God was with us as we mourned our baby
In the darkest valley of grief, God stands by your side, sharing in your sorrow. Lara recounts poignant moments and profound insights that provided inexplicable comfort, guidance, provision, and peace. You will hear the many miraculous ways that God’s presence was with her, and her family before, during, and after each storm. As you engage with this series, your faith will be fortified, your wisdom broadened, and your capacity for compassion deepened, empowering you to support others on similar journeys. Lara is a beacon of joy, generosity, and boundless enthusiasm for life’s adventures, with an unwavering dedication to her beautiful family. I can’t wait for you to meet her, confident that this video will alleviate any fears you may harbor, allowing you to relinquish control and embrace the ever present help in time of trouble, from our mighty counselor and comforter.
In this video, Part 1: Jeremiah’s Story
Lara shares a firehose amount of wisdom in this very candid discussion about the difficulty of her baby going to Heaven early due to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.) His oldest brother Josiah, who shared the same birthday, was the first to discover him. The storms didn’t end there. She was ready and able to stand strong and rest in her faith, no matter where the currents were leading. (Video links below and after each video)
Beautiful and vibrant 10 year old Linnea was experiencing what everyone thought were growing pains. Turned out to be stage 4 cancer: Ewing Sarcoma. This was a shock to all, except God who was already at work coordinating plans for what was to unfold.
After wrestling with depression, miraculously reconnected with Jesus finding joy and peace… only to be struck by a car… reuniting with his baby brother Jeremiah in Heaven. If someone you know is currently grieving in a similar situation, please share this video with them.
TRANSCRIPT
I asked Josiah to go and get his brother up from his nap and told me something was wrong, and then he said, he’s dead. The night that Jeremiah died. I prayed and asked God to open my eyes. Now that I would be able to see some good things that he was doing right then, because I knew that I’d be able to see them someday, looking back.
But I said, I need you to show me stuff now. And he did. God is the only one who can bear our expectations.
We are afraid of losing a child. Mothers who are leaving the hospital with their newborn and sudden infant death syndrome is in the back of their mind and they think, oh no, that that can’t happen to us. That doesn’t happen anymore. We’re fine. Perhaps one day you’re in the doctor’s office and you hear words coming out of your child’s doctor’s mouth and you’re like, I can’t hear this.
I don’t know what’s going on. Perhaps you hear a knock on the door one day and it’s the police. Even just one of these situations is absolutely unbearable, let alone experiencing every single one of these situations. I am deeply humbled and immensely thankful for the chance to introduce you to my new beautiful friend. The Canadian in me wants to say Lara, but the American in me says Lara.
My parents got it from Doctor Zhivago, and in Doctor Zhivago they say Lara. I like that I can’t do that. well, we don’t know who God’s going to bring to watch this video, but he does. We have friends who are praying over this conversation right now. Well, I am so thankful that, that I got to meet you in the women’s Bible study in the fall.
We were doing the typical, you know, four second introductions around the table when you shared about your family. I didn’t know what to say. There was just a shared, like, you know, heaviness. This is another question that is complicated when people are normal, get to know you. Question of how many children do you have? I have given birth to six children.
I also had three miscarriages. I’m sorry. And two of the children that I’ve given birth to have since passed away. So I’m raising four children on the earth right now. You had shared about your perfect bookends. Yeah. Your oldest and your youngest. To be clear, the biblical definition of perfect also is complete. It’s finished it.
And so when I had my sixth child on my first child’s 12th birthday, my family felt complete. It felt like every older kid had a younger kid to mentor hanging out with. It felt like everyone had a child that was near them. Also, to play with, have common interests and the fact that he was born on the first one’s birthday, which was the first born’s choice.
So my firstborn was Josiah, and my last one was Jeremiah. And Jeremiah was a planned C-section because I’d had an emergency C-section. the birth before that in the town we were living. And that was my only option. So he was a planned C-section. He could have been anytime that week. And my first son’s birthday was that week.
So I gave him the option. Would you like Jeremiah to be born on your birthday? And he did. And I checked back with him over several months and made sure you still want to share your birthday, because it’s going to be the rest of your life. And he did. So we went to have Jeremiah, and he, Josiah was right there with us at the hospital.
And because of the C-section, he actually held Jeremiah before I did. and they had a really sweet bond. I have pictures of Jeremiah propped up, watching Josiah play the guitar and watching Josiah play video games. And Josiah just like to have him around. One of my favorite pictures is we went to Hawaii when Jeremiah was almost three months old.
Josiah is holding him and just grinning at the camera and, just so thrilled to be a big brother again. So in that sense, it’s a perfect it’s a complete. It was, of course, not perfect. I was far from perfect, mother. far from a perfect mother. I did feel like this was the thing that I was made to do.
I was made to be a mother. And so there was some success in that. I was a mother. I was also frustrated with not being able to do the job the way that I felt like I should be able to do it. I look back now and I can see that I had made the perfect family or, being a perfect mother, an idol in my life.
It was something I was obsessed with and something that caused undue frustration because there was no way that I could do it perfectly. instead of resting in, the way that God gifted me and the opportunities he gave me and the people that he gave me to walk through that period of time, I, I felt like it was all on me to, you know, that this family and like all idols, which are really just unrealistic expectations, things that were not meant to hold the weight that we put on them.
For instance, it could be your career and it’s your everything. It’s how you define yourself. For me, being a mother was how I defined myself and then if it’s your career and you get demoted or fired or, you realize even though you got everything that you hoped for, it’s not fulfilling you like you thought it would. Then that expectation is disappointed.
And that’s when you find out that that was actually an idol that that you were putting, in the place of God. After three and a half months of having these six beautiful children, one day, I was making dinner and I realized, that I wanted to feed Jeremiah before we had dinner. Before you’re sitting down to eat or you’re not going to sit down, meet with your family.
So I was working on dinner. I asked Josiah to go and get his brother up from his nap. And he went. Then he yelled, told me something was wrong. And then he said. He said. And he’s shrieking hysterically again. Josiah’s 12 years old and he. So I’m running up the stairs. He’s running down the stairs with his baby brother in his arms, and he gives him to me and.
I have no medical training at that point. Very little medical experience other than giving birth. But I can tell that my son is gone, and he’s probably been gone for a while. he didn’t even. Feel like Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the healthiest, sturdiest. Little guy. I have, a shirt, a picture of him in this shirt that I love.
That said, big guy, big eater. He was. I think he was on it like he was. It was dirty guys. And another picture of him in his jumper that he just loved, where he just is lit up. He’s just having so much fun. You couldn’t nobody would look at these pictures or look at that boy and think there was a thing wrong.
and there wasn’t until there was, so he was not breathing. Like I said, he he actually felt light. He was over well over 9 pounds. I think it was nine and a half. I had four kids that were over 9 pounds, but he felt light to me and he didn’t feel real. But I’ve watched the police shows.
I’ve taken, CPR long, long ago and first aid. And what do they tell you? They say always call 911, call 911. And so like, okay, you know, in one sense it feels like what’s the point. And on the other hand, it feels like this is what you’re supposed to do. So I did I called 911 and I said my child’s not breathing.
And so the dispatcher, you know, she’s sending help, but at the same time she asked if I wanted to do CPR, and I, said, okay. Even though I really felt like he was gone. So I did, until the EMT stopped there. unfortunately, to do CPR, you have to have them on a firm surface. And he was in my hands, so she took lay him on the floor.
which is a painful part of the story, because he had left us in his bed. Then they told me to put him on the floor. And then the EMTs arrived and the police, because when the child, maybe anybody dies at home, the home then becomes a crime scene. At that point, I wasn’t allowed to pick him up from the floor, even though I was the one who put him there.
so that was that was really difficult. So they came. They did CPR for a few minutes, but then they were like, no, he’s he’s gone. And at that point, I had to lay on the floor and weep over my baby while a policeman watched me sitting on the sofa phone to me because I wasn’t allowed to pick him up.
Part of me also really did not want his siblings to have that image in their mind as the last time they saw the baby brother. So, I asked if I could cover him up and they said yeah. So then I put a blanket over him. Meanwhile. Josiah again, 12 years old, as soon as I took Jeremiah.
And then I’m calling the police. And I did, I did tell Josiah to go next door and tell my mother. At that point, she was living half the year next door to us and half the year down here in Phenix. And then I was kind of just completely focused on Jeremiah and not really knowing what’s happening. and then I found out later that the next thing that Josiah did is he took his siblings.
So he’s 12 at that point. Jacob was ten, Lillian was eight, and Joshua was six. Linnea was just about to turn two, and she was already next door with my mom. He took his three other siblings upstairs and they knelt down and prayed for their brother. and that’s who Josiah was at 12 years old. So my mom had to call my husband and tell him to come home.
So at that point, my husband was teaching at the university and most of his classes were in the evening. So he had left in the afternoon and was going to be teaching classes and not get home till like ten, 1030 at night. my mom had to call him. He was just about to go into class, and she said she didn’t know.
She I think she was still next door. She hadn’t even come over yet. And she said, something’s wrong with Jeremiah. You need to come home. And my husband put a sign on the door of the classroom and left. He got halfway home and he was getting ready to pass the hospital, and he thought, maybe he’s in an ambulance.
Maybe I should just go to the hospital. And so he called my mom and said, should I go to the hospital? And she said, no, just come home. He knew that Jeremiah was gone and he came home. I was on the floor weeping over Jeremiah. and he called friends and our pastor and, the EMTs left. The police were there, and they had to investigate our home like a crime scene.
And so I was so thankful at that point that my mom did live right next door. Her house was actually attached to ours. And so we all went over there. And then they were able to do what they needed to do, and we didn’t have to sit there. And it, and then when they were done, one of the investigators came over and interviewed me about, you know, what had happened leading up to it.
That’s the facts of what happened that night. But there were other things already. that were happening that were incredible. Our pastor at the time, was out of town. He was fairly new to us. We didn’t really have a deep relationship with him anyway, but, he he was out of town. And so our associate pastor came over and, right the same hour that Jeremiah died, another man in our church also died who had a large in the church.
And so this associate pastor now is torn between our family, who she knows really well because she was in charge of children’s ministry, and all my kids were in children’s ministries, and this other family that she also needs to go to, at the same time at our house. My husband had called our dear friend, who was our former pastor, who had worked with this associate pastor before he left our church.
And that man who we’d had a long, deep friendship with, he was literally in town for no other reason than to watch his foundation harden over the next four days. He was before the foundation, the day before the rest of his family, who we all loved, had, gone back up to Anchorage. They were in the process of moving down back down to Juneau, which is where this was.
and so they were building this house. The rest of the family went back to Anchorage to pack up. He had nothing to do that week except to watch his foundation harden. This associate pastor had to go to this other family. She prayed with us. Steve was there. Who’s this friend who was our pastor? And then she was able to, like, hand us over to Steve and go take care of this other family.
And Steve was then with us all week when we had to, you know, make difficult decisions and, and just process all of that. until our actual pastor came back, which was like that next weekend. which is right when Steve had to go back to Anchorage. So it was just God was just providing one of our dearest friends who had nothing else to do to walk us through those first really difficult days.
It was just one way that he showed how present he was. One of my favorite verses and one that I have thought of more than ever in the last year and a half, is that God is close to the brokenhearted, and that has been my experience. That night we were going to bed and we had tuck the kids in, so I had five kids who are now grieving their baby brother.
Well, my husband and I are grieving our son and my mother, and there’s just no manual. There’s no instructions on how to do that, but you’re kind of feeling your way through. So that night we went to bed. And there, of course, right next to our bed is Jeremiah’s crib. I think it’s called The Sleeper, which is right next to your bed, and you can easily reach over because I always nursed him.
And and then you can put it back and have a little space, which I loved. But you go into bed and the crib still sitting there and, Tony, my husband asked if I wanted him to put it away and I said, yeah. And so he took it out. I was laying there trying to go to sleep, talking to God.
I said, God, I have been walking with you long enough through enough things that I know in 20 years I’m going to look back and see all these things that you did, the good that you brought out of this very hard day. But I need you to show me things now. Show me some things that let me know that you are near and that you’re at work now.
Because I don’t know how to do this. You know, there’s verses in the Bible that can be confusing and can be misquoted and that, that seem to say you can pray for anything and God will give it to you, but I believe it’s that when we pray according to God’s will, we can be sure that he will answer.
And that night that prayer was God’s will. He wanted to show us that he was near, just like you promised. He wanted us to know that we weren’t alone. He wanted us to know that he was at work, and that this would be for our good, even though we couldn’t fathom that, and that it would bring him glory, because these were promises that he’s given us in his Word.
So that prayer of mine to see what he was doing right then was according to his will. It was what he wants for us, for all of us, all the time. He wants us to know he’s near. So he honored that and it felt like I put on a special pair of glasses or, you know, like in The Matrix.
Like I took the pill and then I could see the truth right there. Anyway, it was like seeing things from a bigger perspective, like the 30,000ft view while it was happening. For instance, one of my favorite stories from that week, which is such a weird thing to think about it when you know how the week started, was the weekend before I had been at the grocery store with Joshua, who was six and going to first grade at a public school.
Even though I’m primarily at Homes Fuller at that point that year he was going to public school, and so he saw pudding cups, and he asked if he I would get them for his lunches. And I said, no, I can make you pretty. I can make you pudding. That will be actual pudding, and it’ll be better than that.
And I’m not even sure what’s in that cup. Right. Not that I didn’t love those pudding cups when I was a little kid. And totally remember the kids who had all the packaged foods in their lunchboxes and how cool that was. But that’s what I said that day. Again, I already confessed I wasn’t a perfect mother, so I didn’t get him for him, and I promised him that I would make him pudding and put it in little cups and put it in his lunchbox.
So Jeremiah died on Monday. On Tuesday, a neighbor from across the street brings over this box with this huge lasagna bag, salad, bread, and a package of chocolate pudding cups. The exact ones the exact brand that my son had wanted. And I took those cups and I took them to Joshua, and I said, Joshua, God loves you. Your mama was not meeting your need.
But God will. Because he loves you. And when I first started blogging, Joshua was about 12 or 13 and I told the family, I want to write. You know, by that time has been like 6 or 7 years later, I want to write these, stories about how I’ve seen God show up in our lives. And Joshua said, don’t forget to tell them about the pudding cups.
I love that because this is what this is what I think is the purpose. I mean, God shows up, he’s at work in our lives. And when we notice and we remember that it builds our faith in future situations. So then, see, he’s 13. There’s a lot going on in a 13 year old boy’s mind. But what has also been cemented there is the fact that God loves him.
And in such a practical way to give him something that he really, really wanted. Did he need pudding? No, he really wanted it. And God honored that and gave it to him at a time when he was hurting. And I feel like that’s such a good example of why God sometimes shows up really dramatically. Now, I believe that God is at work in us and around us all the time, but we don’t always notice.
And even when we do, we forget, right? We can look at the Old Testament and we can go, Those Israelites, you know, how could they forget that God did all these dramatic things for them? But we do it and we forget within, you know, within a year, not within generations. Like they why didn’t they remember that 400 years ago?
God did this for them? Well, we forget what God did last week, right? So when we don’t when we hold on to those things by writing them down, by retelling them, because just by retelling what God has done, it makes those things go deeper, which is why God told the Israelites to have these feasts where they were telling these stories over and over again to help them remember, when we tell our stories, it’s cements them in a in a more permanent way to help us remember that God is present and that he’s at work, so that then when we go through the next thing, because they’ll be a next thing, we remember sooner that God
is present and at work. So something I mentioned that Linnea was about to turn two. She was going to turn to, just six days after her little brother died. Would we have felt like having a celebration? Probably not. Maybe we would have been like, oh, she’s two. She doesn’t even know we’ll do it next month. Right?
And and I’m not even saying that that would be a wrong way to handle it. You know? But my mother, who usually spent six months in Juneau with us, was leaving early that year so that she could go on a trip to Europe with a friend of hers. They had this river cruise booked, and so she was leaving early.
So because she was leaving early, we had Linda’s birthday party early, so we’d had it the weekend before. We’d had this sweet celebration, you know, focused on her in a way that I don’t know how long afterwards we would have been able to do that if we hadn’t. And then my mother, who’s done a lot of traveling, that was the first time that she’d ever bought travel insurance.
And so she was able to cancel that cruise and get all of our money back. And then she and her friend were able to rebook it in the spring and actually found out then not only is the spring a nicer time to do that particular trip, but they were able to add excursions on either end, so it turned into an even more amazing trip than they first had planned.
And I think that two is such a beautiful example of the way God arranges things like If God, your travel agent, you’re going to get the extra excursions right? Like it’s just, it’s just like extra ways to show up and show you that he cares about little things and he loves you. And he wants to bless his children.
Just like we want to give good gifts to our children, right? That’s what Jesus said. If you if your son asks you for bread, would you give him a snake? Well, no. You know, in the same way God wants to give generously to us. I am not saying that you’re going to be, you know, always happy, healthy and wealthy and all of that, right?
Because that has not been our experience. We are neither wealthy and we’ve gone through some big health things. So I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is God shows up generously in in ways that, bless us personally. Something that I loved seeing after Jeremiah died was the way that the church functioned, the way it was supposed to function.
I’ve been part of the church my whole life, and we don’t always do that. We as the church don’t always function the way that God designed us to. But in the weeks following Jeremiah’s death, I saw the bread bakers bring bread. I saw the casserole makers bring casseroles. I saw the money, people giving money. I saw the gardener bringing a tree.
I saw the Sunday school teacher taking my children for a day of fun. Away from this house of mourning. The prayers were praying. The huggers were hugging, and all of it combined to be the hands of God carrying us through this time. There was one day when Tony and I, I think we were just walking from mom’s house to our house.
We were out in front of our house for some reason. This car pulls up and this dear woman from our church who I wouldn’t even say was a close friend, she was. And you know, the next generation. She was someone I enjoyed talking to. She wasn’t someone I would necessarily like, you know, go on a coffee date with.
but she was somebody that I knew cared about my family. She pulled up in front of our house, she got out of her car, and she was weeping, and she walked over to us, and she put her arms around both of us, weeping. She turned around, got back in a car and drove away, weeping. Now, before Jeremiah, Tony and I would both say that we were not good with death or grieving.
We didn’t know what to say. We didn’t know what to do, and we were so afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. We tended to just not do anything to not make contact, to wait until some appropriate amount of time is passed, and then we’ll try to express our condolences. I don’t think we are that unusual in that.
I certainly would have thought if if somebody had said, just go to their house, cry with them and leave, I would have thought a little of that wouldn’t be helpful. That would be adding to their burden. Now they’re worried about me.
But I would have been wrong because as she got back in her car and drove away, I literally felt like this weight that Tony and I had been carrying, someone had come and just like, put their shoulder under it and it was suddenly a little lighter. It was people talk about being the hands and feet of Jesus. It was like that.
I mean, God was the one carrying us through. He was the one carrying this burden. But this person was just a physical representation of Jesus that day. And and we knew we weren’t alone. We knew there were people weeping with us. We knew there were people praying for us. I mean, we probably would have said that we knew that already.
But here was proof, and it was just so beautiful. So we learned a lot about grief and my husband said that we got qualified. There was new ministry that we were now qualified to do. And now when people have a loss, we’re not afraid. It feels like that’s a club that we’ve joined. There’s a lot of clubs in our life that we didn’t want to join, that we have joined.
The classroom setting of learning was never very, effective for me. Turns out I need to do things, and that’s how we learned about grief. And a lot of other things is just by walking through it. Here’s an example of of how Tony and I, before Jeremiah, you know, just were unqualified, didn’t know what we were doing. we had lived in a very tiny community barrow.
It’s on the Arctic Ocean. It’s as far north as you can go in America. Somebody in our church died and we went over to their house. The whole church is a very tiny church. Went over to these people’s house, that day, kind of sat with them through the day because it, it took all day to get all the details.
Yes. He was flying the plane that went down. Yes. There’s no survivors. But when we arrived, I noticed that there was this man sitting on the couch who wasn’t really close with this family. I just overheard the wife and mother of six kids who’s waiting to hear news about her husband say, yes, he came here this morning. He’s been sitting there all day, and it’s been such a comfort to me.
And here I walk in and I look over and I just see this man sitting on the couch reading his Bible. He’s not talking to the family. He’s not playing with the kids. He’s, you know, not distracting. Oh, he’s just reading his Bible. Right. and that was a time, too, where I was like, Is that is that helpful?
But he or she said, it’s been such a comfort to me, and it wasn’t something that I really got at the time. I’m like, if you say so. You know, I didn’t get it. but then when Jeremiah died, I could totally have seen that. The closest to that for me would have been this young mom who came and cleaned my bathrooms.
She cleaned my toilets, right. We had three, two and a half baths, so three toilets and I didn’t really know her very well. she was part of this young moms, Bible study at our church. And I felt like at that point, I was not a young mom because my oldest was 12. They were all having their, you know, first and second babies.
but because Jeremiah was a baby, this death really hit them hard. they all had babies, right? And so, she came and just asked if she could clean my bathrooms. And when I got to know her better later, and we talked about it, she said, you know, what I wanted to do is I wanted to just come to your house and pray, but I thought that would be kind of awkward because we didn’t really know each other very well.
So I thought, I’ll come and offer to clean your bathrooms and then I can pray while I’m doing it. And it was so beautiful. And it was wonderful that same day that that moms group had kind of like coordinated. So I had somebody that brought us dinner and somebody who took our laundry, laundry for a family of seven.
Yeah. All, all the same day. And then 2 or 3 weeks later, I went to the moms group just to say thank you. This was beautiful, you know, this gift. And they said, oh, well, actually, we’re planning this whole other thing that was just that was just kind of thrown together that day. We’ve got this whole other plan and we want to we want to bless you and your mom and Lillian, who was eight at the time.
We’d like to give you guys makeovers. And, somebody one of our members is a hairdresser. And another one is a makeup artist. And we’d like to do that and do your, your nails and, and all this, and I’m like, okay, well, okay. If you want to. My birthday’s coming up. So I was actually turning 40. and so they’re like, that’s perfect.
So on my birthday, they picked up Lillian from school. They sent, a couple ladies, went to the house and babysat the rest of the kids, brought pizza and movies for them, picked up my mom and I. Then they had me bring a special outfit. They did our hair, they did our makeup, they did our nails. And then they, coordinated with Tony when he got off work to come and pick me up from their house, gave us an envelope with money and, gift cards to go go out to dinner and, and then took my mom and Lillian home and, like, they, they coordinated all of this, and it was just so beautiful because, you know, it’s it’s sometimes. And I was the same when, when you have little kids at home, you kind of, I don’t know, I speak for myself. I sometimes felt like what can I do? I, I don’t have a lot of money. I’ve got time. But I also have little kids. And so they got to come with me and do whatever I’m doing.
Right. and yet they were able to figure out how to give me this amazing birthday less than a month. Almost exactly a month, actually, from when my child died. And and it was so fitting for them. Right. It was using their gifts. It was it was just such a beautiful time. And, yeah, just another great example of how the church was functioning as the church.
And, you know, it was such a spectrum of things that people were doing. And, and each one was just so fitting for who they were and how God designed them. That is such a beautiful example. especially because you you didn’t really feel like you were part of, like, the Young Moms Club, you know, like you kind of felt like a little bit of an outsider.
Yet I think especially in their case, having babies, they were so shocked that this could happen to someone in their community. Yes. And it would have been really easy for them to, you know, not touch it, you know what I mean? Yeah. Retreat. Like in fear. Yeah. Like when we’re afraid, and I. And I speak for myself.
I like to pretend it doesn’t exist. Or if there’s someone who, is is going through something unthinkable like you did, you can sometimes feel like it’s safer to give them space. Yeah, to stay away. yeah. So, it’s just such a beautiful thing that they embraced you and your family, and they didn’t feel awkward, like I love that she came and just cleaned your toilet like, that is something practical I’m sure you were not wanting to do at the moment.
Yeah. And I just love that about, the church, which, you know, you and I know it’s not a building, it’s the people. Yes. And I love how God speaks to these people and, you know, inspires them, you know, to do something for someone else. And I think it’s a good reminder for us that we can sometimes feel these nudges from God and be like, that’s silly, or won’t make a difference.
You know, I feel like we need to we need to respond to those nudges because we don’t know. Like she, you know, she could have just disregarded that feeling, like that’s what I should do because thinking it was dumb or whatever, or somebody else will do it or, you know, all of these excuses that we come up with, when God wants, he’s he’s inviting us to be a part of the work that he’s doing.
God was already comforting us, walking us through, carrying this burden. But these people that responded to his invitation to bring a casserole, clean a toilet, do laundry, whatever, take the kids they got to experience. They got to be a part of it. It’s like they got to be on the team. You know? They got to be on God’s team doing this, you know?
And, and so it’s not, you know, it’s not like if they hadn’t if they hadn’t done that, God wouldn’t have comforted us and carried our burden and walked us through this. But he’s going to do it anyway. He’s already doing it. He’s already at work. But he was inviting people to get involved and be a part of it, and they were blessed because they responded, you know, it’s just a blessing when you when you do something and you feel like, yeah, that that made a difference.
Or you can see that it was helpful or, you know, it just it just feels good to do something for somebody else. That’s the way we’re designed. God made us that way so that, so that we would help each other and, and people would know they’re not alone. When this happened, did you guys feel, like, angry with God for taking your baby?
I want to be completely honest. Not like raging at God. I was very disappointed, no doubt. frustrated. confused. Because what I said earlier about, you know, feeling like this, our family is complete, and Tony and I didn’t really have a plan for how many kids we wanted to have. We were kind of going like, oh, maybe if we’ll have another one.
You know, it wasn’t like we planned to have a big family or not. we’d both come from families with four kids, and we thought that was a pretty good number. But here we were at six. but it felt so I was like, I thought I thought we were on the same page here. I thought, was there something wrong with this complete picture that I saw?
You know, wasn’t like, I like, you know, shake your fist at God kind of rage, but definitely confusion. I think confusion is kind of the best word for it. Like, wait, I thought I thought this was the trajectory, and now we’re going over here. So I, I had been a Christian for a long time. I had, experienced difficulties before this that, I knew God could work through.
And I knew, that he could use. So I didn’t doubt those things. So this was literally, something that I said. I remember saying this the week Jeremiah died. When you have little kids there, they’re going to say, and they’re going to ask things that everybody else is thinking but aren’t going to say, right. So of course, my children asked why?
Why did this happen? But they’re not asking God. They’re asking me, right? Because I’m supposed to have all the answers. And this is what I said. I don’t know why, but this is what I do know, and this is what I’m holding on to, and this is what I’m focusing on. I know that God is good. I know that he has good plans for us.
I know that he is at work in our lives, in our world. He’s here with us.
In those things that I know, help me accept the things that I don’t know. Be okay with not knowing. Did that make it feel okay that I didn’t have my son? No, but it made it okay that I didn’t understand why? Because I knew God was present, that he was showing up faithfully in all those things that I listed, and also in things like just conversations with my kids where I felt like, thank you, God, that totally came from you.
I didn’t have those words when I went into that conversation. Yeah, the things that I knew helped me with the things that I didn’t know. That’s what I would tell people. When we get to heaven, I think we’re we’ll look back with perfect understanding and our lives and, the book club, I mean, we recently read The Great Divorce, and C.S. Lewis is talking about this part where someone who’s in heaven is talking to someone who’s not.
He says something about, like, when you get here and you look back, you’re going to see heaven’s light shining over your whole life. So I took that, as you know, you’re going to see everywhere that God was at work, and you’re going to see with perfect understanding all of the the things that other people did to you. Right.
You’re going to understand what was behind that in ways that we can’t now. We can. You know, it helps if somebody hurts you and you find out, well, they were hurt horribly, right. It does help us somewhat. but then we’re going to have perfect, perfect understanding of all of the factors that impacted us while we were here.
I love the analogy of the tapestry. Have you heard that one? How, the front of the tapestry is this beautiful masterpiece, but on the back it’s just this mess tangles and knots and chaos and, you know, that’s our life, right? And I think it’s really easy for us to want to blame God, you know, if he mad at us, did we do something wrong?
You know, we live in a fallen world, right? He he didn’t want this for us. Yeah, but when we say God took Jeremiah, it wasn’t the he he was taking him from you. He was taking him out of compassion like he’s got him. You know, when we say we lose a child, he’s not lost, right? Right. Absolutely. Where he is.
Yep. And when I had my first miscarriage, I, I called and talked to a girlfriend, and it was really wonderful that I didn’t live where she lived anymore. And, so she couldn’t just, you know, give me a hug, and we couldn’t just hang out. So first she just wept with me, which was a relief. My husband was out of town at the time, which is, you know, when things happened.
So she cried with me for a while, and then she said, well, at least you know where that one is. And I was like, yeah, yeah, because there’s no guarantee that our other children will choose to be in a relationship with God. But they are right. At the beginning of my childbearing years, I knew that I had one there because Jeremiah was in heaven, and I knew this.
If people have lost a child and they don’t know that, I’d encourage them to read the story of David and Bathsheba. We always think, oh, David and Bathsheba, right? And we’re just we think of just how they got together, like the beginning of their story. Right? One of my favorite parts of David’s story, which isn’t something we automatically think of when we think of David and Goliath and David and Bathsheba and, you know, the mighty king and all this is actually their child died.
And while he was sick, David, fasted and mourned and prayed and asked God to save his child. And then the child died, and David got up and washed his face and put on clean garments and ate. And his servants were all confused. You were mourning before the child died, and now that the child died, is everything fine?
Right? And David said, my son won’t return to me, but I will go to him. And I just loved that because he knew where his son was. even Curtis Chapman. A lot of people know that he he’s a very big Christian artist, has been for a very long time, had a child die. I heard him say one time that he thought about heaven a whole lot more.
Once one of his children went to live there. And that is been so true for me, too. It’s, the more pieces of my heart go there. Yeah, the more it feels like another home. Kind of the way Phenix feels like another home. Even though I think of Alaska as my home, a big part of my heart is already in heaven.
We will be together. Yeah. When we say we lost a child, we didn’t lose a child. Boy, did I struggle with how to say that Jeremiah died for the first year. I wouldn’t even use that word. I couldn’t stand to say that he died because I knew that he was alive. So I really struggled with how to talk about him.
So I would sometimes I would say lost. But then that didn’t feel right because it wasn’t lost. But he wasn’t with me. And just sometimes I would say he graduated. That felt like, you know, I’m moving on. He got to move on. Jeremiah was only with us for three months and 12 days, but during that time he got to go to Hawaii.
One day we were at this beach that had this, pillow lava, which, is really cool if you haven’t seen it. It’s like, if you can just imagine the way you’ve seen thick flows of lava, and it looks so soft and it’s just thick and oozing, and then imagine it freezing. So you’ve got these little tide pools and stuff because it went down into the ocean.
So there’s all these really cool tide pools all over the place. It was a great place to take little kids, even though it wasn’t a sandy beach, you know, for playing with, like, the sand. It, had all of these fun tide pools to play in, and one of them was even big enough that Linnea was in this little floaty thing, and she was able to float, and the kids were able to push her back and forth inside of her own little, little pool.
So that was really fun. but some of the tinier ones I was with, because I am I’m not sciency, but I’m a homeschool mom, so I’m trying to trying to be sciency for them. We were like looking in the little tidal pools and looking at the critters moving around in there, and there were these little, hermit crabs and they, were picking up the shells.
And we’re looking at them, and some of the shells you’d pick up are empty, and some of them have crabs. And what I heard from somebody then was that they they grow, and then they get too big for their shell, and they have to leave, and they have to go find a bigger shell. So then Jeremiah was with us on that trip, and a couple weeks later he was gone.
And when I held him that day and he felt so light, I felt like God said he got too big for his shell. He was bigger on the inside, you know, than than his shell could hold. And there’s no limit in heaven to how big his soul can be. Wow, that’s a beautiful picture of the spirit, right? Yeah.
I mean, body or bodies or shell. Yeah. Not something I’d ever experienced. I’ve never held a dead body. It feels like a shell. It feels like it’s empty. I’ve heard it before from other people. Yeah, that they know that their loved one is not there. It is just a shell. And what we put on his stone was his name and dates.
And then it said safe in the arms of Jesus. Yeah, because that’s where he was. And something else happened in Hawaii, right? we were at another beach that did have sand. It was a very small beach. We had it all to ourselves. the kids had been out playing in the water, and I’d been taking care of Linnea, and, but there was this point where all of the the big kids.
So Josiah, Jacob, Lillian and Joshua were all, playing in the sand. And Linnea, who was again was almost to, we discovered, had to have somebody with a hand on her at all times because she would run right into the waves, be knocked down, be floating face down. You’d grab her, put her on her feet, and she’d run right back into the waves and, like, repeat.
So it was like, okay, that freaked me out. And then I so I was taking care of her. But at this one point, Toni was was taking care of her. My mom was sitting in the little, shade tent with Jeremiah, who was asleep, and the other kids were all playing in the sand. So I’m like, okay, it’s mom’s turn to go out and go swimming.
You don’t really know how far out you’ve gone until you look back, you know, and and then also, it’s easier to swim parallel with, beach than into the waves. And so anyway, I kind of turned and then I was going to go parallel and I was swimming along parallel, but I started to get like like a little moment of panic, like I’m quite a ways away from the shore.
And I didn’t realize I’d come up this far. And, I’m not a really strong swimmer. I’m pretty strong. But, I was remembering this episode of Magnum Pi from my childhood where he swam out and. And then he was, like, stuck in this riptide that was going to take him to Alaska, and I. So I sort of like going home.
I, you know, what? If I got in here and I, you know, whatever. Anyways, so it was just it was just a moment like those thoughts kind of just flash through your head. And, and I was like, oh. And just then my foot touched something, you know, which is also kind of scary. But then I realized it was a rock and it was right underneath me.
So I stood on this rock and I was looking back at the shore and I can see it so clearly now. There was a big, hill right behind the beach, and there was some dark clouds that were coming up, from behind. I looked like a storm was coming in. And here’s my kids over here playing in the sand, building sandcastles.
And here’s Tony wrangling Linnea over here, and my mom and Jeremie in the tent. And it was like my whole world is right there. And I could just sit there, I could stand on this rock and just look at them. And I was wishing I had a camera. You know, that’s why I think God’s given me such a clear memory of it, because it was like I was I was mentally trying to take a picture of this, this day and this moment.
But while I was standing there, you know, the waves are going all the time. It wasn’t a big wave day. We wouldn’t have been out there if it had. But but still, the waves are just moving me back and forth, right? And it’s fine because you feel like a security, because I’m on this rock, right? I’m not. It’s not scary feeling.
It’s just kind of gentle, like, okay. And then I was able to rest. And when I felt like I was all rested, then I swam into shore and we went about our day. Well, 2 or 3 weeks later, Jeremiah was gone, and I’m tasked with parenting five grieving children. The youngest who and totally confused about where Jeremiah’s.
I mean, they were all confused about where Jeremiah is, but especially to. I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t know, how do you do this? This grief felt like something I could drown into. It felt like there was a deep, dark hole kind of just over there that I could go into and never come out. It was kind of like sitting by a campfire and in God is that fire, and he’s keeping me warm and there’s an attraction to that.
I want to be near that. But it’s like, I, I keep thinking there’s relief over there. I could just go in that hole and never come out. Anyway, one day when I was thinking about that, God reminded me of that day at the beach and he said, these waves, these waves of grief, they’re going to push you and pull you, and you’re not going to feel.
Like you know what to do. Like you know what to say. You’re not going to. Know how to navigate this. But I’m here. I’m that rock. I’m underneath you. I’m holding you. You can just start and rest here with me. Yeah. And when you feel. Strong again, then you can go back. And it became like such a beautiful picture for times alone with him that, he was holding me.
He was holding all of us. But I just love that he did that. He orchestrated that day in that picture, in that rock he put there. Who knows how long that rocket been there, right way before I needed it. But he arranged it all so that I could look back at it when I needed it. And it was just another way that he was allowing me to see that he was present, that he was present before preparing us, and he was present with us in it, sending pudding cups and that he was going to be there always.
And I love the picture of, you know, I can just see you on that rock in the water all the way around you. He was surrounding you the entire time. Yeah. The water analogy is a lot like life, right? The waves, they come and go. Some days are blue skies and beautiful little like trickles of waves. And other times there’s waves that, really just threaten to take you out.
Yeah. Did you ever feel like he had sort of given you a reason to stay? Certainly. My other children were a huge motivation to not go crawling that whole I felt like they needed me. Yeah, they needed me to function. They needed me to, you know, still be their mom sometimes there would be times where I felt like I just got to go cry.
And so I would just go in my room or the bathroom, you know, and have a few minutes with God. And I remember one night especially that was, it felt like the first night that kind of felt normal, like we’re getting back into a sort of a normal routine. I fixed this dinner that I fixed a lot for my children back then.
Don’t judge me. dinosaur chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese and carrot sticks. So I felt better about it, and, well. And so I had set them. Set them all up, actually, on our couch in our love seat in the family room with their little trays in with their, set up the TV so they could watch a movie.
I didn’t really think anything except I was thinking, okay, okay, this feels this feels normal. Like we’re we’re we’re getting through. You know, there’s some comfort in getting back to, a routine. Even though, you know, for a while, you just. You can’t have a routine. You have to just deal with whatever’s happening that day, and that’s fine, too.
But when you can start to have those days that feel normal, there’s a comfort there, right? So they sit down. I put in one of their favorite movies and did not think about how The Prince of Egypt begins. oh. And this mother is putting her baby in the basket and saying goodbye. Oh my God, that’s. Oh, wow.
And it hit me so fresh, like it had just happened. You know, it had probably been, like I said, 2 or 3 weeks at that point. and I was just, like, backed out of the room because I didn’t want to make a big deal, you know, or the kids or, you know, just go out and just went upstairs and just collapsed on my bed, and I was just sleeping in, I remember my mother noticed that I was gone.
And came upstairs and, and she had actually lost a baby also, before I was born. I’m the youngest after a big gap. But during that gap, she’d had a baby that had died at seven days old because he had a heart defect that they didn’t know about until after he was done. So I had always had ultrasounds and made sure that they looked really carefully at the heart so that we would know, because it’s the kind of thing that today they could have fixed if they’d known about it, you know?
But at that point they didn’t have ultrasound and they didn’t know until he was gone. so I, you know, thought I was doing my due diligence. Just have them that that’s the only risk factor I have to worry about is this weird heart thing. Right. And so I always had them check. But their hearts were always fine.
I guess I didn’t say, so it was sudden infant death syndrome that Jeremiah died of on his death certificate. It it just says, asphyxiation from SIDs. At the time, I’d never heard anybody say this is what causes it. Honestly, I had thought there’s probably other things going on in that home. Maybe they’re all big smokers and, you know, maybe there’s some sort of abuse going on that was undetected.
Or, you know, I just like a baby doesn’t just die. I certainly never thought it was going to be part of our story. I never known anybody that it had happened to it. It always has been something, you know, in the news. I read an article just a few years ago now that, they think that they’ve found, Gene, some babies to sleep really heavily.
And that’s why they just stopped breathing. Because they were sleeping so heavily. They think because he was a very heavy sleeper. Like I said that day, I went, I, you know, he was taking a nap and I asked Josiah to go get him. It wasn’t unusual for us to have to wake him up from his now. Makes sense to me if that’s if that is what’s going on.
But, yeah, it’s just one of those things that you don’t think that will ever be something that you need to know very much about. Our pastor friend who was with us that week, his wife, Janet, is a dear friend, and she actually had another friend whose son, died laying on her chest like they were both. And she woke up and he was gone.
And it’s a weird thing, but for me, that was a comfort to hear because it was like even literally in our arms. That wasn’t something that could be prevented. So this may not be a comfort to some, but, you know, the Bible says that all of my days are written in a book. That’s right. I knows exactly how long my life is going to be.
He knew exactly how long Jeremiah’s life was going to be. He was not surprised that day. this pastor friend Steve prayed with us that night and and something that he said kind of bothered me. At first. It was like I got to think about that. I don’t know, it just didn’t sit right, he said as he’s praying that God was the first one to cry that night.
and I it kind of, you know, it just kind of jangled me like, God crying, oh, well, do we see that in the Bible? Yes. We do. We see God mourning over his children when they’re disobedient, and we see Jesus mourning, weeping with people who are weeping. And so the idea of God crying shouldn’t be so shocking, but that he did it first because he knew what we were going to be experiencing right before we did.
And I even, I forgot about this till just this minute. But he also another kind of a picture that he gave me reflecting on that, that first week was because, you know, Jeremiah was my sixth child. There had been many times where I’d taken a child into the doctor’s office, where I and the doctor and the nurses, everyone else besides the child knows there’s a needle coming in.
You know, the Bible also says that we’re surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. And I think it’s I think there’s angelic forces, but I also think it’s people that have gone before us that are watching over our lives. I don’t know how much, how much, you know, interaction they have, but they they’re cheering for us. And and maybe that just means angelic hosts.
And I’m fine with that too. I don’t have a strict theology on that with that saying. But there are people. There are beings that are witnessing our life. And so God gave me this picture of like our family in our house that day, going about our normal life. they all knew what was coming before we did. And it may seem maybe this wouldn’t be a comfort to somebody else.
To me, it was a comfort because when I take my child in for a checkup and immunization, I’m doing it because I think that that’s for their good. Right? And and for me, I’m not going to get into immunizations, but it’s my it’s my belief, right, that what the reason why I’ve got them there is for their good.
Well that’s I’m I have imperfect understanding but God understands perfectly and he knows that what’s about to happen is for my good. But he also knows that it’s going to hurt. Yeah, just like we know with our child, right, that what’s about to happen is going to hurt. It showed me the tenderness God felt for me and for my children and Tony and my mom that that God was going through that day with us, knowing what’s about to happen and already being there to hold us.
Like I can think of lots of times when I got my kids immunized where I immediately like nurse them right afterwards, or they get the lollipop or whatever, you’re trying to comfort them, right? You probably already have a plan. Maybe you’re going to go for an ice cream cone afterwards, right? You’re there’s something that you’re planning to make this not so bad, right?
This thing that they had to go through. And I just think it shows we get that from our Heavenly Father, whose image we’re made in. And he does the same thing. He knows that this thing that’s about to happen is going to hurt, and he’s going to be right there with us, and he’s going to provide in all kinds of ways that we for our comfort.
You know, the Bible calls him the God of all comfort and and I love that, that he calls himself that. Right. because that’s what we need, don’t we? They all do. That’s the Holy Spirit, right? He’s a counselor, right? Yeah. Yeah, he’s right here. And ever present help in times of trouble. You have such a gift for expression and writing.
you have a beautiful blog. So where can people connect with you? Well, I love to tell stories about the faithfulness of God, and I love to share how he’s been faithful to me. So I named my website GreatisYourfaithfulness.com. For any viewers who are watching this video, thank you for spending time with us. please leave your prayer requests down in the comments and we would be honored to pray for you.
For more inspirational stories like this, please do the YouTube thing in you know, hit notifications and subscribe, and we’ll have more stories of how God’s working in people’s lives in the highs and the lows. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you Laura. Yes for sure.
To connect with Lara, visit her at greatisyourfaithfulness.com.