Feeling a bit disconnected in your walk with Christ?
Well, Pastor Greg Laurie has a great new book called What Every Growing Christian Needs to Know that'll help. Let's say you're feeling lethargic and tired. You know, if you have a diet of social media and you don't take time for the Word of God, this is going to have a damaging effect.
So this is just one of the things we talk about in this new book called What Every Growing Christian Needs to Know. Available at harvest.org. And of course, when Christopher went to be with the Lord. In 2008, it was so devastating for us. And you were such.
A great help at that time, you know, because you stepped in into Jonathan's life. Because Jonathan was so influenced by his older brother, you know, because Christopher was quite a bit older than Jonathan. Yeah. And he was almost like another parent in a way. And, you know, because Jonathan was just a little kid, I was always amazed at how the two of them could get in an argument.
You know, one time I saw them arguing. Jonathan's like two, Christopher's like 14. I said, Why are you arguing with a two-year-old who even cares what he says? But Christopher managed to do that.
So, how old would he have been when Jonathan was two? I said 14. I think he's 10 years older. That's a lot like Olivia and Lennox. But it is funny, they can still bicker.
You know what I mean? She's 19, he's 7. It's like, but it's just kids are kids. It's just a sibling thing. It is.
But you. We're so helpful to Christopher and then to Jonathan. In fact, he went to Montana and worked with you for a period of time, and he was really feeling the call of God in his life.
So, you know, we have a long family connection. It's crazy. And walking with you guys through. Christopher's going to heaven, which was so devastating. And yet, watching you and Kathy and Jonathan struggle through all of that, finding your way.
You guys had been in Montana before with Christopher. Yes. Watching him. Fourth of July, man. I was so proud of Christopher.
You know, for all of his difficulties and struggles. When he went to be with Jesus, he was at such a high watermark of his faith, leading his family, of loving it. My last meaningful interaction with him was a breakfast where he was just telling me how much he had felt. Bad for not being the same example to Jonathan he wanted to be. And I was just encouraging him: like, even in that regret, there's an example.
So to be open, be bold, you know, because he was saying, I feel like I've lost moral authority. I'm like, you can't, in your mistakes, talk about that. And so I was just, and I was just so encouraged by him. His Finding his footing, and you guys blazing a trail through the loss of a child. I mean, we got the front row seat to that, sitting on the beach with you guys while you were ugly crying, like the depths of sorrow.
Yeah. But then seeing you still grab onto God, and you guys came to Montana for some of that healing. Yes. And of course, all of that. Not knowing that we were about to follow your example and not knowing we were about to lose a child.
And you preached Linda's funeral. And so it's like it's almost just poetically weird and beautiful that we got to walk with you through grief and then you guys got to return the favor in that same way. Yeah. So I remember so clearly when you called because we were, our whole family was there at our house, we were having a great time. And I got this call from you.
I believe the first time. I was in the ambulance. Yeah, you were saying, Pray, pray. You know, it's an emergency with little Lenya. And so we prayed.
And then you called us not long after that and told us that she was with the Lord. And it was so hard to believe because we had walked through that together. And now it's happening to you. You know, that was such a devastating time in your life, but you. Have gone through that with such a strength, and a lot has come out of that.
We wouldn't wish this on anybody. What has happened to us? We joined this exclusive club we never wanted to be a member of. I mean, you stop and think: if you lose your husband, You're a widow. If you lose your wife, you're a widower.
If you lose your parents, you're an orphan. But if you lose your child, what are you? There's not a word for it. I guess devastated. But so we have a choice at a time like that to become better or bitter.
You can just become mad at God, angry at God, but you chose to become better. And to help others, and you've not wasted your pain. And you've written about this quite extensively in your book about Little Lenya. Tell us about that book, how that's impacted people. Thank you.
Yeah. Linya had an asthma attack, as you know. She was five. It was five days before Christmas in 2012. And that night, we had the chance to give her corneas to two people.
So each of them got one of her cornea. They also took her heart valves. I mean, that's a hard thing. We got home, the hospital called, and immediately we were thinking, did she wake up? You know, like that was our first thought.
Because you're clutching at anything. Denial's real, shock's real. But they were like, no, no, we want to, you know, take her heart valves and take her corneas and take these, you know, organs for transplant. And, you know, as much as you don't want the visual of them cutting into your child, it also was like, she would want us to do this. And so we said yes.
And later on, these two people get her corneas and they told us they had been blind, but they could see. And that's such a beautiful picture of the gospel, of course. And Linya means lion. And so it just hit me. I was like, wow.
They see through the eyes of a lion. And I kind of got this metaphor of them seeing through her eyes and us seeing through Jesus's eyes. And the lion. Was that a new one?
Well, because Linya means lion. Oh, wow. It's a Russian word. And then we called her Linalion. That was her nickname.
And she was the most... ferocious, you know, hair always messy, always in trouble, naughtiest of our children for sure. She had the cutest little voice, too. Like raspy and yeah, kind of smoky, like she had just had half a pack of cigarettes or something. But just, I think she would have been a good singer because that kind of tends to be the voice profile.
So anyhow, I was in my office. It was the first year. I mean, the first year is so crazy because it's every Father's Day, Mother's Day, June, 4th of July.
Well, this was close to Christmas. Yeah. That must have been the worst Christmas ever. Weirdly, I was so on edge for it. You know how you raise the defenses before Mother's Day, your birthday?
And that first year is like. Sweeping a minefield. And then after that, I remember taking a breath, and I don't know if it was your experience, but after the first year, I was like, okay. I can do that again. It was like almost a sense of a weight shifting off my shoulders in grief that year.
Was that your experience at the year mark? I don't know if it was at the year mark. I mean, I do remember distinctly that I felt as though a weight was on my chest. I mean, a physical weight that seemed to be there for quite a time. And then it just began to lift.
you know, because it's weird in the early stages of grief. You know, you wonder will I ever be happy again? And then, when you begin to experience happiness, you almost feel bad for being good, right? For feeling good, like, oh, I shouldn't be happy right now. But, you know, if we stop and think about Lanya or Christopher.
In heaven, or let's just change the position. Let's just say that you or I were in heaven and our children are down there. Would we want them to live in sadness for the rest of their life? And we'd want them to grieve us. I mean, we want to be remembered.
But at the same time, we would say, live your life, put God first, discover his plan for you. We'll be reunited one day, you know, be happy. But it's hard to be happy when you're so sad, isn't it? It's so true. And you know, it's weird is to derail, and I'll come back to what I was saying, but with my dad, with my dad's death this last year, we're not at the earmark yet.
The grief has been so different. Tell me how it's different. I naively, when dad died, I thought to myself, as my brothers and sisters were all falling apart, Okay, this is their first major meaningful interaction with grief in a real serious way. And I thought to myself, like, I'm a vet. Like, you know, I've lost a child.
You know, losing the dad is going to be sad, but I'm going to feel somewhat like, and man. I called you on a really low moment. I remember calling you like a month in, just being like, I am struggling here. And the grief is different. And I was like, and it hit me.
You can't Have a grief punch card and feel like I'm entitled to my third grief free because I got, you know what I mean? Like, it's a different person, it's a different grief. Lynn was my daughter, but my dad was, you know, for 42 years of my life, I always had a dad. I had him every day to text, I had him every day to call. He showed up at everything.
He was a very great dad. And I knew he was dying from the pancreatic cancer, but the Mayo Clinic told us we had a year or two more.
So when he did die, and I never got to say goodbye because he turned so quickly. And It just caught me off guard. I think the difference of the grief. Was partially, I expected it to be less severe. And it was really challenging.
It has been really challenging. I've multiple times called him, and then I remember, you know, he was in heaven. Oh, really? Yeah, like actually got to the phone call. Or would go to text him and be like, oh my God, because we didn't talk every day.
So, I mean, sorry, we talked every day, but I didn't see him every day.
So I would just go to, like, oh, it's been a couple of days. I need to give dad a call and be like, oh, wait. And then I would hit me again. But all that to say, with Lenya, when she got to give those people her eye tissues, we. Had the revelation, I think, that Ephesians talks about, which is that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened.
Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus. And so we started to see connections between the pain we were facing and what God wants to do inside of our eyes and the metaphor of things that are, you know, the song puts it this way: that may the things of this world grow strangely dim. And almost this far-sightedness, near-sightedness.
So I did all this research on lions and figured out how their eyes work and kind of wrote this book comparing our eyes to Jesus's eyes and use her eyes as a metaphor. And what was surprising to me when the book went out, and now it's out, we've sold a lot of copies in, I think, a dozen languages. It's out in now. We have a children's version of it that's done very well, won a bunch of awards. But I would get letters back from people who weren't dealing with the pain of a loss of a child.
They would be dealing with chemo or they lost a job or they got divorced. And then I kind of realized, like you've said before, when you connect with people on pain, it doesn't have to be the exact pain. It can be anything, but they're. Get encouraged by it. Yeah, yeah.
It's been said that success builds walls, failure builds bridges. And I think. And by that, the idea is that success, oh, I've done this, I accomplished that. People think, yeah, whatever, you know, but failure or tragedy. They go, wow, he's just like me.
He knows what I'm going through. You know, we are at the end of the day, we're just human. Just because we're called to be pastors doesn't mean we don't have all the emotions that anybody else has. And, you know, because I realized when Christopher died, you know, being a preacher didn't give me a leg up. At the end of the day, I was just a father who lost his son.
I mean, I'd been the preacher at the pulpit trying to comfort families who'd lost their children so many times, including at your service for Little Lenny. I remember that day like it happened yesterday. It was like a scene from a film because it began to snow. It was cold. It was outdoors.
It was just like the most tragic scene from a film, but at the same time, glorious because of the hope we have, you know, but it was so vivid. And so I did my best as a pastor to try to comfort you. But one day when you wake up and you're, you know, you're in the front row and you're the parent and you're the one who experienced a loss and you know these things, but what you're going through emotionally. Recently, a friend of mine, his son died unexpectedly. He was running a race, he was very young.
And he collapsed at the finish line. I think he was 23 years old. And so I went to the hospital immediately because one thing I know is when this happens, you need to get to that person as quickly as you can. You don't have to be there with the right words. You just need to be there.
Sometimes it's just the ministry of presence. In fact, often I felt less is more. Saying less can do more. And so I was just, I walked into this room where his son was lying on this hospital bed. He was gone.
And his son was a believer, and the family was gathered around. And I realized that this horrible thing that I'd gone through, which I wouldn't wish on anybody, was actually a tool I could now use for the glory of God. Because as I began my talk to them, I just said hello. I'm friends with The guy whose son had gone on, and I said, and my name is Greg Laurie, I'm a pastor. And I lost a son 16 years ago, and that was my connection.
And that's not wasting your pain. It's like, cause I can speak to this from experience. And I think sometimes people will listen to you more because they go, oh, he knows what I'm going through. I think so. And I think you're hungry.
Like, I was hungry to ask you questions and benchmark. And you know what I mean? And even like, it almost tells you. I can do this. I can stay married.
I can stay in ministry. You preach through this. I can too. It almost gave me a temple. And I think that's why Paul said, like, follow me like I follow Christ.
And when we see someone who's faced, Any awful tragedy, but has kept on going. We can go, okay, I can see that example and follow it. You know, what I found is it changed me. I hope for the better. I believe it has.
But I think before it happened... When I would hear someone just lost a child would you call them. I would call them But I would dread it, and and I would and I would be happy when the call was over. Or, you know, there was an apprehension about all of it because I felt so ill-equipped to help them. But now, when I hear it, will you call them?
I'll say immediately. I'll call, yeah, I'll do it. Because I know I got to walk in there where others maybe don't want to. And because I know what that's like. And I think that you've been able to do this in amazing ways.
What would you say? has changed in you, in you as a person. And in you as a leader, spiritual leader, as a pastor, since when you went to be with the Lord.
Well, I think what you just said is key. I think one of the things um I've had to learn to do is associate Anytime I use something That she taught me through that experience, or even like you mentioned a minute ago, like when I'm happy, I've had to learn to, by kind of reframing it, associate that happiness as being connected to her too. Because I think part of the reason We don't want to heal because it's true. Like some people stay stuck in their grief and don't want to heal because they feel like the last thing that that person ever gave them was the grief. And so if they give up sadness, they'll almost lose their connection to their loved one.
Interesting.
So. You have to almost tell yourself, like, my healing can connect me to her too. Not just her in my future, but also, like, this healing is, this healed grief connects me to her.
So I can honor her by being happy. Or, like you said, to your point, when I talk to someone or share something from that experience, because people always say, like, oh, I'm sorry for asking about Lenya, or like, they don't want to bring it up in an interview. I'm sure it's the same thing with you. Like, they almost feel bad. And it's like, no, no, let me.
I associate that as like me as her dad stewarding her legacy. You don't want them to be forgotten either. No, I want her to say.
Well, think how many people know Lenya's story. Not that you much rather have your daughter at home to see tonight. But however, she's with the Lord, but it's great you can remember her and she can impact people. And in a weird way, we were given the chance, like you and I both. We should die, and our and Christopher, Jonathan, and Christopher, and Livy, and Linya, they should be telling our story.
Like my father, my grandfather. That's how it should be. For whatever reason, God and his sovereignty allowed it to be this way. We get to steward their legacies. And so I'm not going to miss that opportunity.
And I can do it with happiness, not just sadness in my heart. Like I can genuinely be happy. But as a leader, I think there's greater empathy. I think the brokenness from the pain has brought me down to the dust, man. I mean, I've been in the place where, like, like Job says, like, I'm licking the floor of Sheol, you know?
And I think that grounds you in a different way, that humbles you in a different way. And so I think it's changed everything about my leadership for sure. What would you say to somebody maybe that just heard the worst news imaginable and they're wondering, how am I going to survive this? You remember what that was like for you? What would you say to them?
One thing my counselor helped me to see with this new recent grief is with my dad that really helped me was he said, make sure you differentiate the grief.
So grief feels like a big bag of laundry. Yeah. And it feels a mountain of laundry to do. And that's almost overwhelming. You go, I can't even do this laundry.
But he said, what do you do? You first thing you do is you go whites, coloreds, darks. You sort it. And then the piles get smaller.
So he said, okay, with your dad, immediately sort the grief out because it feels like a monstrous pile of grief.
So instead you go, what am I not grieving? What am I not grieving?
Okay. I'm not grieving all the memories of my dad. I get to keep those forever.
Okay, let's put those in a different pile because you're not actually grieving those. And then cherish those memories and the lessons you learn from them.
Okay. Second pile. What has also not been taken away is your future with your father. Yeah. Linya, Christopher, my dad, they're in heaven.
Okay, well, I'm not grieving that because I'm looking forward to it.
Okay, well, what are you grieving?
Okay, I can't call him today. I can't have ice cream with him or invite him to my daughter's graduation.
Okay, grieve that. But now you're grieving a much smaller pile.
So I would say to someone grieving, of course, first of all, I would hug him and. Say, I'm so sorry. Yeah. And ask him about that person and want to hear all that. But that would be my advice: differentiate the grief.
Yeah, that's a good distinction.
Well, thank God we have hope and thank God that our children are not just a part of our past, they're also a part of our future. And your father, of course, and my mother's gone on to be with the Lord and, you know. When she died, you know, I I felt deep grief. I think I felt deep grief over not being the best son. You know, like I thought I could have been a better son to her.
Of course, she could have been a better mother to me, but you know, we can only do our part. And you know, that was a tremendous loss. It's hard to so hard to lose people, but they're not really lost if we know where they are. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to my podcast. Before you go, I wanted to let you know about the important work we're doing here at Harvest.
You know, we've had the same goal these last 50 years, which is simply this. We want to know God and we want to make Him known. And we do that in a lot of ways. Documentary films, animation, radio, television, large-scale evangelistic events, and more. If you want to be a part of what we're doing to fulfill the great commission, you can support us with whatever you can give at harvest.org slash donate.
Again, that's harvest.org slash donate. And thanks so much.
