Our intensity of our minds, whenever we suffer, is when is this going to be over? When is this going to stop?
Yet, you see Jesus on the boat, in the storm, chilling, asleep, knocked out. And so, instead of trying to fixate ourselves on when is this over, resting in the one who's in it with us becomes the whole goal. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. Do you feel like the last two days were in this mini-series of this drama that you can't wait for today because you need to hear how it ends? Yeah, because I actually don't know how it ends. I know.
I mean, I sort of know, but I don't really know, and I'm guessing our listeners feel the same thing. Yeah, and if you haven't listened to the last two days, please go back because we've been interviewing Recab and Brittany Gray about their story. And you guys are parents of four. You're a pastor here in Orlando. You've had quite the journey. But yesterday, we ended at this crisis point of your life because you didn't know whether your second child, your daughter, was going to live or die. Yeah. So thanks again for sharing this because a lot of us, man, we're in pain, and our children are suffering. We don't even know how to process it sometimes with God, with each other.
And we haven't even asked how your marriage has endured through all the trials, you know, because that affects our marriages, too. Yes, indeed. So your daughter was just airlifted to a hospital. You didn't think she was going to make it because it's bitterly cold in Iowa. And yet you find out that as they airlifted her, and she's at a crisis point, that her numbers were actually good. You thought she might die in the transition.
Yes, without a doubt. I mean, even yesterday when you said, hey, when you're telling Brittany, prepare yourself, that conversation in itself, like she might not make this flight. Sickle cell, cold, you knew the odds.
Yeah. So what happened? Well, God had a different story, and not only did she make it, but she arrived. And throughout the process, this is the first time me and her have actually been able to see her together. Because it's during COVID.
Because it's during COVID. And so we're literally in the room with her, just praying over her daily. What's her name? Zipporah. What's that mean?
Well. Zipporah means little bird in Hebrew. She was named after Moses' wife from the scripture. Just a strong woman who followed after what the Lord asked her to do. And so it's ironic that she is a little bird. She's a tiny little baby girl, but she's a strong girl.
Yeah. She must be if she pulled through that. So strong. So strong. So you've been praying over her.
You start praying for her every day. It was a rollercoaster though. It was scary days where it's like, we made it all the way here only for it to happen like this. There were other days where it was like, man, this might be the day where, you know, we started to think about taking her off. Yeah.
She was on a ventilator completely under the whole time. So we were in the room, but we didn't know if she could hear us or, you know, what was going on. And you have a baby. You have an older son. And you have a baby.
Yes. We have amazing parents. Our parents jumped on a flight pretty much immediately when they found out Sephora was in the ICU. And so both of our parents worked together to keep our kids because we didn't know how long we would be there. We didn't know how long we would have to leave our home to take care of our other child. So the boys stayed at home with grandma and grandpa while we were out two hours away and unable to be with them and see them. And I was seven months pregnant.
And yeah, that stay ended up being a lot longer than we knew, but we were grateful for that time. And your one year old did not have sickle cell. And I just asked you and your other sibling that was born, who you're pregnant with, does not have it. But let me ask you this because I'm hearing this, you know, it's going through my mind. PTSD. You talk about trauma. You're walking through like the greatest fears that parents have. So did that affect your marriage at all? You're probably not thinking like, oh, he's not being romantic. No, our child may not make it.
Yeah. Because a lot of couples don't make it when they face trauma that's really deep like that. This is where I could just brag on Brittany, like through that pain of miscarriage.
When she talked about like being able to experience now high joys and low pain and sorrow, her depth of walk with Jesus got so deep during that time. Had it not been because when things like that are happening, every moment of stress is like exacerbated like 10 times. Or a hundred times.
Or a hundred times or a thousand times. Like it is every little thing becomes the worst thing. So any little stress is like, we need to fight over this. But man, seriously, our relationship got so deep during that time.
It happened first through the miscarriage. I was running super hard in ministry and I had to stop, but that halt gave me things to think about. Why do I care so much about this? Is this really for the kingdom of God?
Or is this, do I like the applause? I had to ask them just hard questions and it changed me. It literally shifted me. And by the time this all happened, I was in a different place, but so was she. So it was like God through the miscarriages were preparing us for what we were to face. And seriously, our depth of closeness was so close during that time and during that season. And that was necessary for the rollercoaster ride we were going to be on with her in the hospital. But by the grace of God, about a month later almost, she was fully taken off the ventilator. And we were ultimately discharged. This is what's crazy though. And this is a part of the story I don't think many people actually know. So this might be a first to something.
But the day we get back to Des Moines, within hours, my son begins to complain of the same exact pain. No. That brought her into the hospital. No way. Same day.
Same day, like clockwork. Like every single thing she said, it was happening to him. And we go in the hospital, exact same thing.
His oxygen is low. I'm like, Lord. I mean, how much is too much? Are you thinking that?
Like what? And that was where it was like, yo, this is more than we can bear. Like, but we're not bearing it alone.
I love what Paul says in 2 Corinthians to show that the excessiveness of power is not our own, but it's from the Lord. It really was just God's strength at that point in time. We had nothing left. There was no like, all right, let's gear up, done gearing up.
It's like, Lord, you just going to literally have to pick us up and carry us through this. And it was dope because the doctors, because they saw my daughter, they were far more aggressive with treatment. And so what could have been another month and intubation and life lighting turned into just a week in that hospital.
And he was able to go home. But as you pile up all these things, then she's also now seven months pregnant. It was so overwhelming. We were just like, we just have to get out of here. Like, I mean, I'm feeling it for you. I'm like, what? What?
Yeah. And I'm just thinking, one, it's just like you just had this baby. Two, you're pregnant.
So hormones are all over the place. Then you've got your mama's heart with your daughter and now your son goes back in. Are you on your face before God? Or are you just so numb in survival that you can't even function?
Yeah, I think what he said is right. During that time, watching my daughter in the hospital, in the hospital bed, unresponsive, she's not able to communicate with us and we don't know what's going on. Every now and then the ICU nurse runs in because something flares up and then you're just like, okay, okay, she's fine, she's fine.
I'm doing a lot of research on my own. We were fortunate. We have a couple nurses and doctors in our family, so we're like texting them. What does this mean?
What does that mean? But yeah, I think I remember this specifically. I remember him calling me when she first got intubated. I remember sitting on the stairs and I remember that call.
I remember saying, are we going to lose our daughter? I remember being sad. I remember being at peace. That peace kept me, which is funny because that's what the Lord showed me when I first came to Christ. That peace. I'm just so amazingly supported by this man. He encourages me to get in my word and pray. At that season of not being able to communicate with my daughter, reading and praying was what we were doing.
Where could you identify that peace coming from? I mean, how did you have it? God given.
Absolutely God given. Because like you said, I'm a mom. That's literally what my job was. I wasn't working full time. I was a mom. That's what I do. That's who I am.
I would identify myself as primarily first before I'm children's ministry team or I'm a mom. So for me to be okay with the thought of, I had nine years with this girl and it was wonderful. For me to be okay with like, if this is how things end, I'll be okay, was absolutely from the Lord. Absolutely from the Lord. I mean, it's quite a journey.
If our listeners have been listening for the last couple of days, I don't know if it was yesterday or two days ago. I don't even remember where you said, you know, initially with your children born with sickle cell, you're like, we're being punished. And you know, I had a little brother die when I was seven.
He was five of leukemia and I'm pretty sure my dad went to his death bed believing it was punishment for his adulterous affairs. I think he really felt like that was a punishment for his sin. And that's where you guys started. Yeah. That's where you were feeling.
And here you are towards the end of this thing. And you know, there's a passage in John 9. I mean, we're looking at Mr. Bible over here. I'm guessing you're in John 9 where, you know, that's the passage where he heals the blind man. And the question to Jesus is who sinned?
Was it him or his parents that he's born blind? And they were thinking the same thing. God's punishing somebody with this disease.
So as you think about even that, that journey, I know there's a listener or thousands. Because it's sort of almost human nature. We feel like we get rewarded for good and punished for bad. What do you say to a parent who may think there's punishment in their family or to another family member, probably a child like you, and they think it's because of their sin? The quick response is in Christ, the wrath of God has been satisfied. It's such a strange thing to fully embrace. But not embracing it will only lead to more sin. And this is why the evil one wants to keep that lie in front of us. We think if we believe it's punishment, that will then stop. But it's actually like if we believe it's punishment from God, it actually leads to just more stuff.
Because we don't realize that God is wooing us to him and not away from him. And so God does discipline his children. Hebrews makes that clear.
But his discipline is always, always kind and gracious and good for us. And it's going to be some painful moments in life. Without a doubt, we experience painful moments in life. But in Christ, pain is not unredemptive. The amount of things that changed our walk, that transformed our experience with Christ through all of these things, from sickle cell, it matured us crazy fast, and we needed to be married at 21. I don't know what we would be had our kids not had sickle cell, because I think I'd still be a selfish knucklehead. It was seeing my son in pain that changed even how I loved her.
Who knows what happens without even experiencing the loss of children? And I say all that not because those things are good things. We don't celebrate suffering. But we can celebrate the savior who's able to redeem suffering and turn it into something transformative.
And in our lives, those things have been bedrocks of our lives. And I will say this, like, we would never ask for it to happen again. Do you want pain? No. But can we learn the deep lessons without it? I don't think so. I think that's a good reminder that our kids, like, we hate, hate, hate when our kids go through pain.
But I asked you when we took a break. I bet your kids are mature, those two older kids. I bet they're not the typical teenagers.
I got them. What are they like? Yeah, special. Man, my son is like, I don't know how to explain this, but like, he plays just as critical a role as we do in the home. His maturity to be able to know when to entertain himself and know when he has to lay that down, supports maturity to be a caretaker literally from nine years old. And the combination of them two, like, they parent together, even our youngest two. And that's at such a young age and do it without asking. Tell us we'll take the kids.
Tell us we're going to take over this. Like, it is like a gift you can't even like expect, really. And specifically for Aaron, like, he's been through so much transition, so much change, so many things that didn't go his way. God used pain in that young man's life to create a dude that, like, I don't just love him as a son.
I admire him as a man. So, yeah, special, special, special kids. What about your daughter, Brittany? Yeah, she is a caretaker at heart. So she, without question, will always go in comfort, specifically children, but she'll comfort even adults. She loves to take care of others and anticipate needs and things like that.
And let me tell you, they're both so creative in such a beautiful way that we never, we're just like, where did this come from? She's like her father as well. In some ways, she is a single minded person. She will latch onto a passion and fully go out and just do it all the time. She doesn't know how to stop. I have to tell her, like, hey, are you ready to go to bed?
Because it's, you know, you got to finish your projects and go to bed. But she's really passionate about sewing right now. And she's been sewing dresses for herself, for me, for others, making pillows, clothes for people. Just doing it on her own volition. I don't know how to sew. And she knows how to do everything based on, you know, looking at YouTube videos or she's taking a couple library courses.
And just to have that, you want to go to this adult sewing class to learn how to do this project? And she's like, okay. And she just does it on her own.
I don't even go in with her anymore. I bet your three and four year old two really admire them. Oh my gosh, they love them. Yes, yes, yes.
So sweet. Well, what about your marriage? I mean, you've weathered a storm, you know, other storms on the horizon, but a lot of couples don't make it.
They go through something like what you've gone through and they don't make it. Or you said earlier, you know, when you're in it, everything's heightened, your anger, your frustration can come out at your spouse. So talk to the couple that maybe is going in a storm right now and they're not doing well.
How would you help them? Yeah, I think the big thing is recognizing like perspective in the storm. Our intensity, and maybe it's just because we're Westerns and we got like everything at the tip of our fingers. The intensity of our minds whenever we suffer is when is this going to be over? That is our focus. We are fixated on, we locked in.
When is this going to stop? And yet you see Jesus on the boat in the storm, chilling, asleep, knocked out. The dope thing about what you see in Jesus's life is obviously, yes, that's the Messiah. But fast forward to when Peter's locked up in prison. He's so knocked out. The text says that angel has to literally poke him in the stomach. This is in the text because he's so learned to rest in the storm. And so instead of trying to fixate ourselves on when is this over, resting in the one who's in it with us becomes the whole goal. So stuff comes up now. You talked about PTSD.
Anytime she calls me, what's happening? The first thought is like, somebody's going to hospital, something happened at the crib, like something's gone down. And we got the PTSD of that.
We also, our oldest have only lived in the hood. So we got so much stuff, yo. But that pain has brought about an understanding that like, no matter what's about to encounter us, there's a God who's over it and there's a God who's in it.
And that in and of itself can keep two people locked in. It's like a reminder, babe, there's a God who's over it. There's a God who's in it. Hey honey, there's a God who's over it.
There's a God who's in it. And if each party can bring one another back to that mindset of sobriety, it takes the focus off of looking at that person as the enemy. And now you realize really the enemy is the one who's causing the problem. But if there's a God who's over it and there's a God who's in it, even the enemy can't create the havoc that he wants to. So we can literally sleep and rest.
And we did when our daughter seems to be dying. We can lock in and play games when it seems like the suffering won't stop. And we can experience deep moments of prayer and reflection and scripture reading. What you reading right now? Nehemiah, what you reading right now?
First Thessalonians. And we get to talk about, yo, how does that connect? And in the middle of suffering. So if the habit is built outside of it, the habits will continue on in the middle of it. And I just believe the sovereignty of God and the empathy of God allows for us to experience closeness even when we're in pain.
So good. Recap, I'm wondering, I'm just thinking about parents that are just in it, whether they have a prodigal, because that's hard too. And parents are blaming themselves. They don't know what to do. It could be sickness.
It could be mental things that are going on with our kids or depression. I'm just wondering if you would pray over these parents that are listening. And if you're listening and this is you, like, stop for a minute and just receive this prayer and agree with this prayer over you. Father, we thank you that you are our Father.
You know what you're doing and you're training us to do it as a mirror reflection of you. I think to Manoah, the father of Samson, asked all the right questions, had all the right desires, loved you. And yet Samson grew up and made horrible decisions. Lord, right now, even through that passage, I pray some parent is comforted that Manoah isn't blamed and neither are they. But Lord, even if there have been ways that they have not been as faithful as they desire, would you remind them right now the truth from Second Timothy that when even they are faithless, you remain faithful for you cannot deny yourself. This is all ultimately you. You called them to be parents. You are the Heavenly Father.
You are the one who are training them to do their job, a reflection of you. And you sent your son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for each failure that all of us have had as parents and as sons and daughters. And he rose from the dead victoriously in order to empower us to be better parents than we ever could have been without him and to be better sons and daughters than we ever could have been without him. And Lord, we thank you right now that we will not live defeated parent lives, but where we failed, we will confess not only to you, but to our children.
And where we have been strong, will you encourage us to be even stronger in that area? And for all the in-betweens, the nicks and crannies, the cracks, the crevices, all of the brokenness in our lives, may we always be reminded that when you called us to be parents, you made a contract not with us, but with yourself. You signed both sides in the blood of Christ. And so for that, we say thank you. And all we can do is long for the day when all that you began will be brought to completion when Jesus Christ returns. We love you and we thank you and we honor you. And it's in Jesus' mighty, matchless and majestic name we pray.
Amen. You know, I've known Recab for a few years now, and all that passion you hear in prayer is like the one you just heard him pray. That passion is the real deal with him. That guy loves Jesus, understands the gospel and knows the scriptures.
And it kind of just spills out of him all the time. And I hope you've really been encouraged by him and his wife, Brittany, over the last three days that they have been with us here on this program. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Recab and Brittany Gray on Family Life Today. Again, such a tremendous blessing to have them with us over the last few days. And, you know, as we're heading into the fall here, sometimes we're really just looking for the perfect gift for our husband or wife or maybe even for another couple. And the Weekend to Remember marriage getaway is one of those things that you can gift to other people. Right now, you can get Weekend to Remember gift cards because they're now 50 percent off. That allows you really to invest in your relationship now and then kind of choose your getaway later on. So don't miss the chance to strengthen your marriage at half cost until September the 16th. So you can go to familylifetoday.com and click on the Weekend to Remember banner to find out more information and locations of the different Weekend to Remember marriage getaways near you. Now, coming up tomorrow, David and Meg Robbins are going to be with us talking about debunking the myth of perfect parenting.
Do you ever wonder if you're a perfect parent or can you be a perfect parent? David and Meg are going to be here to blow that up in the best way possible. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
