Grieving Between The Two Rails With Ron Deal, Connor’s Dad

In this heartfelt episode, Greg Buffkin welcomes Ron Deal from FamilyLife to discuss the profound journey of grief following the loss of his precious son Conner. Ron shares his personal story of losing Connor to a sudden, tragic medical complication, emphasizing the importance of not wasting pain and using it to help others. The conversation delves into the duality of grief, represented by the metaphor of two rails: one of pain and sorrow, and the other of hope and trust in God. Ron explains how navigating between these two rails is essential for healing, and how sharing their story has been a significant part of their journey towards recovery. Throughout the discussion, Ron highlights the importance of community and support for grieving parents, sharing insights on how to create a safe space for grief, and the necessity of being selective about who enters one’s grief garden. He also touches on the value of lament in the grieving process, encouraging listeners to express their pain authentically while holding onto hope. The episode concludes with Ron talking about he and his wife’s involvement with the While We’re Waiting ministry, which provides support for parents who have lost children, and the importance of finding trusted voices in the journey of grief.

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:49

Hi, and welcome back for our latest episode. I'm Greg Bufkin, and I'm so glad you could join us today. Guys, my guest today is Ron Deal. Ron is one of the most widely read and viewed experts on blended families in the U.S. today, as well as a senior director at Family Life, a licensed marriage and family therapist, the best-selling author of more than a dozen books and resources, and host of the Family Life Blended podcast. And if that weren't enough, in addition to all of this, Ron and his wife Nan are also popular conference speakers and lead a support group for parents who have lost a child. Today, Ron will also be sharing his story of personal loss and grief following the sudden and tragic death of their 12-year-old son Connor to a combination of severe medical complications in February of 2009. We'll also explore some of the helpful insights that Ron and Nan have learned on their journey that offer hope and encouragement to other grieving parents. And finally, we'll hear about God's faithfulness in times of suffering and how he can redeem our pain and brokenness for good and his purposes. And now, here's my conversation with Ron. Well, Ron, welcome to our podcast, man. It's really good to have you with us today. I've been looking forward to this. Thank you. Yeah, so have I. So have I. And I'm sorry that Nan couldn't join us today. Our for our listeners, Nan was originally scheduled to uh to join Ron and be a part of this conversation, but because of other obligations, she wasn't able to. So we'll just have to make do with Ron.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Well, she sends her regrets. And we we are both very grateful for what you're doing because we have been the recipients of people pouring into us in our journey, and we love giving back at this point in our journey, and we know how important this is. So thank you for what you're doing.

Speaker: 3:01

Yeah, well, and I can say the same for what you guys are doing, Ron. You guys do it it would take too long to talk about everything that you guys do on a daily and weekly basis between your your writing and your podcast and your small group. The list goes on and on and on. So thank you guys for all that you do as well. And I like you, I love doing what I do, you know, in the aftermath of what we both experience. It's just it's incredible how if we if we just give the Lord our pain and and our loss and suffering, it's incredible what he can do with it to to bring good out of it and to help other people, isn't it? Right. That's exactly right.

Speaker 1: 3:49

And and we've told people for years, if we're gonna have to have this pain, we are not gonna waste it. We we are gonna use it, we're gonna turn it, we're gonna do something with it. Because I think to just have pain with no outlet, no direction, no is is to in effect lose your hope in some ways, because I think it's in the in the moving it outward of ourselves that we find a way to live with it. We don't get over this, but we gotta live with it. And I s I think this is my working theory, man, and I'm still trying to figure it out. But I think the more we move it from within to the outside of us in moving towards other people and sharing with other people and blessing other people, then it helps us live with it.

Speaker: 4:43

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think the as we do that, it helps in our healing process far more that I think than just about anything else we can do. You know, we took advantage of counseling for a number of years after we lost Ryan, and that was beneficial. And some of the books that people recommended were beneficial. But when we were when the Lord brought us to a point where we could actually start ministering to other people who had lost children, I think that's and sharing our story over and over. I think that's when it our healing journey grew exponentially. Yeah. And so, you know, it it's you don't really go into it thinking that, but retrospectively you can see how that does happen.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker: 5:40

Well, Ron, I'd like for you to just take a few minutes and tell our listeners about the the reason that you're here is not only because of what you do, but because you guys have have your own story.

Speaker 1: 5:53

You guys lost your your beautiful 12-year-old son, Connor, to tried to diagnose and couldn't really figure out what was going on, and tested him for strap and all the kind of usual suspects, and he didn't have any of that. And so they just said, Here, here's a breathing treatment. He was having a hard time breathing, sent him home, said you'll be better in a couple of days. And then one day later he had a 105-degree temperature. And he had no underlying conditions. None. He was our healthiest kid for those 12 years. Wow. Yeah. Out of the three. He had the least amount of, you know, flus or what infections or whatever. And so this just literally came out of nowhere. Long story short, he ended up in the hospital for seven days, transferred to Dallas Children's Hospital. We were in Amarillo at the time, and start to finish, 10 days he he was taken. It turned out to be a MRSA-staff infection that had gone septic, meaning throughout his body and his bloodstream. It had attacked his lungs first. That's why the breathing was labored. That was the first real symptom. And then it just began to attack everything else. And turns out he did have the flu on top of all of that. He was in such a weak, weak position at that point. So even though they were trying to address the MERSA, the combination of the two things ultimately took his life. February 17, 2009.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Oh my gosh.

Speaker: 7:21

You know, you expect, you know, when somebody is older and they they come down with something that's serious, you know that it can can kind of cascade into something else, and then you treat that and you have and all of a sudden you're you're it's you're treating something that you never even started out thinking that you'd be treating. But when they're 12 years old and they start out with a headache, like you said, how many times have you sent a child to bed taking ibuprofen and thinking, oh, they'll you know, they'll be fine, they'll wake up with and the headache will be gone.

Speaker 1: 7:58

If you're like me, you think MERSA is that thing you get when you go in for some surgery and you get it in the hospital and you come out with something worse than what you went in for, and that is the common narrative that's called the hospital-borne version of MERSA, which I didn't even know there was a different kind, but there's a community-born version of MRSA, which you get just walking around life. And that's what happened to him. And we don't to this day we don't know where he got it, how he got it. We have no idea. We just know he was healthy and then he wasn't. And 10 days is really all we had. And that's been six thousand one hundred and three days ago. We're coming up on year 17, this coming February of 20 uh 26, will be 17 years. Which is super weird because we've, you know, he we we've not had him longer than we had him.

Speaker: 8:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:53

And I mean, there's all sorts of little markers and your grief changes over time, and but we don't ever go back to where we were. We we never go back.

Speaker: 9:05

It's impossible.

Speaker 1: 9:07

It's impossible. We're different people. We're not ignorant anymore. We we can't pretend that bad things don't happen. We can't pretend that that prayer is complicated, you know, before Connor died. I have I have a lot of before and afters that I find myself reflecting on frequently. And one of them is prayer, you know, before Connor died. I just thought prayer was pretty straightforward, especially verses like, you know, you know, the prayer of the wise man availeth much, and pray for the sick and they will be healed, and just all kinds of passages that seem to give a promise about that. But then that's not the way life works. And you're like, well, so what is prayer? And what's the point? And what are we so what am I doing? Why why am I praying for this? I mean, you cannot go back to where you were. You cannot.

Speaker: 9:56

And it's thinking for a lot of us right now.

Speaker 1: 9:59

Yeah. And it's not just prayer, but it's like 10,000 little things that you now see differently because of this before and after experience. And it has recalibrated us, is our word. It's recalibrated us. What I used to think was a bad day, you know, was a flight delay or a flat tire or something, uh, some hiccup to my schedule in the day. That was a bad day. You know, now that doesn't even hit the Richter scale on my on my recalibrated definition of what a bad day is. So you you you have to have a whole lot of horrible happen before I consider it a bad day, which means that you know, here's the social aspect of that, which means I'm walking around life with people who think a bad day is a flat flat tire. And I'm looking at their life, listening to their story, going, yeah, I I don't know how to relate to you right now. I how do I love you in this moment when I just think that's ridiculous? Yeah.

Speaker: 10:56

I did you did you find yourself finding it difficult to be normal, everyday people? Tolerant and chit chat, for example. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And be able to give grace when somebody's talking about how bad their day is.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially in the beginning when the intensity of the grief is the the greatest. Yeah. It is horrible to try to sit with people. And and and I think everybody listening right now has had at least one moment, if not a bunch of moments, where you're like, I cannot sit in this room any longer with people who are whining, complaining about things that do not matter. Now, I used to be in your shoes, but I ain't no more. And I cannot, I cannot pretend that this topic is significant when it is not. And that is a very difficult space to be in because now you're retreating from people that you normally would engage with. You're withdrawn, you're holding back, you're turning away, you're laughing at somebody. I mean, not outwardly laughing, but necessarily sort of inside going, that's what you mean. Yeah. And and all of a sudden you're losing relationships. People are looking at you like, where'd you go? You used to be my friend. Yeah, a lot of things get changed in the after.

Speaker: 12:20

Yeah, indeed. Uh did did you find people retreating from you guys? Absolutely.

unknown: 12:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:26

It's all the above. You know, there's you retreating from them. It's other people going, I don't know what to say, so I'm not going to say anything at all. I'm going to avoid you. Nan had one person see her. You know, they met in the grocery aisle just a few months after Connor passed away. And Nan saw, made eye contact with this person, and she literally turned and went the other direction to avoid having to pass by. You know, we had deep relationships that just came to an end within a year and a half of his passing. Just people who just couldn't relate to it, didn't know how to do it, and family members who didn't know how to be around us. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Speaker: 13:05

People don't know what to do with us.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah. And and here's the thing I'd love to pass on because this was given to me by a very, very trusted voice. I don't know if the name H. Norman Wright means anything to you. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Norm Wright is a was a he's passed away at this point. He was a prolific author. He basically started premarital counseling back in the 60s. Now that doesn't tell you something. He was a marriage and family counselor and expert and wrote 90 books in his lifetime. But his life's work was about grief. You want to look up H. Norman Wright and Grief, and you will find a multitude of resources for adults and kids. And he knew this well because he and his wife lost their son at the age of 12. And then his wife died. And then his other daughter died. All before he passed away. Let me tell you, this man, he knew it. He called me three weeks after Connor died. And he said, Ron, I just want to share a few things with you. You know, he said, Be careful when you're driving. You're going to have likelihood of having an accident is going. And little things like that were just so helpful to me at that because I couldn't see straight. And he's saying, Yeah, you're dangerous, you know, right now because you're you can't focus. Your brain doesn't work. Grief, brain is a real thing. Like little things like that were really helpful. But the one thing he told me, and it made me furious. All right. Greg made me absolutely furious when he told me. And I later came to repent and go, he is absolutely right about that. And it was this. He said, other people won't know how to deal with your grief. We don't do grief well in our Western culture, number one. Number two, child loss is so just in a different category, and people really don't know how to deal with that. And he said, you will have to get good at figuring out who you can trust with your pain and everybody else. You just need to avoid and not go there with that pain because they will they will trample on it. And so it's your job to gauge that with people. And I said, My job, my job. I'm the grieving dad here. Why is it my job? Why can't other people come to my aid? Wait a minute, I've got to be the one who figures out how to navigate a social moment with somebody. I'm the one in pain. Why is it my job? Greg, he was absolutely right. Because as Nan and I have come to describe it, we have a grief garden that is so precious to us. And there are there are roses and there are stories and there are places to sit with our son in his memory and who he was and what he was about and all of that. And I don't want to let people into the grief garden who will trample on the roses. And it's my job to say, no, I'm sorry, this is just not for you, and to keep them out. But when I find the one who does have that space in their heart empathy, who does have the gift of mercy, who can come into the garden and listen to me sob and cry with me and hear my stories for the hundredth time, the same story over and over again, that they will come and sit in that garden. Those are the people that I allow in. And it's my job, unfortunately, to figure out who I let in and who I don't. That has saved us so much pain over the last 17 years. Because once we embrace that, once I got over being mad about that and embraced it, all of a sudden I found myself in less and less circumstances where I was infuriated by how people were reacting or responding to me.

Speaker: 16:49

Yeah, it seems it seems so repulsive to have to think about doing that. Because your automatic response, your default response really is exactly what you said. I hey, I'm the gr I'm the one grieving here.

Speaker 2: 17:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 17:16

But what we eventually grow to understand is that there's it's impossible for them to understand. I mean, truth be known, the only way they could is if they had walked here too. And we wouldn't want that for anybody.

Speaker 1: 17:30

Trevor Burrus, Jr. And aren't those the safest people in our world, other grieving parents? Absolutely. They are the that's why we're so drawn to one another, because I don't have to explain how I can smile at somebody's little funny remark and know and that you that I'm not really happy. I don't have to try to hide the fact that I can have a part of me that has a smile on my face while the rest of me is deep in anguish because I don't have to explain that to another grieving parent because you get it too. Exactly. And all of a sudden, there's a safety here that says I don't have to be vigilant to guard and protect my son's memory or my pain or how I'm feeling about it or how mad I am at God today, because you might get upset that I'm mad at God. You know, I don't have to worry about any of that when it's another grieving parent, which is why you know we're such big advocates for parents getting together and listening to podcasts like this, but having groups and talking and discussing, sharing with each other.

Speaker: 18:26

Yeah, I I think that there are more resources available today, as as you were just describing, certainly than when you guys lost Connor. And even 10 years ago when we lost Ryan, there were very few resources. And so you find yourself in this pretty lonely, isolated place very often, especially if you don't have that kind of community that will enfold you. Kathy and I were blessed because we had a small group that met at our home and had been meeting together for a few years. So we already had relationships, I mean, strong relationships. And those people became a lifeline for us because they would listen to our story, they would listen to the hurt, to the pain that we could express because it was a safe place. And even though not a single one of them had lost a child, they were very gracious and very patient with us. And they will never, ever uh have any, any idea what it meant to us that that they just offered their presence. You know, they didn't try to fix us. That's right. Didn't didn't try to offer words to, you know, to to put band-aids on the surgical wound on our heart, but they just simply listened most of the time and loved on us.

Speaker 1: 19:53

So here's our journey. We were extremely blessed to have a therapist in town that we worked with who was exceedingly good for us. But we also had in Amarillo, Texas, the Hope and Healing Place, which is a grief nonprofit ministry, and they do all kinds of grief work with adults and kids around a lot of different subjects. We joined one of their grief groups within six months of Connor's passing, and it turned out everybody in that group, that signup time, were all parents. So we didn't have somebody who had just lost their, you know, 105-age parent, you know, which, God bless them, you know, we love you, but it's not the same as losing a child. And so we had a group of parents that we just kind of fell into one another's arms every you know week. And that was marvelous for us.

Speaker: 20:41

But since it's pretty cool how God arranged that for you guys, that it was all grieving parents.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Aaron Powell Yes, exactly. And then with Within a year, a friend of a friend of a friend told this couple who had lost a child about us, and they reached out and started mentoring us and just walking with us over time. And then we ended up figuring out a legacy project for our son, a memory project that honored him, and it was connected with this couple. And that led to this long ongoing relationship that we still have that's today. But that mentoring relationship, you know, gave birth to other connections over time. And now we're involved in the while we're waiting ministry, just as volunteers, and we lead a virtual support group for parents who have lost a child. And Nan, once or twice a year, hosts a day for moms in our home. We just had that two days ago in six-hour, excuse me, an eight-hour day where moms come and just spend time kind of talking and sharing with one another. So we have really immersed ourselves in this grieving community, if I can say it that way, both receiving and being able to sort of give back. And I mean, that's how we grieve forward.

Speaker: 21:53

Yeah. And you know what, it's probably very difficult for someone who maybe you're listening today and you haven't lost a child. Maybe you know someone who has. And it may sound what Ron just just shared might sound a little odd to you because you don't have the same perspective. But when he said that that they have dived in, you guys have dived into the grieving community. I understand what that means. Other people might think, oh gosh, that sounds a bit morbid and depressing. For us, it's life-giving, isn't it? Yeah, it's all right. That's right.

Speaker 1: 22:34

That's right. It's not depressing at all, really. No, it's not. I mean, we're here already. And so it's the sharing of the pain that what is it? 2 Corinthians 1 talks about the God of all comfort who comforts us with the comfort that and then we and comfort others with the comfort we've been given. Exactly. It's it's this domino thing where comfort begets comfort begets comfort. That's the body of Christ coming together to support each other, to help each other, to sit with each other, to bear one another's burdens. I think that's what you do with grief is take it to the source, well, ultimately vertically, with God, the source, right? But also with his people and in an active form of lament. And if you're not doing that, then I don't think you're grieving well. You tend to grieve internally, you tend to get stuck with it, you tend to not run into dead ends and you don't have anywhere to take it. And all of a sudden you just ruminate on those same thoughts and you get stuck in those spaces. And so one of the things, you know, it is life-giving to sit and talk. In our virtual support group, one of the things we regularly say, because we have new members all the time, because you can be anywhere in the world and log on once a month to our support group. And so we have new people showing up. And we regularly say to people, look, you don't have to talk tonight. But we do want to encourage you eventually, you do need to talk. Because somehow taking something inside of you and moving it outside of you helps. If nothing else, it moves you a little closer to the other people in this group and it moves them a little closer to you, and you feel less weight. I don't know that I can explain that other than that's one of the ways God graces us in our pain to move forward with it.

Speaker: 24:26

And I think too, as we share our stories, whether it's you know via a podcast or whether it's you know in person live or even on the virtual small groups, as we talk about our experience and talk about our grief and the before and after, we're processing it as we're talking. It forces us to hear what we're thinking.

Speaker 2: 24:53

Yes.

Speaker: 24:54

And then we can also take in what somebody else is sharing from their experience and put it together with ours. And it I think God uses that to blend our stories in such a way that we learn from them and they learn from us. We borrow from their faith, they borrow from our faith, and we learn how to grieve in healthy ways.

Speaker 1: 25:18

You know, I we don't need to chase the neurology of this too much. I am a licensed therapist and I do work with people on a regular basis. And Nan and I have a book called The Mindful Marriage that in the back of it has a section of how everything you've learned in this book applies to grief. All of that to say talking out loud helps you preach to yourself. And that actually helps different parts of your brain turn on and activate, actively process painful things. It's not the same to sit in silence and think it. To say it out loud activates a different part of your brain that actually helps you process it in a more complete and thorough and different way than if you're only sitting alone and thinking it. So literally, there is something neurologically happening down to the neuropathways of your brain when you're talking about grief that you don't get if you only sit in silence and ponder it all to yourself. So praying out loud is different than thinking a prayer to God. Saying it to a friend is different than just sort of mulling over something yourself. You're exactly right. There is benefit in the talking process, not just from what it does outside of you in terms of the social connection with other people, but also the internal part of you that is trying to figure out what do I do with my sorrow.

Speaker: 26:42

Yeah, I'm glad you shared that. And you know, for those of you who are listening who maybe have been reluctant to do that, uh, whether it's out of feeling like that might be a little weird or you're just, I don't know, maybe you're just reluctant to try it, I would encourage you to try it. You heard what Ron just said, and I think both of us have experienced that on a very personal level.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yeah.

Speaker: 27:09

So give it a shot. It may not change everything overnight, probably won't, but if you put it into practice over time, I think you'll find that it will change the way that you're grieving and the way that you're thinking about your grief. Ron, I want to go go back a minute ago, a couple of things that you said. I watched a video that you and Nan did for Focus on the Family. And I believe it was about a roughly a 30 to 40 minute video. It was one of the most impactful and one of the most helpful and encouraging messages that I have heard over the 10 years of my grief journey. You guys were very real and very pretty raw. We don't hold and raw. Yeah, all of them. We don't hold back. Right. And that's what I loved about it, because I think people who are where we are, maybe they're in a much earlier season of grief. Yeah. I think they crave that authenticity instead of because very often you know as well as I do that in the Christian community, we like to put a pretty face on things sometimes. And people often, particularly if they're outside of a relationship with with Jesus, they're like, that that's not real. I mean, those th those people are just faking it. And they're trying to sound religious or trying to, you know what I mean. Yeah. But that's not what people want to hear. They want to hear authenticity. And yes, they also want to know that just because we're Christians, we have a relationship with Jesus does not shield us from going through pain and suffering and loss, even the death of a child.

Speaker 1: 29:02

That's right.

Speaker: 29:03

But we have him to go through it with us. That's the difference. So on that video, there were a couple of things you guys talked about that I'd like for you to share with our listeners. One is grieving between the rails. Yeah. The other is talking about the value of lament on our grief journey. So why don't you just share what you and Nan shared on that video?

Speaker 1: 29:29

Yeah, I'm happy to. This has really become useful for us, and we've shared it with many, many others, and it seems to connect to the actual real-world experience. And let me just say that what I'm about to share about the two rails is as biblical as it gets, but we didn't know it when we were sort of stumbling our way into this languaging. But you'll see in a minute, it is what lament does. And so hold on to that thought. You know, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is the name everybody talks about, the five stages of grief. And if I could just preach for just a second, let me just say, please let go of that. We have way overused her model. Thank you, Ron. Most people don't have any idea that she didn't ever study grieving people. She studied people who were dying. Most people don't know that. She studied people who had cancer who were terminal. And so bargaining as one of the stages makes sense when you're going, Lord, I'd like to live. I'd rather not die. Is there any way we can work this out? That's what Jesus did in the garden. You know, that was one of the things she studied people who were dying. She did not study the people who were left behind. So we have taken her model that was, by the way, she apologized to the psychological community before she died a number of years ago, saying, I never said these things. Please stop using my research in that in an accurate way. I never said they were stages. I never said this is a prescription of how to do grief. She wrote a descriptive theory about how pain and the prospect of death impacts the person who was dying. That was her brilliant work. She never said, now this is how you do grief. When your dog dies, your grandmother dies, you lose a job, and your child dies. Never did she say that, and we have way overdone it. The next time you hear your pastor use the five stages, please go up and be very polite and say, we need to stop talking about this that way because that's not accurate. Okay, so for us, I say all that to say our experience didn't match the five stages at all. And so we started stumbling. Well, what is it like? And we found ourselves into this language. Our grief is like a big train and it's moving 100 miles an hour, and you cannot stop trains going 100 miles an hour. And all trains have a couple of rails that they're riding on, a left one and a right one. And we sort of just figured out it breaks down for us into two big categories. The left rail is pain. It is we miss Connor. It is the deep, deep valley of the shadow of death. I've got an elephant sitting on my chest and I can't breathe. You know, there's physiological uh uh aspects to this grief. There's the emotional, the mental, the social, all of those things are under that category of pain. I miss him every single day and I want him back. That's the left rail. The right rail is, but I know I'm gonna see him again. It's that hope. It's that I'm trusting in God and how eternity works. And so there's the day that I can long for. The right rail is the promise of being together again. I don't know what that looks like. I don't have that all figured out, but I do believe it's gonna happen. The right rail is God is good. The left rail is, but why didn't God so why did didn't God save him, rescue him, fix him? The right rail is I can trust the Lord to manage Connor, to hold Connor, to protect Connor while I am apart from him. That's a beautiful thought for me. The left rail is, but I wish he was right here right now so I could just hug him and hold on to him and take care of him. Sure. These are the two rails, right? Left and right. And in the beginning of your grief journey, you're more on the left rail and like the train is leaning way up on the left pain reel. And really, that's all you can see for a long time. Like I I don't know how long it depends on every person, but honestly, you just that's all you can feel. That is so every once in a while your head can get around hope, but you don't stay on that rail very long. You're just right buck up on that left rail, leaning hard. But as time moves on, you sort of bounce down to the right rail a little bit. But you're always, here's the point, you're always riding on both. This notion that we have in our Western culture and in the Christian culture that faith somehow destroys sadness is ridiculous. That's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous thought. It just doesn't happen. I tell people my faith informs my pain, but it does not negate my pain. Faith talks to my pain. Faith gives perspective to my pain, but the pain remains. I am forever on two rails. Now, as time has moved on, Nan and I have had conversations as of late. Here we are, 16 and a half years in. Sometimes we're on the right rail more than we're on the sadness-sorrow rail. Like it's almost like we can feel that hopefulness more frequently than ever before. And that's a nice thing. But the left rail is still always there. They are together, side by side, into eternity until I get there. Then I don't know. I guess the rails meet or something. I don't know what happens at that point. But this side of death, I'm on two rails. And don't try to talk me off one or the other. Don't tell me one's better than the other. These two things live in parallel. And I got to navigate both of those spaces. Now we started fumbling our way into that sort of language, and it was really helpful for us. You know, I'd walk in and I'd go, I'm on the left rail today, leave me alone. You know, I mean, uh I you know, we would use that as a way of saying, I'm in a good place, I'm in a bad place, I need something, I don't know what that is. And that really, really helped us. And then we started studying lament. I mean, this is like six, eight, ten years into our journey. We start studying what lament is really all about in the scriptures. And guess what? Consistently, you have this left rail, right rail experience. The left rail, you know, Psalm 77 is a really good example of that. He's going, man, my pain is horrible. God, are you forgotten about it? I guess you just don't give a flip about me anymore, do you, Lord? That's the left rail talking, right? And then he says, and then he turns to the right rail and he says, And yet I will remember who you are, what you've done, how you've been faithful. I know this about your character. I'm gonna hold on to that as best I can. Guess what he's doing? He's doing left rail, right rail experience all at the same time. Right. That is it. That is how this thing works. And he is allowing his faith to inform his pain, but it doesn't get rid of the pain. That's what I love so much about the laments of scripture and the story of Job, because you just see this demonstrated over and over and over again. Now, let me add one more thought, and then I'd love to get you to react to all this, Greg. Since even studying lament, I've studied in my world, in the mental health world, there's more of a new predominant model about how grief really works. And guess what? They describe it as two major tasks. One of them is grieving, the sadness and the sorrow, the memories, the telling the stories, the holding on to your loved one, and learning how to carry them with you into today. That's the left rail. And the other major task is figuring out how to live life again, how to get into today and look forward to tomorrow. And how do we carry the person with us and yet re-engage life as best we can? That's the two rails. That's lament. The major theory of today is validating what scripture's been telling us all along. Now, here's the little trick: it's the movement between the rails that gives us movement forward. If I just sit on the left rail forever, yeah, I'm kind of stuck. I can't also just sit on the right rail and go, yeah, God is good all the time, and I don't have to worry about my loss. That doesn't work because your body will not let you forget. Your brain, your body, your soul will not forget your pain. And so you can't deny it. That doesn't work either. You got to ride both rails. And it's movement into grief spaces and then back into life, and then back into grief spaces and then back into life. And conversations with, like we were talking earlier with other grieving people. That's left rail activity. And then moving over to the right and going, I'm going to church and I'm going to try to worship God. I don't know if I can get it out, but I'm going to try because I need to remember who he is, his character, and how that sustains me. It's the movement between the two and writing both over time that adds up to good grieving, if I could say it that way. Grieving that is productive in moving you forward.

Speaker: 38:26

Right. Yeah, that that whole concept resonates so strongly when when you when I heard you guys talking about that, I had never heard anyone frame it exactly like that. But you are exactly right, particularly as you read through the Psalms. You know, David, God called David a man after his own heart. And yet David sometimes would rail against God. He would rail against his enemies. And sometimes he would ask God to destroy his enemies. But he always moved back to who God is, the goodness of God, and that God is sovereign and that we can trust him. Even with our pain, even when we are experiencing the absolute worst that we could have never even begun to have imagined.

unknown: 39:23

Yes.

Speaker: 39:23

That God is there, he doesn't retreat from us. People might retreat, but God doesn't. He's not afraid of our pain. He's not afraid of our words. He's a good father, and he can receive that and help us process through that.

Speaker 1: 39:39

Now I think there's two common ways that I agree totally with you. But I can hear two people in my head. One of them's going, No, it's not okay to be mad at God. You can't say things like that. Yeah. And I would say, oh, go read Lamentations. The entire book is a is a screaming and go read Job.

unknown: 39:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:58

Who God says about Job in the bit beginning of Job, there's no one on earth like this guy. Now that's a compliment.

unknown: 40:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:06

But then Job, but then Job, after his tragedy, spends about 36 chapters yelling at God. Now, I why would God give us that book, that story, if it's not okay to talk to God out of our pain? He's doing it to teach us what to do with our pain. It's the exact opposite. He is giving us an example of how you move in and through grief. Bring it to God. The ugliness, the bitterness, the the lack of understanding, the pain is to be taken to God. That's what Job does right. A lot of people in their pain, a lot of people in their pain just Stop talking to God and retreat from God, and then the disconnect happens. But Job goes to God in his pain and the connection remains. That is life-giving.

Speaker: 40:58

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I I could not agree more with that, Ron, but don't you think that in the American church that we have done a disservice to people, be it be to Christians and and non-Christians, because we for some reason we have made it almost blasphemous to even think about getting angry with God, much less expressing it to Him.

Speaker 1: 41:28

Yeah. I actually think that's our Western control society that's dominated our theology. We actually think that we need to master pain. We need to control it. We need to overcome it. And we don't have a good theology of suffering. I mean, read the scriptures. It's very clear. You know, Paul, I prayed three times to get rid of my pain. God said, nope, my grace is sufficient for you. And Paul realizes, okay, in weakness, that's when I'm strong, because it's God working on my behalf. And he somehow finds some contentment with that. It doesn't mean he enjoyed his suffering. Not at all. Exactly. That's the whole point. The suffering does not go away. And by the way, here's my favorite verse that people can borrow and use when you have somebody throw Christian platitudes at you. Proverbs 25, verse 20. I really love the New Century version. Let me read it to you. Proverbs 25, 20, and the New Century version says this singing songs to someone who is sad is like taking their coat away on a cold day or pouring vinegar into their wounds. Amen. Amen and amen. It's miserable to sing songs to someone who is sad. Stop trying to fix us. There is no fixing this side of heaven.

Speaker: 42:49

No, there's no fixing.

Speaker 1: 42:51

We're not projects. And we're not, there's nothing wrong with grief. It's not a mental health issue. Grief is not bad or wrong. It just is.

Speaker: 43:02

Exactly. And we just uh grieving parents need to be loved. Yes. They need to be accepted. You don't have to understand it. Don't don't even try to understand it. And just do understand from however you you can try to do this. Grief is incredibly messy and it's totally unpredictable. And it's like, you know, you were talking about a few minutes ago, Ron. We go from the left rail to the right rail, and sometimes we do that 37 times in half a day. In a minute. Yeah. In a minute, even. Yeah. Yeah. So it's you know, if you think you're confused looking in at us from the outside, imagine how confused we are trying to figure out how to navigate life on the other side of losing our child. It's just, it's uh we weren't made for it. You know, uh uh when we think back, you know, God gave us the perfect environment to Adam and Eve. They had the perfect environment, they had a relationship with God, it was perfect, there was no sin. There was no death. Sin introduced death into the equation. That's right. And I I think we come poorly equipped to know how to relate to the concept, poorly equipped to know how to navigate it, to process it, and to help other people who are going through it.

Speaker 1: 44:33

So you're bringing scriptures to my mind, if I may. Yeah. One last thought about lament, and then I want to come back to John 11. So uh you know, there's more than a third of the Psalms are laments. Job, the book of Lamentations, this is all over the Old Testament. And by the way, the book of Psalms starts off with a lot of lament, and then there are less laments at the end of the book of Psalms. It's as if the meta-message of the of the how it was bundled together is that the more the closer you move to God, the more you allow faith to inform your pain, the less pain you experience. I find that fascinating, and that's where hope comes in. But pain doesn't go away this side of heaven. But let me just say this to your listeners: go read the laments. They're beautiful. 77, they're doubles. This is how I remember them. Psalm 77, uh, Psalm 22. A lot of people know what Psalm 23 is. Lord is my shepherd, shall not want. I mean, that's we we say that when we're praying. We pray that at funerals. That's a psalm of deep uh peace and knowing that we're in God's care. What's Psalm 22?

Speaker: 45:42

The chapter right before it. That's an Asianic psalm.

Speaker 1: 45:45

That's the psalm Jesus prays on the cross. Lord forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. And by the way, when anybody in the New Testament quotes part of a chat uh part of a section of scripture in the old, you should go back and read the whole old. It assumes they're carrying the entire meaning of the section. Psalms 22 is this massive lament. Jesus is lamenting on the cross. He is reflecting back on Psalm 22, and I can also. Now, here's the last thing I want to say about laments. What I love about God is not only how he teaches me how to lament, and he teaches me that like Job, I can bring it all to him. He gives us a lament, Psalm 88, that doesn't have a right rail. It is only the left rail. And I love that because that what that says to me is, Ron, you don't always have to have an answer to all the problems. There are just days where all you got is suffering, and you bring it, and that's okay. And we never have to turn the corner every single time and say, yeah, somehow it's all going to be work out in the end. You don't have to do that. That's what Psalm 88 is telling us. And I think that is so beautiful, such a gift from our loving, compassionate Father.

Speaker: 47:00

Aaron Powell It it really is. And uh, you know, uh I think sometimes we use this phrase, it's okay not to be okay. Yes. And that's basically what what Ron and what you're saying.

Speaker 1: 47:14

Even God is saying that, that it's okay not to be okay. That I don't always have to have everything, you know, work out perfectly. By the way, the Romans 8, that passage that people will throw at us as a platitude, we have misunderstood. Romans 8 is a lament. Paul is actually looking back at how the earth is groaning over its current circumstances, and the Spirit is interceding for us in our groaning over the crud we got to deal with in life, the deep, deep sorrows of this world. And then he turns the corner and hears the other side, right rail of lament. And he says, And God is with you in this, and he is constructing something on your behalf, on behalf of you and all humanity. It's not everything's gonna work out great, and every bad thing is a good thing. That is not what Romans 8 is all about. It's a lament. Now, look, this this there's nothing wrong with bringing our pain to God. As a matter of fact, that's how we do it. John uh, John 11, I said a minute ago, you were talking about how the Father joins us in our sadness. That's what John 11 is. Lazarus has died, Jesus goes to the grave, he cries. Since we were all little kids, we what's the shortest verse in the Bible? We all knew it. Jesus wept, right? Right. What's the context? Jesus is crying over his friend and over his friends who are grieving his friend, and their sorrow brings him sorrow. Yeah. This is our God.

Speaker: 48:51

And he was willing to express that. He was willing to let other people see him express his grief, even knowing that within a few moments he was going to raise Lazarus back to life. He didn't blow it off because he knew that. He allowed himself to experience exactly what we experience.

Speaker 1: 49:18

Greg, you just reflected back the two rails. The left rail is sorrow and sadness, and Jesus joins us in our sorrow and sadness. Even knowing the right rail that he's going to do a miraculous work and he's going to raise Lazarus. See, the right rail does not negate the left. If it did, Jesus would have never had to cry. He would have just said, ah, it's going to be all right. Give me a minute. I'm all over this. He didn't. No, that's not the way it works. You authentically have both side by side, pain and trust.

Speaker: 49:51

Yeah. That's real, that's the reality of it. And and and that's I think once we can embrace that and understand that that that is how our grief journey and our healing journey are going to play out until we leave this the place where we live now on Earth. And I think sometimes when we can get to that point, I think it relieves some of the stress that that we feel trying to figure out how this is going to work in the future. I mean, we know how bad it is right now, but you know, we want it to end. And sometimes, you know, people other people around us want it to end. You know, it's like, you know, have it, you know, it's been 10 years. You know, you kind of need to get over it. And that ain't the way it works. That's not the way it works. That just isn't. You know, there's there's something else that that you guys talked about in that video, Ron, that also want you to share the last few minutes that we have. And that is, what are some things that that you found, that you and Nan found, either as a couple or as individuals, that as you look back over these last 16 years were beneficial to you guys on your grief journey that you could share with our listeners. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1: 51:22

I'm going to popcorn these. First of all, as a husband and wife, wow, uh extend a lot of grace to each other. Over time, in the beginning, you don't know how you're going to react when Thanksgiving rolls around or birthdays roll around. But over time you will learn one another's pattern. You'll learn, for example, that Nan rallies heading into Connor's birthday or Christmas Day. She crashes after the day. I don't rally going into the day. I am sad. I am in my lonely place. I'm on my left rail. And I am having a hard time going into those special days. And then I sort of lift after. Like, okay, knowing this about each other, she gives me grace when I'm down first. I give her grace. Like, you gotta be a team, you gotta figure this out and try to survive together. And that is a journey. We don't have time to get into it, but we did this really well the first four years, and then we didn't do it well. And there was some complications to that, but we had to work hard to find our way back towards one another again. So in those precious relationships, and this is also applies to your other children if you have them, and your extended family. The other thing is the grief garden. That really is it's a way to protect your pain, your grieving process, find your trusted voices and let them in and keep, you know, looking for time with them, but then also guard that garden and don't allow other people in who are going to trample the roses and just add to your pain. And that takes a vigilance and it takes an emotional work on your part, but it protects your sadness in a way that's healthy for you, I think, uh, over time. And that's really important. It's so very important. So very important. And by the way, let me just tell you a tip. There's one grief expert who says, you know, with the average sort of loss, about a third of the people in your life are actually helpful with your grief. They can listen, they can hear the story, they'll be okay for you. They say another third are sort of helpful sometimes, and other days they're antagonistic to your pain. And the last third are just not helpful at all. Those are the people you don't want to let in your grief garden ever. Okay. But I think when you lose a child, I think it's not a third. I think it's only one tenth. I think it's one tenth out of everybody in your life actually has the capacity and the mercy and the compassion to sit in your grief garden with you and hear the stories over time. When you find that one tenth, oh my goodness, hang on tight and and and and thank the Lord that you have them.

unknown: 54:04

Amen.

Speaker 1: 54:04

Everybody, everybody else, you're kind and cordial to and you maintain a relationship with, but you don't let them into your garden. You just don't do that to yourself. That's painful. If my wife were here, here's the other tip she would say: be kind to yourself. Grief is all-consuming, especially in the beginning. It changes everything about you. You've been recalibrated. You don't even know who you are anymore. You don't know what you're about, you don't know what you value. Everything is up in the end, up and up for grabs, so to speak. You're trying to rework your life. And you just be kind to yourself. You try to go to church, you just can't do it. Be kind to yourself. Have an exit plan. Give it a go. Keep trying to engage. That's right rail activity. You you gotta do that. You can't not go forever. You gotta push yourself into the right rail every once in a while. But it's okay if you walk into that space and something gets triggered and you need to leave. Okay, great. Be kind to yourself. Those little decisions are are really helpful. And you're not beating yourself up with guilt or shame about not being a good Christian because you can't go to church or whatever, whatever that little horrible thing we do to ourselves, that's not helpful either, right? And that's not really giving yourself space for lament. So be kind to yourself in those spaces. And yet, know eventually you got to do some right rail activity in order to keep moving down the tracks.

Speaker: 55:33

Aaron Powell We have to make purposeful choices in order to continue moving in a healthy direction. Because just given if we give in to our default emotions, then sometimes all we would feel like doing is curling up in a corner somewhere and just just kind of wallowing in the in the pain. And but you and it's okay to do that. If God gives us space to grieve and lament, then who are we not to give that to ourselves and who are we not to give it to others?

Speaker 1: 56:13

I often think the right rail lament, Psalm 77, yet will I trust you, is a preaching to yourself. It is a, okay, Ron, you're in a lot of pain. But you also know who God is. You also know what he's about, you also know his character. And you need to remember that you can trust him. So it's sort of that pushing yourself into that acknowledgement. That doesn't mean your pain goes away and you're not assuming everything's gonna be hunky-dory. It just means you're bringing along some perspective to inform your pain. That's really what that is ultimately all about.

Speaker: 56:52

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, we talk about hope. Every everybody who is who is in that that pain and suffering space needs to have hope. But the hope that we talk about, the hope that you're talking about, really isn't a concept. It's a person. And that person is Jesus Christ. And we know that. And that's where that's where we can do all of this in a safe space and in a healthy, a healthy relationship with him.

Speaker 1: 57:28

And that person has experienced the ultimate loss, the ultimate suffering. He has gone through the depths of the grave. He understands your pain. He is not antagonistic toward it. He absolutely has deep, deep compassion for it. And I think is far closer to our pain than most of us realize. We we cannot get stuck on the, but God, you could have prevented it all, and why didn't you? That's a very important question. You got to wrestle with that. That's Job's 36 chapters of trying to figure it out. That is an important question. But that doesn't erase the fact that he has experienced great suffering and understands it from the inside. That makes him closer to our pain, not far away from it. And somehow that was really helpful for me when I finally sort of wrestled that to the ground and said, okay, there it is. I think if I could summarize, what did Job learn? At the beginning of Job, God says about him, there's no one on the planet like him. He's blameless and upright. There's no one like him. Wow, what a compliment. That is unbelievable. At the end of Job, Job comes to learn something he did not know about God. Now, wait a minute. The blameless, upright, there's no one on the planet like him guy, learned something from his suffering he did not know about God. I wanted to know what that was. And I went on about a two-year hunt to figure it out, talked to every expert I could, studied the scriptures, went deep. And here's what I think it comes to. What he learned is that he can trust God with things that he will never understand.

Speaker 2: 59:11

Well said.

Speaker 1: 59:13

He will trust, he can trust God with things that he will never in this life understand. And I'm holding on to that. I'm holding on to that. That's that's my right rail talk into my pain.

Speaker: 59:26

Yeah. I love that, Ron, because I think we before we suffer like that, we really don't understand what you just shared. I think only until and I wouldn't wish it for anybody. There's surely there's another way to learn that. Yeah. I wish. You know, that we're not in control. We only think that we are. And we can trust God even when things aren't like we prefer them to be, or when we prayed that they would be. God is sovereign and he has a good plan. It's a perfect plan. And sometimes that plan does include suffering. Why? We don't know. We're not going to know on this side of heaven. Exactly. That's it. But but as you said, you can learn that he is absolutely trustworthy. And you have experienced that. We've experienced that. And I pray that's something that our listeners experience as well.

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

Can I talk about while we're waiting, real quick? I hoped that you would. I I know you know what that is for your listeners while we're waiting.

Speaker: 1:00:40

I love that ministry.

Speaker 1: 1:00:42

Nonprofit ministry that started. We live in Little Rock, Arkansas. It started an hour south of us in Hot Springs, and we didn't even know. It for a number of years until somebody introduced it to us. There's now retreat locations in 25 states. There are more than 70 small groups around the country, and Nan and I run the virtual support group for parents who have lost a child. This is all specifically for Christian parents who have lost children. And it's it's a fabulous ministry. No one ever pays a dime to go to any of it, to go to the retreats for moms, for dads. Nan and other people do a mom's day in their home on a Saturday just for people in that region. All kinds of activities are happening throughout the year, and no one ever pays a dime to be a part of it. It is a blessed, God's hand is on this ministry. People just donate. It's amazing what happens. And we are big advocates for it. We have been blessed by it. We give to it. They have a podcast. They have, you know, resources they recommend, things like that. It's not a bunch of experts telling everybody how to do it. This is parents helping parents. That's all that it is. That's all that it is with the Spirit of God's blessing on it.

Speaker: 1:01:50

Yes. This ministry that Ron is talking about was founded by Brad and Jill Sullivan. And you can please check them out online while we're waiting. Their podcast is While We're Waiting, Hope After Child Loss, very similar to our podcast name. But this, as Ron said, it it this is a very anointed ministry. And they it continues to grow. And please take advantage of it. If you're not already involved in something like that, whether it's uh one of these support groups that Ron's talking about, or if you want to listen to the podcast, it is an incredible ministry. So please check them out. And for our listeners also who didn't, maybe didn't get a chance to write it down. There is a link that I will provide in Ron's episode description to that episode, excuse me, to that video that he and Nan did for Focus on the Family. So I will include that. I would encourage you, please listen to that video. You'll hear some of what Ron talked about today, but you'll hear even more, and you'll hear more about their story. Ron, I just greatly appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to come and be our guest today to share your story, but also to share some of these insights that you and Nan have picked up over the years on your own grief journey and sharing that with others to help give them some encouragement.

Speaker 1: 1:03:31

You know, I I guess my last thought is we're still on the two rails. You know, I it ebbs and flows, and in the beginning it was left rail only, and and then the right rail would start coming in, and it did for me sooner than it did for her. And, you know, but any given day I can jump over that left rail and just be a mess. This is the journey. This is the way it rolls. Being kind to ourselves, trying to understand the process, lamenting on purpose is moving us further down the road. It's not fixing anything. That that's gonna happen in heaven. And we're just carrying Connor with us day by day until then. But if we're gonna have to live in this pain, like I said at the top, we're gonna do something with it rather than let it dominate our lives and drive us into nothingness.

Speaker: 1:04:28

Yeah, well said. And and the other part of that, the good news about that is that you don't have to figure out what that looks like. If you'll just give it to the Lord, he'll figure out what it ought to look like. And and it'll be a heck of a lot better than anything that you and I could come up with. That's right. Yeah. Well said. Well, thanks again, Ron. Really do appreciate you sharing. And for those of you who are listening, if if something that Ron shared today, if it really touches your heart and you have a question or if you would just simply like to leave a comment about that, you'll find a link in his episode description. And I would also just real quickly like to ask Ron if you have a website that that folks can go to because you talk, your ministry is really directed toward blended families. And if you're listening today, and that's you're in a blended family, Ron has some amazing resources.

Speaker 1: 1:05:29

Yeah, well, I appreciate that. So rondeal.org will get you to a website where you can get in touch with all the things that I'm doing. I work with the Ministry of Family Life, and so we have some things that go through family life, some things just on our own. I will mention our book, The Mindful Marriage, that Nan and I published this year, uh, is really about the journey of trusting God in marriage and learning how to put on self-control in our worst moments. And it has an application to grief, and we we make that connection in the latter part of the book. And so it's not a book on grief. I want to make that clear, but I think it has some spiritual discipleship elements to it that I think are really helpful for us in things of grief. So rondiel.org.

Speaker: 1:06:15

Great. Thank you for sharing that. And I will also include that in Ron's episode description. And as always, thank you to our listeners for listening. And we will look forward to seeing you back in a couple of weeks.