Welcome to episode 16!
When we find ourselves grappling with loss, the journey can be isolating and profound. Mary Matt, a school psychologist and mother who has endured the heartache of losing her son Maverick, joins me to share her intimate experience with miscarriage, a chemical pregnancy, and stillbirth. Her poignant narrative reveals not only her personal anguish but also the broader issue of how religious platitudes can sometimes deepen the wounds of the grieving. Through her story, we uncover the delicate balance between faith, mourning, and the true meaning of support.
This episode takes an unflinching look at the impact of religious clichés when comforting the bereaved. We discuss the often-unintended consequences of saying things like "God won't give you more than you can handle," dissecting why such expressions, though well-intentioned, can fail those in their darkest hours. Mary's reflections guide us through her spiritual journey and the importance of authentic, empathetic companionship over theological commentary. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the intersection of grief and religion with sensitivity and respect.
Mary's courage in recounting her journey is a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring love of a parent. Her dedication to her church's children ministry and her work with children are a beautiful homage to Maverick's legacy, inspiring us all to channel our deepest sorrows into acts of kindness and service. Join us as we honor the memory of Maverick and explore how love and purpose can emerge triumphantly from the depths of despair.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
Welcome to episode 16!
When we find ourselves grappling with loss, the journey can be isolating and profound. Mary Matt, a school psychologist and mother who has endured the heartache of losing her son Maverick, joins me to share her intimate experience with miscarriage, a chemical pregnancy, and stillbirth. Her poignant narrative reveals not only her personal anguish but also the broader issue of how religious platitudes can sometimes deepen the wounds of the grieving. Through her story, we uncover the delicate balance between faith, mourning, and the true meaning of support.
This episode takes an unflinching look at the impact of religious clichés when comforting the bereaved. We discuss the often-unintended consequences of saying things like "God won't give you more than you can handle," dissecting why such expressions, though well-intentioned, can fail those in their darkest hours. Mary's reflections guide us through her spiritual journey and the importance of authentic, empathetic companionship over theological commentary. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the intersection of grief and religion with sensitivity and respect.
Mary's courage in recounting her journey is a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring love of a parent. Her dedication to her church's children ministry and her work with children are a beautiful homage to Maverick's legacy, inspiring us all to channel our deepest sorrows into acts of kindness and service. Join us as we honor the memory of Maverick and explore how love and purpose can emerge triumphantly from the depths of despair.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
Follow on IG @themiscarriagedad
Email themiscarriagedad@gmail.com
Make sure you subscribe!
Write us a review!
What this conversation is explicitly about is when Kelly goes to Mary and Kelly brings his own religious ideologies and tries to impose that on Mary as a way for comfort, and what Kelly is saying is that cannot happen because that is hijacking Mary. The opportunity to be vulnerable, to express deep sadness, to express deep grief and for me and Mary to connect at that human level at a moment where I need to be the most vulnerable with her because she is feeling the most fragile and vulnerable. This is the Miscarriage Dads podcast, a podcast humanizing the experience of miscarriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Miscarriage Dads podcast. So today Chris is unavailable, so it's just going to be me and our guest who I'm going to ask to introduce herself in a little bit. In a little bit, but I just want to say thank you so much for all of you who continuously tune in to this podcast and engage with our content and have contributed to this conversation.
Speaker 1:The last conversation Chris and I started a couple of weeks ago has been well received. Well has been received by some, it's been well received by others. It's just ruffled some feathers, and that just goes to show the importance of having not just these types of conversations but this particular conversation. And so this is conversation number two in this new series that we're starting, when religious conviction, religious belief, clashes with loss and grief. And I am delighted to have a special guest with me this afternoon, and so I'm going to ask her to please introduce herself.
Speaker 2:Hi there, my name is Mary Matt. I am a school psychologist by day and also a lost parent.
Speaker 1:Mary and I we connected on Instagram, we follow each other's accounts, and shortly after we started this series, you posted something, mary, that I ended up sharing on my Instagram story. And then I just took a leap of faith and reached out to you and I was like, hey, I really like what you just said there. Would you mind coming on to the show so we can have this extended conversation? And you were gracious enough to send me over a couple of dates, and so here we are, about to just dive in headfirst into this conversation, but before we do, can you give our listeners a sense of who you are in terms of your story, your loss story?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my husband and I haven't been together about 10 years. We both have had quite the journey in loss world, especially in our relationship and in our marriage. We've been married 10 years this year and in that time we have struggled with secondary infertility, we've had a miscarriage, a chemical pregnancy, and then we also uttered those words that we all dread that our son, maverick, no longer had a heartbeat, and I carried him to term with his twin brother, erickson, and the way up to the 39 week.
Speaker 1:Having those words basically seared in your memory now and anticipating the delivery date. What was that time frame like for you? What toll did it take on you? What did it do to you, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually?
Speaker 2:do to you psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. I will say that the initial shock it was more of my codependent tendencies of caring for my husband and my oldest son when we first learned that Maverick had died, because I kind of had figured my husband was going to have a tough road ahead and just monitoring me and then also after delivery, just my mental health and just caring for me. So I felt like those first initial days really were focused on making sure that he was okay, because I knew that he had an extra layer of grief and with regard to not only is he a father that's grieving but he is also now going to step into the role of supporting me, obviously carrying both life and death simultaneously and in anticipation of our son Maverick being stillborn. Few weeks, that first month, it was really just about kind of processing that information, trying to help him process it, because obviously it's different for a lost dad who is somewhat removed from the physicality of a pregnancy. So those first few weeks were really just it felt like a little bit of damage control. But thereafter it was more of how am I going to carry him, keep myself healthy, because at the time I did not realize that I was at risk of going septic and also losing Erickson in the process.
Speaker 2:Those risks were not really discussed with me but my husband, being a man of intellect and a little common sense, did a quick Google search and kind of started preparing himself. For what do I need to look out for? How can I be supportive? What are the things that we need to completely, you know, stay away from? So like any extra stress, things like that.
Speaker 2:He was really good about making sure health wise physically I was okay Mental health wise really just being there when I needed it and validating the feelings as they cropped up. We really did that for each other and we both already knew given the fact that you know, we've been married for 10 years, creeping into two decades of being together, so we really knew that we were both going to grieve differently, like we understand each other's coping skills, our style of you, know how we care for our own needs and how we process information. So luckily, we kept our communication pretty open and we just took it a step at a time and we didn't. He really followed my lead as far as what I was comfortable with and disclosing, and I was pretty open about Maverick's death from the moment I found out that he was no longer with us. So that was kind of how we started to navigate that, at least up until I delivered.
Speaker 1:If there were a checklist of all of the things that someone could do to handle such a devastating stretched period of time like that. Everything you said, it just sounded like check, check, check, check. I mean, that is just so awesome to hear the understanding between the two of you, the understanding of how each other grieves, the giving each other space, the you being mindful of him, him being mindful of you, him being proactive. And you know, it's rare that when it comes to some type of health issue, that Google actually helps in the situation. And so here's a situation where Google was helpful and useful and not taking things you know down a very sinister rabbit hole. Can you take me through the experience of delivering, as you said, life and death?
Speaker 2:It was hard. That was, I feel like, when everything really for me became real In the weeks leading up to delivery. It was a sense of, like, dread coupled with excitement, coupled with, I mean, just a lot of anxiety, like I wanted to make sure that I got everything I wanted. So, unlike a traditional, maybe stillbirth story, I had, you know, the better part of half a pregnancy to kind of prepare for this delivery of life and death.
Speaker 2:And for me, I just really wanted to make sure that, despite the fact that, no matter how I was going to cut this, it was going to be tragic, I wanted to ensure that I walked away feeling like I did everything I wanted to do to honor my son Maverick, and overall I feel like I did that. We did that as a couple, as a family, and there is really only one in that whole everything I wanted to honor him. I felt like there was only one thing that I didn't do In hindsight. It's always 2020. But I'm very grateful that I had that time, because I also empathize so deeply with our lost families that incur the loss at the very end, that have no time to even buffer themselves in this grief journey at all.
Speaker 1:What was that one thing you wish you could have done?
Speaker 2:My husband had opted. We had a long discussion. We had a friend of ours that was kind of helping us in this process and he had told me early on I do not want to physically see Maverick's body. That's not what I want. I don't want to remember him that way. I don't want our first meeting to be that way and in this my so I obviously am. I'm confined to the bed.
Speaker 2:There's not much I can do at this point there was a few issues with the hospital and Maverick as far as where he was at, how he was treated, but I won't go into that. But basically it limited me to be able to get up, freely, move around the room, get Maverick um, you know, back and forth. And so I, a friend of mine, had hired um now I lay me down to sleep to come in and take pictures of him and um, unfortunately the only picture I did not get was of him in his entirety. Um, because I was concerned with um, obviously decomp in utero. What would that look like for his little body? Who who was, you know, not fully developed, obviously very frail Um, but with that I, I did not tell anybody that I wanted that, I just it really slipped my mind and the chaos of the loss and impending delivery, it just slipped my mind.
Speaker 2:And so now I'm left with, you know I have pictures I, obviously he's wrapped up in the pictures with um. You know my husband, you know, as he had requested, please, I don't want to see him, that's fine, um, but I just didn't get the picture of his full, full little body. But I have cute pictures of his feet, um, and you know him wrapped up with his twin brother and things like that. But that was the one thing I just wish I would have had for me. Um, but I do have one picture where you can kind of see the top of his uh, little tiny, little little hairy head, um, where I'm holding him in the palm of my hand. So he's very small now.
Speaker 1:So here we are talking about life and death, and there is nothing that can get us right to the heart of the reason why you and I are having this conversation than this paradigm I think we all have. As human beings, we all have a drive for life, and one of the most uncomfortable things, one of the most uncomfortable situations and places that we can find ourselves ourselves in, is either in a place of grieving something or someone who has died, or being witnesses to someone grieving something or someone who has died. So I self-identify as a Christian. I've said it very clearly on this podcast before. I have a master's of divinity. I went to seminary school. Some people call me pastor, some people call me priest. I am a chaplain by profession, so faith is a very fundamental part of who I am and how I see the world. What is your relationship to religion, spirituality? How do you identify and and or do you even not use those type of labels and you identify some other way?
Speaker 2:I think, for all intents and purposes, for simplicity I would say I align definitely with Christianity. But as far as religion, although I probably present as your very typical Sunday churchgoer- I'm actually not. I have a very deep and profound relationship with Christ and our almighty creator. I love theology, I love history as it pertains to theology and it very much is a part of who Mary is at the core.
Speaker 1:So you mean to tell me a person named Mary doesn't go to church on Sundays?
Speaker 2:Come on, I know, I know, but this person named Mary is actively involved in children's ministry because I just love volunteering.
Speaker 1:There we go. I got that going for me, there we go. That makes up for it. So listen, mary, let's just address it. God talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think we we hear a lot of um, what I like to kind of. I heard this a while back. It was called cliche entity, cliche entity.
Speaker 1:I like that. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:Because in this process like I have a lot of obviously, like I said, I am involved in children's ministry as a Christ follower I have a lot of friends that align with Christianity and their favorite is God won't give you anything you can't handle. That's one of the top ones. That or God has a reason and I just like it's mortifying and it's it's very glaring to me when I hear things like that. Who truly understands God and who really is just listening to the regurgitation of what is being kind of the buzzwords of society, like who's in the word and who's kind of just sitting out there in the world. And it's not intentional, but it's something that I think that people really have to think about because they're really band-aid, blanketed statements to make them feel better.
Speaker 1:Not us, the ones that have actually endured significant loss that there may be some listeners who are not Christians, who do not identify or align with Christianity, who may have an entirely different spiritual identity or affiliation or alignment. So what you and I are talking about is specifically to those of us who are in the vicinity of Christianity in some way, shape or form, who are in the vicinity of Christianity in some way, shape or form. But I'm going to go out on a limb and venture to say that perhaps in the other religious or spiritual domains and practices, if there are also concepts or if there are also convictions, that may also not be helpful to convey to someone who is grieving in that moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, those are the two that I hear the most, Mostly that you know God doesn't give you more than you can handle, which we all know is not sound in its logic.
Speaker 1:Was that said to you directly though?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, everything happens for a reason that God must have needed another angel, which, well, don't get me started on the angel part I'm like, oh, it doesn't really. I mean, it's very sweet sentiments, like I understand, understand them, but they're, they are unhelpful, they, they, basically they discount the entire loss and grief process. Um, really, we need people to witness the grief. Um, and, like I it, my response is typically something to the effect of I appreciate that sentiment. Um, however, I don't share the same like theological thought process is usually how I would relay that information and it's, it's been pretty, um, I would say, educational for people when I have those conversations and they're like, well, what do you mean? Or I'm like, well, there we go, we're just opening up the layers of, let's have the conversation of what does Mary mean when she says like, hey, I just to say, like second Corinthians, where God really does show us that he gives us more than we can handle. So we look up at him and seek his face, because he is how we handle anything in this world ultimately, in this world ultimately.
Speaker 2:And I really try to remind people that he handles my battles for me and that whatever I face, even in the time frame of when I already knew, when looking at the ultrasound screen, that my son was dead. I knew this, I could see it clear as day. And it's exactly the reason I turned to my husband and I said you need to prepare yourself. And you know, as I'm thinking in my mind, I kept thinking whatever you got her up to, I'm all in, I'm scared. I hate what's happening to me. I hate that my son is gone, he's dead and there's nothing I can do. And I wake up tomorrow and in a week from now and in 10 years from now. And that's still my reality. And I have to find a way to lean into his promises because the only way I am going to get through it, because I am not strong and the strength that I have is minuscule compared to the almighty creator.
Speaker 1:So what do you think is underneath the reason, the impulse that people have to want to impose these platitudes on someone who is experiencing the most devastating pain that they will probably ever experience in their lives? What do you think was behind the fact that some people in your community said some of those things to you?
Speaker 2:Two things discomfort and ignorance.
Speaker 1:So I knew you were going to say the ignorance part. Let's take ignorance off the table, because to me that's starting to become like a crutch. So let's take ignorance off the table. Discomfort and what else.
Speaker 2:I think I was reading something recently. David Kessler had said we live in a grief illiterate society. So really it's about being uncomfortable because we're not well educated on the topic of grief and in our Western society I mean, let's really think about that. Most of us with our loved one passes away. We get three days off for bereavement, we have a funeral within five days days and boom, you're back to work. And he was like yo, we're at you good. No, no, we're not good, cause this is cyclical. That's the other thing. There are no stages of grief. Grief is cyclical.
Speaker 1:Just baked into our system. You're absolutely right Just baked into the system. Is this disregard for the value of the grieving process?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And you add in a loss like a pregnancy loss, and especially for men. I mean you're a few degrees disassociated at that point. And then you're asking other people to tap into that grief and they're even more disassociated because it's not theirs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. So what I think is fascinating about your experience and my experience in terms of how things played out and also in terms of how what am I trying to say In terms of how people think about what the grieving should be like, or even if there should be any grief at all. You had a pregnancy where your twins had grown in your body and ultimately, Maverick's death occurred at a point early on in the pregnancy where he stopped growing, but you still had to carry him and Erickson to full term in order to deliver both of them. My wife experienced miscarriages which occur chromosomal abnormality. The body detects it pretty early, stops the pregnancy and it is the shock. I don't think there's a difference in the shock value, but it is the shock that we were expecting and then, all of a sudden, it's just, it's just done. And then all of a sudden, it's just it's just done. So her pregnancies ended before she even got to experience any of the things that you got to experience in your pregnancy.
Speaker 1:I think it's acceptable on a societal level. Let's try to remove the stigma around miscarriage. And for for a second, if there were no stigma, I think somebody would look at that and say, yep, If there's one person who should actually be grieving in this scenario, it should be the woman, because she then has to go and get this procedure or the her body's going to pass whatever is left inside at home and it can be traumatic and it is devastating to her and in fact that happened to us. Both happened. She had to get several DENCs and the one passed right here at home as we were getting ready to go to work. But I think when it comes to that type of grief, I've never felt a kick. Like you said, I am several degrees disassociated from the experience. I've never felt a kick. I've never seen a belly grow. I haven't done any of that stuff.
Speaker 1:From my standpoint as a man, I think society would look at me and be like the heck you're sad about.
Speaker 1:Like the heck you grieving about.
Speaker 1:Like bro, you get to have more sex, you get to try again, Like it's really not that big a deal, your body didn't go through anything, You're not experiencing any type of physical effects or discomfort, Like what the heck do you have to worry about? I think in your scenario people would definitely I mean, we would call those people evil if they did not empathize with your husband feeling grief and your husband publicly emoting because, oh my God, he was expecting to be a father of two. One of them passed away and they're having to now parent the one who's always going to remind them of the other one, and all of that stuff. So I think people would become a lot softer to his grief than my own, than my own. Do you think that there is something to do with the physical, tangible nature of having a child who has passed away and how grief is tolerated when it comes to that scenario versus the? It just got lost in the nothingness of space and at least for the guy he really has nothing to to be tripping about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that you're absolutely correct on that.
Speaker 2:Like there's not something tangible to show for said grief.
Speaker 2:Or in this case we're talking about early pregnancy loss in the form of miscarriages.
Speaker 2:I think that men are absolutely discounted and we're only seeing that to be more prevalent as society drudges on.
Speaker 2:It just seems to be that they aren't seen in this community and it's unfortunate because even with my husband in losing Maverick really I mean even in that I mean the simplest thing I can even come up with right now is the social worker comes into our hospital room and doesn't acknowledge him, not one time in the process of losing Maverick, which to me, watching that, it was very upsetting, more than even what I was going through, because it's like you have this man who is here supporting his wife, who you know never will know the tangibility, I mean at all. I mean he didn't see him, he did hold him, but I mean it's just a very different experience and that the fact that we have mental health professionals that are supposed to be facilitating what can be looked at as maybe some getting them connected with community resources, providing information, but to not even look or address the man, even in that situation, tells me that it's far worse for our earlier lost dads as far as their support and their grief process.
Speaker 1:So I bring all of that up to again. Bring the conversation back to God. Talk in those moments Now. Imagine just that, right there.
Speaker 1:And then going to your community, who then whispers these type of things into your ears, whispers these type of things into your husband's ears. What does that do to you? How, then, do you begin to think through your experience through the lens of, for instance God has a purpose. Everything happens for a reason. Don't question God's wisdom. How, then, do you begin to and especially for I'm going to to impose myself into your story and try to put myself in the place of your husband?
Speaker 1:Here and here I am. I know what my experience is, man. I can only imagine what your experience as my wife is. As a man, I feel this impulse to want to cover you and protect you and shield you from all of that, but then, in the back of my mind, I'm hearing God did this. So why would I trust in this higher power who did this to my wife and who is doing this to me? Why would I want to trust that guy? Why would I want to give my allegiance to him? Why would I not be angry? You mean to tell me that I can't be angry at the person who killed my son. What does that do to you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of what I always ask people. When we're doing God talk, when we're talking about God and how we present information, we need to be very cognizant, because you got to ask yourself, me and yourself as a believer, we're coming to it from a different lens. But you, if you say that to somebody that maybe doesn't or has, maybe has maybe a newer relationship with Christ or our creator, you, got to ask yourself.
Speaker 2:Are your platitudes going to bring people closer to Christ or are they going to push them away? And everything you're saying to me tells me to hell with your God. Why would I? Why the hell would I? Because why would he need my baby, like what the hell did I do in life to deserve that?
Speaker 1:So at work presently I am supporting a patient whose baby has been in the hospital since birth and she is someone who is devout in her faith and we've had many conversations about what her experience has been. She has a history of losses and she also has living children, and this, her last child, has been complex medical needs, all of that stuff. So we've gotten to know each other and know about each other's story more that. I've visited with her in the hospital and recently she was telling me that you know, when she was pregnant, there were all of these other people in her community who were also pregnant, and now, since her son has been born and he's been in the hospital, she's having to watch all of the other women who were pregnant at the same time that she was live happily ever after with their kids, and none of them have complex medical needs. None of them have even been to the hospital since after they were born.
Speaker 1:So there is this sense that she's like hold on man, why couldn't you? This is relevant because one of the things that has been told to her is that you know, god won't give you any more than you can handle. Everything happens for a reason, like she's been told those types of things by people in her community. And so, in reflecting in our conversation, she's like, well, why couldn't? Why couldn't he just pick one of their kids? Why couldn't he just pick one of their kids? Why it had to be my kid?
Speaker 1:Like, haven't I gone through enough stuff? Why does he have to keep picking me to give me the heaviest battles, the heaviest burdens to carry? Doesn't he know how tired I am? If he knows everything, can't he see that this is leading me to my breaking point? Does he have to be this cruel to test my faith? If he knows everything, shouldn't he already know where my faith is without having to put this heavy burden on me?
Speaker 1:And so these are the implications of the things that we say to people, that I don't think the person who is saying that thing at that time is necessarily taken into consideration. Because, while it may sound like the right thing to say, while it may sound like it's coming from the mouth of God himself, the nuances, what is not being said, the sentiments that someone can, the conclusions, rather, that someone can draw from those things are so deeply disturbing and devastating to the person's psyche that is already fragile and in a state of utter vulnerability, because here you are just wanting to be a parent to your child, and in the most cruel way, it seems like in a moment where you already feel like you have very little control or no control whatsoever, that feeling of loss now amplifies that so much more. And so what? The heck man?
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more and I feel like, again, it goes down to people are very quick to mitigate their discomfort, so they slap on the first thing that comes to their mind, without really thinking Like. At that point it's almost like, if you're a follower, you're being entrusted with this, this, this huge emotion, this huge devastation for this other person, and it's almost like, in a way, god's giving you the responsibility to uplift them in a way that's conducive to healing, not in a way that leaves them feeling emptier than they felt before. So it's a responsibility. God talks to responsibility.
Speaker 1:I could not have said that any more beautifully. So the one point that I want to make clear is this If Kelly goes to Mary, who is grieving the loss of her son Maverick, and Mary says to Kelly, I don't know why this happens, but I'm going to trust in God's wisdom and in God's plan, who is Kelly then to say anything else to Mary? Because you know what? This is Mary's way of trying to make meaning of this devastating loss that she's experiencing. So if you're the one using and leaning on your religious convictions, your religious ideologies, your sense of theology and of who God is and your relationship to him and all of that good stuff, If you're the one, the grieving person, who is doing that, I am totally okay with that.
Speaker 1:That's not even what this conversation is about. What this conversation is explicitly about is when Kelly goes to Mary and Kelly brings his own religious ideologies and tries to impose that on Mary as a way for comfort. And what Kelly is saying is that cannot happen, because that is hijacking Mary the opportunity to be vulnerable, to express deep sadness, to express deep grief and for me and Mary to connect at that human level at a moment where I need to be the most vulnerable with her, because she is feeling the most fragile and vulnerable as we try to land the plane. What do you think are some helpful things, better things, healthier things, that someone can say to somebody in that moment of devastation and grief and anguish. What do you wish somebody had said to you when you were grieving the immediacy of Maverick's death?
Speaker 2:I wish somebody would have told me the safest matter, what tomorrow brought me, that, at least for my community and my convictions that God's already there, he's just waiting for me. And that it's an invitation and a transaction between him and I to navigate this loss together and I wish that somebody would have just taken the time to remind me that I wasn't alone.
Speaker 1:I love that image that you just painted in my mind, that he's already there waiting for you.
Speaker 2:And he was, has been in every, every step of the way. It's just been so true in my experience. But that was coming to the table with a very, probably a very clear idea of who God is. But I also know that everything doesn't necessarily happen for a reason, know that everything doesn't necessarily happen for a reason. So I really had to be my own sense of comfort, because most of the people within my community use at least.
Speaker 2:Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan, and so it's kind of unfortunate that I had to be my own sense of comfort and the comfort for my husband and having a very realistic idea of who God is. Because in my mind, even early on, when I had a few complications with Maverick, I told God when I sat in the emergency room twice before he actually passed, and I remember saying you know, you decide all things and if this is part of the journey and the invitation for me in my Christ lived, if we fully and truly embrace that model, if we fully and truly understand not just the surface, practical part of it but the underneath, deep wisdom behind why Jesus did and said the things that he did and said.
Speaker 1:I think it would be impossible for someone to not show up to a Mary who's grieving, to a Kelly who's grieving, and be comfortable in just showing up and being there with those who are grieving.
Speaker 1:Because I can't find a story in the Bible, mary, where before Jesus healed someone, before Jesus connected with someone, he had to walk them through some type of theological something or he asked them some type of question about the ancient prophets or whatever, and then, based off of their response, he would say well, I don't know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go ahead and walk away Like I can't find any of those stories.
Speaker 1:So if for me and you and many like us who profess to be in alignment or profess to be hardcore you know Jesus followers and Christians and whatever label you want to put and we say that this is something that we embrace, that defines who we are and our character, our behavior, our identity, our mindset, the whole nine we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and actually realize that the things that we think are being helpful are causing more harm than good when we are the ones to impose those things on the most vulnerable people and we're robbing each other of an opportunity for deeper connection, for vulnerability, for healing, for actually showing up in the ways that the ethics of Christ would shape us to show up. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 2:I love it. I agree. I feel like if we could learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable witnessing grief and get comfortable with not having that impulse to God talk in a way that's not healing, I think that people would be more receptive to being vulnerable, Because right now I think there's a lot of reservation in being vulnerable, especially in front of those that maybe are Christ followers, with the fear that people are going to be met with the platitudes that we were talking about. So, yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 1:I think your baby also agrees, and your baby has so much to say.
Speaker 1:Listen, it has been a pleasure chatting with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for opening up about your experience and talking about what I'm sure has been the most difficult day of your life.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the way that you continue to honor your son, maverick, and the work that you do, how you show up for the kids in your work and the kids in the children ministry, that you're a part of the work that you do, how you show up for the kids in your work and the kids in the children ministry, that you're a part of the way that you mother your children, the way that you are a wife to your husband, the way that you are a friend to your people in your community these are all ways that the impact of your son and knowing the knowing of him, of your son, and knowing the knowing of him even though he wasn't born the way that you wanted him to be born, the impact that he has on your life still, and the difference that that's making the lives of so many other people who may not even know his name.
Speaker 1:I think that speaks to the legacy of who he continues to be in this form of how we experience reality. So I just want to say thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for being open and transparent and vulnerable with a total stranger, about something so precious to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me and sharing this space with me. I appreciate it. Anytime I have the opportunity to talk about how wonderful God is in the midst of our tragedies, I'm always up for that challenge. We'll be right back, thank you.