Ep 22: Grief & The Search For Hope

Everybody. Welcome to the run to the hard podcast this podcast. Our mission is to help people in grief and bottom line is, is we're grievers. I'm a griever. My wife passed away just two short years ago, and

I've had the privilege of

sharing our story and her story on this podcast.

And the goal is, is that the Lord will help heal us where we're at, so that ultimately

we can go out and find somebody who is hurting, in loss, in grief,

and allow the Lord

to help us to

help them heal right where they're at. And if you were with us last week, a good friend, long time friend, former student Tristan Borland was on our program,and after we got done,

talking last week, I said, Hey, Tristan, can we please do this again?

I feel like

there's so many things

that we could have continued to talk about. So without further ado, Tristan Borland, back on the

Hey, thanks Curtis. And we can talk, can't we? I mean,we're on here and we just, we just talk.

and talk

It's been great catching up.

I've always got more

words [00:01:00] to just spew out on

people or something, so.

Now it's been

really good. And if you didn't catch this last time.

Tristan's Pastoral Story
---

Tristan's been a pastor for several years. He had the chance of working with a non profit, working with families who have lost children and others.

he's done a lot of counseling. he's sat beside a lot of deathbeds. He's done funerals. he is an author. You know, it's not the book he wanted to write, but he is an author, A Life After Death, poet, and I didn't know that until I, until I started reading your book, but you've got some poetry in here too, and I, and I wanna, I'm gonna get to some

of those later on.

One of the reasons, Tristan, that I wanted you back on was that you know, I had so many questions, pastoring before your

tragedy, and then

what was it like to be a pastor and

have to allow your congregation and your community to minister to you

And then, of course, years later, you know, how has that changed, or if it has

[00:02:00] changed you, and your perspective? And so,

man, I just want to dive in. Pastor Tristan. What does that

look like?

As a

pastor

in many ways, losing my daughter didn't fundamentally change us.

Like we were kind of still the same people we were before we lost her as we were afterwards. I'm a pretty compassionate

person We've been long term in this community

and we've been able to walk with people in

death and we were

loved so well by our

congregation So a lot of people have bad stories of how many people say wrong things in tragedy and death.

And we had a

few of those, but for the most

part, people were so generous and so good.

we, I think we still have,

some casseroles in our freezer

from like the, Lutheran

church in town

that just, you know, like other

churches came around us. So I love the body of Christ and people were so good to us.

I would say this.

Managing Grief and Boundaries
---

One of the things that distinctly changed is,

over about

a year,

I just noticed a lot more hurting and broken [00:03:00] people were coming to my office.

I think when people saw us broken

and us grieving,

it,

it, it, built some sort of trust, uh, among those who are suffering. I'm sure this is true of your podcast. Like as you share,

your heart, like people that are carrying heavy burdens are open.

to those who are

broken. And so it probably changed my relationship to the community, to the congregation, more than it fundamentally changed how I operate.

I don't know if that answers your question, but.

Yeah. So the funny thing is I was cleaning out the freezer the other day and

I found

some casseroles.

true

story, two years old, I was like, I forgot those were even in

there, that's funny.

just did a

podcast recently where I talked

about having to create even some boundaries because grievers attract grievers.

And, And, sometimes it's

overwhelming,

you know,

maybe

long term, you're managing this [00:04:00] better, but for me,

I,

can only manage so much. and as these have been coming in, I'm trying to learn how to manage all of these stories and this information and the amount of people that I can interact with, things

like that.

Cause it is

a lot. Yeah.

when you start

And nobody knows, sorry, nobody knows

how to do

this. Right? Like nobody's prepared. And that's. That's one of the things I think as a pastor walking through tragedy, I had some experience in these realms,

but how do you

manage all of the complexity

that comes with a tragic

death? In it

and I think we all

are kind of figuring this out as you go. So how do you, how do you have proper

boundaries? what, are

what are the new

roles that you play in the lives of others? Those are complicated questions, I think.

The Role of Community in Healing
---

You took three months off from the church after Maria died.

there had to be a grieving process, there had to be community coming [00:05:00] along to support you, but

the inner workingsthe places that nobody gets to see, like, had to be,

well

unpack

it, I cannot

say enough good things about the church that I served, like, I love those people.

They showed us the love of Christ in, in deep and

compassionate way. And the reality is like, we lost our child,

but, but our community

lost Maria and our church lost Maria.

we were suffering greatly, but people loved us and, and they didn't know what

to do. They didn't know what to

say. And they were

so generous and so good. So our elders were

like, take as much time.

They're like, literally, if you need a year,

Like we'll walk with

you so kind and and so I did. I

took three months off

I

was just like, how do I have any capacity to say anything to anybody?

Soduring those

three months, I preached once each month,

but I told the elders, I'm like,

look, I'm going to get up and I'm going to

speak, I'm not going to [00:06:00] just open

up

the scripture and talk about, I

don't know, some random text. It's like, we're going to

talk about,

like, what we're all experiencing together, which is suffering and loss and

tragedy. And I'm, because I'm like, well, this is what I can do. I

can communicate. I want to write. I want to think about

this. But, one of my

things, I love people. I loved our congregation.

I'm pretty extroverted. Um, I told him, I'm like, look, I'm going to share,

and I know you're all going to want to talk with me, I just, I

can't, I don't have the capacity. Like, I don't even know

what to say. I'm just so wounded right now. Now I love you

all. And so publicly

I

can sit here and talk to all 250 of you communicate my grace and love for you, but I can't do this one on one right now.

Like I just needed that

boundary. And so I literally

preached, walked out the

door and got in my car and left. And, and, uh, we kept going to church, but we hid in the

balcony just as a family. Like we,

it was just so hard to

be in

public, right? And that's where I

think you have to figure out where those boundaries

are and walk through those kinds of

things, you know, individually as a family.

but our church

[00:07:00] was so good and they walked with us and,

I think it speaks to

how do you

help people

in

grief?

How do you walk with people?

And uh, you said

something on the last

podcast, Curtis. You said You laid in

The Weight of Grief
---

bed for three months, right?

How did, I'm just

kind of curious. How,

how did you get out of that?

Or what was that

experience for you? Cause that's

not you. Anybody who knows Curtis Christopher,

he's not a like sitting around

lazy,

you know, but like it's

so fundamentally changes Like what, what, what was your process on getting Out of

despair or,

or speak to that.

Yeah,

you

know, I'm always careful,

um, doing these podcasts, you know, I'm,

I try to be really open and vulnerable, but

But man, Tristan, I, I'll just, I mean, to level set with you, [00:08:00] and

I

never want to say things to, make people think poorly or badly, or that doesn't sound Christian like or whatever, but

man, there were weeks I just

wanted to die.

It was,

Yeah.

And to say that publicly, I know people will question and, and whatnot, but, um. think

If you say something like that, I think

we can unpack it

If you're

willing, but you don't have

to. No, we can. Yeah. I mean, cause I

think, I think when you say that, you're not saying you're suicidal.

No. Like, I think that's a, yeah. Oh. Yeah.

But, but

ultimately, you know, you just, you're broke, you don't want, you don't want to have to deal with how bad this hurts.

you, asked

me, what motivated me

and,

um,

my grown children, I don't think they'll take offense at this at all, but some people know the story and know that, you know, there's, Michal had five [00:09:00] children, the younger ones, they went straight to dad's, I

didn't know if I'd ever get a chance to see them again.

So not only did I,

But at the funeral, I had to watch those kids get in another person's car and drive away and literally say, God, I don't know what's gonna happen.

Ella, the

oldest daughter, she's, she was 18 at the time, senior in high school.

And,

You know, she knew she had a home, she had a place to go to, so it was just the two of us come home to a big empty house, you know, no more noise, she's at one end of the house, I'm at the other, and I just, I remember laying in bed and having these, awful feelings of just, man, I don't wanna be here,

but

I'll be honest with you,

heh.

The one thing

that for weeks, motivated

me to keep going was this girl crying down the end of the hallway. Mhm.

Knowing that she [00:10:00] couldn't have another tragedy.

Um,

knowing

that I had to be a different kind of a dad for a girl who just lost her mom. who just lost her siblings. Like, literally.

If there was one thought that entered my mind during that period, that would have been the first one.

And

then they began to trickle in, you know, my wife on her deathbed

said,

babe, people are counting on you.

That's, um, it's a hard spot,

man.

Thanks for sharing that. think I think it's, you know what though? Like,

I think people need

to hear this

And I

we don't

like to think about these things, but the reality is this is I think common

when you go through great loss It is hard to just know how to even live

Right.

and that's dark. And I think I [00:11:00]

we were

Helping Others Through Grief
---

talking like maybe we should talk on this podcast about like how do Pastors in the church how do churches and people help people in grief?

And I think if you don't recognize that

your brother or sister who just went through tragedy might not even want to get out of bed,you don't, I don't think you have a context to know even how to enter in how to help.

Right?

cause most people, I don't think they want to see that

want to, you know, most people, and this is where people I think mess up

in grief. they'll say

things like, well,

you

know, well, there's still hope and

there's hope of heaven

and you know, you'll be happy again. And I'm just normally

like, I don't even know what to

do with that.

Like,

I mean, I get theoretically somewhere

I can live again, but there's nothing in me right now that understands that, practically speaking.

So when people

say

I just want to lay in bed all day, it's like, yeah,

of course, you don't even know what to do. Um, I think that's a good starting place for like, how do you [00:12:00] help somebody?

tragedy

and loss. And that was, I mean, for us, if we didn't have a newborn baby, it's hard to get out of

bed,

was very

similar to what you're saying.

Our children

need us.

if it were

just

me, I'd burn my life to the

ground probably. but

to have others that depend on you, it's like, well, I can't, I can't.

can't fall apart for

them. And so,

but, but for months,

that's just the

space

you live in, right?

I got to keep going, but I don't know how.

Exactly. And, and

we had this unspoken language where. You know, when we were up, we would kind of meet in the kitchen

and I,

I knew that if she was lingering in the kitchen, like, oh, that's my signal to hang out,

that

we need to bond, we need to talk, we need to share, we need to cry.

Oh, my word, we cried a lot together. Um,

but

just,

you know, week after week, figuring out what she needed, This tragedy. And, um,

and honestly, [00:13:00] she's old enough to at this time that, she could come in and, and say, what do you need? I'm so sorry. You know, I know what I'm feeling, but you lost my mom, you know?

Mm-Hmm. . And, um, so that was a, it was a really unique relationship that was built, um, during that time. But man, did we need each other. Wow. You know, you talk about Mm-Hmm, , you know, you had to get up and, and raise kids.

I can't imagine if I would have had to come home to an empty house, nobody. Like I, I can't even fathom that.

Yeah, that would have been really bad.

And then I

go back and remember people that I actually know that are going home to empty houses and my heart just breaks.

Well, and this is, you know, when, when it comes to how do we give practical advice to, churches, pastors, these kinds of things, one of the things is like, look, in every single one of your congregations, if you're listening to this,

You got widows,

You got people, widows and

widowers in their [00:14:00] 70s, 80s, 90s,

and it's just as lonely then, and it's probably more

lonely because they don't have children.

And so I think you hear these kinds of stories and it should give you a compassion for your brothers and sisters who are alone. and this, it is a very difficult

thing. how

do you

continue to build a life while you're here?

And it is very

difficult. And I would just say this,

I think a very

universal thing in tragedy is

like, it's going to take months if not a couple of years start to get out of that malaise of knowing what to do with yourself.

and we all have to do it.

And praise God, there can be life again,

but it is

not

easy. And I think that's just

like where we

start, right? We start, with that

kind of baseline of this is what people are going

And then, then I think the practical question is like, what does the church do? How do we

engage? How do we enter in? And,

I think we, there's maybe a couple of things we could say about this.

Sure.

Um, I'm kind of

curious. Let me just say

this. [00:15:00]

I needed three months.

You

needed three months.

A

pastor friend who just lost his wife recently, he took three months off. A friend from college lost his wife years ago. I remember his boss gave him three months off. So, I think we just practically gave some information to Employers,

pastors,

people who are part of the family or know somebody, I, it may not be true for everybody,

but it

sounds like there is something to this three month window of, they need some time, right?

so, I

didn't want to gloss over that, I just,

I keep hearing that same number over and over and over again. we can't

stay there. We got to dig our way out of that hole, but just a thought. I don't know, just a thought for some, cause we have some really, really

new widows and widowers that are paying attention like weeks out.

And um, I always keep them in the back of my mind thinking of what do they need right now? What do they need to hear right [00:16:00] now?

yeah, three months

just to like

exist, right? a

three month break. That actually sounds pretty like

reasonable. And then I would even

say like three

years

To

expect to,

feel

normal again, or, or whatever

new normal is.

I feel like that's a probably a good

timeframe for us. Like it was about three years

before I felt like I was,

somewhat

of a similar capacity as I was before Maria

died. Like three

years.

But that helps

me because I'm just

entering into my third year. You know, I just celebrated the second year. And again, you're ahead of me

by

a ways and to just listen to somebody else who's gone through this to just try to have some benchmarks is helpful.

Yeah.

Well, and I

think

there's

some question of

like, I've had a lot of people ask

me, like,

I had a friend go through

this

tragedy. What can I do?

And I think

before

you [00:17:00] do anything, these kinds of recognitions are very helpful,

there's nothing you can

do to bring them out

of this.

In fact, I would imagine

when you're in that first three months,

if somebody had just said, Hey, Curtis, come on, let's go do

this thing. Come on.

It's like, that's not what I need right now. I don't want that. I think people see those who are suffering in tragedy, and we're like, how do we fix this?

You know, how do we get them out? How do

we help them be normal? I'm

like, they don't, they don't want that right now,

which would've been me before, because I'm a fixer, I'm a guy, right? Fix things, you know, gimme a problem, I'll fix it.

I'll

solve the problem for you. That would've been me before this. I would have been, what do I do?

Right? I get that.

I think that us as men, that's, that's kind of how we're oriented, right? Most of us, like we want

to, how do we make this better? How do we solve the problem? And so it's a good thing to recognize

that there's just, there's no fixing it.

There's no problem to be

solved per se, but there still are things that we can

do. So I don't

think the answer is just well, just wait three months,

you know, and hope they get

[00:18:00] better. But

you got to Yeah. my my perspective is don't try to pull them out.

Of their sorrow,

the best

thing for us to do is enter into their sorrow,

you know, so, the

incarnation

of Jesus

Christ, like one of the key doctrines

of the faith

is not that God, like

his salvation is not Oh, these all terrible,

broken people.

I'm just going to pull them to heaven.

It's that Christ, the God man enters in fully

experiences the human life. Like he

doesn't

just say like, well, here's a ladder that if you do these things, you can climb your way to glory. And then, you know, you can solve your problems by me giving you a means to get out of the muck and the mire that you're in.

It's that he comes down and enters in

And

experiences the full

human life, including tragedy and death and suffering.

And so I think

as Christians, like that's a good model for us

[00:19:00] to like, when we see our brother or sister struggling,

it's, is there a way

that I,

can enter

into their darkness?

And just sit with them and be with

them. I think it's a good

starting place as we think about how do we help those who are broken. Um,

and and to be

fair,

I think those who are grieving have full veto power of who they let into that space.

A hundred percent.

I think it's

okay to be

like, nah, I can't handle you right now.

you

need, if you're a griever, You get to pick who are the three or four people that just you can, you can be honest with who you can let

into that

space and please ask

them. please ask them.

to

enter in if they're

not. Um, and I think if there's other people because grief, you know, this Curtis is grief brings a lot of, attention.

And some of the time, you know, there are people that are drawn to tragedy

and those people are just not very

helpful. And so for us, we

had hundreds and hundreds of people like wanting to check in

and I

just, [00:20:00] can't, I can't do

it, but God gave us

five or

six really close friends that could just walk with us in a deep way.

So.

that was my wife. But they helped us

in our darkness. Yeah.

That was my wife, Michal. So,

to

this day, two years after she's passed away, people still will text, message, call that your wife helped me through one of the darkest moments of my life. And I'm like, I don't even know who you are. Like, how did you know my wife?

And then she would say, you know, friend of a friend. And I'm like, I didn't even know about this.

somehow she realized that she didn't have to go fix people's problems, but she was a great listener. And, over and over and over, she would gain the trust of somebody who was going through something really, really hard, and she'd just go sit with them for

hours

and just let them pour and dump and talk.

And for me,

I remember

when she would go to some of these meetings, I'd say, [00:21:00] Hey, do you have a plan? You know, are you there to help her fix anything? And she's like, no,

no,

I'm literally going to listen and to hold her hand and pray with her. I'm like, cause my, my fix it brain just

can't comprehend

that.

It can now. It can now, not before.

But

man, she was good at that. And I'm still hearing stories to this day of people she just sat with and said, bring it, let me hear it.

Yeah,

That's um, that's that's so good.

again, if we're giving

like, I always have a hard time giving practical advice.

because there's just

not much practical things you can do, but

Listen, well,

there's a clinical

psychologist that I was following and just kind of learning counseling things.

And he said something

like this. He's like any of us in

counseling, how dare you think you can solve anybody else's

problems you don't know anything.

He's like, you better pay super close attention [00:22:00] and listen

a

ton. And even

like this guy's brilliant and highly trained. And he's like, I don't know how to solve my own problems, let alone anybody else's problems.

And if I've

got a client in here, I better just pay attention and listen. And if I listen long

enough, maybe I'll have something to offer. And I think in grief, Just that being willing

to be

awkwardly quiet

sit with those who are in the midst of despair.

If you do that

for long enough,

it is so valuable to the person who's suffering.

Even if you don't

feel it, even if you don't recognize it. Just being

present.

There's, some people, Curtis, that have said to

me,

Like, I don't know what to

say. I'm

like, great. That's a good starting

place. Cause there's nothing to

say. And, and I think there's a sense, and we all have this kind of the sense

of like, I don't want to be

weird. I don't want to be awkward. And, uh, I, I tell people like, believe me

when this person who's just lost their

loved [00:23:00] one and you go into the room,

they're not thinking about your

awkwardness. Like they're not

concerned.

they're, not

sitting there thinking, I hope they say the right

thing. they're not worried about you at all.

And so just

don't, don't, be self conscious. Just go in and sit and be okay just sitting silently. And if they want to talk, they'll

talk. And if they don't want to talk, you can

sit there and you can say, like, do you want me to leave?

And if they say, yeah, please leave, then just get out and that's, that's okay.

Um, but don't,

don't worry about your awkwardness cause nobody else is thinking

about it. they're not

even concerned what you're feeling right

now.

I think the more self conscious we are, the harder it is to like, just really enter into that place. So,

you know, you, even in the last podcast we did, you talked about the goodness of God.

And I share

the goodness of God on a regular basis that in the middle of all this,

if

you have a relationship

with God, you can begin to flesh out His goodness and His help and His [00:24:00] grace, and His mercy. But you,

you have a chapter

The Theology of a Three-Year-Old
---

in your book, The Theology of a Three Year Old

I'd love you

to

kind of flesh that out a

little bit, you know,

when

your, when your daughter says,

God is bad.

Okay, so this was Sadie,

who is 17 months younger than Maria. So

she would have been

about three and a half, almost four years old. And,

I think I'll just,

read

it. she said this, she sat on my lap and she says,

do you know why God

is bad?

And I said,

what are you talking about

Sadie? And she, she repeated, do you know why God is

bad?

And still not knowing what she

was getting at, I asked why.

He makes us sick. She

said, that's why

Maria died.

I said, no, Sadie, God is

not

bad. He is only

good. he is love and he loves us. He's not bad and he does not do bad things.

And she [00:25:00] smiled

and seemed to accept my theological correction at three years old

and went back

to playing with her dolls.

I was left shocked by

her logic and the honesty of a three year old wrestling with faith's most difficult question.

Why does God allow

evil, suffering, sickness?

Why does he allow Maria's death?

Is Sadie

more honest than I am

about the reality of this world?

I have thought long and hard about the problem of evil,

and I know that God is and must be good. I came to this conclusion long before Maria died, and I still believe

it now,

but some things are

easier to know than to

feel. I know he is

good, yet there are many

things that I will never comprehend in my heart.

So that's,

just an

honest conversation with a three year old kid.

And I did, I mean, there was never a day

when I was laying in bed or suffering greatly or weeping or out at the graveside.

There's never a day where I thought

God is

bad,

but there are

many

things about God that [00:26:00] I will never understand.

Not this side of heaven.

And I think it's okay to wrestle

with those things. And I don't know how

you can not wrestle with those

things in, in the midst of those dark times. Pete

So as a pastor, I know that you

see

people stuck

and

they're stuck at that point. Maybe they've been a Christian for a while, but they cannot put their head around this tragedy, this loss.

They can't understand it. And they become bitter. They become angry. And I've seen people, I mean, cuss at God. Like, Tell God off like I've heard some stories like that and as a pastor, What do you say? What do you say to those

people because

obviously somewhere in their

spiritual

journey?

They haven't truly wrestled with this concept

Yeah,

Ithink

again if somebody's very angry with God the the first response is just to listen

you know

God's got big [00:27:00] shoulders. He can handle a lot more. And

it's not my

job to clear up their perception.

Most of the

time we just have to receive what it is that they're saying. In fact, I think if we go too quickly, if

somebody's broken and sad and they're angry with God, and we go too quickly to defending God,

that's probably not what they need to hear in

that moment.

And So I

really just try to be prayerful and just say like, okay, what can

I. What can I do in this moment with this person, um, to just receive this? And if they're angry, like, okay, they're going through tragedy. It's okay to be angry as long as they don't maybe stay there

forever. But a lot of times I just want to buy that, credibility in their lives.

So again, I think we, we all start with listening.

and if somebody's stuck,

you know, Curtis, I was

thinking about

this. We talked about that three

months, maybe three months when you go through

tragedy, give yourself three months just to

just

to survive. And if that

three months

turns into three years and you're still laying in bed every day, like there's a point where it's, you got to kind of help pull that person

out.[00:28:00]

Uh, you know, if, if you were years

later and you're still just not getting out of bed, it's like, you need a friend who can come and say, okay,

Hey, How can, we get you

out of this? And maybe you need some medication. Maybe you need to see

a therapist, you know, or whatever. There is probably that place

from.

utterly

broken to starting to live again. Where that line is, again, it's so dependent on the situation and the person, and

I think we we all start with

a mindset of like, I don't know how to solve this, but I'm going to

enter in, I'm going to listen, And if somebody's angry at God, it's like, okay, let's, let's talk

about that. Work through your anger.

but maybe, maybe you just don't know him Maybe you don't see the cross fully. Maybe you don't know Christ

and his,

his brokenness fully. And so let's just,

let's just listen

for a while.

Um, I don't have a lot

of practical things to say, to argue against somebody who's in tragedy, cause it's like, well, that's their reality, right?

No, no, I understand. I understand.

But I think. You've [00:29:00] pointed a couple times out the beauty of the cross, the beauty of Christ entering into our suffering.

Yeah, that's good, because I, I, I don't think we have a true grasp and view of the cross and humanity and what God actually did. I think, I think it's a really good starting point.

I don't know, you, I've got You've got so many different things in your book that I've underlined and written. Um,

Jesus Loves Me
---

Jesus

Loves Me.

The

song Jesus Loves Me, I read that in your book and, it has

two

complete meanings to you. And you've had to work through that.

Yeah.

So

I

planned.

Like the whole service

and it was at the high school gymnasium,

but I did

not

plan,

the grave side,

you know? And,I remember that

like two miles from the school to the grave, it was

just so

sad [00:30:00] and, quiet and, you know, we hundreds and hundreds of people, but it was just family at the grave.

And so I'd asked,

my friend, Phil, who's a

pastor down in Iowa. I was like, Hey, Phil, I don't have anything planned. can you just handle this and just deal with it? And I don't have the capacity to say or do anything. Um,

and we got out to the graveside.

and Phil was very gentle and he just said a few

things and he kept it

short and

and it was to the point. but the last, the last video we have of Maria was the four girls at

the time, a friend of ours was babysitting

them. She,

took a video of them singing Jesus Loves Me. And

I write about this in book.

I'm like, I never really liked that song. it's very childish, you know,

It's just like a little nursery

rhyme and

pretty

simplistic. And it's just not,

it never really

meant much

of anything, but that was the last song we had.

The last recording was

Maria singing this with her sisters.

And so that was

at the end of the video montage that we made [00:31:00] of Maria for the funeral.

And Phil, the

pastor, was just like, Hey, we're gonna,

We're gonna

close and we're gonna sing, Jesus Loves Me at the grave. So here we are, here's her casket. Um, we're saying goodbye and Phil leads us in Jesus Loves Me.

So now that's kind of become,

uh, just a ritual for us when

every

March 4th, uh, every May 3rd,

we go out to the grave and as a family, like we try to choke out those words and, uh,

and then our church,

kind of a beautiful thing.

Um,

our, our worship leader at the church that I pastored for many years, when a new

baby was born in our congregation,

they would have the family come up.

And they just sing "Jesus Loves You" to this child

And man, for all

these years like

Every time that

happens, you know, I, just,

I can't, you know, it's, it's, it's a [00:32:00] beautiful thing, right? It's

like, Hey, we're welcoming

another baby. Like praise the Lord for this child.

And so that song, like this song, the super simple song that I never really even liked has all this now meaning of my daughter's last recorded song,

the song we sing by her grave, and yet also this like, welcoming children into the body of Christ. Um, yeah, it's funny how those

things change meaning over time, doesn't it?

Yeah.

I read that story. And,

um,

for me as a father, I was trying to contemplate you burying a daughter. And then now it's used to celebrate new birth. And, it's gotta be,

it's

gotta be a moment of like, oh my goodness, you know what I mean?

just one, one more piece of the puzzle. And I think

for

most people who haven't gone through this kind of tragedy, there are a lot of things like that,

that you may not even know mean or don't mean things, you know?

Because [00:33:00] It might be, you know, you talked about, trinkets or clothing or things like that in your book, where something might mean something that nobody even knows, or a song that comes on the radio.

Michal loved worship music, and there are certain songs I can't hear.

Like,

they come on and I turn them off.

it's

so emotional. You know what I mean? Like,

My wife would stand in front of the mirror and listen to Shane and Shane Though You Slay Me,

and just sob. Like, this was part of her morning ritual. And when that song comes

on, I can't, I can't listen to it. I have to turn it off. And so, you know,

I,

I read that part of your book and I was like, man, there's,

We

all have something

like that.

that we, we will forever hear differently or

think differently about. Yeah.

for man, for a long time, I was like, I cannot sing happy, rah, rah, Jesus worship songs.

I'm just like, you know, the ones that are like a little bit overly positive. So

[00:34:00] even to this day, I think there's some songs that I just think like, yeah, that

is singing

about reality, but it normally has a certain kind of sober darkness to it.

Um, but the ones who are

like, you know, everything's going to be great and everything's going to work out. I'm like, those songs are for somebody else, they're not for me. And so,

uh, yeah.

You

had a, um,

chapter

Two Different Lives
---

in your book that talked about two different lives. And, um,

found it interesting

because the kids and I have similar conversations

to

your thought behind this.

I'd like you to just share a little bit about that.

Yeah.

um, you know,

we can all

imagine not ever going through the tragedies that we

face. So

I think in that chapter I wrote about I can imagine two different kinds of worlds

like let's imagine one world in which

we Maria was

never

born like we had all of our other children

and she wasn't born,[00:35:00]

and therefore, she never died.

And,

you know, our family would look a lot like it does now. We would have

all the other kids and,

you know, a pretty large and happy and healthy family. And we would

avoid all of

the suffering, all of the sorrow, all of the

tragedy. And, um,

I can, I can just

imagine that.

Like my life would

look a lot like it does now, and it'd be a pretty good life. Or

Then I can,

you know, imagine our life as it is,

which Maria was

born and we've had, um, seven children,

but, but she died

the other children continue to live. And we have this giant

hole in the middle of

our family. And we walk through deep darkness and terrible tragedy and sadness.

And so the, the question is,

if I could choose

between those lives,

which [00:36:00] life would I pick?

And the

answer is, well, I, I picked this life, like I picked the real life.

Which sounds maybe strange because you think like

the first life would be easier and it would be, it would be considered, I would much in many levels, I would much rather not know the

things that I know.

I would much rather

not have gone through what we've gone through,

but that's not how life works.

And

the sorrow. Is, is

all there because we love our daughter

it doesn't solve the sorrow for her not to

exist.

It's,

It's, precisely because

she does exist because we had her and now she has died

that we

grieve.

And that is because of love and the way of love is always better.

It's hard. It is hard. If you love, you're going to be broken. Um,

it's the [00:37:00] better life.

And, and the, only

alternative,

to, to, to tragedy is to just not to love

and to forget. And I'm like, I don't want to forget. I don't want to not love.

Like it is the better life.

And I think

most of us who've loved and lost experienced that.

Like, I don't want to go

through this. I would rather, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but I'd rather this than not have them in my life.

I've

been asked that question, would you do it all over again if you knew the outcome?

Absolutely.

Because not only did I love Michal, man, she loved me well.

And

to not have experienced being loved well, man then

we're reminded of Christ. who loves so well, who continues to love so well, right? And so to understand that love on a much different level, [00:38:00] um,

um,

the older kids, they threw this at me one day. They were like, what if,

what

if mom never met you? What if we had do this alone? What if you guys had never met? And of course I'm like, well, don't think that way because that's not what happened. But you know, their, their minds are, are trying to work through that struggle.

Like, what if we had to do this without you? and I took that as a compliment because, man, I hope I've loved them well. I hope that that's what their sentiment means. Like,

we're

so glad you're in our life that we got to experience you because of our mom and that we're getting to do this journey, you know what I mean?

And so I've, I've kind of flipped that conversation and realized.

What

it really means and it comes back to

loving

well,

yeah,

there is a

Love as a Multiplying Force
---

principle I think about quite often which

We can

often

think that love is a limited

commodity. So for

instance [00:39:00]

You only have so

much money when you spend the money.

It's gone You only have so much time when you spend your time

like you can't go back and

redo that But love does not work that

way. love is not a zero sum game.

It

multiplies if it's true And good. so I've, I've, experienced

this, you know, we've had seven children,

which is kind of unique. And

I think there's a mentality of

like, how do you love so many children?

And my answer is like, well,

it's chaos for

sure.

But it's not as if I had

one

daughter and like when you have your first

child. It blows

your mind,

right? how can this little precious child, how

could I love anything like this child? And

so much of your love and devotion is toward this child.

And then when you have

a second child, it's not as if

you have to take half of

that

love from the first child and give it to

the second, it's,

not quantified that way, right? It's actually, it

multiplies in the sense

of what I love

about [00:40:00] my family right now is not just how I love each one of them, but how they love each other.

And this is,

I think, why love is fruitful. It produces more. This is the love of God. He creates

us to go and love. Now,

I, as a father of seven children,

have the

time that I did whenever I had one

child. Time is a

limited resource.

But I love the way my children love each

other. Which is also a great tragedy.

Because right now there's like, Ugh, wonder how they would be if Maria were still

here. or,

oh, it was, they lost

their sister as well

as we lost our daughter.

but I just think, I think, this is

the, the beautiful nature that God has called us into, which is like, you love Michal and you love her children.

And that is

how God works in these kinds of things. It's not limited to the person, but it's fruitful. It produces other kinds of love.

I don't know. That might be a little bit of a weird concept to go into the podcast, but you know, it's [00:41:00] something

I think about a lot.

good

because it goes

with something you said

the last

time we met.

You said that, you know, grief is this ball, it's this hurt, it's this thing, and the ball doesn't get smaller,

but life

gets bigger. Yes. And as soon as you said that about love multiplies, it made me think of your thought about, yeah, the love and for you, there's a lot of kids to love, you know, your world definitely got bigger, but the concept is that love multiplies.

And love, and our family, and our friends, and our community, and our kids, and, and, and our grievers, the people we spend, you know,

it

is multiplying. Our world is getting bigger. It doesn't make this hurt, this loss, this tragedy any smaller. It's still there,

but

I don't know, that's what I thought of when you were talking about love multiplying.

Yeah. And maybe that's like really practical in

that when somebody's like in the depths of

grief

one

of the, One of the things to wrestle with is

not

well, [00:42:00] how do you solve this problem? There's nothing to

solve like you're gonna suffer. You're gonna you're gonna grieve

can't figure out how to fix this problem There's nothing necessarily to fix

Tragedy

and death are terrible.

But the

question for most of us

is how how do we have life

again? Which means probably incorporating other things into your life. What is God calling me to now? Now that I've gone through this devastating

thing, it's not going to be solved, but how do I

get back into the world? What is the Lord calling me to do?

Which I want to be very kind and patient because it takes time.

Um, but, but our lives

have to grow to some capacity. That's where health

is. in dealing with grieving people, there are some

people that are so, so stuck. They're stuck 20 years back in

the past.

And man, I get it.

Like I, I'm not no

judgment,

to find health

is to engage in the world

that God has called you to live in despite your

tragedy. And so don't think

about how to solve [00:43:00] what has happened in the past.

It's, it's, what is God calling me to do now? Um, and expanding my life beyond where it currently is.

So

Pain into Purpose
---

we've been using a

phrase called pain into purpose a lot lately,

and

um, I really got it through going back and reading all my Old Testament heroes.

You know, I was thinking of David and Joseph, and they, they went through some horrendous childhood tragedies.

I

mean, you got brothers, can you imagine them trying to kill you, throw you in a hole, right? And then it's like, oh no, let's make some money, let's sell them into slavery.

And you're like, yeah, my brothers would probably do that. You know what I mean? Yeah, probably. But when you think of

tragedy upon

tragedy upon tragedy, and you're like, God was preparing him.

as a young person, and when we try to

read

those Bible stories, we just see

the tragedy.

Yeah, we see this, this glorified person and thing, and what God did at the end, but we [00:44:00] really struggle with What was being produced in the middle until you've been here

and then

you're like, oh man And so now tell me if I'm wrong But you talked about two lives

and

you would choose

the

life of Maria because you got to experience Maria and you got to love her that you.

She got to be a part of your family your home and her loss shows how much you loved her

but second

don't you feel this incredible urge like

God, that wasn't a waste

of a life, that wasn't a waste of a tragedy, like, God,

she has

to mean something.

This

tragedy has to produce fruit. And that's

the sensation that I'm getting,

is like, Some people are so caught up with the grief. That that's all they bear for the rest of their lives.

And the grief overshadows the person that they're grieving and somehow they can't go back and make [00:45:00] that life matter more than their own grief. I mean, that's what I'm experiencing. It's part of what's pulling me out. It's part of what's helping me

to move

towards a healthy person again is trying to understand that and I get that from going

back to

the Bible characters who are.

God was preparing all the way along with tragedy after tragedy after tragedy and you know what I mean?

Yeah, and

I always I struggle with this because in one

way there are people early

on that would say to me

God's gonna use

this

and I, struggle with that because

Maria is a

human person made in the

glory of God who is a beloved daughter, a beloved

sister. And it's

like, I just think we can treat people as

maybe a means to some other end and that's not necessarily good. But on the other hand, I was like, yes,

of course God can use

this. So there's a, there's a tension [00:46:00] here.

If, if you were laying in your bed, grieving your wife, like two weeks after she died.

And I showed up and I'm like, Hey, Curtis,

uh,

God's gonna use this, buddy. It'll be

okay. You would have been

like, Leave me alone! You know, it's

like, that's not the time to say that, but of course! In the cosmic economy of God, God is using and will use Michal's death

and Maria's

death.

But that doesn't mean

that they were just,

a thing to be, they're beloved

of God.

they're

the beloved

wife, a beloved daughter, a beloved child. And, and

so, I just don't think we should ever treat human beings, even those who are our beloved

dead, as if they are just some means to some other end. Like, well, you know, my daughter died, but five people came to know the Lord. It's like,

well, okay, that's good, and God can use this,

but I don't

want to

devalue the person.

and

yet, no, but

yet, like, I think

we have to [00:47:00] approach Our sorrows

and our tragedies as if they are part of a greater cosmic story.

And we can't always see that. And I don't want to say this tritely, but this is why we love the Joseph

story, right? Joseph story is so

powerful

because, you know, he's sold into slavery

he's,rejected by his brothers.

And then he's a good servant and he like goes to the top of the

household and

he's, You falsely accused

of grave evil and thrown in

prison and then he's used in

prison and he should be released and he lingers in prison. And then

finally he's restored and he rescues his whole

family. And it's this really redemptive story.

It's really redemptive thousands of

years later when we

read it. But I'm thinking of Joseph in prison and it's

like, Hey Joseph, it's all going to

work out. And I think him in the prison is thinking like, really?

Like I don't

see it. Right. You know, you just, I think you

want to be cool. You want to be a little slow to be like, Oh yeah, God's going to make sense of all this.

But in a cosmic way, he [00:48:00] does

tell stories through great suffering.

that's not

always helpful when you're laying in bed,

just trying

to survive, right?

No, I get it. And struggle

where that we're fleshing out. One of the things I keep saying on

our podcast is, guys, I'm not perfect, I'm not a professional, I'm not a counselor, I don't have a degree, this is not, and so don't

anybody take me for that, but I am just fleshing out grief before you at, in real time.

And so I think the beauty of, of that is that it's one more piece of those things that we struggle with. In this process.

The Cosmic Story of Redemption
---

Mm hmm.

I think it's

taking

Um,

the cosmic story of redemption seriously,

because I think even we can talk

about Christ and his

incarnation, his coming

down, um, and, and then the cross, like what Paul says in Philippians, like he emptied [00:49:00] himself,

even to the

point of death, even death on a cross. And I think we can take that and

say, like, isn't it so

nice

that the God himself came down,

became a baby

and he grew up and then he died for us?

so that we can be forgiven.

And I'm like, wait,

did you just kind of gloss over

cross as if it's just this thing that

like saves us all, which it

is,

But in

Gethsemane,

Jesus is

saying

like, father, if, if cup can

pass for

me, please take it. And

he's. And he's despairing that his friends

are

not praying with

him And

he

is. Weeping,

drops of blood, and then he is

betrayed and he is scourged and he is suffering and he cries out from the cross,

sabachthanai, my God, my

God, why have you forsaken me? This is a great tragedy full of agony

and suffering. and that [00:50:00] is God

himself incarnate

on our behalf. And to just be like, Oh yeah, it's nice that Jesus died for me.

I'm like, wait a second here.

don't think you've looked at

that

and and I think that is the tension we live in because it is

redemptive and it is our hope,

but it's also

horrible and

beautiful. it is the greatest

suffering

the most

heroic story.

And those are

not mutually exclusive stories.

Those go together.

And so I think that's that tension we live in

is grievers as

can't just gloss

over

as it's some sort of means to an end, you

know, like, Curtis, what a great podcast you have. You're touching so many people. And

it's like,

but like, do you know what I. Went through to,

to do this podcast.

Like I

just, it's not that simplistic, um,

but then

God can

even use the death of our loved ones.

it's a great [00:51:00] mystery.

Amen
---

You're a poet. I didn't even know it.

I don't know that I'm a poet, but some of the time you just express yourself, right?

Yeah, I was, I was reading your book

and got to

the end and I was like, I read it and I thought, well, that's a, that's a neat poem. I was like, no, no, no, no, Tristan wrote that.

And,

um, you said three years.

You know, we talked about three months. You said, hey, three years,

things

begin to change. At three years you wrote this.

You

said, I have always longed to dwell in mountain heights and girth the place I ought to have been born, where heaven meets the earth.

For

generations long before their beauty testifies,

to a

transcendal glory mortal sorrow long defies.

When

I am most satisfied, blissful, and at peace,

this

is when I long the most, where [00:52:00] beauty's never ceased. But on this temporal plane,

I

live where glory long evades. Where death and tragedy prevail and happiness abates.

In the valley

of the darkness death

has seized

my love. Forever stolen from the lowland, so I look above.

For forty and six months she graced our home and settled hearts.

Now six

and forty months I look for joy to never part.

So still I long to find my home above

the misty peak.

Those

shadows cloak the holy face.

A

glimpse is all I seek.

crazy cause, you know, Music poetry, things like that.

it's

interesting how,

they hit us at different times, but

I

mean, [00:53:00] literally right after Michael died

of all songs, I'm not really a switch

foot person,

right?

Maybe

a little creed, something. I don't

know, but

literally switch

foot, the song where I belong, um, Came across Spotify

shortly after Michael died.

And,

There's

several parts of the song,

but

the one that, when I read that poem, I immediately thought of the line that says, still looking for a home in a world where I belong, in a world where I belong, because it's not here.

Yeah.

there's there's a longing, right, in, in death,

that

that, the world would be set right

And I

don't

belong here, but I do belong here, It's, it's

I find

that, [00:54:00] uh,

you know, poetry, music, art.

Um, speaking

is something that, that is, that is so deeply longed for, um, is

both the thing that makes me

cry and the things that makes me hopeful.

Right. and and so that is why

like a song or,

you know, writing poems in the mountains is where I was

and just, you know, just trying to reflect

on like what's going on in my heart.

What in this longing for something more it's

uh, it's the it's the mysteries of life and God that that captivate us I think in those times.

Well,

Tristan and I have

thoroughly enjoyed, I mean, that's a weird word to say when we're talking about.

Don't you say lots

of

weird things in this

season, right?

Yeah, we do. Oh man. Lost my wife, lost you. But, but no, number one, reconnecting, but two, just fleshing this thing out,

man, there's so much more I want to learn.

There's so much more. I feel like I'm in a period of time where my, my mind

is starting

to come alive. [00:55:00]

I'm

like, I want to know more. I want to know, and I'm not as much of a reader as I am a, a friend. I want to hear people tell me their stories. I want to know what's coming

next. I guess that's how I'm dealing with this, but you have a chapter right at the end called Amen, and it's at that three year mark, Where you just, not that you're closing the book, but that you

give

a really good kind of conclusion to your, to your grief story.

And I'd like to end the episode today with you kind of just reading it, And sharing anything else that you want to share with us.

And

let me, let me say something first. Curtis, you said you've enjoyed our conversations. It has been really good butum, it's a weird thing to say you enjoy it, right?

Cause I wish that we hadn't had any of these conversations. I wish that we blissfully had lost touch and hadn't reconnected. Right.

Cause I don't wish this on anyone, but there is a goodness, [00:56:00] um,

friendship

in, in the

midst

of the worst things in life. It is a gift. It is a gift. And so, maybe if it, if nothing else, if nothing else is gathered from these podcasts or whatever, it's like, you know what, this is, it's, there's a goodness to this.

So, yeah, so we wrote, um, initially just to kind of process our grief. Um, we did a blog just so that people could kind of follow our story.

And then eventually we turned it into

a book, but after about three years

of writing

and, and the, the writing got less and

less frequent. So if you watch, if you read our book, like it's, there's only a few writings from years two two and a half, three. Um, and it was just, we kind of got to the point of like, you know, yeah.

We'll still

grieve. We'll still talk about Maria. We'll still grieve her

loss, but it's time to be done

living in the space. And so, um,

so yeah, I

can, I can kind of give you, I'll start halfway through, um, our last, our last chapter.

on one

very ordinary night when [00:57:00] Maria was

about 13 months

old, we sang

and read

together. Maria was wandering

and dancing and

playing, seemingly ignoring all the rest

of

us. As we

concluded our time of prayer, I ended with the common

refrain. In Jesus's name, and from the corner of the room, we heard a squeaky little voice

say, Amen.

Jill and I

looked at each other in surprise. Was that Maria?

was playing with her toys and not paying attention to the rest of us. said it again, more emphatically, In

Jesus's name, and again from the corner of the

room, we heard the word, Amen. Amen.

I did it one more time, and again Maria uttered her first recognizable word. Amen.

Amen. May it be so.

We offer

our

meager prayers to an almighty

God, not knowing

if he hears us.

There is much I don't understand about this world.

I doubt I ever will understand.

His will for us [00:58:00] is mysterious.

His ways are

not our ways. We pray the best we can, and we conclude with, Amen.

May it be so.

May his will

be done

and we

trust and we hope

It is time to bring these reflections to an end

to everything.

there is a

season and a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die

a time to weep and a

time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance

grief doesn't

end.

But it changes.

My documenting

our grief needs to come to a close.

So I will

end with Maria's first word.

is the

same word

of trust and hope that

John used to conclude the last book of scripture.

After recording his apocalyptic and cataclysmic

vision of this world, John concluded with a single hope. Hope.

Christ will

return.

He will make all things new. [00:59:00]

There will be a final redemption. he, which testifies these things say,

surely I come quickly. Amen.

Even so come Lord Jesus,

the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Revelation 22, 20 and

Amen.

Maria, amen.

Until the day

breaks

and the shadows

of this

life flee away

and I see you

again.

Amen.

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