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. Hello, I'm so glad you're listening. You can connect with us through social media. Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net. Please share Bleeding Daylight episodes with others. Can we trust God even when life continues to be difficult? Where is God in the hard times of life? We'll explore that with today's guest.
How do we trust God for good when everything looks so wrong? How do we hold on to hope when our world is falling apart? I'm joined today by Julie Sunne, who has faced profound life challenges. Julie's faith took many difficult turns when she faced a series of miscarriages and the unexpected challenges of parenting children with special needs. Through her book, Sometimes I Forget, Julie invites us into a journey of intimate connection with God amidst life's challenges.
Julie, thank you so much for your time. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Rodney. Thank you. I want to explore your early experiences of faith. What was your connection to God and faith as you were growing up? Well, growing up, I went to church every Sunday. My family believed in God. I knew there was a God, but I didn't really apply that to my life too much. I was a Sunday goer. I knew the Lord as the Sunday God, kind of.
I didn't really apply Him to my life very well, and He didn't really become something, someone I could depend on until I really started having trials later in my life. And then He just continued to reveal Himself to me over a series of decades, I would say. So even though growing up, it wasn't the perfect childhood, because none of us have that perfect childhood. No, no. And it was difficult at times. It was probably somewhat normal, would you say? Oh, I think so.
I think everybody I knew kind of lived that way. Most everybody I knew would say they believed in God and did, and I really did. I believed in God as the creator, as probably the sustainer, I would say, and the head of everything, the sovereign. But I didn't know Him in a more intimate way and a more personal way. And that was sorely tested as I became a wife and looked to start a family. And that's when I needed Him as someone who was near as well as far.
I knew He was there, but I needed someone who was right with me. I needed the God that was there and was never going to leave me. And I had not really wrestled or felt that from the Lord previously. I imagine that most of us, when we're looking ahead at what's to come in life, we do imagine the fairy tale of, and they lived happily ever after. And I suppose you were imagining that, too, when you married and settled down and then wanted to start a family.
Tell me about when things started to change. Yeah, well, I had a wonderful childhood, and so I didn't have a lot of trials growing up. I mean, they were normal things, and we were tasked with working hard. I grew up on a dairy farm, so there was no shortage of work to do. I didn't grow up with a real fairy tale, you know, everything was given to me on a silver platter kind of life. But at the same time, I didn't have any real struggles. I didn't have any abuse that so many deal with.
I had parents who loved me. I got married, and my husband and I had decided after a while that we had wanted to start a family. And to me, as long as you were a good person, and you did what you needed to do, and you were kind to others, and you went to church on Sundays, and you said your prayers, and that life would be okay, that God would take care of us, that things would be okay, and that I could live what so many of us think about as the abundant life.
When I got pregnant my first time, it was super wonderful. This was going to be great. I told everybody, and then the devastation happened. I wrestled so much with that when I lost that first baby, when I was told that there was no heartbeat, and I would not have my child like I thought I would. I was a good person. I knew I was kind. I did the right things, and I couldn't understand why God would allow something like this to happen. What is good about losing a baby?
I didn't understand how a good God could allow such bad things to happen. I spiraled down, Rodney, into a very, very deep hole, which actually, looking back, seems kind of silly. But in grief, we all grieve differently. And my grief was so deep at that point. I couldn't see myself having children. It just was devastating to me, and that really shook my faith to a very deep core, to the point where I wasn't sure about God anymore. I wasn't sure He was there.
I suppose I still, at that point, I still knew there was a Creator. I never doubted that God was there. I just doubted that He was there for me. Help me to understand a little bit of that time, of that miscarriage, because I know that there's your own grief that you're having to deal with, but oftentimes there are still attitudes from some people as if, well, these things happen, and you can have another one, and it can be almost dismissive from other people, can't it? Oh, absolutely.
I think the miscarriage is when people lose babies early on, and nobody has known it except for the few you reveal it to, I think it's very easy to dismiss someone else's grief and someone else's loss. In those cases, I think even more so, just because it doesn't seem real to so many. That is very, very dismissive, as you said, and also kind of dangerous to the spiritual well-being of the person who is dealing with this grief, and emotional as well.
We have to acknowledge that everybody deals with grief. Everybody has grief. If you live long enough in this world, you're going to have some trials, and you're going to have some grief. We have to deal with that grief on our own level, and everybody does it differently. We have to be there for the people that are grieving, and a loss of a life that you were dreaming about, that you had planned, all the dreams I had for her, all the things that we were going to do together.
I had her life planned out to some degree of what we were going to do together as mother and, I guess, daughter or mother and child. And so that was a huge, huge loss. It's difficult with miscarriage because it's so different between, I think, father and mother as well. It is, I guess, in any type of grief, but I think in miscarriage so much more because I think the mother in the early stages feels connected to that baby right from the start.
As soon as you are told you're pregnant, or you look at your pregnancy test and you know you're pregnant, that bond is there, where I think it's a little bit different often for the father because they haven't experienced that yet, and the hormone changes aren't there. It just isn't as real to them often. The baby isn't as real to them often at that early stage. So it can be very isolating in miscarriage, I believe, for the mother especially.
You touched on an interesting point there that if the miscarriage happens before the time when you excitedly tell friends that, hey, we're going to have a baby, then it stays within a close group of people.
And I imagine that there would be quite a number of people who have gone through miscarriage and believe that they're one of a handful, where statistics would tell us that that's not the case, but there would be many women and their husbands as well who would be going through this kind of grief and feeling that they have to do it alone. Was that something that figured into your own grief? Yeah, very much so. My husband and I at the time were not on the same page with this. And I did tell.
I told my immediate family and my husband's immediate family. And like you said, some were. They tried to be supportive, but they didn't know how. They thought it was very comforting to say, you know, you can have another child. And, yeah, it was very lonely. I didn't know where to turn. But since then, as soon as you start talking about miscarriage, it is so prevalent. So many women have lost babies to miscarriage. Very, very common.
But that in and of itself, that's easy to dismiss then because it's so common. So it's easy to kind of wash that away as well because, well, many, many, many people experience it. Well, that's not real helpful either. Basically what we need is people to acknowledge our loss in the way that we feel it and to acknowledge and walk with us through the grief and be okay to listen. We need to know we're not alone, and we need to know other people care and are willing to listen.
As you say, you were driven into a very deep pit at this point. When was it that your thoughts started to turn around and to think that this faith that you had might be some of the solution or some of the way forward in life? It took a little while, and I really couldn't tell you exactly how long. I think it was a number of months.
God really met me in my need in a very deep and profound way, and I don't talk about it a lot because it seems very mystic, but it was amazing how God reached out to me. Like I said, I dropped into a very deep pit, and at one point I was even wondering whether life was worth living. It seems silly, like I said, to say, but I was just that depressed about it. I was laying in bed, and I just didn't even want to get out of bed. I didn't want to live anymore.
I didn't want to get up the next day and do what people are supposed to do and put on a happy face and go out there. So I was really deep in this pit, and the Lord sent a dream to me, and He revealed my daughter. I saw this image, and I can still see it to this day, a beautiful little girl, and she was being held up for me to see, probably about maybe three months old from what I can gauge now. She was just gorgeous.
I heard these words, not audibly, but in my spirit, I heard these words, This is your daughter, Sarah, and she's fine, and now you need to get up and live. It was amazing, amazing. I'll never, ever forget what I felt like at that time, what she looked like at that time, and I did. I was able to get out of bed, and I was able to move through my day. Now it didn't just suddenly, my grief didn't just go away, but it was God revealing Himself to me and showing me that this was not the end.
He had more stuff in mind for me and that my daughter was fine, she was with Him, so I didn't need to grieve her death. Yes, it was lost to me, of course, I didn't have my baby, but she was fine with Him, and so it was enough for me to continue getting up and living for the Lord and starting to realize. Because at that time, I had just like, If this is how you are, God, I don't know if I really want to follow You. I don't know if I really want to know You.
It was Him revealing Himself to me in the most profound way that exactly how I needed Him to, and that's the beauty of the God that we serve, is He is an individual God as well. He's with each one of us, and He meets us in our needs in an individual way, which is just beautiful.
And as you say, there's that individual meeting of the need that we have, and I've spoken to other people going through different forms of grief and noting that some people, they don't witness anything miraculous or have that sense that you did of God being there, but He takes them through in a different way, and yet some people, there's the very real, tangible presence of God.
What was it like for you to suddenly realize that this God who used to be the Sunday God that you would meet at church on a Sunday was actually there for you the whole time and wanted to walk you through your darkest moments?
Well, that was the beginning of a journey for me that was a very rollercoaster journey, but it was imperative, and of course God knew this all along, it was imperative that He revealed Himself to me to that degree to prepare me for the other struggles that I went through in the rest of my life through four more miscarriages, through having a daughter with disabilities and now caregiving for her. I needed to know that He was there, and still, it wasn't all of a sudden everything was just easy.
It wasn't. And I still struggled with what the Lord was allowing in my life. That was a real struggle, and to some point continues to be. I think it always will be for us. In this world, in this broken life that we live, the enemy continues to assail us with temptations, and he wants us to doubt the Lord. And so this was a real important way that the Lord revealed Him to us.
And I want to say, too, that I think the hard part with miscarriage and maybe some of those type of trials is as we talk about our grief and how deep my grief was at that point, it's easy to feel guilty for that as well, because other people have gone through so many worse things or more what we would classify as worse things maybe, the death of a living child or a child that you've held in your arms or the death of multiple children. Some people lost their whole families, things like that.
So it's easy to feel guilt, too. So I think it was important to know that the Lord recognized where I was, didn't shame me for that, and was willing to be there with me through all of those trials to come. And you mentioned how the enemy does like to taunt us and does like to continue to accuse. And I think you really touched on one of the important ways that we need to recognize the way he does that, and that's with comparing.
He does it in so many areas of life, getting us to compare our experience to someone else's. And as you say, comparing your grief, your tragedies in life with someone else's, and then almost beating yourself up that your tragedy doesn't seem to match up to someone else's. And that comparison game can keep us trapped, can't it? Oh, absolutely. It took me a long time to share, and part of it was that. It was like my tragedy, my trials have not been as great as other people's trials.
And that is a real tool in the enemy's arsenal, I think. And it's a very dangerous place for us to walk as Christians. We need to be sharing. We need to be coming together and encouraging each other through the trials that we have, and not to think that ours are less than or not as important as someone else's trials, and our grief isn't as warranted as someone else's grief. And that's a fallacy, and that's right from the enemy. The Lord is a transcendent God.
That means He's far away, but He's also a very near God. He's an imminent God. He's near to us, and He cares about us in a personal way as well. And so our personal trials are important to Him and should be shared so that we can encourage others with the encouragement He's given to us. If your life was a Hollywood story, we would know that there would be that one tragedy, then you drew closer to God, and everything was wonderful after that. But as you've already mentioned, that wasn't the case.
How do you continue to trust God when those hits keep coming, when, as you mentioned, you experience several more miscarriages, and then you're having to care for a daughter with special needs? Over an eight-year period, I had four live births, and then I experienced five miscarriages as well. And our third child, a daughter, was born with a cleft inner soft palate, but you couldn't see it, so it's just a hole in the roof of her mouth. So that just was some feeding issues.
It seemed like it could be resolved with some surgery later on, but that was just the beginning symptom. And since then, it's been slowly revealed that Rachel has a lifelong syndrome, genetic syndrome, that we actually do not have a diagnosis for, which is another difficulty all of its own, is another problem that you kind of deal with of isolation when you don't have a diagnosis where you can have people surrounding you that have similar issues.
So I needed to know the Lord, but it was still a very up-and-down battle. It was still a very rollercoaster hill for me. Yes, I knew He was there for me, and He had revealed Himself to me, but the only way I can describe it is a really pretty rollercoaster. I would be elated when we would have a child, and then I would just be devastated and could not understand why God allowed this again. I was a good mother, I felt. I had a lot to offer these children.
It was still a very kind of a works mentality. I was still doing things to please the Lord and expecting to be rewarded for that. I hate to say that way now, but that's really where my faith was, and He really had to bring me to a point where I could trust Him regardless of my circumstances, and I could start to realize that the Lord's love wasn't contingent on what my circumstances were. He loved me no matter what.
My circumstances didn't reveal the level of that love or the greatness of that love, and that He was a sovereign God that I had to learn to trust with my circumstances, that He wanted the best for my life. But what that best was, I couldn't always see. I had to learn to trust Him, and that took a long time, Rodney. That was a very, very long path for me. And looking back, I can see how He just continued to pursue me.
There was days when I was face down in a trail in the middle of the woods just screaming out to Him, but at the same time not even sure I wanted to hear from Him again. But then He would just slowly stay right with me and continue to maybe put people in my life or help me feel His presence in a way that I hadn't before, or help me experience the beauty of the children I did have and be able to start reaching out and comforting others and to see how important that is as well.
And I couldn't do that if I hadn't gone through some of the trials. And then through my daughter, He began to reveal the beauty of who she was. Right now, she's 26 years old, and we do care-give for her. Her ability is about a 3-year-old. So we have a toddler in our lives, and there's a lot of challenges that come with that, but there's so much beauty in who she is.
And as the Lord revealed all that beauty to me and how He is using her in my life to shape my faith and to be there for others, I can't doubt His hand in it. I couldn't doubt that He, even though my circumstances always didn't look good from my human perspective, I could see the good that was coming from them. You mentioned that the sort of grief that you were going through, especially with that first miscarriage, was very different for you as to your husband.
And I also know that you can't speak on behalf of your husband. But where was he in this as this journey goes on, as you're growing closer to God and he's revealing more of himself? I guess God must have been working in his life along that timeline as well. Yes, yes, I believe He was. And it was a very different thing. He was very much into wanting to fix it, whether that meant that we were satisfied with the two children or three children.
It was easier then to just not try to have more children than to lose more children. So it was more probably a fix-it mentality, I think. You're right, I can't speak for him as far as where he was on that journey, but I can see a difference in looking in our relationship now and how we can deal with things and how Rachel also has made just a profound difference in his life as well.
Watching my daughter Rachel grow and what God has done in her life and what she does in our life, it's just a beautiful thing. And he has come so far in his faith as well. But it was a very different path for both of us. We very much traveled it alone as well as together. I don't think that's an unusual thing.
Because we are created so differently, men and women, I think it's very, very common for the path of the man to be so different from the woman, both in emotional but also in the spiritual area. Now that I look back, we've been married 35 years and my daughter is 26, and we're so far removed from those initial times that we can look back and we can just see the beauty of the process when we couldn't see it at the time.
And I think it's very common for men to want to try and fix things, even if we know we can't. Yes. Seems to be the way it goes. Yeah, and where I wanted just someone to be, I just wanted us to be there and I wanted us to be there together. That was another struggle, all of its own. All I wanted was his presence and all he wanted to do was fix things. So like you said, that is very typical. And it's a beautiful thing to look back. And if I can say, just hold on, it'll get better. It does.
And I know throughout this whole process, you learnt more and more about building trust in God, and that might sound counterintuitive for some people because, as I say, we would expect in the Hollywood version of your life that one tragedy and then everything starts to resolve, and yet that wasn't the case. How do we trust God when we continually find these things popping up in our lives, these things that we have to continue to grieve over?
Yeah, the only way that I could reconcile my circumstances and my continued trials with my faith was to start to know who this God was. I really had to dig into who God is in my life and what that meant for my life. And as I started to search the Word and get to know the Lord more intimately, my trust grew by leaps and bounds. I started to realize the beauty of who God is.
In my mind, I had expectations for how God should respond to things and to my circumstances, and when He didn't, that disappointed me. It shattered what I thought He should do in my life. But when I started to study who God truly is in all of His complexities, then I realized that He's omniscient. He knows things far greater than I know. He's infinite. He's already in the future. He already knows what's going to happen before it ever happens, and He's guiding that.
And that can sound even worse in a way because you're like, well, if He's already there and He knows what's going to happen, why is He still allowing it? And that's where it comes back to His sovereignty as well and His goodness and His love, and they all go together. God cannot be less loving or less good or less kind or less sovereign. He is all of those things together.
And so when we start to realize that God is all of these things, He's sovereign and He's omniscient and He's all-powerful, He has everything in control. We just can't see it because we aren't omniscient. We aren't infinite. We aren't eternal. We aren't all good, and we aren't all kind in who we are, and we aren't all loving. We don't know what He knows. We can't see what He sees. We don't know what happened 2,000 years ago and what's going to happen 2,000 years from now, but God does.
And so we can trust our future to Him. We can trust all that He allows in our lives because He's there and He's taking care of it all. And so when we realize that all He is is perfect, then how can we challenge that He's not in our lives and working in our lives for the good that we just can't see? God isn't so concerned about my heart and what I feel here on earth, although He is because He is a God who is near, but that's not His primary concern is our souls, what our eternity looks like.
We can't see how the things in our lives are playing out for that eternity, but God can. He already has, and He already knows what needs to happen in our lives and what He should allow in our lives, not just for us individually, but also for those around us too and those to come. You've already mentioned that you do have a role now of being able to come alongside those who are going through difficult times, and I guess that's part of what you're doing with your book, Sometimes I Forget.
What was it that prompted you to begin writing? It was the dreaded future that prompted me to write. At times I really get panicked about our daughter's future because she can't live alone, and you hear so many horror stories about what happens to people who are noncommunicative. My daughter has very restricted expressive language, and so she isn't able to tell us if something bad happens or to describe what that looks like, and we have to see it in her behaviors as it's revealed through that.
So when I think about what's going to happen when my husband and I are gone, it can become a very scary thing to think about, and I can fear the future. So I was doing that at one point, and I was writing a blog post. I started writing out how concerned I was for me in that kind of panic situation of what's going to happen with Rachel in the future. I had to stop myself, and I had to start reminding myself of who God is, that He's going to be there. I had to remind myself.
I just started putting down this prayer, but sometimes I forget, Lord, that You are sovereign, that You are in charge of everything, and that You have her life under control. Sometimes I forget, Lord, that You are loving, that You love her more than I do. Sometimes I forget that You are already in the future, that You are omniscient, and You already know what's going to happen.
I just had to pour my heart out and remind myself of who the Lord is, and that I don't have to fear because I have a perfect God who is going to take care of my daughter because He loves her so much more than I do, and He already has her future planned. So I can be okay with her future, even though I can't see what's going to happen, and there are scary things out there in my mind. But the Lord is already meeting her there, and He's already got her in His care.
That was hugely cathartic and hugely healing for me and very peace-giving to me. As I was thinking about this and continuing to deal with it, and it's not like all of a sudden I never fear her future. That's not true. I'm human, and I continue to wrestle with that part. But that's where I had to keep coming back and reminding myself of who the Lord is, and when I understand who God is, I can trust Him with what's coming.
I thought that was so important for me to hear, and it's important for others to hear. When we have expectations of what's coming and those expectations don't happen, that's when the fear and the sadness and the grief hits so much heavier. But when we can know that our future and the things that we deal with in our life are still going through the sovereign hands, the loving hands, the infinite hands of our Lord, that I can trust that future and anything that's going to happen to Him.
We mentioned before the comparison game that we play, and I can imagine people listening thinking, well, my life hasn't been beset by the sorts of things that Julie's talking about, and so therefore maybe this book isn't for me. But I imagine that there are things in it that are going to touch us wherever we are in life. Tell me, who do you think is going to benefit from reading the book, Sometimes I Forget?
I think anybody who is wrestling with their daily lives or the things that are happening in their lives, and absolutely, I've actually written about some things that in my opinion almost seem trivial or mundane, but they're a real life. The cleaning up of my daughter when you have those people that have little children, and it feels like your days never end. Why am I doing this? What's the purpose?
Well, God has a purpose for it because God is sovereign and God is omniscient, and He has a purpose for your life. It's really a book that should speak to people, especially Christian women, I think, in whatever stage they are in life. Not only those who have dealing with some real unexpected tragic circumstances, but also those who are dealing with just the hard everyday life.
Life is not easy in this broken world, and Satan will continue to tempt and, as we talked about, try to force you into comparison. When we're there, we can become very disgruntled with our lives and questioning of what God is allowing in our lives and what our purpose is. I think for the elderly and the infirmed, I think it's a real difficult place to be when we wonder what our purpose is.
Well, when we know that God never changes and He has a purpose for you from the time that you were born, or conceived for that matter, until the time you breathe your last, then we can take comfort in that even as our abilities maybe our physical abilities decrease, and we aren't able to do the things that maybe we think we should do.
So I really think it's a book that's going to be helpful for many from all different walks, going through real tragic things, as well as just our daily struggles in life. If people are wanting to get hold of the book or to read your blog or just get in touch with you, what's the easiest way for them to find you? I blog and my website at juliesunne.com. J-U-L-I-E-S-U-N-N-E dot com is a great place to meet me. You can find me there, and you can find all the social media channels.
I would love to have you join me there, and I also have some free resources there for people that need more encouragement, and I would love to journey with them. We all need to know this Lord who loves us so much and is in charge of our lives and is doing what's good and right in our lives, even if we can't always see that. Julie, thank you for painting such a beautiful picture of the God that we serve, even in the midst of trials.
I'm sure that many will appreciate that, and it's going to be a help for them. But thank you so much for sharing your story today on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you, Rodney. It was really a joy. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others. For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.