Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome. You can connect with us through social media on Facebook and Instagram. Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net. Please share Bleeding Daylight episodes with others. We all face grief at various points in life, but how do you deal with overwhelming grief? My guest today will take us through her own journey.
It's often said that no parent should have to bury their child. Cheryl Christopher has journeyed through that grief. She has written two books. The first, A Portrait of Grief, Hope and Healing After the Loss of a Child. The second book is titled, Forget Me Not, A Survival Guide for Grief. She's my guest today on Bleeding Daylight. Cheryl, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me, Rodney. I'm wondering if you can take me back to your early years.
I know that growing up wasn't easy for you. Tell me about your home life as a child. As a child, Rodney, I knew what we all know as children, that we were created to live happily ever after. But in my life, I often ask myself, is this really my life or has there been some mistake? My parents were separated when I was born. But when I was six weeks old, my dad called my mom and wanted her to join him so that they could try again. When I was eight years old, we were in a terrible car accident.
We were all injured, but my mom was nearly killed. She was thrown through the windshield. Those were the days before seatbelts. And she was in the hospital for a long time. My dad asked one of his relatives to come to help us and to work for him part time. My parents never knew it. But when this man moved into our home, the dark reality of sexual abuse entered my life. I was filled with shame. My home just wasn't a safe place to be.
In my middle school days, my dad drank too much and he yelled a lot. My mom fretted and worried. Every night, I prayed that my daddy would stop drinking and my parents would learn to love one another. When my brother and I were old enough, my mother would drop us off at the local Baptist church. One day when I was 12, there was a visiting missionary there and I heard him talk about the conditions in Chile. And he kept using the word chaos over and over.
I didn't really understand what that word meant. But as he continued to talk, I understood that he was talking about the conditions not only in that country, but he was describing the conditions in my own home, in my own family, in my own heart. And then he went on to prescribe a cure for all the chaos. If we only would trust the one who could calm the chaos and the fear. And he talked about an all-knowing father who knew all about me and loved me anyway.
And he talked about his son Jesus who could take all my sins and even the sins of others against me. That he took them on himself and he died in my place. He said Jesus came for the weak, not for the strong. He came for those who were ashamed, not for the proud. And then the missionary said that anybody who wanted a new life could just come forward and receive it. And I thought, boy, nobody wants a new life more than me. And so I went forward and I received that new life that he talked about.
And it was really my first taste of joy. And when I went back home, although I was different inside and my heart and my inner life had been changed, things in many ways got worse in my home. When I was a senior in high school, my parents divorced and my dad moved on and remarried. And we saw less and less of him. But I have to tell you this part of the story. Years later, when I was married and had four children, my mom came down with breast cancer.
Unknown to us, my dad at the same time was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. We were all shocked when we went for her first treatment at the local cancer treatment center to find all three of us, my mom, my dad and me, in the hospital at the same time, in the same little room waiting for their treatments. And they took turns going in for their treatments for weeks. They met there regularly and talked in the waiting room. My dad got better, but my mom got worse.
And daddy started to call her every day. Sometimes he'd drop by our house and drink coffee or just to talk. When she could no longer drive, my mom gave her car to him. I would call dad to come and sit with her sometimes when I needed a break, when she got to read really bad. I was just amazed to see God answering my childhood prayers decades later. It really did teach me that although sometimes God's work is hidden and He's silent in our life, He's always near.
And sometimes His presence in the past and His faithfulness in our past can lay a foundation that gives us hope when we encounter really bad things in our lives. It's interesting to hear the story of that young girl in a world of chaos. And as you say, the chaos didn't end in your outward circumstances, but certainly there was something different in you where you knew that there was joy. You knew that there was hope that went beyond the circumstances.
That must have been such a relief for that young girl. It was. It really was. I was no longer alone. Tell me where life went from there, because you've mentioned that later on you got married. And unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the grief that you were about to face. Tell me a little about how life looked for you in those earlier years.
For most of us, life follows a pretty predictable path, although fear and anxiety have somehow become a part of our daily companions in this modern era we live in. For most people, life is pretty good. For some of us, however, there comes a day or night when a phone call or the knock at the door or the sound of the last breath changes everything and everything suddenly turns upside down.
It's as though a bomb has been dropped in our lives and we find ourselves in an altered universe where pain rules. For our family, it began first with a knock at the door. My husband, Gary, and I owned a photography studio in Belmont, Texas. At this particular time in our history, our three older children had graduated from college and had married. And we'd recently built a small new home in a golf course community outside of our hometown. We had one child left at home.
He was our youngest son, Austin. He was kind of a bonus child. We weren't expecting him. It was an exciting time, though, of new beginnings. But that night we had photographed a wedding and had come home. We were preparing for bed, and Austin was due home at any moment. I heard a soft knock at the door. Opening it, I saw three of Austin's friends standing there. The boys were shaking, and one of them spoke softly, There's been an accident. It's bad. They've got the jaws of life.
And a patrol car pulled into our driveway as we were running to our car and met us with the words that our son had been pronounced dead at the scene of an accident. After carrying me inside, my husband calls a friend to come and stay with me, and he went to the scene of the accident. There was a pastor living next door, and he came over and wanted to pray with me. And I said, No, don't speak to God in my presence. I'm not speaking to him.
Go in the other room and pray for the boy who's still living, the driver. But don't pray in my presence. Although I wouldn't speak to the Lord, Rodney, he continued to speak to my spirit. Don't push me away, Cheryl. I know what it's like to lose a son. I still have a plan, even in this. We were surrounded by the love of God's people. But with the loss of a child, it's just too big and too explosive to contain. No one had ever taught me about grief and mourning.
I tried to hold it all in because that was my way of dealing with things. But I have learned that we have to feel the feelings and let them out. I couldn't stand for life to go in the way it would have been if Austin had lived. So I quit going to work on a daily basis. I went back to school, and I got a new job, and we changed churches. I wanted to change every single thing about my life. Everybody's not that way. Many people can find comfort in the churches where they're buried their children.
But I couldn't do it. Sometime in the first year without our son, I knew that I didn't want to live in that house any longer. We put it up for sale. It didn't sell. In the second year, my husband and I were sitting out and we were watching the sunset. My husband said, Isn't that beautiful? I didn't respond. He was angry with me and said, What's wrong with you? Can't you even enjoy a sunset anymore? I don't want to live here. I don't want to be here anymore. We built this house for three people.
It will always be empty to me. I'll make you a deal. I said, If the house doesn't sell for two more months, that would be the end of the second year without Austin. I'll find a way to live here and never mention it again. Breaking my silence with the Lord for the first time in two years, I said, Lord, please send someone to buy this house. You have two months. The telephone in the house rang instantly. That's probably someone wanting to buy this house. My husband muttered, and it was.
You know, sometimes the Lord just shows up. And that day he cracked the door of heaven ever so slightly and showed up for me. And in doing that, he gave me a fresh glimpse of himself. And he showed himself to be present and compassionate and understanding and forgiving from my turning my back on him. And I think you've touched on something that many people don't seem to realize.
You said that you really needed to change everything about life of what you were doing as a job, where you were living, the church that you were going to. And you said not everyone has to do that. I know that grief is different for different people. How often do you find that people are expecting grief to be the same, and if they've walked a path of grief, that they expect that other people should walk in that exact same path? Rodney, that's a hard thing to answer.
I think most people stumble through grief. They don't really have a direction. We don't know how to do grief. We're kind of encouraged to move on and to be brave, and we pretend a lot. When we've had a catastrophic loss, other people don't really want to deal with it. And we've found that you lose a lot of friends because a lot of it is that they just don't know what to say. People who have really known catastrophic grief understand that there's really not a right way.
You just have to do it day by day. And every day is different, and everyone's life is different, and everyone's path is different. There are things that do help, and they've been pretty well chronicled. I touch on a lot of those in my book. People who have known grief don't have expectations of others. It's the people who haven't really experienced deep grief that have the expectations, I think. The story doesn't end there for you, and in fact, there was more very difficult grief to come.
Tell me what happened next as part of that process. Where did life go for you? It takes me a long time to grieve a child, but my husband rebuilt our lives as best we could. But nine years later, we got a call from my daughter that she had received a text from our oldest son, Wes, that evening. It was an odd text. It said, I'm so sorry. She had tried to get in touch with him and couldn't get in touch with him. And so she called my husband and said, I think something's wrong.
And my husband couldn't get in touch with our son either, but he got his wife. And she told us that our son had killed himself and that he was dead. For those of us who survived the loved one's suicide, the aftermath is really pretty profound. In my case, the impact caused me to just totally shut down. I didn't want to feel, so I went to sleep and I shut down my emotions and blocked out my thoughts for as long as possible, losing the ability to do even the simplest of tasks.
I only wanted to escape the overwhelming pain. But several weeks after Wes's death, my husband got a call from a friend of his, Judge Tom Muldiney. Gary knew Tom because they had played golf together. And we knew that Tom had terminal cancer. And he told my husband that the Lord had given him a word for me and he needed to come and talk to me. So Tom came over and he told me the story of his grandmother. And he said she was a beautiful woman.
But my parents and my aunts and uncles always said, I wish she'd known her before. And he didn't find out until he was older that she had lost her son to a suicide. And after that, she found him herself. And after that, she was just a shadow of herself. She never laughed again with the joy she had. And all the color was pretty much drained out of her. And Tom concluded by saying, don't let this happen to you, Cheryl. Don't let this be your story. Breathe, Wes. Take your time about it.
But don't stop living. The Lord sent me to tell you he wants you to live fully every moment that you're here on this earth. Please don't give up now. Rodney, I listened to the Lord's word that Tom brought to me. I decided I would not give up, that I was going to live as long as I was alive. I never really heard the word suicide growing up. It was kind of a taboo word that was shrouded in mystery, whispered in sentences that included other words like unforgivable sin.
The question arises, does the sin of suicide carry with it a punishment that keeps people out of heaven? And I believe the answer is no, definitely no. When people talk about that as being the unforgivable sin, it can be a hard thing to face up to, because I guess you then need to say, well, is that right? Is that the unforgivable sin that Scripture talks about? And as you say, you don't believe that that's the case, and certainly there's nothing in Scripture that would back that up.
As difficult as that time is, it's not an unforgivable sin, but there's still the grief left behind that you have to deal with. I guess there is that stigma from some Christians, but there's also a healing that comes, but I must say it would be very different to losing Austin. First of all, let me say that there is a stigma that does surround a family when they have lost someone to suicide, and I do see that as decreasing.
It's not as bad as it was even back when we lost Wes, and perhaps it's because it's becoming so common. There's almost an epidemic of suicide among the youth of our nation. It's very, very concerning. Like you said, there's no ranking of sin in the Bible. Any of us might die suddenly and have unconfessed sin in our lives, but the atonement of Christ is sufficient. It's sufficient for us no matter how we die.
I think sometimes our perspective of God is too small, and we imagine him snooping around looking for a reason to punish and to condemn, but it should be big and unlimited because over and over in Scripture, the Lord paints a portrait of himself as a grieving father running down the road to embrace his failure of a son. In the book of Hosea, which I love, God tells the prophet to take an unfaithful woman, a prostitute for his wife, as a picture of God's own relationship with unfaithful Israel.
He's a mother hen. He's a good shepherd. He's the one who lays down his life for his sheep. And you know, who knows how many in the last split second of their lives turn their face to the Lord and mumble something that sounds a lot like, just remember me, Lord. The Lord says all that call on the name of the Lord will be saved. I think it's a comfort, and we have the comfort of knowing that all of our children had come to the Lord in the earlier age.
Surely someone who takes their life is at the end of their rope. And that's where God is. And that's where he meets us often is at the end of our rope. I know there are many ways to lose a loved one, but my prayers for those of us who are grieving a terrible loss, whether it's by abortion, misunderstandings, divorce, overdose, illness, accident, murder, or suicide, is somehow to allow that suffering to lead us to live more fully and to love more deeply than before.
You know, this second time with our second loss, the Lord showed up for me through sending one of his people to encourage me to continue to live. And after that, we changed our lives again, Rodney. We sold our home, we sold our business, and we moved to the Texas Hill Country where we lived for the next 10 years just drinking in the beauty and creating again as much of a new world as we could. In the midst of this, you're learning more from God. He's embracing you in this time of grief.
Was this a time of spiritual growth for you? Did you start to discover those things that you've been talking about, that God is waiting to embrace us amidst the pain? Did you discover more of God during that time? I think that our whole family did. I think in many ways we grew closer together. We'd always been a close family, but we did grow closer together. I think that God revealed himself to us in so many ways, and he poured his love over us through so many people.
It was an incredible thing, and you can't walk away from that without knowing that the Lord is present and real. He can be dependent upon even in the worst of times. He doesn't leave us alone, but tends himself in many, many ways through Scripture. I'm so grateful, though, that we have a strong foundation to begin with. We found the Lord to be our good shepherd. He was always with us and leading us and guiding us and encouraging us. I know that when Wes passed away, he left behind three sons.
Tell me about the boys and what came after that. Wes left three boys, as you said. His oldest son was just about to turn eight years old when Wes died. The other boys were six and three, but Brock had the strongest memory of his father. Brock had a hard time. He had some special needs. I don't know that we ever fully understood exactly, but I know that even from a young age, he was plagued by depression. He misbehaved a lot. He had trouble at school, and he had a lot of trouble at home.
He often called us to come and get him. He spent a lot of time with us. In his last three years of high school, he lived mostly with us in Hill Country. But he always loved to go back, be with his brothers, and he was very attached to his mother. Thirteen years after losing Wes, I had started oil painting several years earlier. I was painting a landscape, and my husband was out of town. He was on a golf trip. Suddenly, I felt the embrace of a warm hand on my shoulder. It frightened me terribly.
I was alone, but peace engulfed me and seemed to fill the room. Is that you, Lord? I stammered. Trembling, I sat down and wondered, What is it? Is something going to happen? If something's going to happen, you've got to tell me. Getting my Bible, it fell open to Ecclesiastes 7, 1 through 4. These words jumped out at me. The day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth.
It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting, because this is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart, for sorrow is better than laughter. The call came within hours that our grandson, Brock, had taken his life. You know, it took me a long time to speak with a hand on my shoulder and a spirit pointing out a scripture to me.
I was afraid people would think I'd become unhinged, but since then I've asked other mothers who've lost children if God had given them an epiphany or some special assurance of their child's safety, even in death. And although many did not receive any, there were many who did. Some found their assurances through signs such as red birds and double rainbows or butterflies or eagle feathers dropping from the sky or the presence of angels.
In the loss of our two sons earlier, we were comforted in conventional ways by people who reached out in many ways, by many who did the best of things in the very worst of times. But this time, this third time, the Lord made Himself known in a way that I knew was not just wishful thinking. Ronnie, I'm no Moses and I'm no Daniel, but you and I are no less children of the living God. Why shouldn't He appear to you or to me or touch you or me?
I'm kind of learning to expect the Lord to do the unexpected in my life. I look for Him to appear in my everyday circumstances, through people, and even through the miraculous. Why not? We serve a risen Lord, and He's in the world. As J.I. Packer said, the victim of Calvary is loose and is large, and we're free to experience Him as powerfully as did His disciples. We can't see Him like they did, but believe me, He sees me and He sees you, and He walks with me and talks with me.
I imagine that there's this great mix of emotion because there's this sense that God has visited you, that hand on the shoulder, speaking to you through Scripture, and that comfort, that peace that filled the room. But when we look at that against losing another child, this time a grandchild, your heart must have been absolutely breaking. It was. It was, and I asked the Lord, did people die of a broken heart?
It was a very difficult time, but I know that this has been the spark for the books that you have written. Yes. When did you decide that this is something that you wanted to share with others, a very personal story that you've been through? When did you decide, I need to write this down and help others who are grieving? In the beginning, when we lost Austin, I began to journal, but I'm a sporadic journaler. I'd write a little here and I'd write a little there.
I mean, it separated a lot of it by years. It has taken me really a long time to come to the point, Ronnie, that I could write this down and share it. It's a hard story to share. It's not the story I would have chosen for our family. I needed to do it. I felt like the Lord wanted me to do it. I felt like that it would be helpful and encouraging to others. We often go when there's been a tragedy in the lives of others.
I think when I lost my children, if someone showed up who had had that experience, and I could see that they had somehow survived and had rebuilt their lives, it encouraged me. They're the only people that I wanted to see. I felt like if the Lord gave me the words, that perhaps it could make a difference for that one who is having such a hard time and is seeing any kind of a future, that maybe they might turn back toward the Lord and put their hand in His.
Because really, the Lord's the only hope that we have through devastating loss. Other people can give words of comfort, but only He can give us the hope that we need to get through and a future to look forward to.
It must be incredibly comforting for people who are in the midst of that overwhelm of grief, thinking there is no way forward to hear from someone, whether that's through your contact with them or through reading one of your books, to know actually there might just be a glimmer of hope at the end of this path. Tell me about the sort of hope that you're able to offer for others. Let me share with you something that gave me great hope, and I hope that that will give it to others.
I've said that I had a big problem with prayer. I'm not good after all of our losses, but Jonathan Evans wrote a eulogy when his mother died. When his mom got sick, his father, Tony Evans, asked his church and the nation to pray for her healing, but she died. When Jonathan was writing the eulogy, he said, I was wrestling with God because I said, If we have victory in your name, didn't you hear us when we were praying? Didn't you see the cancer?
Your word says if we abide in you and your word abides in us, we can ask whatever we will, and it will be given to us. Where are you? I was wrestling with God, and he answered. He said, Number one, you don't understand the nature of my victory. Just because I didn't answer your prayer your way doesn't mean I haven't answered your prayer anyway. There was only two answers to your prayer. Either she was going to be healed, or she was going to be healed.
Either she was going to live, or she was going to live. Either she was going to be with family, or she was going to be with family. Either she was going to be well taken care of, or she was going to be well taken care of. Victory belongs to me because of what I've already done for you. I like what the Lord said to Jonathan. The two answers to your prayers are yes and yes. Our prayers are often answers in ways that we don't understand or hear.
In my reading of Scripture, I noticed that Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer. He always said with certainty that every prayer is always answered, and everyone who asks receives. I just never speak of unanswered prayer again. We just don't understand the nature of the victory. Cheryl, if there's someone listening at the moment who is going through grief, is there a promise that you would hold out to that person?
I guess I would say if you're listening to this podcast and you've had a catastrophic loss, let me say I'm sorry, and I hope your pain level is decreasing. Time will be your ally. At some point, we have to face the world as it is, and we've all learned that life isn't permanent. We're not guaranteed long lives for ourselves or for our children. Life, after all, is a gift. You're wounded. Just because people don't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't real.
In many ways, the wounds we carry are like those that come from military combat, and we must not forget that we have an enemy. He knows our old wounds, our disappointments, our sins, and our doubts, and he strikes again in those weak places again and again. But these wounds that we have now are different. The wounds we suffer have come about because of loving, and these are wounds of honor.
While tragedy might be a part of the stories of our lives, it need not define us because the resurrection of Christ changes everything. Our great God is working it out for good. We're all free to decide how to respond to our suffering. I know that it's hard in the face of darkness and death.
I know it's a day-to-day decision, but we can change our name to bitter, or we can choose for our stories to be one of the stories that matter, a story that gives courage and strength to those who come after us. Our stories, in the end, can tell the tale of a Redeemer who's faithful and true.
For those of us who choose Christ, there's a great day coming, and I promise you, on the authority of the Word of God, there's a new day coming, a great day when everything cut short on earth will be completed, a day of reunion with our loves, and then the deaf will hear, the lame will run, and the blind will see, and the mourning will sing and dance with joy, and the dead will rise.
That's a great note of hope for people to hold on to, even in the midst of grief, and people may not be feeling that at the moment, but it's a promise to hold on to. Cheryl, if people were wanting to get hold of your book, or be in touch with you, where's the easiest place for them to find you? Both of my books are on Amazon. I have a website. It's CherylChristopherAuthor.com, and they can get in touch with me through there.
I also have an email that I make available at cchristopherauthor@gmail.com. I will put those links in the show notes at BleedingDaylight.net so that people can find you easily. Cheryl, I want to thank you for giving us your story, a very deeply personal and difficult story to tell, but I know that it's going to make a difference for many others. Thank you so much for your time today on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you, Rodney. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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