Choosing joy in grief: A conversation with Jeremy Dehut

In this episode of balancing the Christian life, we talk about choosing joy in grief with Jeremy died. Welcome to balancing the Christian life. I'm Dr. Kenny Embry. We'll talk about how to be better Christians and people in the digital age. Let's go. So what hard things are you dealing with in your life? at points, we all have problems which try our patients, and test the limits of our faith. I think we've all known people, we watch it go through grief and loss, and wonder how they do it so well. In Episode 34, I talked with Jeremy to HUD about journaling. in that conversation. He told me part of the reason he started recording his spiritual life, was to help him deal with the tragedy of losing two sons. I didn't know that story and wasn't sure he was willing to talk about it. So I reached out after our interview, and he said he was willing to share his experience with me. I wasn't sure how this would go. But what surprised me is how much I could relate to his story, and what the loss of his two sons did to his faith. Look, we all know people who experience loss, and as a result, lose what faith they had. Jeremy and Anna's story follows a different path. And I wonder why that happened. I also know most of us are around people going through loss, and wonder how we can help. I think all of us want to be helpful, but don't exactly know how. So I asked him about that. Listen to his answer. So you know, there is a definite quality difference between Jeremy and I, it was a mistake I made on the computer, which gave my audio a much lower quality. You'll notice it, but it shouldn't make any difference in how much you can understand. How you doing, Jeremy?

Good. Thanks for having me.

You and I talked in an episode where we talked about journaling. After that conversation, one of the questions that I walked away with was something that you basically made a very passing reference to, do you believe tragedy brings us closer to God.

I think it brings us closer to God, when we respond to it the way that God wants us to respond to it. And that's up to us. God provides us answers, maybe not answers that we want to hear. But they're the answers that are sufficient for us to hear. And so it just depends on whether we're going to respond to the tragedy the way that God wants us to.

You shared a little bit of your story last time. What happened to your family? How did you become intimately connected with tragedy?

I think what most people mean, when they asked me that question, they're referring to the loss of two of our sons. So maybe a way to to introduce the topic is when people meet me for the first time they asked me how many children I have? And that's that's a loaded question, even though they don't know it's a loaded question. But I'm really just trying to keep the conversation flowing. I'll say, Well, I have four kids at home. But we actually have a total of six children. And two of our sons are second and third born, passed away, one in 2013, and one in 2016. So I'm the father of six, but I have to do away with the Lord.

From what I understand. These were children that were born with special needs. They were

That's right.

You were probably given a prognosis when they were born.

It was a very broad prognosis. So it wasn't super specific. Cooper is our second born son. Kenan is our oldest graduating from high school next week. We're all geared up and getting ready for that. So he was born in 2003. Cooper was born in 2005. When he was born, we didn't notice anything wrong with him. We assumed he was just a happy, healthy little bundle of joy. But then when he got to be about a year old, we visited with some family and saw him next to a niece of mine who was about the same age and realized that he was not interacting to the same level. It didn't have anything to do with gender. He didn't have anything to do with paint. We were like there's something not right with Cooper. And then shortly after that, he started having seizures. So Cooper started receiving different diagnosis is when he was 12 months old. For the majority of his life. He had the diagnosis of autism. He had the diagnosis of epilepsy, he was nonverbal. At one year old, he was diagnosed cortically blind, but when he passed, he had 2020 vision that was Cooper's diagnosis about the age of one year old. Whittaker was born in 2007. And from the moment of his birth, you could tell that something was wrong. We How to waterbirth with wit. And so I was there, I was able to scoop him out of the pool after Anna gave birth to him. And the second that I picked him up, I realized there was something wrong. It looked like he had had a stroke. He was limp to like one side of his face wasn't functioning correctly, and he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy immediately. So for the rest of his life, he was also nonverbal, very low motor control, couldn't move, couldn't crawl, couldn't stand, couldn't chew, went through a lot of therapies, slight slight seizures, nothing to the degree of Cooper's, so he also had epilepsy, a much weaker constitution than Cooper. And so from birth, we anticipated that Whitaker's lifespan was going to be shorter. We just didn't know how short it would be. Most doctors gave them very short timeframes couple of years for wit with Cooper, they thought he'd hit adulthood. He was just so strong and robust physically, it just depended on how the the other issues would resolve themselves.

What were the questions that started going through your mind when this happened to you?

There's so many questions we worked through along the way and sometimes had to work through more than once. With Cooper, once Cooper started exhibiting some of his conditions, especially his having seizures, they were hard to watch, especially early on before he developed a pattern of seizures. They were they appeared so random. And there were some times as he got older, where they became life threatening. I mean, there was one year we were in the ER three times in a 12 month calendar year, you know, where you've got paramedics coming to the house in the middle of the night, and he's been seizing for 30 to 40 minutes. Yeah. early on. The the questions that we started asking ourselves, and we're trying to figure out why why is Cooper experiencing what he's experiencing? Is it due to a failure? on my part? Is this a result of genetics that we don't have any control of? Is this punishment? Have we done something? Have I done something? And this is somehow passed along to my child? Like that seems so silly, but you ask yourself those questions. One of the mistakes that anna and i made very early on is we were asking those questions independently. So I would ask them in my head, and she would ask them in her head, but we wouldn't share them with each other. And we would start to reach conclusions on our own, and start to feel weight or shame or guilt. And assume that the other person saw us that way. Between Cooper's first and second birthday. We were really, really struggling in our marriage, which is normal. It's normal for parents obsessed, special needs kids to experience that.

I've heard that before. Yeah, the casualty of many of these situations is the marriage. Yes. forgive somebody who just doesn't know anything about this. Yeah, feel free. What was the hard part on your marriage?

It varied at different seasons in our marriage at different points with the boys health. I mean, really, really early on when Cooper was one to two. And my wife and I were asking those initial questions and looking for a concrete answer looking for a fixable solution. And we were struggling in some of the marriage basics, we were struggling with communication, we were struggling with the daily grind. I mean, just because you have one child that has an issue, there was another child, our oldest son, that was doing fantastic, and wanting to read and wanting to do all these other things. And so daily life continues to go on. And we wrestled with anger, we wrestled with jealousy, as we watched our peers not have to wrestle with what we wrestled with. And that was something that was a part of our dynamic. For a long time, as our boys fell further and further behind health wise of their peers, learning how to rejoice with our peers who had Healthy Kids and not be jealous, you know, we had to work on that. Trying to figure out the pressure of trying to figure out how to help our oldest son with what his normal was, his normal was not his friend's normal. So in a very real way, he had to work through jealousy and frustration and disappointment and loss. There was grief all along the way, where you realize my child is not going to be what I dreamed he would be. Yeah, he's never going to drive his first car, he's never going to get married, he's never going to go to college. He's never going to hold down a job. I'm going to be a lifelong caregiver. So I'm giving up on the dream of what my retirement years would look like or whatever. There's grief all along the way. So I think all of that was a strain on the marriage. I couldn't have said it that way in that 12 month window, but looking back on it. And over the years, those were things we worked through,

how can we help? We want to be helpful, but we don't know exactly what we what we can do what we shouldn't say, yeah, we don't want to sound like idiots. And more than that, we don't want to sound like we're insensitive. Oh, that's

a great question. So probably a couple of memories that were helpful to me to illustrate your point about we just don't know what to do. The weekend that Whitaker passed away. It was the end of March 2013, our church family did a fantastic job serving us. Both of the boys went through a period of time in hospice care where we realized they're coming up on the end of life. Yeah. So we're focusing on comfort, rather than correcting health issues. The church family there served us tremendously. But eventually Cooper passed, some of the young parents went to the park, a local park, the weather was good enough, that weekend that they could go, and they invited to take our oldest son with them to the park. And I think it was within about 24 hours of Whitaker passing. So they went to the park. We were just at home kind of catching our breath. I mean, we had finally slept, we were catching up on sleep, trying to get used to the new dynamic in the house, which is I mean, that took a long time. And they came home from the park. I was really curious how our son had done what it had been like, he was having this taste of normal childhood. And I asked him, you know, how did it go? And he's like, Oh, it was so good. We ran, we played on the swings. We were on the slides, all these things. And I said, Did any of your friends ask about wit? Because earlier in the week, all of his friends had come over to the house and crammed into his bedroom, and they had cards and get well soon things. So all the kids knew what was passing as much as they could at their age. And my son's answer was so perfect. He said, Dad, I don't think they knew the words to say. It's not that they didn't want to it's not that, but their kids like how does a child who's never experienced the loss of a peer? start that conversation, they haven't experienced that they don't have, they don't have it. And I think in a lot of ways, that's just where we are as adults to. And in our culture, we're not used to being in those environments. And until you've gone through it, or you've seen someone gone through it, well, you just you just don't know. And so we were like, hey, that's okay. They still love you, you can help them learn the words. So that leads me to the second memory. So before we were living in Indianapolis at the time, and we had traveled to Louisville to visit my parents, and I was preaching for them over that weekend. So after Sunday morning service, my parents, and I think one of my brothers, and then my family went out to dinner. Being the parents of special needs kids, it can be very isolating. They're medically fragile. When they get sick, it's a lot more serious than if a healthy person got sick. So we didn't get out as much. They just didn't have the physical capacity to do it. So we were looking forward to we get to go out like as a family, we get to go out we get to go to a restaurant, I get to engage with adults. So we got to the restaurant. And the waiter had asked, okay, I'm going to see you we don't have a table big enough for everybody. So can I set up the arrangements? And dad said yes. And so the way dad helped him set it up was dad and mom and my adult brother. And my kids all fit in a booth. And Anna and I went to a table by ourselves. And I remember sitting there like as it was getting set up, I thought this, this is not helpful. Like this is not what I thought this was going to be. And we sat down. And my parents were all excited. They're like, we're getting Jeremy and Anna, like an impromptu date. They get like no responsibilities, no kids, they get their own time. And we sat down, and you could just read it on my face. Like I was not happy. Dad came across the way and I said, Hey, is everything okay? Are you all right? And I said, I'm fine. Fine. He's like, you're not fine, what what is going on? And so I just launched into, we're alone together all the time, like I love my wife, under normal circumstances is great. We need adult interaction, like I thought we were going to interact. So they reshuffled the tables. And in that moment, when dad and I talked about it later, he was so gracious and so patient, he didn't complain, he didn't get angry. But the mistake that each of us made in that moment was we had each assumed my father had assumed that he knew what would best demonstrate love and service toward me, he had assumed what I needed or wanted. And on my end, I had assumed that he knew, like without communicating to him, I had assumed that he just knew and read my mind somehow and knew what I needed. And he didn't. And I think one of the mistakes that everybody in the dynamic can make is by making assumptions. Those of us that need service, we need to figure out how to mercifully communicate, and share and be patient and think the best as we do, but to help them know what our needs are. And then those that are serving need to slow down and be patient and humble enough to say, I may want to serve this way. But what they need for me right now is X, Y or Z, because they've told me they need X, Y or Z.

Yeah, I think about it, my family With my marriage, yeah. We often my wife will always often tell me what gifts she wants. But there's often the gift that I want her to have. And and really need a new Dixie chopper. That's exactly right. You've kind of alluded to this. You were definitely angry at some point. Yes. What were some of the other emotions that you went through? What did you feel?

It depends at what time grief was sprinkled throughout. Yeah. You know, people who have lost children, whatever the circumstances around the loss, it's still loss. Yeah, you know, so. So people who have lost a child through stillbirth or people that have lost children early, early on in the pregnancy, loss is always lost. Our journey with loss was long. And our journey with loss was like walking through a really long train tunnel, and you knew the end was common. You just didn't know when? Yeah, we knew from Wits birth. In all likelihood, he is not going to live a normal life. So we were we were experiencing loss all along the way. As we tried to figure out and readjust our expectations, to what level will he become independent to what level Will he be able to do things. And then toward the last year, a year and a half, as we started to realize, nope, he peaked here. And now we're on the downhill slide. He He's already hit, what he can do with his vocabulary or not, or how much he's able to eat or how much he's able to stay awake. Or, you know, his joints started failing. We're like he can't do physical therapy anymore. He just can't. He had hip dysplasia and had to have a double surgery on one day. And so grief was sprinkled throughout learning to grieve those losses but celebrate find things to celebrate. He was able to do more than doctor said he would he lived longer than doctors said he would we got to enjoy him for longer than some parents do. There was a lot of weight, and especially because we had other children. Yeah, Keenan did fantastic and trying to help him process. Two brothers, there were special needs. Our vision was you've got three little boys, and they're gonna be running and playing ball and basketball and all this stuff that was not our life, and it wasn't his life. And then we ended up getting pregnant with Sabina, our fourth biological child, and everyone held their breath. All of us were like, right now, two thirds of our kids have special needs, what's going to happen? Is it going to be three quarters of our kids? Is it going to be 50? Like what's going to happen? So there was a lot of apprehension, fear of the unknown, or fear of what we were actually seeing. Getting into hospice was hard. Because a lot of the medical professionals did not want to acknowledge that there was a five year old boy dying. on my own, I started researching growth charts and projections and life expectancies. And I came in to the doctor with my charts. And I was like, boom, boom, boom, this is not sustainable. Do you agree? Or am I miss reading this? And it wasn't until we had that phone call, where they're like, you're right. Do you need hospice and I was like we do. But we've been doing it on our own for three months. And they were only there for a week. Like by the time they came in, we'd already been doing it. A lot, just a range of emotions.

I can only imagine. forgive somebody that is an idiot in this. Okay, cuz you're a good guy. I know. You know that. This is not a gotcha moment. Yeah. But one of the things that I think about from from an outsider's perspective is I would say, you know, Jeremy's better off now. Huh? Boy, what a hard life he had. And that family is so much better off now. Again, forgive me for saying this.

No, you don't have to because we felt it. We have felt what some might call survivor's guilt. Yeah, you know, we felt that. Whitaker when he passed in 2013, we had always had the goal of adopting. When anna and i were dating, we had always talked about adopting someday, hopefully at least two children. But because of our circumstances and our boys our family's needs, we just did not have the capacity to adopt while we were taking care of two special needs boys and then Kenan and Sabina on top of it. When wit passed away in 2013, we re evaluated and we're like we think we would be able to take that on. I mean, we have one special needs son. And if we were doing what we were doing with two, I think we could adopt and it's not about we're more free now. It's just our capacity has changed. When Cooper past things changed a lot more because of his seizures. I had been doing international evangelism I had started traveling, I had been to Lithuania had been to the Philippines. I was planning my second trip back to the Philippines, I think when Cooper was four, but that was the year that he started going to the hospital. And so I had already purchased plane tickets, but he been to the hospital for the second time. Anna and I had a long talk about, I can't do this, like, I cannot risk being out of the country with him going to the hospital. And we don't know why it's been so severe right now. I would feel horrible if he wound up in the hospital while I was overseas and couldn't get back and something happened. Right. So I've got to cancel that trip. And it was hard. The airline was super gracious. But that meant my world, from what I was doing got smaller, no more international trips for the foreseeable future, doing gospel meetings that are further away. I can't do that. I can't say yes to those invitations. And so there was some anger and frustration on my part as my world got smaller. Right. When Cooper passed away, because I had been saying no to so many things for so long. I said yes to everything. Like every invitation that came in, you want me to go overseas? Yes. You want a gospel meeting? Yes. Oh, you want me to travel? Yes. And so the first couple of years after Cooper passed, I was burning out. And Anna and I had to have another conversation of Okay, our dynamic has changed, and our capacity has changed. But we need to be more reasonable. There are other responsibilities. You can't say yes to everything. You can't be gone all the time. Yeah, I'm a part of that was, I was trying to honor Cooper, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do everything I can, because I've got all this extra time that I haven't spending here. And since I'm not, I'm gonna spend it in a redemptive way. I just needed to ratchet, ratchet it back. But all of us, Anna felt that I felt that Kenan felt that the guilt of being able to plan, there are a lot of things that we put on the calendar, and Cooper would have a seizure. And we'd have to call up and say, No, I can't do that. Now we could put things on the calendar and go, we could do it. And every time we put it down, we would feel guilty. Because we would enjoy what we were doing. But we would realize I get to enjoy that because he's not here. Yeah. And then the guilt would kick in. And so we had to, we had to think through that together.

We've talked about this before. I call this this idea of wonderfully broken, the idea that we often end up going to a Sunday morning service. Everybody looks clean, the children are well behaved. Everybody looks like they got their act together. None of us see the conversation of the fight that they had on the way over. And none of us see the fight that happens. Right, as soon as they get back in the car. Yeah, that for an hour, two weeks, we see a very nicely put together family. Yeah, but we don't really understand the broken bits of any of us. Let me ask you this. And I think you know what I mean, this. Jeremy, Do you consider yourself broken? Oh, absolutely. Why?

The idea of brokenness, I think is intrinsically connected to the idea of being humbled. What were my expectations when I first got married, I mean, I think my expectation was what every American couple has, when they start dating, and they get married, I know we're going to have a great life, we're going to have 2.5, perfectly healthy kids. And at age 6065, I'm going to retire ambass my grandbabies on my knee, and I'm going to die before any of them die, and it's going to be great. And at some point, Jesus will go back and I'm sure I'll enjoy heaven. You know, yeah, that's just the scenario that we play out in our heads that's arrogant, so arrogant to think that I'm owed or that I should expect my best life now, to quote, a ridiculous book title. There's no promise of that here. And there are a lot of blessings that we experience being here in America. And I'm grateful for all of them. But I think there are other places in the world where the realities of living in a broken world are more prevalent, and they're just in your face a little bit more, we would benefit from a dose of that. Who am I to get angry that a couple of my kids die? There's some families that lose all their kids. Yeah, who am I to think that I'm owed that? When I say that I'm broken God, God humbled us. It made us I hope, more grateful for the blessings that we enjoy here. It's also made us realize I don't want to stay here. I don't, it's broken here. Where I want to be is where my two boys already are. Like, I want to be there. Yeah. So I hope I hope that it's humbled me, that's what I mean by that. And our circumstances, God can use our circumstances to humble us.

You're not the only one that's going to go through stuff like this. No, you probably, at this point, know, a lot of names of people who have gone through something similar. What's the advice that you would give them because on the other end of this, I can only imagine that you see a lot more hope that you that you see a lot more lighter moments, and that it's easier for you to see joy, because I don't think in those moments. Those are easy things to find.

Yeah, I was just thinking about seeing joy. One of the lessons that my wife and I learned through this process is that joy is a choice. Even as far as her handle on Instagram is joyfully chosen, she didn't pick that after she worked through her grief, she picked it in the middle of it. We're in the middle of the tunnel. And I know there's an end of the tunnel. And I don't like what's coming at the end of the tunnel. I mean, when I'm when I'm talking about the tunnel, I'm talking about special needs living and you see death, that's the end. And so in the tunnel, she's like, joyfully chosen, I need to choose joy, I need to learn to see and choose joy, even in moments that are hard. That's biblical. Yeah. You think about the book of Lamentations, which so few Christians study. The thing is a textbook on processing through grief. And one of the most joyful, hopeful texts in the Old Testament is intentionally smack dab in the middle of it because of its gastic structure. And so he talks about the joy of the Lord. And so as you learn these things about God, and that God is good, and the gods in control, and even broken moments, God uses redemptively. And he's glorified even through that. That's one of the things that we had to learn that we want to share with other people. It doesn't discount the difficulty of the moment. And it doesn't discount the sorrow. I think our culture, we haven't learned how to grieve well, and that was one of the things that I threw myself into, after Whittaker passed, you know, our first son, I threw myself into Lamentations. I have a hand written copy of Lamentations. I have so many commentaries on Lamentations, and then I'm sure my church got tired of it. But I preached a five part sermon through laminations, a sermon for each chapter, because I needed it. Yeah, I needed to learn how to grieve better.

We have a pretty good handle on precious moments Christianity. Yeah. But we don't do well, with the real life Christianity, which honestly, it's not nearly that pretty well, it's real. Yeah,

I mean, precious moments, Christianity is not real. Everybody is doing something hard. And they're hard doesn't discount your heart, right? Your heart is still hard, whether people are aware of it or not, is a different thing. But everybody's working through something. And if they're not, they will, because it's a part of living in a broken world, all of us are going to Yeah, and we need to be preparing each other for that. I mean, that was one of our goals is we realized what was coming to the end of his life, we could get angry about it. And we could get bitter about it. We could do all of these things. Or we could start preparing ourselves for it, and trying to prepare the people around us for it, so that they would weather it. I was writing emails to my church family on a regular basis. I was writing to my family on a regular basis, Mom and Dad let me plan a special devotion at our Christmas family getaway for several nights to try to prepare us for death. Like our family Winokur was the first death of our immediate family. So how are we going to try to prepare our family for this loss? Yeah, I try to help people get ready.

What is the advice that you would give a family that finds themselves in a similar situation to you?

So I would say don't make assumptions, right about what people see or what they know. Communicate? Learn how to work through your emotions in a godly way. Yeah. Because their God given. It's a part of being created in God's image. our emotions have a job to do. They reveal what we value. When you're revealing what's going on inside of you. Take stock of that moment and work through that in a godly way. And graciously be patient with other people as they're doing the same thing, because they're gonna grieve differently.

Did you have a problem asking for help?

Yes. I would like to think that I got better over time. Yeah, I think part of it in my head was I'm the evangelist like, I've got to have this together. And I've got to have this figured out. And then there's my personality, which is very type a, you know, I can do this, like I, and I'm the oldest child, I can do this. But that was the whole broken part. like God was breaking me. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't hold it all together. I couldn't get everything done. But that was part of my breaking. I needed to be humble enough to admit, I need some help. And my family needs some help.

Where did you take out your frustration?

I don't know that it was a constant thing. I usually bottled it up, I would get more tense, my shoulders would get tense and they'd creep up on my neck and I wouldn't sleep well. I would not be as patient. I mean, there were some times in some family get togethers where I would lose my patients. The last Christmas before wit passed away, was the Christmas where I had planned that devotional to help prepare all of us because we could see it coming and it was very, he passed away three months later, but it was that same Christmas. I lost my temper with one of my siblings. I don't even remember what it was over. Because it wasn't about my sibling. I just lost my temper. And so there was a long broken Like ugly crying conversation and until 1am is my wife and I and my sister and brother in law stayed up just talking. I felt 70 years old. I mean, I felt so rundown and emotionally wrung out. I was like, I feel like I'm 70 I had moments like that. And my family was very patient. They did not let me get away with that. They say, Hey, we need to talk. This is not normal. And you just exploded? What just happened?

You lived every parent's worst nightmare. You lived it twice. Yeah. What did you learn about God?

I started writing a book about that, because everyone was asking me about that. What have you learned? What have you learned about God? I mean, I've got all these journals. I've got all these Facebook posts, I've got all these emails, all this stuff that I wrote through all of that. And so after wit past, I started writing the book, organize the chapters got 75% of the way through hundreds of pages, in about that time that I got to that point is when it started all over with Cooper. And we're like, I think we're losing Cooper. It put me back to square one. It just did. And it was different. In my arrogance, I thought, oh, I've done this once it's going to be the exact same. And it wasn't, you know, the loss was different. It was a different person. And it was a different relationship. And it didn't look identical. The principles stayed the same. And so that was humbling. You know, I think I've got this grief thing over losing child figured out, oops, No, I don't. But consistent through all of that, all the Bible reading and the journaling, praying the grieving, looking for hope that there is a God. And he is good. And he is in control. And we live in a broken cursed world. And that this home is not our home. And my boys are in a place where they have intact and whole bodies. You know, I'm looking forward to being with them someday. There's so much more that I could say. But I think that was the gist of it coming back to Is there a god? And if if there is, Is he good? And is he really in control? And the answer is yes. And I don't have to understand everything here. I've got unanswered questions, but that's okay. Because I'm not God. I don't have to know the answers. What I'm called to do is to trust him. You know, one of my favorite biblical characters through all of that was job. There was a brother man. He should write TV drama was one of our deacons. The weekend of Whitaker's life celebration, we didn't have a memorial service. We didn't we had a celebration of life service. We rented a community center. It was beautiful and bright and great. And all these people that that had been a part of his story were there. But that Sunday, this Deacon, organize the service, I couldn't preach for weeks. I just I could not get up in the pulpit and talk without mauling. Yeah. So that Sunday, he got up and he planned a service and he planned a song service. And he asked different guys to lead songs and different guys to read some scripture. But he started it off with paraphrasing from job, you know, job starts off there was a man named job. But instead of job, he threw my name in there. In the state of Indiana, there was a man named Jeremy, who was faithful to God and this happened. I identify with job a lot. And you get to the end of job job doesn't handle everything right. You know, he makes some really good points early on, he oversteps partway through he's got some friends that did not do a very good job. But at the end of it, he still has unanswered questions. He does not know what all has taken place. You don't have that perspective. And God doesn't offer it in the book. Yeah. But God helps him bring bring him to the point and humble him to the point to acknowledge there is a God. I am him. And I am good. And I know better. Trust me. Yeah. So at the end of it, job sits there in job 42, as some of my favorite passages in all of the Bible were jobs, like I thought I knew God. I heard of you with my ear. But now I see you with my eyes, I have a better perspective of you now.

I love that. I started off this conversation by asking you this question. Do you believe tragedy brings us closer to God. Jeremy, do you believe this tragedy brought you closer to God? Absolutely.

One of the blessings of the tragedy, you know, even though we didn't choose it, we don't choose those moments. But God in His sovereignty either allows or causes them however you want to think through that. But God uses them and has the power to use them in redemptive ways. Depending on how we respond and how we point people to him, more people will come to praise and glorify God through a tragedy. One of the blessings that came out of that loss which was hard and hurtful and painful, it was a loss was the opportunity to share gospel with our oldest son. That was probably six or seven months after Whittaker passed. And we had actually changed houses. At Anna's request. She had asked, you know, this is the house where Whitaker lived his whole life. Could we change houses? And we thought about that. And so we left it up to God, we did what we could we listed it, and we had a full price offer in 24 hours. Wow. Which was unheard of back in the time. And so God provided the the open door. So we had moved, we had moved to a new house, and we were doing our family DeVos at night, and we were doing our Bible reading, spontaneously. We hadn't been talking about Whitaker, but Kenan started crying. And when we asked them what he was crying about, he said, Well, I'm just I'm missing with. So he said, this is a this is a grieving moment, we're gonna weep with those who weep, we miss them to Cooper was on the couch, and Sabina is on the couch. And they're clueless, they don't know what's going on. But Anna and I cried with Kenan, but he wouldn't stop crying. It kept working up. And so I started reasoning with them about why our grief was different. You know, it's okay to miss them. And so there's a loss here, death is separation, and there's been a separation, but that separation for us is temporary. We'll get to see Whitaker again, that loss is temporary. We believe that Whitaker's with the Lord, and that someday we're gonna get to see him again. That didn't stop the crime. And I was just so slow. And I was like, oh, man, your mom and I have that hope of seeing him again. We're in Christ. Are you afraid that you're not going to get to see him again? He's like, Yeah, I don't know that I'm going to see him again. And so as a dad, I was like, oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. I'm gospel. We're gonna we're gonna go through the gospel right now. And in my head, I'm like, I want you to become a Christian right now, tonight, I want you to have this hope. But I can't force you. I can't push you to ask me your choice. Like there were so many conflicting emotions, like but we're gonna we're gonna go through it so that you know what you need to do to respond to the grace of God, and to place your faith in Jesus. We went through the gospel, he and I went downstairs into my office, he got his Bible, I got my Bible, we went through the whole thing is like, so are you ready to become a Christian? I wanted him to say yes. And he said, No. He said, No. And he said, I can't make that commitment yet. Like I believe it. I agree with it. But I understand that there's a life that I'm committing to as a disciple, and I can't make that commitment yet. Which was a perfect answer. But in my head, I'm like, Oh, I want to stop your grief right now. But a couple of months later, in December, of the same year that went past Kenan became a Christian. And he said that that was one of the driving factors was thinking about having to think through eternity, and think through life and death, and think through his loss. So that was one of the blessings that came out of that. So even though tragedies are hard, God can use them for good things.

Yeah, what kind of blessings come out of something like this.

There are a lot of blessings that can potentially come out of difficult circumstances, tragedy and loss, that we can grieve differently, because we have hope. It's opened doors to connect with other hurting people, for me to share. I felt this or I responded in anger, or I felt hopeless, those kinds of things. And people feel that, but they didn't realize they had permission to say that, yeah, we've been able to connect with a lot of people. And with the counseling that I do, I have two pictures on my desk. The two photos that I've got on my desk. One is a current family photo. You know, it's whatever the year is, we've had the family photo, Anna and I and the kids right now, that's Kenan Sabina grace and Felicity. And when you look at it, height wise, it's like Kenan, and then this younger set of three, um, you know, he looks like a giant, that's not gonna last long. The second picture is our family photo with the three boys, Kenan Cooper and wit, before Sabina was born, before we had made the plans to adopt the other two. And so I'll have those two photos on my desk. And people will come in for counseling and for help, and they'll share whatever's going on. And it's hard. They're hard that they're living through. We've been through hard things, and I can't imagine some of the harm that other people are going through. And they share it and they put it out there. And they'll say so is there is there hope is there hope. And then I'll say I want to show you two pictures. And I'll bring two pictures over and I say do you see these two pictures. And most of these people at this point, never met the boys. They don't know and they don't know our life story. And so they just look at the two photos and then all of a sudden they glance back and they're like, wait a minute. There are a couple of new kids here and I don't see this what's what's going on, but they don't want to ask. Yeah. And so we'll share. You know, this is our family. back before 2013. We had two special needs boys. They both had way one and 2013 when in 2016. This is our family currently, which is why you see this age gap, we've got a gap between our biological children, because we had two sons pass away. And Life was hard Life was hard for them, they hurt their bodies hurt broken bodies. Most families that have a special needs child, they struggle, the marriages struggle, we had a times two. And then most families that have experienced the loss of life of one of their children really struggle, sometimes ending in divorce, we've experienced that twice. We're not on the other end of this thing. And we're not intact, and we're not growing. And we're not joyful because of anything that we've got. The only difference that has got us from this picture to this picture is God that connects with people. That's a blessing. I kept every single Facebook post that I posted and people shared, I started archiving it for the book, I still have all of the cards and notes that people mailed to us that we hung on the wall. We did it for wit, we did it for Cooper. And because it was our second time Cooper's card wall took up a 20 foot stretch of hallway. We kept it all I still have it. But there was one comment that someone sent me a private message on Facebook, back in 2013. It was someone that was really struggling. They said, I want to connect with you and spend time with you. And welcome you to the Brotherhood of fathers who have buried their kids. It doesn't matter who it was, I love this person. But in that moment, they sent me some other messages. And I'm like, Man, you are so hurting. Grief is eating you up right now. They thought they were serving. Yeah. And so I sat down with and I was like I need help responding to this. Like, I can't take the time to respond to everybody. There's just no way. Yeah, but this one we're going to respond to. And so my response to that gentleman was God's goodness and sovereignty. This is the mantle he has given me to where I've just got to choose whether I'm going to do it well or not. And I can be angry with him and I can be bitter with him. And it would be a disservice to God and disservice to my boy's life. Or I could take it up and do it as well as I can. And he didn't write anything back after that. I hope he listened. There's a lot of stuff we didn't choose. But God did. And if he's good, and he's in control, the only choice I've got is, am I going to respond to this? Well, and steward it well or not?

I end all my podcasts would be good and do good. I've asked you that question before Jeremy.

Yeah.

I'm going to modify it just a little bit. How can we be good to people who are in these situations?

Spend time with them? It's going to be awkward. Embrace the awkward. Don't assume. Be humble, ask questions. listen deeply. And look for creative ways to serve. One of the things that someone did for us and we still don't know who it is, to this day, we don't know who it is. But it was back in 2011. We had both boys and Life was hard. Anna was taking care of both of those boys on a daily basis while I was trying to live life and meet my responsibilities. One of the things that was slipping because of our limited capacity was the housework. And one day, one of the sisters from church showed up with her cleaning kit, because one of the things that she did on the side as a side hustle was clean houses. And she showed up and said, I can't tell you who it is. But somebody at church wanted to serve you guys, and take this off of your plate. So for the foreseeable future, I'm going to come once a week and clean your house. We still don't know who it was. And they did it for a long time. That was just a really observant Christian sibling that saw what our need was and understood and was willing to sacrifice for us. That's just one example of what we can do to do good.

If somebody wanted to get a hold of you, man, how could they do that.

So if someone wanted to get a hold of me, they can reach out to me through my website, Jeremy hunt.com, there should be a contact me button there where I will get their email. They could also go to appian media.org. And there's a contact us button there and that email would get ahold of me as well.

Thank you for doing this man.

My pleasure. Thank you for thinking about it.

I feel certain this was a harder episode to listen to, but I'm also certain it's really important.

Look,

I'm a huge fan of Jeremy and what they do who they offer. I'm grateful. They've shown us how to choose joy in grief. Jeremy and Anna, thank you for your example. And sharing the parts as well as the parts will live. As for the good thing I'm thinking about. I'm grateful for people who share their struggles. Just like Jeremy and Matt basford was interviewed in Episode 38, recently shared being diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. What I've been watching is someone who has taken his struggle, and truly helped him. so far. He's talked about helping those with metal loans, and shown how his faith in God helps him. Look, Matt is a guy who's been dealt a bad hand. But I'm truly impressed how he's using it, to help others. God bless you, Matt. I've been talking to a lot of people recently, I just recently finished a conversation with Julie Adams and Nikki Lee, who have a podcast called the Nikki and Julie podcast. It's geared toward women, but I've had a blast listening to the banter. I also talked with Max Dawson, a Christian leader in Texas, who I think is very gifted and helpi g his church serve. Next week, I plan to release a conversation I had with podcaster and blogge , Wes McAdams, who helped me ee the idea of being wonderfu ly broken in a whole new lig t. I'll say it again. This jour ey has been so good for me. I h pe it's helping you as well. So until next week, let's be g od and do go