Embracing Hope and Love After a Loss

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Find out how to receive your free consultation at HopeRestored.com. Imagine that that's your baby's heartbeat and it's clear evidence of a life growing in your womb. It's a joyful sound of a shared love and a future eagerly anticipated for your family. But if that life is cut short unexpectedly, it can feel like your world has come to an end. Today on Focus on the Family, we'll explore the tragedy of infant loss and how that can impact your life, your marriage, your faith.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John, nothing can prepare a parent for the death of a precious child like that. That's simply not the way things are supposed to happen and the grief that couples experience with the should haves, the could haves, the what ifs and the if onlys, that seems insurmountable. Losing a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS or some other kind of loss is devastating and we truly hurt for that couple, that individual that has gone through that or might be going through it right now. We often don't comprehend the depth of the pain and sorrow, the depression that can happen to the bereaved parents in that experience and we often struggle to say the right thing or say what will help them and today we do want to cover this tender subject so we can equip you to be the best friend, the best spouse you can be in that circumstance. In fact, John, I know you and Deena experienced something in this area. We had a couple of miscarriages early in the development of our family, losses at about 12, 13, 14 weeks and those were really hard times. They were lonely, they were a lot of shared tears and we did have a lot of folks come around and love on us. We want to help you as a listener learn how to do that in a really meaningful way as you surround families who are dealing with difficulty.

That's why again we're going to tackle this subject. It really is to help those that are grieving right now, to equip those who may encounter this in the future and to help us do better at being that good friend that we need to be. We have Dr. Gary Chapman and Candy McVicker with us here in the studio today. Dr. Chapman is of course a frequent guest on this broadcast. He's a counselor, a speaker and an author best known for his series of books, The Five Love Languages and Candy McVicker is a grief and trauma specialist who speaks and writes about infant loss. She's the founder and CEO of Missing Grace Foundation which provides support and resources and education for families and professional care providers in infant loss situations and together Candy and Gary have written a book, Holding on to Love After You've Lost a Baby and we have copies of that here.

Just click the link in the episode notes. Gary, welcome back to Focus. Always good to have you. Well thank you. It's good to be back.

And Candy, it's so good to have you for the first time. Thank you for being with us. Appreciate it. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

I appreciate the opportunity. And it's such a tough subject and Candy, you have first-hand experience with infant loss. You and your husband Stephen lost a child. In fact I believe your ministry is named after that child. Explain what happened and a little bit about your ministry.

Thank you. Well yeah, we were excited to have a big family. We had that number four. We wanted four children and we got started right away after getting married and we got pregnant with Grace and it was a very difficult pregnancy. A lot of challenges and but we just felt like we just pressed through and we'll get through this and the the prize is at the end and at the last two weeks of her life she didn't move very much and we didn't know as a girl we didn't find out the gender at the ultrasound and so we just knew baby's not moving a lot and something doesn't seem right so I called the doctor in fact seven times I went in in the last yeah in the last two weeks so it was really concerning there was no movement. You know in that context in the book it describes that they weren't very responsive the doctors and you had this mama's instinct that something may not be right but it really it was really difficult right?

Yeah you know that's one of the things we teach on we're really big on education. Moms know best they know their babies they know their bodies and they need to trust that God given intuition and I believe if they can just really become mama bears and be advocates for their babies that will do well. You just have to keep asking until you get somebody who listens sometimes you know they're they're kind of in a mode and this is how they are typically doing things but maybe your baby's not typical and their situation needs special attention like ours did. Let me take you back and I appreciate the vulnerability you and your husband Stephen Stephen's in the gallery right now and it's a pleasure to meet him and to get to know him but being a couple in this so you'll have to speak for both of you but in that context take us back to that ultrasound that you finally were able to receive that you talked the doctors into providing. What happened during that ultrasound? Yeah so on the seventh visit they said all right fine you can have the ultrasound but prior to that they would just do what's called a doppler checks they would stick the doppler on and all that does is it's listening for fetal tone it's listening for that heartbeat and it hears both the mother's heartbeat and the baby's heartbeat and and on the last one I think she realized there's not a second heartbeat but I didn't know well enough what the different heartbeats were and I was new to this and so when we got to the ultrasound I really just knew something wasn't right but I just figured I'm going to be rushed into a c-section or something's going to happen because this baby needs attention I had no idea that she had already passed and so at that ultrasound they they just they wouldn't talk to us they were totally silent it was very awkward and strange and she put the ultrasound on and did the doppler and I was asking many questions and she was not willing to answer anything and she just got up and left the room and didn't even say anything and and then the radiologist came back in and for many of us who've gone through this it's like that defining moment it was just so horrible because the doctor just came in and she put on her glasses looked at the ultrasound and she said well as you can see there is no heartbeat and it is dead and that was it she turned that sterile totally sterile and I was calling after I said well what do you mean I don't understand what you're saying and and she turned around she said it's dead and she left the room and then the sonographer stood up turned off the machine and she backed up and she goes you need to leave now and you need to go to the hospital and take care of it and I said I I'm eight and a half months pregnant I don't understand what happened and she goes we don't know but you have to deliver it now and so um it was very traumatic and very icy cold and in fact there there was a waiting room we had come in through and um there were other moms waiting to get their ultrasounds and and as I was getting dressed she said um can you please go out the back exit and not go through the front and I said well we parked right at the front and she said I don't want your crying to upset our new moms and I thought I'm a mom and so my husband said no we're we're gonna walk out the front um and so we went in and we were induced and we went through 24 hours of very difficult labor and we didn't have very attentive care I think a lot of times nurses they they get kind of callous to this it's it's hard for them I think it's very important in hospital settings that they they really work hard to make sure they have the most compassionate staff who are in that role working with the families who go through a demise and um we didn't happen to have those people with us at the time so they were very cold to us and um and as I experienced really challenging labor they said you know labor is hard and especially hard with a stillbirth so you know what you chose not to get the medication now you're suffering the consequences and I said well I just was hoping that if I I think I was bargaining with God and I was praying if I if I go through the pain God will you give her back to me because I do believe in a miracle working God and I was still praying all the way to the end maybe God would breathe life into her lungs and she would be with her and she would be with us and we didn't get that story but um we we delivered a perfectly healthy beautiful baby girl and she died of an umbilical cord issue which is very common with stillbirth and um and we we we just had a very short time with her we we didn't know what to do we were very scared it was all very foreign and strange to us and we had about four hours and um and then yeah and it it does speak to the indifference that some have about a child now yeah and I think abortion has played a huge role in dampening the sense of life for that baby and I'm sorry but that's where I would lay the blame that some just don't embrace the idea that babies are precious and God-given and they are made in his image and deserve every bit of humanity that a person outside the womb would get but that's we're reaping the the consequences of that let me move if I can and again I so appreciate um your tenderness in that and your willingness to share it and I know some people are listening that may have just gone through it or about to go through it or went through it years ago and they're feeling it right now but that grief afterward that night you and Steven are at home and you have to talk about this I'm sure how did you cope with the grief just in the few days after um this well you're you're really in shock all of us who go through a traumatic loss you you have shock that kind of carries you through you function but you don't even know how you're functioning and it sort of feels out of body like you're watching yourself going how am I doing this and um and you know my my thing is when I'm in pain or hurting I'm highly alerted and awake so I I went into an insomnia mode I couldn't sleep which is devastating because the rest would have been so helpful but no matter what even with a sleep med it just really I couldn't get more than two hours of sleep and my husband's mode is sleep and so I would stare at him and I would say how can you sleep like he just he just when he was you know exhausted from the the stress and the strife and the grief of what that caused him and watching me you know he he's my provider my protector and he's an amazing father and so for him not to be able to protect us from that it was really painful for him he felt you know like gosh I can't even keep my baby safe and my wife safe and and so his mode was to shut down emotionally he went to sleep and I would just stay awake and I would cry and eventually I found my way to a computer and I started reaching out to the world out there of grief and reaching out to others who had gone through a stillbirth and that was my survival link that's how I got through this was starting to connect with other moms and dads who had been through this before me and they were able to be a guide to help me get through and is actually how I got introduced to the five love languages well and thank the lord that you had that lifeline Gary we're right up your alley now this issue of dealing with grief and how we do that as human beings what how do we recognize that we're in that state and then what are some things to cope well I think anyone who's gone through the death of a stillborn baby or any death in a family for that matter it's a loss it's a tremendous loss and I think the natural response first of all is we cry if that is if we are emotional at all we cry and we cry and we cry and we cry and and that's good because it is releasing some of those painful emotions and we know that grief we work through grief best when we talk about it that is when we get to the place where we can talk do we talk about it and we and we ask the questions that are in our minds and those questions are in everybody's mind and we ask the questions and let's face it they're not always satisfactory answers that come to our mind when we say why god you know why did this happen sure but it's okay to ask the question and it's okay to tell god how you're feeling whether it's anger or hurt or disappointment or whatever so I think we pour as Christians we pour our hearts out to god and then we also pour our hearts out to members of the family our immediate family as well as our church family and in so doing if people listen to us and just affirm us you can't fix it you know if you're with the person you can't fix it for them but you can show empathy you you can identify with them you can acknowledge you know you can understand the pain and the hurt and all and I think that's that's the primary way is processing it by talking and it takes time it does not happen in two weeks or three weeks and that's part of the problem is sometimes we after six months or nine months we say you got to get over this now life's got to go on you know and and a family member husband a wife you know husband can say that to a wife you know you got to get over this now and she wants to get over this but the reality is we don't ever get over this not when you lose a baby you don't ever get over it but you do learn how to cope and you learn how to go on and you learn how to trust God even when you don't understand the why questions yeah and I you're making such an important point that time has to do its good work which is to soften to some degree the sting of that loss and I'm sure candy that's been your experience but Gary let me ask you though you have something in the book called the grief o meter and explain what the grief o meter is and how that's useful to us this is the tendency on the part of some people to think that some deaths are less painful than other deaths like if you had a miscarriage at 12 weeks that's not as bad as carrying the baby to at the end and then the baby's born dead you know we distinguish so that we there's a meter it's not as bad down here or if you already have six children you know then it's not as bad as if it's your first child and so or if it's a 90 year old person we say well that's not as bad as if they were a 50 year old person death is death you know and if it's your spouse or your child or anyone else it's painful and so one of the things that we try to emphasize in the book is that we don't need to be putting a monitor on these things and saying well this is not as bad as you know something else we are where we are and the person who's suffering is where they are and we need to let them be where they are comparisons just aren't helpful and that's one response that you don't want to offer somebody who's gone through this this is focused on the family with jim daley and our guests are gary chapman and candy mcficker they have this book called holding on to love after you've lost a baby and it's a wonderful application of the five love languages for parents who are really struggling we'll encourage you to call us 800-a family or go online to get your copy of the book the link is in the episode notes gary let me ask you this again i've said this in previous broadcasts we've done together i mean the lord gave you a great insight into the five love languages i mean that was just a spiritual awakening for so many people and it's wonderful when you as the author capture that i just think it's a brilliant moment where the lord said i want this information in people's hands and he chose you to speak it through that's an amazing experience in that context though i'm thinking of the five love languages and if you can restate them real quick in this moment of grief like candy in what she and stephen went through does it weaken that our our love language does it stress us in that area so as you go through it like give us the response of calamity like this when it comes to a person who likes physical touch or a person who likes words of affirmation and how do we calculate as a caregiver as a family member how do we calculate that person's love language when we're trying to soothe their grief yeah well i think for example if you are the husband you probably already know the wife's love language hopefully you learned it earlier if you don't you should have right not too late nothing like a little shame here but no it's good i mean it's important that jean's is affirmation by the way okay and that's why it's so important to speak their love language during that time if it's physical touch then just putting your arms around them and let them cry on your shoulder or just sitting beside of them but keep this in mind also especially in intense grief in the early stages they may even push you away even if physical touches their language they'll say please don't honey you know why is that happening i think that's their core love language i think it's because the grief is just so deep that at that particular moment that they just they just want to be alone as it were you know and so they push off sometimes people that are trying to help them but having said that i think as as time goes on after that initial uh those initial intense emotions speaking their love language is extremely important to them and if it's words of affirmation just say honey i love you and i love you and i love you and i'm going to love you no matter what happens we're together in this thing you know just kind of affirming words to them if it's physical touch yes then then physical touch and affirming touches to them are so important during that time and we do know that this experience puts the pressure on a marriage because we don't always understand how the other person's responding it puts pressure on the marriage and so speaking each other's love language during this time is extremely important in meeting that deep emotional need to feel love because when you feel loved wherever you are you know they're there for me right now i just feel like everything in my whole life has been blown up but in the back of my mind you're you're communicating love and i know you're there for me yeah and so that's so important candy bringing this closer to the relationship with your spouse you and steven speak to those important observations that you both need to be aware of you spoke about sleep or lack thereof that's one thing a physical attribute but what about the emotional pain and how do husbands and wives help each other in that regard well for us bringing the five love languages into our relationship in relation to the grief was really impactful in fact it was a game changer yeah yeah well we were rubbing each other raw you know you're you can do great in marriage when there's no strife or difficulty or trauma right and then all of a sudden you add that whether it's the a death or you know something hard in transition and all of a sudden you're you don't have quite the amount of buffer there and so what the love languages did is it brought back the buffer because we started to be more cognizant i need to love you in a way maybe i haven't before and it's going to reach your core it's going to reach your soul better and um and so my husband's love languages physical touch words of affirmation i'm acts of service quality time and so when we knew that in light of our grief you know he started to say um you know i'll take care of things around the home and but he then honored grace and what he did with me like you know he would he he would put out her picture or he would write me a text or say i'm thinking about our our daughter today and and he would he would spend time with me you know emoting with me and sharing his heart with me he would say you know is it okay that i i let down my guard and i grieve with you he wanted to be strong for me and i said actually i'm i'm very drawn to you and feel safer with you if you weep with me and if you show your emotions to me because i feel like then you're caring with me congruently and so um you know and then with me just you're a great dad like i was watching him do the best he could to parent and what and what ways we had and um and i would you know just be more aware i need to touch him more often i'm not as touchy feely and so yeah and so i would you know walk by him in the kitchen and put my hand around his waist and and he would go oh i needed that today you know i just needed that touch i put my hand on his knee or his you know and i would just say we're getting through this together you know i'm still thankful we have each other and so it was really just about acknowledging i was reaching a place i hadn't reached necessarily before and relating it to our grief and so that really was a very very helpful yeah and it's really important something you said and and i think people need to catch this it had to be a mindful thing to say between you and stephen we're going to do this this way we're going to know the love languages we're going to apply that and you really you do say that it saved your marriage that's pretty powerful it is and you know so we incorporated it into our support groups and so whenever we have couples attending our group we would say okay we want you guys to read this book we're going to ask you all as an assignment to go home and take the the quiz which is available at the five love languages website and you can go on there it's all free you can take every one of the quizzes and find out your love languages and the link you can look and see what your you know kind of guess what theirs is but ask them to take it ideally and then the profile will be emailed back to you and and it was so fun around the table because it brought this joy of you guys we tried this and it worked and people would giggle about how how they were doing it wrong they're like i i just realized how i was missing the mark and now i kind of know and and so there was a lot of good marriage bantering of of like hey we're getting through this you guys this was really helpful so i saw it work and that's a big part of why this book is just i believe in it and i've had so much feedback there's so many people writing to us saying this has been so incredibly helpful i can't even tell you one woman told me she carries it around in her purse because after her baby died this year she said i i open it up and i'm like what do i do again and how do i do this and and she just said this has been a lifeline thank you so much candy um we're right at the end here i mean the time has flown by it goes by so fast but let me let me ask you to describe a bit of your ministry missing grace and what what are you trying to do specifically well our our ministry was based out of what we wished would have been available for us so if it had been out there i would have just gone there and i i did reach out to many nonprofits and i wasn't finding what we needed so it was apparent the lord was saying this is what you're going to do and how you're going to honor your daughter and so we called it missing grace foundation missing my daughter but the the name grace it stands for grieve restore arise commemorate and educate and so we're helping people get through their grief we're helping them restore in their emotional relational physical and spiritual health we're helping them arise out of that dark place of grief i really believe that god gives us joy for mourning and beauty for ashes and strength for fear and and we're really trying to help people have hope for that we connect them with other people are further down the road in their grief kind of that lifeline you have yeah and you know what you can get there and we're going to be there for you whether it's on on the phone online or in person um and then and then we're going to help them um to commemorate we really believe that if you honor your loved one whatever that is we all have different personalities of how we would have raised our kids also in grief we have different ways we would honor our children whether you start a foundation or you fund a foundation or you volunteer in an organization or you create a beautiful memorial garden in your backyard or you go serve somebody in need there's so many ways to do something positive and then education i believe is the most important if there's something we can learn from our story and it can help someone else down the road that is key and and so we're we have support groups we have baskets that we ship out to hospitals so that everything is there in a packet that is going to help them through what they're going through from hand and foot molding kits and the outfits and a memorial candle and books and um resources well thought through it's really meant to be my now what and that's what a lot of people have written to us they said i didn't know what to do but now i know what to do and will it uh hopefully connect to your website and let people link to you gary let's end here because again in the christian community it feels like we run from grief not through grief and there are lessons that are learned in that valley so let me give you the last word again thinking of that listener that viewer who might be going through a real tough time in their life for whatever reason but they're going through grief right now you know i think as you read the bible you see people going through grief read the book of jeremiah and read the book of jobe i mean you see them going through grief and god does not condemn them for going through grief and we we want to deny and just and say positive things that we think will make people feel better but really we just need to walk with them through the grief process and give them time to suffer and and love them in a way that's meaningful to them whatever whatever that language is so that they know there's people out there that are not in my immediate family even who care about me it's what the church is all about is walking with people through trauma and grief well and the thing that i've noticed when in focus tries to do this every day and you know the connections that are made with real people people that are grateful that you were there in the gap with them and helping them and that's what i'm sure you're experiencing candy uh gary and candy thank you so much uh for sharing a very tough topic but certainly this was filled i hope with uh this sense of hope and uh i would love to get this into your hands this book holding on to love after you've lost a baby if you can make a gift of any amount we'll send it to you think of a loved one near you and maybe a neighbor who's going through that kind of difficulty the loss of a child just keep your radar up what an opportunity to talk with this person and to share this great message of hope with them and if you can't afford it just get in touch with us we'll trust others we'll cover the cost of that but contact us and let us know if you need this help or you know someone who needs this help yeah get your copy of candy and gary's book when you call 800 the letter a in the word family 800-232-6459 or stop by the episode notes for all the details and when you get in touch we'll be happy to connect you with one of our caring christian counselors should you need to talk with someone and pray about whatever struggles you're facing right now and we'd be happy to set up that initial consultation for you when you call 800 the letter a in the word family coming up tomorrow you'll hear from Cynthia Wentz as she shares her heartbreaking journey of going through multiple abortions she knew she was very aware that that was the taking of a life our children may be naive they may be young but they're not blind on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ hey I'm John Fuller and to help celebrate your love story we're excited about our Loving Well podcast visit focusonthefamily.com loving well for more information let's focus on the family.com loving well