Eric Schumacher: “My Wife Had a Miscarriage”…We Both Did

We'd gone to the doctor together, he'd done the exam, said, I need to do this procedure. And he said, Eric, you're welcome to sit in this room if you'd like to. And for whatever reason, I just had started to feel a bit lightheaded. And so I said, Jenny, I'm going to need to leave. And so I got up and left the room. And I went out and sat in the waiting room.

And just thinking, you know, that I was a failure as a man and as a husband, because I didn't have the physical strength that time to stay in the room. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson.

And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So heavy topic. OK. Are you ready for this?

Yeah, I'm ready. It's one of those, you better fasten your seatbelt. I know.

I just got my Kleenex box. Yeah, you got it out. I mean, so talk about what you think about grief or trauma hitting a marriage. Like what percentage of marriages cannot survive a really heavy trauma? Do you know? So what percentage ends up in divorce?

Is that what you're asking? Out of the hundred, maybe 30? A stat that's been quoted often is 80%.

And I actually did some research to find out that a book was written. They will end up in divorce? 90%.

Now, let me just say this. A woman named Harriet Schiff wrote a book called The Bereaved Parent in the 70s. And she quoted even close to 90%. That's been debated.

I mean, it could be as low as 20%. But either way, it's like, wow, when a marriage goes through something really traumatic. And today we're going to talk about losing a child, a miscarriage. That's a trauma that a lot of marriages may not survive unless they have a plan. You've got to have a plan to survive any kind of trauma. And Jesus. He's my plan. You've got to have Jesus. No doubt.

But you've got to have a plan. And so we've got Eric Schumacher back in the studio. We've already talked to you a little bit about your loss in four miscarriages, but Eric, welcome back. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Yeah. I mean, yesterday we talked about you and your wife, Jenny, have walked through four miscarriages, which again, if you missed yesterday, just listen to it because, man.

You'll cry. Yeah, but it was so helpful to hear you navigate how you guys have walked through that. And you've written a book to men. A devotional.

Yeah. About how to walk through miscarriage. It's called Ours, Biblical Comfort for Men, Grieving Miscarriage. And so you give them a 31-day, which is great because I know me, I'd be like, I can't read 60 days, but I could do 31 to help them walk through that.

And you're walking through the book of Luke. Yes. So talk about how that grief and trauma impacts a marriage because you've lived it.

Yeah. I feel like for Jenny and me, it brought us closer together. I felt like we've had a lot of suffering, I think, in our marriage. And some of it has been tension between us, you know, and you know how that goes in marriages. And you have five kids.

And we have five kids. Yes. And you're a pastor, and you counsel, and you're going to school, and you lead worship. Yes. And he writes books. And there's something else you say.

Oh, and your mother-in-law came to live with you. Yes. There you go. Yeah. Well, she helps out.

It's too bad there's no stress in your life. Yes. Oh. So I felt like each of our live births and each miscarriage brought us closer together because there's that sense that at least we had. You're there, and this is an intimate thing between the two of you. You're the first two to know about this pregnancy. And you're anticipating this child together.

And if you need to go to the hospital or the doctor's office, you know, I went with Jenny to see the sonograms and all that and hear heartbeats. And so it was a loss that the two of us together could only grieve as deeply as we did, you know. But I know it can be a struggle for men to know, what do I do as a husband and as a father now that we've had this miscarriage?

And to add to that, it's a loss. Both parents have lost a child. But this does affect the woman, the mother, physically in ways that the father obviously is not affected. And so she may have cramping and, you know, all the various issues that can go with a miscarriage and you're not having those.

And so you're in a place where you can use your health and strength to be able to care for her in different ways. I've heard some women say that they've watched their husbands and it appears to them as they're watching their husbands that he isn't grieving. And so then she's judging that of saying, did you not care? Did you guys go through that at all?

I don't recall us ever going through that, but I've heard that a number of times. And there could be various things going on there. On the one hand, it could be a father who doesn't know how to grieve and doesn't know how to show his grief. Maybe the family he grew up in, you didn't show grief.

Or he's trying to be strong for her and so he won't show it. And I think that's the other thing is because we think of miscarriage as primarily a woman's matter, then he may even feel guilt for grieving. He feels like because she carried the pregnancy, this is more her miscarriage than it is mine. And that's part of what the title of the book gets at, ours. This is our miscarriage together.

And he might be afraid. You know, if I talk about my grief, if I talk about how sad I am that I'm a mess inside that I can't deal with things, it might sound like I'm undercutting her grief, the legitimacy and the seriousness of it. And so I'm just going to stuff it down and be the guy who cares for her.

And that's not healthy. I find that most mothers in miscarriage want their husbands to grieve with them and alongside them, even if that impacts how the husband can serve them in that time. Because you've suffered a loss and it's not wrong for you to ask friends to be good neighbors to you and to help out with chores, childcare, meals, all those sorts of things. That's not just for mom. You two need to grieve together. And you know, your home is a place that came about by you getting married to each other because you as a husband need a wife. That's why God gave her to you.

And to try to manage the household as one when it's supposed to be two, that's not healthy for you as well. I'm thinking back at one of our sons and his wife had three miscarriages before they had any kids. And so after one of those miscarriages, they called me and they said, could you just come and be here? And now as I'm listening to you, Eric, it's because they wanted to grieve together. And all I did, I stayed out of the way, I cooked, I cleaned.

And so many of those hours were, they were in the bedroom with the door closed, grieving. And what you're saying is that's really important. It is.

And you're also saying, because I think the way I'm wired. Yeah. What would you do? We have not gone through this, but I can picture myself trying to comfort and be there for Anne. She carried the baby.

She carried the baby. She needs me. I need to be strong. I need to be empathetic.

I need to hold her and not be thinking about my own grief. I would just be, it's almost like I'd put it away, partially denial. For my sake. Yeah.

And if I have any grief, I'd go do it with my guys, you know, I'd sit with them. Obviously you're, you've dealt with it and you're writing to men to say, and I remember reading somewhere in your devotional that you got so nauseated, you walked out of the hospital room. Yes. That was. So you're carrying this.

Yeah. That was during the one miscarriage we haven't talked about yet, where Jenny had to have a DNC. We'd gone to the doctor together. He'd done the exam, said, I need to do this procedure. And he said, Eric, you're welcome to sit in this room if you'd like to. And I've watched the birth of all five children without getting lightheaded, nauseated.

That stuff doesn't get to me. So I had the option of like pulling my chair up next to her bed, you know, even facing her and holding her hand during this. And for whatever reason, I just had started to feel a bit lightheaded. And so I said, I'm just going to sit in the back of the room.

And then it kept continuing to get worse. And I just said, Jenny, I'm going to need to leave. And so I got up and left the room and I went out and sat in the waiting room. And that was another hard part that I look back on and go, did I do the right thing? This little voice in my head was saying, you call yourself a man, you know, you're supposed to be the leader, the protector, the provider. And you can't even sit with your wife. You left her alone in that room by yourself going through this procedure.

Just thinking, you know, that I was a failure as a man and as a husband, because I didn't have the physical strength that time to stay in the room. That's the accuser, isn't it? It is. Of the brethren.

Yeah. I went out into the waiting room and found a place in the waiting room where nobody else was at because I wanted to be alone, but I felt like Satan sat down next to me and started whispering in my ear. And it's not a sin to be weak. In fact, it's the first requirement of being a Christian. Jesus said, I did not come to be served, but to serve. The entryway into the kingdom of God is by saying, I need Jesus to serve me. You know, you have to become like a child. And Jennie didn't think those things about me.

She wasn't upset about that at all. But it's a matter of finding your identity in who Jesus is and what the Bible actually says about what it means to be a husband and to care for your wife. So Christ became just a great counselor and comfort to me in the midst of these kind of situations. Yeah, I know that you just said it, going to the Word, seeking His face. I mean, you walk men through Luke, you know, and so you find comfort in Christ. And obviously, He went through loss as horrific as this. Let's read Luke 19.

Should we do that? Yeah. In verse 41, I can remember the day a few years ago, standing on this road where Jesus was and looking into the city and trying to feel what He felt as He's writing in, celebrated as the King a week before His death. But in verse 41, it says, as He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known on this day, what would bring you peace. But now it is hidden from your eyes. And He predicts what's to come, which they have no idea, and yet He knows. And you know, again, standing there, I sort of viscerally felt this emotion like, What would that be like to have these hopes of what the future is? And then as He's looking at the city, He knows they do not realize what's about to happen. And somehow that comforts you as you're grieving.

Yeah. There's several things that can comfort me, comfort us. You know, the thing I think about right now when I read that passage and hear it is, first of all, we see Jesus weeping. And then the next thing He does when He gets into Jerusalem is He goes straight to the temple and He cleanses the temple.

And so we see Him driven by His anger at the way the temple is being mistreated and His Father's house is being mistreated, a close friend of mine who was 43 died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack. And I preached at his funeral, and it was a different passage. It was from John at Lazarus' tomb, Jesus at Lazarus' tomb.

But these two things also come up there. First is that Jesus weeps, and He knows that Lazarus is going to be raised from the dead. But this is real weeping, and the word behind that in the Greek is for like burst into tears.

This is like full body weeping, like convulsions, snot running from your nose, saliva down your beard, like ugly crying, you know. And that's how Jesus felt about the loss of His friend. And so He identifies with that sort of grieving that we do. And then the other thing is, it says that Jesus, when He saw Mary weeping and the others with her weeping, He was disturbed in spirit. And then when He is brought to the tomb, it says that He was troubled and disturbed in spirit again.

And that word is a word that's used for like war horses when they snort. And so it's not like He was overcome with grief. This is intense rage and anger as He looks at the tomb and He sees and hates death. Those feelings here in Luke, in this passage in Luke, are what drive Him not just to the temple, but straight to the cross, where He is determined to end our sin, end death, and raise us from the dead as justified children of God, forgiven of our sins. And so as I think of myself sitting there in my own shame, I remember that Jesus hates the accuser who's sitting next to me, accusing me of being guilty of things that are not sin. And His strength, Christ's strength and His rage has numbered the days of Satan and has guaranteed my eternal life and resurrection from the dead, and I would say the resurrection of my baby from the dead. And Christ doesn't sit down next to a weeping father and say, boy, you're a failure at manhood, you know?

This is what manhood looks like. He came not as the unflinching leader, He came as the suffering servant who is well acquainted with grief and sorrow. He sits with weeping people and He hears them and sees them and He weeps with them. You know, my story might provide solidarity, but it's not going to provide any lasting comfort. You know, only the story of Jesus can provide us with healing and eternal, absolute comfort.

So I wanted to help men walk through an entire gospel in a month and be well acquainted with Jesus and see how much He loves the brokenhearted and is there for them. And I think it's, I know I've done this, it's easy for me to dismiss what you just said. Jesus weeps, especially when you're going through grief or loss. You feel alone. You feel like God's abandoned.

But the two things you just expressed are still happening in real time in our life. Jesus is weeping with us. He's also angry. This is not what He designed life to be. We live in a broken, sin-stained world, bad things happen, even to good people, and He's weeping with us.

He's right there. I mean, you can hear the whisper of the accuser. That should be shut up and say, wow, He's weeping with me and He's angry with me.

And it's okay that I feel the same things He did because there is a better story and there is hope in the end. And so if there's a listener right now that's feeling abandoned, I hope you realize right now He is with you. He's weeping. You are sitting in His lap. I know it may not feel like it. You may feel like He's a thousand miles away.

That is not true. He is right there holding you, weeping with you and saying, I feel just as bad as you do. But there is hope. And He's with your wife.

Yeah. When you can't be with her. That's a good point. He's able to be with her to comfort and help her when you can't.

And even when you can, He's doing it better. It's Dave and Ann Wilson with Eric Shoemaker on Family Life Today. We'll hear about Ann's struggle to trust God when her sister passed away in just a minute. But first, maybe this summer you've glimpsed some character in your kids that needs some help.

But how do you tackle that kind of stuff? Well, I love this quote from Family Life's Art of Parenting Small Group Study. It says this, We had a very diverse study group from six different countries. It was an amazing experience of evaluating how culture and upbringing impacts our parenting styles. This course was instrumental in reorienting our beliefs and practices toward Christ-centered parenting.

It's amazing. Well, right now, you can use the code 25OFF to save on the art of parenting along with all of our small group studies, 250FF at familylifetoday.com. All right, now back to Dave and Ann's conversation with Eric Shoemaker and how Ann struggled to understand why God would let her sister pass away in her 40s. I think all of us face the questions in those hard times of, God, why?

Like where are you? And I don't know if we'll ever get all those answers as we're on this earth. My parents recently both just passed away in the last two years. They were in their 90s. And so, I'm not questioning that, like, Lord, you've given them a good long life. But when my sister passed in her 40s, then I'm thinking, I just don't see the point. That seems like a terrible mistake.

But what you're saying was, I remember doing that same, and I told Jesus that, like, Lord, this seems dumb. It just doesn't seem like a good thing for her four boys that are now without a mom. But I didn't have a clear answer, except that I'm with you, and I will be their mother and father for so many times that you won't even know about, Ann, but you can trust me. And that's not easy just to say, OK, I'm going to trust you, but it's the best thing that we can do. Were these words that you and Jennie spoke to each other? I mean, did you need each other? Or talk about it together? We did need each other, and we did talk about these sorts of things together. I don't know that I talked about all the things I was dealing with with her.

I tend to stuff things, and then I process through writing. And so it's when Risen Motherhood really asked, they asked me if I would write an article for their website on how fathers experience miscarriage to help the mothers that come to their ministry. And so writing that, I really had to go back and relive those experiences and begin to name the things I was feeling, you know, like anger and shame and loss, all these things like questions, uncertainty.

And that was really good for me. And so that enabled me to talk about this much more clearly, which is what I hope this book does, you know? It opens a door.

It does. It opens a little journaling space, you know, for some questions. And I think it will be helpful for men as they walk through miscarriage to be examining the experience in some way, just paying attention to it, not even asking what's right and what's wrong.

Just pay attention to it and write it down. And you don't grief things in a week, especially the loss of a child at any stage is a manifold grief that you can't understand all at once, because 18 years later, that child would have been graduating from high school. There's a new grief, you know? One of the things I think, and you said it well, you know, about not having all the answers to our questions, I hope that comes through in this devotional because throughout Luke, we find him encountering a lot of suffering people, and he doesn't give answers as to why they're suffering. He might say it's not because anyone sinned. That's to protect the suffering person. But he still doesn't say why this person's suffering this way and not this person. We don't get those answers this side of eternity, and I don't know if we get them then.

But we do get Jesus, and that's better than answers. Yeah. Is that the kind of stuff that you encourage a husband to talk to his wife about? Because when you said you, you know, sort of found yourself processing your grief through writing, I would do the same thing.

Well, that's what I was going to say. She's pointing at every reading. I was like, I'd go preach a sermon on it, and she'd hear it sitting in the camera nation, like, why don't you talk to me?

I'm sitting here like, what? Like, I've never heard this in my life, and now you're in front of thousands of people because as a wife and as a woman, we long for that connection of knowing what our men are going through because we want to experience it together. That's why your devotional is so brilliant.

So you tell us Ann, I ask Eric, you tell us men, should we be sharing that with our wives? Yeah, and I know for you, Dave, you wouldn't have processed it until you sat down, maybe read a devotional, and then journaled your thoughts about it. I don't think you were trying to stay away from it necessarily, although you don't like to feel bad.

You'd run to play basketball or something instead of feeling bad. But if you brought me the page of the journal that you wrote, it brings tears to my eyes because we as wives long to know our husbands' hearts. We long to know what they're feeling. We tend to tell our husbands what they're feeling if you ask or sometimes you don't even need to ask, we just tell you. But as women, we long to know our men, and that's a beautiful way to know our men.

And it's not that you're trying to stay away from grieving, it's that you're not always sure how to process it. So it could be an incredible gift. Eric, this has been a gift to us, and I think so many, because it's not really talked about. So thank you for having the courage to enter into this world.

Thank you for having me. You've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Eric Shoemaker on Family Life Today. His book is called Ours, Biblical Comfort for Men, Grieving Miscarriage. It's a 31-day devotional for men processing miscarriage. You can get a copy at familylifetoday.com. Also, all this month, when you help reach more families with God's truth by giving to family life, we want to send you a copy of Jenny Allen's book called Find Your People. It's our thanks to you when you give this month at familylifetoday.com or when you call with your donation at 800-358-6329. That's 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be with our very own Ron Deal, talking about excelling at ministering to stepfamilies. That's tomorrow. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.