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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:...

This is part of the series People in the Bible Who Lost a Child . In this episode, we are going to look at two dads, who had their children returned to them while still on this earth; Jacob in the Old Testament, and Jairus in the New Testament. It would be easy for us to compare the fact that we didn’t get to have our children back and be bitter or angry about it. But that would prevent us from se...

This week we are looking at Naomi, in the book of Ruth. Naomi lost her husband and both of her sons. She became a bitter woman, blaming God for her troubled life. She doesn’t realize how much God is at work behind the scenes, and eventually is able to declare that God never stopped showing his grace to her. Sandwiched in the middle of all this, is Naomi’s daughter-in-law, Ruth. They have a very un...

Last week we started looking at Job through the eyes of a parent who has also lost a child. This week continues this fascinating study, starting with of Job’s friends, whom he calls “miserable comforters”. There are many things we can relate to in the book of Job, much more than I realized until I dug into the book of Job for the purpose of this series in looking at parents in the Bible who have l...

We are still in the series Parents in the Bible Who Lost a Child , and this week it’s time to look at Job. You are probably tempted to skip this one because it’s easy to pass right by him, thinking we already know Job’s story. (He lost everything, had friends who didn’t do a good job of comforting him, and then God gave him everything back…Whatever…!) Please stay with me for this one b...

This is episode 52, which means this episode completes a full year of the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast. Because of this milestone, we are taking a break from the current series to share some thoughts about the difference a year can make. Those of us who have lost a child from this earth are painfully aware of this. Usually after the death of our child, we can’t see any movement toward hea...

Since Easter is in just a few days, it seems like a good time to look at Mary, Jesus’ mother, as a parent who lost her child. I had never taken the time to see Mary’s life through the eyes of a grieving parent. But as I began to study it out for this episode, I was amazed to discover, based on what are told about her life, how many ways we can relate to Mary as a bereaved parent. Even beyond that,...

Did you realize that King Solomon was a rainbow baby? The scriptures that surround this situation can be confusing, and even hurtful, especially to those who have lost an infant. Podcast host (and ordained minister), Laura Diehl, spends most of the time on this episode doing her best to untangle these verses, giving listeners new eyes to see and know that God cares, and that He always has a plan f...