody goes, this is the all-American couple, this is the perfect couple. But what's on the surface isn't truly the way things are underneath, right? And so walk us through a little bit. If you glanced at the Christophers, what was your perception of them, but then really what really was happening under the surface? Walk us through a little bit of that. I'll never forget the day that you actually called me and said, hey, I've got a I've got a ministry for you and you need to do it. You that's the kind of pastor you were is that you saw a need and you saw a person. You're like, you're a good fit. You need to be doing this. And it was awful for me to look you in the face and say, I can't do it. And you said, why? And I said, Wendell, my home front's not good. It's falling apart. And I remember you and I just cried together and I told you for the first time that what on the outside is not what's on the inside behind closed doors and began to unravel and unfold all that was happening in our home and how our marriage was falling apart. And I'll never forget, because we're good friends and I'm thinking to myself. He's got to know he's got to know But in the end you didn't know and I'll never forget In that moment you actually got mad at me and said how have you been living two lives? In my church and in front of us and I had to confess that yeah It's not good and we began to walk that path of divorce in the church, which was just awful and terrible and messy and I'm glad that you walked that path with me, but it was messy. And it's great to have not only a pastor, but also have a friend who can walk those paths with you, pray with you, talk you through it, but ultimately in the church, which is just one of the worst places to get a divorce for all practical purposes, it just is. Because you're looked at from so many different viewpoints. Who's right, who's wrong, who did this, who did that? And man, what a mess. I'm grateful you were there for me, but I also feel bad that you had to be there for me. Does that make sense? It does, but I don't, I'll tell you one thing. I don't feel that way I'm glad and I you know the crazy thing about everybody's struggles in life If you're going through it or you're helping someone through it, we all learn lessons from it. Yeah Literally, yeah to watch you and to see what was happening in your life made me all the more mindful of things that were happening In my own life sure and I think that's scriptural We're supposed to learn from each other and sharpen each other along the way even in the midst of the hurt it put a magnifying glass on my View of others too. I think growing up in the church and being a part of such great churches I had a certain view of people who were in divorce or going through divorce and God had to wreck me had to wreck and shatter all of those mirrors or all of those magnifying glasses that I was looking through and It began a major work in my life in my own life Some of the greatest spiritual growth in my entire life and I got saved young. I was saved at 7 I asked God to sanctify me at 21 and I'm telling you some of the greatest spiritual growth Began to happen in my life through that terrible time Yeah Yeah. And you were part of it. That was the beauty. Yeah. I think part of it too, for me, is, and that's why I talked about what was on the surface or under the surface, because often we make assumptions about people and where they are that may or may not be true. Sure. Yeah. And so I remember that conversation very well in which I'm like, man, I, Curtis, I always thought you were the guy that had it all together. No, I yeah Yeah, and and and quite honestly there there's something extremely freeing For everybody listening. There's something freeing about understanding Everybody has a struggle. Yes, and the sooner we can be raw and real and vulnerable and open Which I had to learn those lessons of what it truly meant to be open and raw and real and vulnerable With people because it's only then that people truly trust you. I'm finding out now that people will trust you They'll give you their attention. They'll listen to you because they trust you. Yeah, they trust your the vulnerability in your life and I'm still learning. I'm still learning those lessons even now. So, you go through a divorce, regardless of the circumstances, I remember conversations with you where you're trying to figure out what is next for me, how do I move past this, how do I help my kids through this, all of those things. And then, all of the sudden, and I want to say this to everybody listening, one of the things that never happened with Curtis was, and again, I'll talk surface or under the surface, but from my perspective, I never saw you doubt your relationship with God and all of that. Is that true? True. Absolutely. Okay. And so there was a constant that as bad as it was, there was still hope because I still had Jesus living inside. So things are bad. and then all of a sudden something out of nowhere happens in your life what is it that happens out of nowhere? Before I talk about that I think it's good for the audience to know that there were some principles that had to be played out number one I had to determine and tell God that I wasn't going to date I didn't want to mess this up and if he had somebody for me he was literally going to have to drop them in my lap I had that talk with God. And another principle that I know that everybody needs to do this, but I hid for a while. I was on some local boards. I got off. I was on the church board and I had to get off. I hid for a while. I sought God. I bought a little cabin in Michigan and just hung out on the weekends and just prayed and walked and saw and read scripture and just really leaned into God for month after month during that time period. And so I think it's important for people to know because I do know people who will jump right into things to either bury or hide or do something with this hurt and hard because divorce is, it's especially for a Christian or somebody that's in the church, it's this huge banner that just, you feel like the world sees it, everybody sees it, it's hanging around your neck, you don't know what to do with it. And so I Don't think it's good to hide for a long time but I hid for a while and I think that time of healing of Leaning into God and making some commitments and promises to him because I'll be honest. I was lonely I was tempted man. This stinks. You're single. You're 50 years old and you're single What are you supposed to do with that? I was an empty-nester My kids had just literally my kids had just finished school one was married one was engaged and I'm single empty Nestor at home bachelor nothing just put yourself in those shoes It was rough and I had to make some serious commitments to God and he did out of nowhere He drops this amazing person in my life, and I could spend hours telling you the details of how that worked out But he did he literally dropped this person in my life who also in the church in the Christian community in our community had just gone through a terrible Miserable divorce and so we had this commonality where we were both hurting where both were Christians We were both we both had gone through hard divorces in our community. They were pretty public Messy and so we had that commonality but in the middle of it all was faithful, she was a believer, she trusted God with her future. I was trusting God with my future. And so we began this journey of healing together. And yeah, the Lord gave me Michael. And I'll never forget the time I called you and said, you're not going to believe it. And you were like, I know her. I was like, that's amazing, because I didn't know who she was from Adam. I didn't know who she was. But somehow she had tons of connective friends that you and I both knew and you know who she was and others knew her And so I'm asking what do you know about her and is she this or is she that and everybody's like she's amazing Like you couldn't have picked somebody better than her. And so we started this journey of vetting each other and getting to know each other but Most importantly of trying to heal through both going through such hard and messy and nasty divorces. But again, I grew a lot through divorce, but God gave me a person who pushed me and challenged me. And I had another growth spurt. The months that her and I dated, we grew by leaps and bounds in the word, in prayer. We'd stay up late every night, vetting each other, talking, and then we'd have these amazing prayer times, just begging God to heal our hearts, to give us a beauty for ashes story and he did week after week we would do that then it was like okay we're gonna we're gonna do this we're gonna get married I couldn't wait to go buy a ring I was we started um vetting each other in January of 2020 and then by February we're like okay we're dating by May I'm engaged I give this woman a ring like we're doing this thing and then come June we decided that maybe we had to wait a year for the kids to get through another year of school and then it was like that's too long we can't wait a year and then it was like let's get married in December because maybe we can get the kids through half a year of school and then I was like forget that I want to get married And so I'll never forget in June. I said, hey, do you love me? She's yeah I said, do you believe that God put us together? Yes I said, let's get married in three days before school started in August We got married and you were there you counseled us You you saw the joy you saw what God was doing in our lives and you got a chance during cold fit. We had a cofid Ceremony and it was a blast and you were there and our families were there and you were able to be a part of that Blessing and that that joy it was yeah, it was a moment. It was good. The interesting thing for me was I Counseled you through the divorce. Yeah marital counseling. I counseled you premarital counseling yeah with Michael and And I just want to stop and I want everybody to know everybody listening who you marry matters. Yeah, it matters It's not an accusation on anyone Yeah, but it is the understanding that that that the two really to do the two really do become Yeah, and both have got to be on the same page pulling the same direction and to watch the countenance from the tragedy of the divorce To the moment of triumph with Michael Yeah, and to see the change that happened inside of you as an outsider looking at it was awesome It was awesome to see that demeanor change in you. Yeah, and to see dreaming Result in your life because Curtis you've always been a dreamer like you've always been a guy that can see something that doesn't exist through your faith in God and trust God's gonna help us get there and connect the dots You're a good organizer that way and seeing what God could do and quite honestly you don't even know this But you have challenged me so many times in my walk with God I remember a board meeting where you were just adamant and you said if that listen if we say no to this We can see we can see where God is not going to honor our decision. But if we'll say yes and believe that God can do it, God can do even more than this. And we've just got to trust. And you challenged me to not throw in the towel in a moment when I wanted to throw in the towel in ministry and striving to lead people to Jesus Christ. So I've always admired that about you. And what was a great thing for me was to actually see that come to fruition, to actually see God give you the benefit of your faith in Michael. It was awesome to see that firsthand. You guys getting married, there is, I'm telling you, there was excitement in that wedding. Every moment was there to honor God. Every moment was to honor the union of two families that had both been through some form of tragedy. They were saying in Christ and in Christ alone there is triumph and we want to honor what God can do in our lives. And so it was a beautiful wedding, beautiful. The wedding happens and all of a sudden life just blows up. As far as excitement, you've got kids, you're running everywhere. Michael had how many kids? Five kids. We haven't talked about that yet. When I started dating Michael, I had all these friends of mine who are 50 years old and older saying, what are you doing did you not see that she has five kids dude your life is good your kids are out of the house you're a bachelor you're single what is wrong he times come say should happen or a picture of us went online and on Facebook and somebody would be like did you not see the five? Yeah, my kids are, they're out of the house and one of them's married, one's getting married. And at the time her kids were 15 to five, five of them. And I had a lot of conversations with her. I had conversations with friends about what could that look like? What do stepkids look like? And of course they would tell me the worst and the most horrifying stories ever. And I can tell everybody they're amazing. From the first day I ever met them, they're amazing kids. And the union, the marriage, the moving under one roof, it was a lot of work. But honestly, it was, I needed it. It was a blessing. I got to be a part of some amazing kids' lives. And to this day, I'm fully engaged, fully part of parenting these kids and helping these kids. But yeah, so there's five kids, we fix up an old building that I had uptown and we get married in it and then it becomes a wedding venue. And next thing I know, the first year of our marriage, we're doing a business together and so we're raising five kids, we're starting a business together. I already have my work and my businesses, so when you say life happened, life exploded. Yeah. And I go from hiding, I go from hiding and staying in the shadows to fully engaged in the community. The community loves Michael, they like they love what we're doing with this wedding venue uptown. She begins to blossom, she begins to dream, she begins to and I get to encourage and help her and watch this woman literally come out of her own shell. And yeah it was it was a blessing in every direction we were loving life and it wasn't that it wasn't work it wasn't that it wasn't hard it wasn't that it wasn't a lot of time but we were doing it together and for the first time ever I had a best friend and we were doing life together and it was amazing it just was I don't know how else to describe it. We had spent so many hours sitting at a kitchen table with a coffee mug just pouring into each other and loving each other and getting to know each other and I can tell you honestly the day after marriage it never stopped. We never stopped pouring into each other, loving each other, dreaming together, working together. We're talking about tons of texts every day, 10 or 12 phone calls every day, and still having time at night to talk and to share about our day and to dream together and talk about the kids and their future and what we wanted to do. Yeah, it was awesome. It was awesome. You literally felt like you had a partner in ministry, didn't you? Yeah. Someone who was as passionate about following after the heart of God as you were. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those those years, you, those two years specifically, you got to experience something. Is it fair to say that in those two years, Curtis, you got to experience the marriage you'd always loving God together, following God together, dreaming together, working together. I know that not everybody can work together. I get that. It doesn't matter if you're the best Christian on the planet. It doesn't always work that way, but we loved spending time together. Yeah. We couldn't spend enough time together. Side question, I've never asked, did the two of you ever fight? Oh yeah, she was feisty. Oh yeah, no, she'd put me in my place. and doing life so quickly and so deeply that you can vet each other as much as you want but you're still not going to catch every quirk everything and I'm not the best communicator so I might say something and and know exactly what I meant and she wouldn't take it the way I meant at all because she hadn't spent enough time with me yeah and so she come back to me a day later she said I'm at you and I'm like sure what did I do and will you said this and I'll say oh, honey I didn't mean that at all. I meant it like this and she's like I'm a mad at you for a day over that I said all you gotta do is just bring it up and say let's deal with these things And so once we learned how to fight per se like how to deal with these things We would deal with them quickly and we just got but again, this is such a short marriage like we're learning things. We're learning things so fast in such a fast paced world of raising a bunch of kids doing work together, business together that we were still learning each other. We felt like we had 25 years to catch up in a year. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And yeah, we were learning quirks and all kinds of things quickly. So you had a marriage that that was a struggle and got into a marriage that was that That was blissful. Yeah all practical. Yes, this is Some of our listeners are in the midst there. They're in a bad marriage right now Sure there or they just gotten divorced or their spouse has lowered information That's been the sure their world right and they're separated or they're moving towards divorce some of our listeners may be came out of the marriage and are now married to somebody else they prayed that they feel like god put together and give them a lesson you learned one or two points just real quick a lesson that you learned about in a new marriage how do you not hold your new spouse accountable for your old spouse? How do you help them? Give them just a nugget. Sure. You and Michael both learned. The reason I'm asking that is I know you guys spent a lot of time talking. Oh yeah. So give a couple nuggets there. Yeah, that's a great question because the first thing that happened as soon as I got divorced was a good friend of both of ours, Dr. David Miller, comes to me and says, hey, I need you to make a list of everything you want in somebody and I was like, I don't want to I don't want a date I'm not interested. He said do it Anyways, he said make a list of everything you want and everything you hate what you never want to see again He said because if you write it now, he said it'll be the most raw real list you've ever made because you did it and it was very pointed It was it laid some things out that I don't even want to tell him from the mic sure like I just it laid it out But that was the first step I did and I would encourage anybody who's started I would encourage people who are dating teenagers young people college kids if you don't have a list You have you don't have a clue what you're looking for Yeah Make a list and if you don't know what a list is start in the scripture Start defining what a husband is start defining what a wife is go to the scripture make a list and Then if you've been divorced and gonna be remarried don't you dare start dating somebody until you have a list That's first thing I'd say the second thing that and Michael did this for me I would say it was more her than me is when we started vetting each other. There was no question off the table We turned over every stone. We went into every nick and cranny of our heart and our soul and the deepest darkest things And I know that for some people they're like, you know what they don't need to know that or maybe that's too hard Or that's gonna wreck this let me tell you what we both wrecked each other when you go that dark and into your The darkest places of your soul and reveal and are vulnerable to the point where you can talk and ask about anything it does two things It's a make it or break it situation because you can look at literally look at each other and say yeah, I can't do this yeah, and when you get to that point and God comes in and Just washes it away and you wake up to next morning and say God this was yours to begin with I can do this because You have brought us together and I can overcome that thing and you don't know that you can overcome that thing if you don't know what the thing is That's good. That's good advice And we did it and we did it. It was some of the hardest work I've ever done in my life was vetting each other to that degree. Yeah, it it was you said something You said she was your best friend. Yes Because you put the work in yes, you knew each other yes, right and that honesty that you both expressed and shared with each other became actually the bedrock Absolutely that that actually enabled The horrific struggles that were coming for you guys to yes to hold firm together. Is that fair? Yes, so so Talk us through Things are great. We're doing this. We're you know, we're Michael Schieffman, yes And good crazy. Oh, yeah She had so much energy and she Once once she got to dream again and start to do things that she'd always wanted to do like it was a blast I could sit back and just literally watch this woman blossom in front of me. It was amazing. You and Michael came to my 50th birthday. Yeah. And we had a bunch of people and we're having a great time together and the two of you, I remembered after you left, Tammy and I just said the two of you were larger than life. We were so happy for both of you. Just seeing the countenance, seeing the way you, there was playful banter, the way you were Both just just appeared and and the cool thing about this one was I knew it wasn't surface No, it was deep. It was genuine. Yeah, and it was great to see that Literally, we talked about it after you left how happy the both of you worked Wasn't too long after that. Yeah that that your world was rocked again. So tell our listeners what happened So we we get through our first year anniversary, it's great. We've worked our tails off. We have a really busy second year, but the second year was more about really trying to find our groove, how to balance work, how to balance kids, how to balance family, how to balance each other so that we could have quality time together, because we loved, we just loved being together. I'll never forget that we were planning for our second anniversary and I told her about Mackinac Island. I told her what an amazing place it was, that there were no cars, there were no motorcycles, it was you walk, you hike, you bike, you ride horses and she was like, I didn't even know a place like that existed. I said, you're going to love it. And we had so much fun and we had set time aside to plan. We had set time aside to dream we bite we hiked and just had the time of our lives my mom told me she said you've worked that woman so hard you owe her big time and so I let me she really did she said you owe her and so I booked the Grand Hotel for the whole week for the whole week I booked the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island for the whole week and we'd get dressed up and go to dinner at night and I mean it was amazing like we had a plan we had laid out a plan for the next year we were actually going to homeschool a couple kids we were going to do a couple things in the business differently so that we could free up more time to travel we were planning on going back to Mackinac Island in October like she was all for it she's I'm gonna bring the girls we're gonna do this we're gonna do that like it was just it was such a good time we're there a couple times we're hiking we're walking and she would bend over and say oh my word I'm so out of breath. And she said, I don't think I'm that far out of shape or something's wrong with me. And first couple of times I didn't think anything of it, but after a few times of it, I said, babe, something's wrong. Like we need to get you checked out. And we got home from that anniversary. She went to the doctor. He thought maybe she had some kind of a virus in her lungs. He said, come back in two weeks. We're going to check you out again. Well, we never got to make a second appointment. She began to get short of breath on a regular basis. She started swelling up and about probably at the next two weeks we ended up in the ER and we end up in the ER and she'd been up all night long. She was starting to swell up. She couldn't keep her breath and I'll never forget when the doctor came in and said you guys Michael's in heart failure and we're just what are you talking about like we just had the best honeymoon of our life we were on cloud nine we have a plan and and he comes in and says I don't know what's wrong with her I don't know why she's 43 years old she plays soccer with the kids in the front yard she walks she bikes like she's in shape she has more energy than I do what do you mean and over the next week and a half there's blood work there's testing of her heart she's in and out of the hospital she has a couple more episodes they basically are saying that her heart's not pumping the water out of her body and she's filling up with fluid so we're trying to do diuretics and things like that to try to get the water out and it was it took another week and a half from the time we went in to the emergency room and i'll never forget where we were her and i were coming home from Columbus. We're near Canal Winchester, and the doctor calls and says, hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm driving. He said, I need you to pull over when you talk for a minute. And I know right where I pulled off into a little cul-de-sac there in Canal Winchester. And the doctor said, Michael, he said, I suspected this a few days ago. I sent the labs up to the James. You have bone marrow cancer, and you have amyloid which is a rogue protein and it's attaching itself to all your organs and it's killing you and Yeah, we're sitting on the side of the road we get this news and Of course, we have tons of questions and every question was answered with this is not good, this is bad, the recovery, the probabilities, all that. And finally, he's a young guy, he's a good doctor, he's a good man, but he's giving us the medical version of the conversation. And finally, I just said, Doc, I said, you're a young guy, you've got a young wife, you've got kids, you got a level set with us, just tell me, I'm the dad. We're on our way home to go see the kids and tell me what to do And he said Curtis you need to go home get your house in order I remember asking him specific lies like tomorrow next week. He's like tonight Tonight you need to go home get your house in order. We stopped and we prayed on the side of the road we went home we brought all the kids into one of the bedrooms we all literally laid on the bed and just bawled and cried and tried to explain to the kids and of course they have tons of questions we don't have answers for and I called my kids up and said, hey, we need family pictures like this Friday. And they knew. I'd kept them in the loop up to that point. And so they all showed up and we had family pictures in the lawn on Friday. The very next week, the kids were supposed to get baptized at church. And so all of Michael's family shows up at church and we have this huge shindig. The kids get baptized. Michael's there. We do family pictures with the family. And at this point now, we've been in conversation with the James, with the cancer doctor who's gonna treat Michael. He's one of the top amyloid specialists in the country. And he's right here in Columbus, which is awesome. And things are moving super, super fast. And so we're scheduled for the first chemo treatment on a Monday. I don't have the date in my head. It's end of September, like the 27th or 28th of September. It's a Monday morning. We just had family pictures. We just had time with the family and She's not in good shape. You can tell that she's not looking good, but we go in for our very first chemo treatment and She never comes home. She ends up in ICU that night. I didn't know they told me to go home I got a call she checks me in the morning and said hey not to worry or anything But I'm an ICU apparently my blood pressure dropped my heart rate dropped and so I rushed to the hospital. I get in and she's stable, she's doing okay. They send me home the next night, so this would be Tuesday night and same thing happens. I go home, I didn't want to go home. She crashes again and I rush back to the hospital Wednesday morning and they're basically trying to save my wife's life. The amyloid had attacked her heart. She wasn't getting the fluids out. It started attacking her kidneys. Her kidneys were shutting down, so now the fluid's backing up from both directions. And on Wednesday, they just, they worked like crazy to figure out how to get the water out. They hook her up to a dialysis machine. They have monitors checking her heart. And so by Wednesday afternoon, she's fairly stable. But at that point, family and things are coming in, and we don't know that we have ten more days. That's all we had From the day we got the news in the car on the side of the road Till the day she died on October 9th was just four weeks Yeah unbelievable Yeah So So, you had this great relationship, the bliss. So we're in September, my birthday's in July, we're two months removed, is it? And I remember hearing, I'm on the outside looking in, but I remember hearing the news and just being devastated. Can't imagine what it was like to live through it. I remember a conversation you and I had in an early morning, and you told me everything. How the doctor said, look, you've got to get things in order. And still at the same point, I remember us saying both at that moment, but God's bigger than this even yet. And God can do something here. is that today may be fantastic, tomorrow could be catastrophic. But the thing that is absolutely going to give you hope is your relationship with Jesus Christ. It's all you have. It is all we have. And God chose not to heal him. This is the thing. Because I remember us saying, but God can do this. I know that's what the doctor said, but God could do something here. And it would be such a testimony. And yet the thing that still gives hope is the fact God provides. Even when it doesn't turn out the way we think it should, even when life doesn't take the turn that we think we're owed, God still provides. He still keeps us, even in the midst of turmoil and up and down here. He still provides a baseline Someone something that we can cling to with all of our hearts. Is that right? It's all we have. Yeah, that's all we have and in Michael's life She demonstrated that him about that because everybody this is the fundamental piece right here, right? here. Right. Talk about Michael's reaction and response. Michael had early on in life lost her child. She had to give birth to a nine-month-old son who died two weeks before she was to give birth. So she'd experienced death in a really harsh, hard way. And she had to come to grips with that and really dig deep in her own heart and life to figure out who God was because you have to know Michael was such the optimist she was such the Bigger than life character that life was good and God was just gonna bless her and she as a kid did all the right things Were all the right things said all the right things on her parents Did she was the model kid and just thought that life was all about God's gonna bless me He's gonna give me a great marriage. He's gonna give me great kids. I'm just gonna follow him and everything's gonna be good And then she's faced with this awful death of a son and she wakes up one day and doesn't know who God is Scott how could you let this happen? and she walked me through that process of discovering who God really was and diving into the word and Understanding that life on this earth is so short. It doesn't matter if it's a child. It doesn't matter if you're 20 30 40 80 It doesn't matter that we're all going to die and that there is an eternity that will go on forever and ever and when she figured out and found God honestly for the first time it changed her and the way she raised her kids the way she Vetted me the way she married me. It's the way she Communicated with me was she knew who God was and she knew that this life she lost a grandparent both her grandparents and she watched walked with them through those deaths and so she understood what death was and she understood who God was and understanding that death is a part of life and understanding that the time on this earth is so short and the only thing that matters is our relationship with God. This is how she talked I'm talking this way to you because Michael taught me how to talk like this. This is how she talked to her kids She would say things like 43 or 83. We're all gonna die kids. Are you ready? It doesn't matter when she's on her deathbed She's telling each one of the kids. It's my time guys. Don't be mad. Don't be mad at God. Don't get bitter over this. It's just my time. She'd say I had a great life I got to raise you kids. You guys are wonderful. God's gonna take care of you, but it's my time to go Should this unique perspective life death in relationship with God. And every day in the hospital, she'd say the craziest profound things. I'll never forget one night, she looks at me and says, am I living well? Have I lived well? I'm like, baby, you've lived better than anybody I know. And then she says, am I dying? So I want people to say that she died well. Who says that stuff? Who says that? She wrecked that hospital. She wrecked it. Those people didn't know what hit them. I was there. I saw the reaction of the nurses and the staff to her. And even you. I just want everybody to know there was something spiritual that was happening in that room and people were taking notice of how she was living those last moments of her life They were Yeah, I've never seen a service where the staff from those intensive care areas Yeah, say no, we're gonna come to the surface right want to be there to support Yeah, because of how a person lived those moments in their life There was something different about her Richard's wife, this is coin. I didn't know that she knew people in the office at the hospital This is going called the office. I don't know if you know this story. I don't she said do you guys know? What's going up on going on up at the 11th floor and they said to her? Everybody knows what's going on the 11th floor that woman is wrecking this place Wow You see? Crazy. People would go in and think that they were going to encourage her. My mom, she came in and she wanted to come in and love and encourage her. She walked out sobbing and saying, Oh my word. Like everybody who walked in there walked out encouraged and blessed. And and I watched that conversation as my mom was saying Michael. You're not supposed to go yet I'm ready Lord. Take me not you you got so much life and Michael looked her in the eye and said I Get to beat you there. How cool is that? Just nuts Yeah, that's a difference That's a difference in the way that we live because from my life purse sometimes I've viewed heaven It's like the consolation prize. I know the word says it's the crown jewel. I know it's not that the consolation It's the end it didn't write. That's the perfect end and she got that. Yeah, I don't know where that came from, but she got it. One night. She was just talking about heaven, this is we're getting close to Sunday and it's one or two days before she passed and it's late at night and she's just talking about, I can't wait to hear the music. I can't wait to hear the angels. I hope I get to sing in the choir. And she's just going on and on. And then she looks at me and she says, Hey. She says, I'm going to heaven. I said, I know. I said, I want to go to. And she said, No, you can't. You can't go yet. There's too many people counting on you. But she said, You know what, though? She said, Time's not the same in heaven. I said, Yeah, what do you mean? She says, I'm going to get there and turn around and you're going to be there. True. Yeah, it's not it's not far off, it's not Neverland, it's not it's not this pipe dream. It's a reality. Yeah. Yeah, and I got to watch somebody Enter heaven With a joy and a smile and a love and an appreciation for what she had a year But in an anticipation there was not fear. There was not drudgery. There was not Yeah, I'm sad that I'm gonna leave you guys, but I'm going to heaven. Yeah heaven yeah yeah that really embodies doesn't it what Jesus said when he said I don't want you to grieve like those who have no hope yeah yeah we're supposed to pull the plug we could talk for hours and hours of all that things that happen in the hospital but we're supposed to pull the plug on Saturday morning because the doctors have basically said there's nothing we can do Michael I'm sorry when do you want us to do this and she chose she got to choose when we were gonna unplug the machines and and so Friday afternoon would have been the seventh because she didn't actually pass away until Sunday morning the night nobody was in the room I don't know how and I don't know why but I just had this moment of clarity and I said hey babe how would you like to leave a message for the world and she looked at me and thought for a second and she says you know what she's really weak at this point her voice was pretty rough and she said I think I would I said okay I'll hold the phone I'll turn it on turn it off and you just tell the world what you want to know and window I don't remember what she said I was just hitting start stop as we went in fact I couldn't even go back and listen to him like weeks later I just couldn't I couldn't listen to him and so I had had a friend actually translate them and put them all into text and I had them and I've only read them a couple times over the first year but then recently in the last six months or so I've spent some time going through them and I just I want to read you yeah just this is a couple paragraphs but it's a long document, but this is just a couple paragraphs of what she said the day before we're going to turn the machines off. To help you understand the clarity, the conscience, and the understanding of who God was and who we are and what our role in this world is. But this is the last couple paragraphs of the whole document. It says, my prayer through many tragedies has been, Lord, keep my heart and my children's heart, Curtis's heart, soft towards you and to others. I've also encouraged my children to run to the pain and run to the hard things because that's where God will meet you. That's where he'll show himself strong and real to you and that's where he's gonna bring healing like only he can. She said don't cover it, don't run away from it, but feel it." Sounds like a woman, right? Feel it. She said, but feel it and let God do its work in you. And then the next time that you have a friend who's going through hard, you can run right into it with them and help them heal in the middle of their pain. And I think that's what some of this is all about. Jesus didn't run from the pain. He ran to it for us. For great love, he said, not my will but yours be done, Lord. I think he's the perfect example, and I think that's what life is all about. Great love and great pain, and the love of the Father covering it all. He said he goes to prepare a place for us with no more sickness, no more sadness, no more death. I just need to stop. This is my wife on her deathbed this is her words I don't know deathbed it's crazy he says he goes to prepare a place for us with no more sickness no more sadness no more death Lord willing I'll be there very soon I can't wait and wait to meet my Savior so this is not goodbye this is just see you there this is not a sadness for anyone who is a child of God. But the hope of a homecoming that's been long awaited. And if you don't know this precious Savior, please run to Him in your pain. Find healing and hope and redemption. Because He's the only one who can, and that's why He came. I love you all. This world is not our home and I'll see you soon. Wow. That was my wife. That's who God gave me was that woman. Yeah, now that you have them. They were hard because all they did is represent death and anguish and hurt and hard for the first year. I struggled with them. to live by, she gave us this roadmap. Yeah. So in her dying wish, she didn't want you running away from this moment, she wanted you running towards it. Yeah. To embrace it as hard and as difficult as it is as it's been To run towards it. Yep, and embrace it because she said that's where God is. Yep. Jesus covers it all. Yeah How have you seen Jesus covering you in all of this whole man You got the woman you'd always dreamed of. Yep You lose her two years later, right? How is God, how's God, how is staying in this moment, how is God provided for you? A friend of mine said to me recently, Michael's in heaven because there's things going on here that only she can talk God into doing. That's true. So remember I've got five kids that aren't mine and not only did I have to have a funeral but I had to watch five kids walk out of my life and not know if I'd ever see him again. Yeah. And that was hard. I went home to an empty house. It's hard. Kids that you had grown to love and love to this day. You had fallen in love with us. Yes and God's been working that out. Yeah in a big way He's been working that out during the vetting process Michael taught me how to run into really hard places. She made me face some my own Dark places and in losing a father at a young age The dead walking out on us at a young age. She made me face those things. She made me face because she wanted to know what kind of a husband I was going to be, what kind of father I was going to be. She helped me run into really hard places and watch God not only heal me but heal her and heal both of us in some of our darkest and hardest moments. And so she'd already been practicing this on me and then teaching her kids. And I watched her walk into so many women's... in two years time I can tell you of a dozen stories where I watched her walk into other people's hard stories and pray for them and help them and guide them and people you would never know about because it wasn't about her showing the world that she loved people it was about her just being there for people in really hard places I watched her do that she modeled from the day I met her how to run into other people's heart because she had been there. And she knew it. So it was a formula that she had already done. She lost a child and ran to God and God met her in her darkest, worst moment and helped her heal and grow and become strong in the faith. And then she realized that she could do that for others. And then she realized as her last wish, in fact, before she recorded that for me, she'd said something in the hospital and I wrote it down. She actually used the words I can't remember if she was talking directly to me or to one of the kids, but she said Run to the hard run to the hurt for it's in the greatest Hard that God wants to do his greatest work and I remember writing it down because I'd never heard her say it that way And it's so impacted me that I put it on her headstone It's on her headstone. And by the time we get to this recording, she basically regurgitates it in a different way, but says the same thing. Run into the hard places of your life and let God work with you, heal you, and help you, so that you in turn can turn and do the same thing for somebody else. It wasn't a one-time thing, it was her life mantra. It's how she operates. So she was just regurgitating to me, to the rest of the world, if you guys will follow this formula of life, God will do big things. This thought just occurred to me, Curtis, and I've never thought of it this way, and I'm sure you have, because you're a lot smarter than I am, man. Michael ran to the heart. She said that it would have an impact, right? Great impact. Her running to the heart and not shying away from that moment in her faith is still today having an impact. Yes. She's not on earth. Yeah. Bigger than her. It's bigger than that hospital room. Yeah. It's bigger than a lost child. It's a failed divorce. Her life is having an impact. She is still reaching the world. She's still making a difference. I know Which is the hardest prayer in the world to pray Lord Lord your will be done and not mine because What do you want to do with this man? That's hard. It is it is Yeah Yeah, I remember the prayer of John Wesley where he said let me be used for you or set aside for you Let me have everything. Lord, what an amazing prayer. Yeah. Yeah. That God would use her life was her prayer. It's what she wanted. She believed God would do great things. And I guess I'm just saying that is what's happening. It's happening through her life as you share her story. I always marvel too at Abraham, when God called Abraham when he was Abram, and before he renamed him. And he said, I just want you to follow me, drop everything and go on this journey. And then you go to the book of Hebrews and Abraham never got to see, he never got to see the result of his faith. Right. is faith, right? But we're having a conversation about faith in Christ today and what that can do in someone's life because Abraham long before just said yes to God, it created the opportunity today for us to have this conversation. And so Michael's yes, not shying away from the moment, still impacting everybody listening you've got a yes moment. You got a moment that you can either that God can help you rise above or you can run away from but the message today is to run towards it. You don't know how it's going to end up. You don't know what tomorrow is going to hold. You don't know how God's going to connect all the dots. But God is doing something in your life that you don't recognize and that's something that he's doing it's going to impact everybody else it's not just for you right it's for everybody else because if it was for me I'd be selfish yes exactly right yeah you'd have chosen the other yeah yeah who wouldn't yeah huh so you're learning in these days, what does it mean to honor someone of great faith? Can their story impact others? In the hospital I started writing, I did it out of fear of not wanting to forget my wife or her story. And so also, Michael had a social media following because of a previous business that she had built. So I Wrote a lot just to keep people in the loop of what was happening. And then after she passed I just never stopped I kept writing about her I kept writing her nuggets or her story our story our love story what God had done and I didn't know who was listening I didn't know who was watching. I didn't know it didn't honestly I didn't care sure I was just regurgitating my love for a woman and her love for God and the story of us that's all I was doing but a couple of my former students come to me I don't know how many months ago five six months ago and they're like Curtis we need to tell your story and I'm like what does that even mean they said we've read your stuff you need to tell Michael's story on a bigger platform then he said we could do a podcast. I'm like, I don't want to do a podcast. I said it's hard enough to just do what I'm doing. I'm just trying to get through life. And God used these guys, used Chris, his wife. I got to go visit them and his wife just asked me so many great questions. She said, I love Michael. I love her story. You need to do this. And somebody's wife has a lot of impact when they start telling you what you should or should be doing. And I reluctantly agreed to sit down and do it, record a couple podcasts, and I hated it. I hated them. I didn't like doing it. But the Lord has given us this thing. It's runtothehard.com. It's a platform in which I get to talk about my wife. I get to tell her story. And that part I like. I get to talk about my wife. Yeah and share Who she was and how she impacted this guy how she impacted these children? And it's become a thing and people have been Listening and I hate listening to myself. I don't like it I know you've done been doing this a while and I just I like listening to myself more than I like watching this I just what's happened though is it's resonated with with people who have lost recent spouses, kids, loved ones, parents. And I hope it's I hope it's helping. I hope it's encouraging. It has become a ministry that I'm trying to wrap my head around. You and I have had lots of conversations about it. And I still don't necessarily have a plan. But I'm having to trust God for it and with it and realizing that through this mechanism of podcasting or social media that my wife can still have impact. She can still share her message. She can still help people run into their own heart. She can teach people how to help other people run to their heart and to help them find God in the most miraculous way ever. I surprised myself the other day, I was actually talking on our podcast about the fact that if you look at all of our favorite Bible characters, Joseph, David, and what God allowed them to go through, because God allowed them to go through horrific things. Joseph, year after year, tragedy, horror, just story after story, and then it dawned on me in this moment of clarity that The harder the things that God allows us to go through the bigger the task he has for us. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, it's proven it's in the world it is yeah, I don't know what to do with that except to say that We're all gonna go through hard things and every one of us are gonna come to this fork in the road where you're going to run and you're going to hide and you're going to get away from the hard things of life or you're going to good dive and go right into them and you're going to allow God to use them. You're going to allow God to help. He's going to heal you. He's going to do things in your life that you never thought possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're living that. That's what's happening. That's what's happening. Yeah, yeah. And I wanna encourage our listeners, you have got to check out the podcast, Run to the Hard. You can go to runtothehard.com as well. And there's a foundation you've started because people in grief, you and I were talking over lunch today, how people don't plan for the unexpected. They don't plan for the moment when someone's not there. And I know as a pastor, just the moments that I've had where I've tried to ask people to help us scrape the money together to bury someone, to help a family that was in need. And I know that your foundation is striving to actually take care of the widow or the widower who doesn't have the funds to take care of their spouse. And you can find that information on runtotheheart.com if you'd like to participate in that and I know that would be welcomed, right? Yes. Yeah, I was as we conclude today. I was I was praying for you today and Out of my deep love for you as a man of God The guy that's Challenged me that's been there for me as a person And this exact scripture is what I thought of when I prayed for you. Probably know it as soon as I start reading it, but I love it. It's 1 Corinthians 16, 13. And I want you to know this is what I see in you. Stand firm in the faith, act like a man, and be strong. As I prayed today for you, that's the verse God called to mind about your life. And I want you to know, and I want everybody to know, Michael was a fantastic individual. But God knew what he was doing when he put Curtis and Michael together. Because you've been a fantastic individual in your own right in your life. Thank you. And I have no doubt the Lord is going to continue to use you to change lives. That Michael's story through you is going to continue to change lives and that you're gonna be strong and that you're gonna be watchful and you're gonna stand firm in the faith. So as a guy who's seen it all the ups and the downs I just want to say thanks for being you man. Okay. Curtis thank you for being with us today. Thank you. Thanks so much man I love you and I love you too man I'm so glad we got to do this today. love you too man I'm so glad we got to do this today. you

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