All Episodes

When our child dies, we start out in such a place of darkness and eventually have moments we see light or hope, and then fall back into that darkness. Along with that, many of us have a hard time seeing or finding God in all of the pain and confusion. No one has all the answers to our questions of “Why?”. So instead of being stuck there, it can be helpful to change some of our perspectives, which...

At GPS Hope, we get emails from those of you who are struggling in your marriage after the death of your child, or who have questions about how your spouse is grieving. So, I decided it was time to do a podcast episode on this topic. Of course, this means I got to bring in my other half to talk about this subject, as my husband Dave joins me to share his side of things. In our workshops, Dave and...

So often I hear the frustration of bereaved parents who are hurt and angry because people around them think they should be doing better than they are, even as early as 3 or 4 months, on up to the first few years. This episode addresses this difficult issue, with some ideas of things that can help you deal with these kinds of ignorant remarks. Links Mentioned in th is episode: To get a list of my t...

This week is a continuation of last week’s episode as I talked with Erica Mitchell. Erica had a pregnancy loss and had to deliver her stillborn son, which was pretty traumatic. Last week we ended in the middle of Erica’s story of God allowing her to see her son, Sheldon, in heaven. She was so angry that He would dare to show her that, after taking her son from her. This episode starts with God’s r...

This is the beginning of a chat I had in the Hope Mobile with a Wisconsin friend, Erica Mitchell. Today’s talk is quite a bit of the details (and I do mean details – as in possible trigger warning, which are important to her story) of Erica’s story of the traumatic pregnancy loss of her son, Sheldon, including her questioning why God would make promises to her that He wasn’t keeping. Erica does a...

When our child dies, most of us have an immediate support system. But as the weeks and months go by, those people usually go back to their lives and we are left still shattered. We feel like we are going crazy. People around us say that we should be “over this” by now and make us either feel angry at them for suggesting such a thing, or feel guilty for still being such a mess, easily confused, for...

Isaiah 62:3 is a scripture that has had a special meaning to me for several years now. It says, “You shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord.” What does that mean? How can that possible apply to us after the death of our child? A few years ago, God used this verse to show me how we can transform our lives to live out our rightful royal place in His Kingdom, no matter what we have been th...

Lately I have been hearing from several of you, “I know my child is in heaven and no longer has to deal with pain and suffering, but what about me? What about my family? Why doesn’t God seem to care how much pain we are in from my child’s death?” This has been tugging on me, so I decided to devote a podcast episode to this topic. This episode is from my heart, sharing a word I believe came from Go...

I like to find out what topics you, the listeners, would like to have discussed, and one of them is this topic of our children who seemed to know that their time here on earth was going to be short. This could be a rough one, but since some of you have been asking, I decided to take it on. I also decided to branch out a bit on a similar topic of our children who let us know they didn’t want to die...

It is devastating enough to have one of our children die, but to have your only child leave this earth gives a parent even more difficulties to have to fight against in working through the suffocating darkness. Sara Nelson lost her only child, Jeanette, and feels called to help others through their grief, no matter the loss, but has a special place in her heart for those who, like herself, have lo...

Ashley Pittman lost a set of twins, seven months into her pregnancy through premature labor. Will Jr. took his last breath in her husband’s arms and Aree’a took her last breath on Ashley’s chest. Ashley struggled with her grief for the next several years, believing her pain is what kept her connected to the twins. During that time, her marriage started to unravel to the point that her husband had...

If you are like many Christians, we have been taught that happiness is more of a fleshly thing, and that we shouldn’t be trying to be happy. “God isn’t interested in your happiness.” Really???? Then what is heaven about? Why does God try so hard to get us to believe and receive His love for us? Happiness should not be our main goal in life, but happiness should be part of the Christian life. It wa...

When our child dies, anything that gave us joy or made us feel fulfilled in life seems to be wiped out. Most of us aren’t suicidal; we just don’t want to be here anymore. We can’t imagine living life without our child being part of it and we know we can’t continue to live for years with this kind of pain. We need something bigger than us, and bigger than our pain, to live for with our remaining ti...

Our lives revolve around our children. They become one of our main reasons to live. When our child dies, the pain is so intense that it feels like we can’t continue to live (even if we have other children, maybe a loving spouse, a job we used to enjoy getting up for every day or a ministry that was extremely fulfilling). We need to figure out how to want to live again. Most of us don’t even think...

This week is a continuation of my talk with Joe and Shaunda Knight in our Finding Joy Again series. (If you didn’t hear last week’s episode, I highly recommend going back to hear Shaunda share about her “Matt box” in Episode 66: Fighting for Joy.) This week the discussion covers: How easy it is to go back to that dark place, and how our perspective can make the difference between staying the...

Last week I started talking about scriptures that can be difficult to understand like having joy in trials or rejoicing always in the Lord. This episode was going to be part 2 of that discussion. Due to “the computer eating my homework”, I lost my notes and was unable to record what I had planned to share. Instead, this episode is an edited version of a talk I had with Joe and Shaunda Knight, of K...

This series of Finding Joy Again wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t also talk about some verses in the Bible that tell us to have joy in our trials, which can almost be like stumbling blocks that get in the way – things we can trip over. As I started recording, I realized I had written myself so many notes on this topic, looking at a few of these verses that talk about having joy in our trials that...

Facing child loss puts us on a very long, unwanted journey. Not only do we feel robbed of our child, but we feel robbed of who we were as a parent and as a person. One of the things that seems to take the longest to find again, after the death of our child, is joy. In today’s episode from the Finding Joy Again series, we talk about six steppingstones that can help us with getting beyond the darkne...

God promises that we can have joy in our lives, and there doesn’t seem to be any parameters or limits on which of life’s circumstances (or tragedies) don’t qualify. We are the ones who have to decide that we want joy back in our lives again and be willing to work for it after the death of our child. How do we do that? Especially when we aren’t sure we can get out of the darkness, finding hope, muc...

This is the second episode in the Finding Joy Again series. As I push for myself to learn how to have joy back in my life again, one thing I am sure of is that we can’t have joy without a revelation of God’s love for us. We must learn how to live loved by God, which is a struggle for many parents, after the death of their child. We want to pull God down to our level of humanity, to try and make se...

In this new series, Finding Joy Again , we are going to be digging deep into the topic of joy. • What is it? • Is it even possible to have joy in my life again? • If so, how do I get there? • How can I hold on to it and not keep losing it? Before we can have joy again, there is a seed that needs to be planted; the seed of hope. Most of us are familiar with Nehemiah 8:10, that the joy of the Lord i...

How we think about certain things can either keep us in our place of darkness or can help us find our way out. In this continuation from last week’s episode (“This Was NOT in My Plan!”) we look at four more keys that can help unlock the door to the prison cell of our suffocating grief. The four keys are: 1. Come into right alignment 2. Rest in Him 3. Surrender 4. Change the “Why?” question There a...

It was certainly never in our plan to have a child leave this earth ahead of us. But that is what happened to many of us, and it changes everything. It may have blindsided us, but it didn’t take God by surprise. Even before your child was thought in your mind, He knew how many days he or she would have here on this earth. We can’t move forward without hope. So how do we get that hope to be able to...

The death of our child gives us so many mixed emotions about God. Here are just some of them: God betrayed me so I can’t trust Him anymore. I am so angry and confused with why God allowed my child to die. I know I had faith! Why didn’t my faith keep my child from dying? Why bother praying and serving God if He is just going to do whatever He wants to do anyway? These are all talked about in this e...

In the last seven weeks, we have been in a series of people in the Bible who lost a child. We have looked at • Adam and Eve who were the parents of the first person who died in the Bible (#49: The First Death in the Bible was a Son Who Was Murdered) • David, who lost an infant son (#50: A Rainbow Baby in the Bible) • What we could learn from Mary, the mother of Jesus at the death of her son (#51:...