Join us for a hope-filled conversation with Eric Schumacher and Jessika Sanders about how to pray for a child or baby in a medical crisis. Eric is a grieving father and author of Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage. Jessika is the founder and Executive Director of Praying through Ministries. Together, they wrote In His Hands: Prayers for Your Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis.
In this episode, we discussed:
Going to God before Google
Surrendering our children's lives to the Lord
The impact of trauma on our brains
The power of intercessory prayer
All about their book, In His Hands
When God doesn't answer our prayers in our timing or ways
Trials and how they build our (and our kids') testimony
Suffering and our sanctification
Reasons why we believe in Jesus
Praying through Ministries and how they help grieving families
Full transcript below.
MEET OUR GUESTS
Eric Schumacher is an author, podcaster, and songwriter. He earned a degree in communications from the University of Northern Iowa and an M.Div. in Biblical and Theological Studies from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Marriage, Family, and Individual Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Eric and his wife Jenny live in Iowa with their five children. He serves as the Pastoral Ministry Director of the Baptist Convention of Iowa. He is a member of Grand Avenue Baptist Church of Ames.
Connect with Eric:
Instagram: @emschumacher
Facebook: /emschumacher
Website: www.emschumacher.com
Jessika Sanders is a wife and mother of three, and the founder and Executive Director of Praying Through Ministries, a nonprofit delivering gospel hope to families navigating childhood illness, hospitalization, and/or child loss.
Passionate about equipping others with biblical truth, especially in suffering, she has contributed to publications including So God Made a Mother (edited by Leslie Means) and Hope When Your Heart is Heavy (from Proverbs 31 Ministries). She and Eric Schumacher are also the co-authors of In His Hands: Prayers for Your Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis.
Connect with Jessika:
Instagram: @jessikasanderswriter
Facebook: /jessikasanderswriter
Website: www.prayingthroughministries.org
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Ashley Opliger is the Executive Director of Bridget's Cradles, a nonprofit organization based in Wichita, Kansas that donates cradles to over 1,400 hospitals in all 50 states and comforts over 30,000 bereaved families a year.
Ashley is married to Matt and they have three children: Bridget (in Heaven), and two sons. She is a follower of Christ who desires to share the hope of Heaven with families grieving the loss of a baby.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Episode 52 | Praying for a Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis |
Jessika Sanders & Eric Shumacher
Ashley Opliger: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley Opliger. I’m a wife, mom, and follower of Christ who founded Bridget’s Cradles, a nonprofit ministry in memory of my daughter, Bridget, who was stillborn at 24 weeks.
Cradled in Hope is a Gospel-focused podcast for grieving moms to find comfort, hope, and healing after the loss of a baby. We want this to be a safe place for your broken heart to land.
Here, we are going to trust God’s promise to heal our hearts, restore our joy, and use our grief for good. With faith in Jesus and eyes fixed on Heaven, we do not have to grieve without hope. We believe that Jesus cradles us in hope while He cradles our babies in Heaven.
Welcome to the Cradled in Hope Podcast.
Ashley Opliger: [00:00:48] Welcome back to another episode of Cradled in Hope. I am so glad to introduce our next two guests to you. You already know Eric Schumacher from our June episode when he came on to discuss men grieving miscarriage in his book that he wrote, called Ours, for grieving fathers. He also co-wrote another book, called In His Hands: Prayers for Your Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis, with author Jessika Sanders.
I am so pleased to have both of them on the podcast today. Eric Schumacher is an author, podcaster, and songwriter. Eric currently interviews guests on the Nothing is Wasted podcast, and he has a Master's in Biblical and Theological Studies from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Marriage, Family, and Individual Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
He and his wife, Jenny, live in Iowa with their five children, and he serves as the Pastoral Ministry Director of the Baptist Convention of Iowa. I'm so glad to have Eric back, and I'm also pleased to introduce you to Jessika Sanders.
Jessika Sanders is a wife and mother of three. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Praying Through Ministries, a nonprofit delivering Gospel hope to families navigating childhood illness, hospitalization, and/or child loss. She is passionate about equipping others with biblical truth, especially in suffering.
She and Eric are the co-authors of In His Hands: Prayers for Your Child or Baby in a Medical Crisis. I'm looking forward to this conversation as we talk about child loss, as well as navigating difficult medical situations with our children on earth. Let's get started now.
Ashley Opliger: [00:02:21] Welcome, Eric and Jessika, to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. We're so glad to have you here today.
Jessika Sanders: [00:02:26] Thank you.
Eric Schumacher: [00:02:26] Thanks, Ashley. It's good to be here.
Ashley Opliger: [00:02:28] Well, Eric, we just recently had you on the podcast and we loved your episode on men grieving miscarriage. We love your book. Ours, and just the many resources that you have available for fathers grieving a baby in Heaven.
You introduced me to Jessika and her ministry, Praying Through Ministries. And so we're looking forward to getting to hear your story, Jessika, and how the two of you met and collaborated on this beautiful book called In His Hands. So would you introduce yourselves to us and then share a little bit more about how you guys got connected and how the book came to be?
Jessika Sanders: [00:03:01] My name is Jessika. I am a wife and mother of three. I live in Southwest Florida. I'm not a beach girl. I'd rather be in the mountains any day, but this is where the Lord has planted me. We have not experienced loss firsthand, but we have had three near-death medical emergencies with our son and we spent 37 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, three days in the pediatric ICU, and we've had multiple hospital emergencies sprinkled in there in his four-and-a-half years.
I'm the Founder and Executive Director of Praying Through Ministries, which I'm sure we'll talk about later as well.
Eric Schumacher: [00:03:41] Yeah. I'm Eric Schumacher and I serve as the Pastoral Ministry Director for our state convention of churches. My wife, Jenny, and I have been married for almost 26 years now, and we have five living children and a new daughter-in-law, which is very exciting.
We have four children in Heaven that we lost through miscarriage, which occasioned writing Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage that you mentioned, Ashley.
Yeah, it's been a privilege to work alongside Jessika and trying to serve families facing medical crises with children through this book.
Ashley Opliger: [00:04:21] Well, I love that this resource is available, so I would love to know how the two of you met and how God gave you the idea to write this book.
Jessika Sanders: [00:04:29] When we were in the neonatal intensive care unit for 37 days, in the middle of that, I felt like the Lord started to highlight faces of the people around us, and I could see the pain, and the anguish, and the worry. And I remember thinking to myself, “How does anyone do this without the Lord? This is too heavy of a burden for someone to take that on and feel like they have to do something when you are absolutely powerless in those moments you can't control.”
He just impressed that on me and spoke to me to start praying for these families and help them pray through. So we were living in the Ronald McDonald House and I had a notebook, being a writer, and I just started asking people their names, the names of their children, how I could be praying for them.
Though we were in the middle of our own crisis, I definitely felt that calling to support others as they were walking through it, and so I would write prayers. Like before one family went in for brain surgery, I wrote out a prayer to that mother to encourage her.
And once we were discharged, it took me a little bit of time, I would say, before I really recovered from the trauma of it all. It felt a lot like a pressure cooker to me. So once we got home was when I hit that valve and everything was finally able to come out.
And so after I had some time to process, that's when the Lord again said, “Create a community where you can help people to pray through this.” And that is how Praying Through Ministries started with that Christ-centered approach to helping people pray through, not medical advice, nothing like that, but giving them biblical support and support through prayer.
And as it evolved, we began to do care packages. Some of our families that we had prayed so hard for didn't make it, and that's when our heart was to give something to them. We knew we couldn't say anything. There are no words that we can say that are going to make anything better. So the one thing we knew we could do would be to point them to Jesus.
So I began searching for resources and came across Ours and was like, “I need this book and I need it now because it is going to be a staple in our ministry.” There doesn't seem to be many resources for men, so when I saw that this was geared specifically towards men, I wanted it.
And I kept searching Amazon. It said pre-order and I was very impatient, so I felt the nudge and I was like, “Okay, I'm going to reach out to this guy.”
So I found Eric, reached out to him asking him, “How can I help you promote this book? How can I read it, write a review for you? I really want to help get this out, because I think it's so important.”
And then he was beyond gracious to me, and I'll let you take it from there.
Eric Schumacher: [00:07:26] As an author, when someone reaches out to you and says, “How can I help promote your book and we want to use it in the ministry,” you've found a new best friend.
And so we got on Zoom and talked, and I learned more about what she was doing through Praying Through Ministries and her work with writing personalized prayers and sending out care packages. And she was asking how to get copies of Ours and use those, and just in the course of the conversation, she said, “It's my dream to, one day, be able to write a book of prayers for parents in this situation.”
And I just said, “Do you want to write it together?” And she was eager to do that. And so Ours was just coming out from The Good Book Company, and so I approached them with this idea for this book. And The Good Book Company was so gracious, they had really taken a chance on Ours because there really wasn't a Christian resource like that for men grieving miscarriage.
And they had taken a chance on that book and they saw the value in this book. And so they offered us to be able to write it with them. It was hard work. It was really hard work.
At the time, I was still in pastoral ministry at our local church and a family in our church had just been diagnosed, a little girl had just been diagnosed with brain cancer. In fact, I dedicated the book to her memory.
And so during the period that we were writing this, they were walking through that cancer journey and she ended up passing away a little over a year ago. Having a family that were church members and friends walking through a medical crisis with their child, this book in the portions I wrote, she's just all over it because it was a family that was front and center of my mind, trying to imagine what they were going through or could be going through in the future and what kind of words they needed to be able to pray for various situations.
Ashley Opliger: [00:09:21] I love that the book is focused on prayer because so often, I think, as Christians, we will use prayer as our last-ditch effort. And it's interesting how we will sometimes try to solve our problems in a million different ways, but not go to the Throne Room and to storm Heaven and pray to God.
It's like our human nature, sometimes we're just so eager to get out of our circumstances that we try to fix it and we try to manipulate and control. And it's not a bad thing, right?
When it's our own children, we're going to Google and we're going to try to find the best doctors and we're going to try to make sure that they're eating the right food or whatever it is.
I know because I've been a worried mother that has dealt with many issues with my living kids, and there's been so many things that I've tried to fix. And I think that's wise as parents that we do our research and we do these things.
But at the same point, we have a father in Heaven who is the Creator of us and our children and loves them even more than we love them. And we need to be bringing everything to Him and praying through.
And so I love that you focus on prayer because prayer should be our first thing that we go to, that should be the first answer when we are struggling with something, especially with our kids. Because I heard a pastor say this, and it always stuck with me.
It said, “Whatever you fear the most is where you trust God the least.” And I realize a lot of times that comes with my children because I fear something happening to them.
And so would you just talk more about in your own journey, the power of prayer as you walked through that hospitalization with your son and the many days that you were in the NICU and the PICU? How did prayer change your perspective through those times?
Jessika Sanders: [00:11:05] Yeah, God is, He goes before us, and I feel like my story is such evidence of that. Back when I was in my second trimester, I started to experience a lot of intrusive thoughts, and fear and worry and anxiety weren't really a part of my norm. I had never really struggled with that before, so this was new.
And I was a newer believer, I was like three years into my walk, so I was taken a little back by it. And each time these thoughts would come to mind, I would do what I have read that Jesus has done, where I slice it down with Scripture. When He was tempted by the devil, He combated those temptations with the Word. So it's exactly what I would do.
They would come to mind and I would say, “My child is fearfully and wonderfully made. God has a plan and a purpose for this child.” And I really stood on that.
But then I also asked the Lord, “Why is this happening? What is going on that I don't understand?”
And I really feel like He spoke clearly and said, “Pick up the book of Psalms, circle the ones I tell you to circle, start praying them and don't stop until I tell you to.”
And so this was a solid month before Ezra even arrived. And so I knew, the power of prayer in that moment, that something is ahead and God is preparing me and He's having me pray for it.
And when our son was born at 42 weeks, but only weighed four pounds, 14 ounces, I knew, “Okay, the battle is, it's happening. It's unfolding right before me. Something is very wrong.”
So in the moments of his medical crisis at 36 hours, I called 911. Couldn't remember my address. I couldn't even string together thoughts. And even in the ambulance, all I could get out, even though I had prayed these big and bold prayers, all I could get out was, “Lord Jesus.” And that was more so in my mind because I was just sobbing.
But the beautiful thing, when we walked into the NICU, and I didn't have the words to pray because I was so paralyzed, I was able to open my Bible and everything was circled already. So the exact words I needed to pray were already circled. The Lord had prepared me and equipped me.
So I remember sitting in that lounge the first few nights with the postpartum belly and the hormones and all the things, and just watching tears fall on the pages of my Bible with the circled psalms that I was crying out to the Lord in those moments. So the prayers that He circled were what carried us through the NICU experience.
And I really started to memorize those Scriptures and insert my son's name and pray them over him.
Eric Schumacher: [00:13:54] We haven't had those kind of life-threatening medical crises with our children. Through 20 years of pastoral ministry, I've found myself in emergency situations, visiting people in the hospital.
And sometimes it's difficult to know what to pray, as a caregiver. Whether you're a pastor or a parent or a friend, someone who comes alongside, a grandparent whose grandchild was walking through this and they're trying to care for their children, it can be really difficult to know what to pray.
And even like Jessika just mentioned, being in the ambulance, only being able to pray internally, “Dear Jesus, dear Jesus.” We know what our minds do in the midst of trauma and crisis. They can freeze up.
And you know, the Apostle Paul says–and I'm so grateful for this–He says, “We don't know how to pray as we ought.” And the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, which is a great comfort because we don't want to imply that if you don't have the words, then prayer fails.
Our groanings are prayers that the Spirit interprets and presents to the Father for us. But we also know that God inspired an entire book of psalms, prayers that He intends for us to speak back to Him. And Jesus taught His disciples how to pray with specific words.
And Paul records his prayers in his letters, which can become model prayers for us.
And so, God's given us words to use, and He's also given us words that are models for how we can learn to craft our own prayers. And so this book is designed not just for parents who are walking through a medical crisis. It is a prayer book. It's a book of prayers. And maybe I'll just read through the table of contents to give listeners an idea of these kinds of prayers.
There's 12 sections, and they are prayers for uncertain and fearful times, for healing, for our child, for our family, for the medical team, for the things we need, for times of spiritual darkness and doubt, prayers to lift our eyes in praise, for during treatment, for giving thanks after recovery, for times of loss, and for life after a loss.
And within each of those, there's about maybe 10 prayers in each of those sections that get into, some are very general, and some of them are very specific, like prayer for leaving our other children at home when we're going to spend significant time at the hospital, for packing up a child's room after that child's passed away, prayers for when we're about to receive a diagnosis, after good news, after bad news, that sort of thing.
And again, it's not just for parents. It's for friends and family. It's for grandparents. Each section begins with a prayer for the child, a short and simple prayer for that child to read themselves. And it ends with a sort of responsive prayer for a group, where you have a leader portion and then a response portion from the group, so that you can gather in the room together and be able to pray in unison these things.
And we did a lot of asking people who've been through these various situations. What were they praying? What were they struggling with? What were they longing for? What were they questioning? And then tried to immerse ourselves as much as we could into that experience mentally to try to think through all the various aspects.
Because there is something, even though prayer does not depend at all on our ability to be eloquent or to name everything that's needed, there is something very comforting about having words that put our longings and our desire and circumstances, that we're able to speak them, name what's happening, name what we want.
And so this is a book of prayers that attempts to help parents, grandparents, families, pastors, children, to name and to speak what they need in those moments. And our hope is that's like priming the pump, that the Spirit would meet them as they read our words and make those words their own prayers.
And even if they leave the prayer in the middle of the page because they're starting to speak their own words on their own, that's a win, that it's to help them start.
Ashley Opliger: [00:18:26] Absolutely. Honestly, as you were saying that, I was thinking about relating it back to the Psalms because even last night I was reading a particular psalm that brings me comfort in the midst of a trial I'm going through right now, and it's a psalm of David.
And at the beginning, it explains what's going on with David and his circumstances. And I'm like, “Well, those aren't my circumstances. My life is not in danger in the same way that David's was.” But his words, as I am reading them and praying them, they relate to that longing and those feelings that I have, even though it's different circumstances.
And so I think that these families who are in the circumstances that you guys are talking about, just having that relatability and knowing, “Someone else has been here before and these words are what I'm feeling in my heart,” and giving them some words to give back to God.
And like you said, He does intercessory prayer for us on behalf of all of our needs and all of our struggles and all of the emotions that we're feeling. And sometimes it's hard to even put into words the amount of distress and anxiety that we can be going through when we're walking through trauma and worrying about our children. And so just knowing that God is there and Jesus is interceding for us is so powerful.
I do want to talk about prayer when it comes to when we're praying for our child and our prayers are not being answered. In my particular circumstance with my daughter, Bridget, I was on bed rest and I was having pregnancy complications. And we were praying that the Lord would let her be full term, that she would be born healthy and alive, and those prayers were not answered.
She was born at 24 weeks and she passed away. She was already in the arms of Jesus when she was delivered. And so from a worldly perspective, you could say that those prayers weren't answered, but in so many ways, the Lord answered our prayers in giving such a purpose to our daughter's life and giving us eternity with her.
And so there's times our earthly prayers aren't answered in the way that we want them to be answered. And then there's other times our prayers aren't answered in the timing that we want them to.
And so, I told you before we hit record that us recording today was really meaningful to me, because yesterday was the year anniversary that my youngest son had an emergency surgery and was hospitalized for seven days.
He has a lot of GI issues, a lot of food allergies, and so that was very traumatic a year ago. And I remember being in the hospital and he basically had to lay on me like he couldn't lay on his stomach because he had four or five different holes in his abdomen from the surgery and so he was only comfortable laying on his back on me.
And so for a full seven days, I just laid in that hospital bed with him on top of me. And I just remember looking up at the ceiling and God brought to mind the story in the Gospels, it's in Matthew 9, but it's the woman that was bleeding for 12 years.
Jesus was walking through the crowd and she went and touched His cloak because she's like, “If I can just touch Him, He can heal me. I have that kind of faith.” And there's another translation that doesn't say the edge of His cloak, but it says the hem of His garment.
And that, those words, just came to me. And I kept thinking, as he was on my body, I kept imagining myself reaching up to Heaven. And I was like, “Just a touch, Lord, just a touch of Your garment. I believe You can heal my son.”
And In those moments, there was healing that happened, but it's been a slow process. We're a year out and he still struggles with different GI things, and we're still in the middle of it, but we've seen the Lord working and answering prayers.
And the chief of all pediatric surgeons was on call the night that we had to go in for the emergency surgery. That was a mercy.
And from an earthly perspective, someone could say, “Well, God wasn't there for you, he had this emergency surgery. Why did He allow the perforation of his stomach to happen in the first place?”
But we're like, “God intervened and had the surgeon,” and he's been healing, but it's been slow. It wasn't like the woman, where she touched it and she was automatically healed. It's been a slow healing process and I'm still in the midst of interceding for my son.
And so would you speak to the moms and to the families that are listening? Either their prayers were just straight up not answered the way that they wanted and that they so desperately were asking Jesus to save their child and their baby passed away, or their prayers are not being answered in the timing.
They're still in the middle of this. They're still looking for healing. They're still asking God to intervene and it feels like He's being silent. Would you encourage us to keep praying and keep trusting God in that? And what did that look like for both of you?
Jessika Sanders: [00:23:03] I'm there. I've been there, and I'm still there. My son's four-and-a-half, and we thought he was healed from one of his diagnoses. We thought he outgrew it, and we had been carrying on with life until three months ago. He had another near-death medical emergency that felt like the rug was totally pulled out from us.
And what has helped me through my entire four-and-a-half years with him is one day when we were in our first stint in the hospital in the NICU and the doctor was giving us a potential diagnosis, what he thought it was. And he was sharing how, unfortunately with this diagnosis, he's not going to have a normal childhood. He's not going to be able to do some of the things like throw a baseball in the front yard, all those kinds of things.
My husband was listening intently because it's his first child. And I remember as I was listening to him, I just felt that I was to surrender my child in that moment. So in my mind's eye, I reached out my hands and said, “Okay, Lord, he's Yours. He's always been Yours. If it's his time and he's not going to be here with us, I will be heartbroken. But I will still trust You. I will still praise You.” I just felt I had to surrender.
And so as hard as it was because of everything we had seen and been through, I did that in that moment. And I was met by this beautiful vision of this adult young man with blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, and he smiled knowingly at me. And in my heart, I knew, “This is my son.” Whether this is him healed in Heaven one day, or if this is him healed here on earth, I just had this incredible peace and I had to believe in faith that was my son.
Because when I looked next to me in the isolette, he was bronzed with liver failure. I mean so dark. His eyes were really dark and then yellow, and then his hair was really dark.
But the beautiful thing is now. He's four-and-a-half and he has blonde hair and the most crystal blue eyes I have ever seen. I don't even know where they came from. So I think that vision the Lord gave me has served as an anchor for me.
So as we continue to pray and we continue to wait for healing and we continue to see our son suffer in all of his, he has food sensitivities as well. He has ketotic hypoglycemia.
So his blood sugar just recently went all the way to 22 until he was non-responsive. We are still very much in the struggle.
And what I do is I continually surrender my child. So even as we called the ambulance, which I did not give the address on purpose. I gave the phone to my husband, like, “You tell them this information.”
But even as my son was laying there on the ground, non-responsive, I was just at his feet sobbing and surrendering to the Lord again and trusting God that I had that vision, “Whether it's here or in Heaven, I know my son is going to be healed and I'm going to trust You through this because I know You're right here with me.”
Ashley Opliger: [00:26:29] I love that Jesus gave you that vision of-
Jessika Sanders: [00:26:29] Yeah.
Ashley Opliger: [00:26:29] … there's going to be healing. There's hope in your story. We don't know when or where it's-
Jessika Sanders: [00:26:37] Exactly.
Ashley Opliger: [00:26:37] … going to happen this side of eternity or not, but He has a good plan for your son.
Jessika Sanders: [00:26:43] Yeah.
Ashley Opliger: [00:26:43] And there's something that's going around on Instagram reels right now, a little phrase, I don't know if you've seen it, but it says something along the lines of, “You can't protect your child from their testimony.”
Jessika Sanders: [00:26:53] Mm, wow.
Ashley Opliger: [00:26:54] And I was like, “Oh, that's so powerful.” Because when I think of my daughter, Bridget, it was like, I couldn't save her life. And in so many ways, her death and everything that's come about because of her life and her death has created this beautiful testimony of the Gospel through this ministry. And I couldn't protect her from that. That was God's plan for her testimony.
And likewise with my son, as hard as it is to watch him struggle gaining weight and not being able to eat many foods and have all of these health issues and hospitalizations, that's going to be part of his testimony and that's going to be part of how he shares what God has done for him.
And in some ways I don't want to fully protect my kids from the hard things that have happened in this world. If you think about my own testimony, the different trials that I've walked through in my life, those have been the things that strengthened my faith the most, and have brought me closer to Christ, and have sanctified me, and pruned me, and refined me in His likeness.
And now where I'm at, I wouldn't trade going through those things because of how my faith has been strengthened and the ministry that has come from that. And likewise, should we be trying to protect our children from that, when those very hardships and trials that they're walking through can be the very things that God's going to use for His glory and to help other people and to build His Kingdom?
Jessika Sanders: [00:28:19] I've seen it strengthen our family too. What Ezra has walked through, it's impacted his older sisters. So again, same thing. Even though we've walked through such hardship and suffering, I would not change it because I've seen how the Lord has used it for good in the lives of so many. So I consider that, honestly, an honor to be a co-sufferer with Christ and to carry our cross right alongside Him.
Eric Schumacher: [00:28:44] Ashley, you were mentioning introducing that question about, “How do we deal with God's timing in answering prayers, especially when it feels like He's not answering our prayers?” And you mentioned the instance of the woman who had been hemorrhaging blood for all those years wanting to touch the hem of His garment. That story occurs in the middle of another story.
In all three Gospels, it's preceded by Jairus, who comes up to Jesus and he says, “My daughter is dying.” So here's a parent with a child in a medical crisis. She's going to die.
And he's seeking out Jesus, “Come with me and heal my daughter.” And it says, “So Jesus goes with him.”
So Jesus is on His way to Jairus’ house to heal his daughter in whatever medical crisis she's in. And this woman, as the crowds are pressing in on Him, touches His garment and she's healed. And He feels power go out from Him, and so He stops and He asks, “Who touched My garment?” And there's this whole interaction there.
And when that's done, He's answered her prayer and taken time to address her need. Then He resumes going to Jarius' house, and they get there and there's people mourning. And they say, “She's died.”
And I think as a father, I could imagine what's going through Jarius' mind. Like, “Wait a minute, I got here first. I asked You to heal my daughter before this woman needed to be addressed. And if You hadn't stopped to answer her prayer and to interact with her, You would have gotten here in time for my daughter to live. What's going on?”
And of course, in that situation, then Jesus goes into the house and touches her and He raises her from the dead. And in His timing, in the delay to deal with this woman and minister to her, Jairus daughter's situation gets worse, even to the point where she dies.
But he sees a greater revelation of Christ's glory and power because of that delay in answering that prayer. And his daughter's testimony is greater than it would have been.
And I think the same thing about with Lazarus, when word is sent to Jesus that His friend who He loves is sick and He's dying. And the passage actually says Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus, therefore, when He heard he was sick, He stayed two more days. His love motivated Him to wait until Lazarus died, and then He went.
And the statement that's made to Him is, “If you'd been here, he wouldn't have died.” And they don't even necessarily know that He chose to not go until Lazarus died. And the result of that is this revelation of God's glory that Jesus is the Resurrection and the life.
And that doesn't mean that all of our children are going to be healed or that they're going to be raised from the dead in this world. But those stories, I think, give us confidence.
And I think about this in any circumstance where I just question, “Why aren't You acting right now? I'm praying. Why aren't You doing this,” to remember that His timing, He delays, sometimes, answering prayers because He loves us and because He wants to reveal more of His glory for us to see than if He acted right now.
And even if I don't understand His timing, that helps me trust Him, that He knows what He's doing and His, “No,” or His, “Wait,” is because He loves me, not in spite of His love.
Ashley Opliger: [00:33:01] I love that you brought that story up, that those two stories are interconnected, that Jesus was on His way when the woman came up and touched Him.
And something about that story that really sticks out to me as well, you said the girl that had died, her testimony was strengthened because Jesus literally raised her from the dead.
But the people there that were mourning at her house, when Jesus came, He says to them, “The girl's not dead. She's asleep.” And they laugh. It literally says that all those people in the house laughed at Him. And then He raises her from the dead. So then the testimony of all those that were there to watch, right?
And so you also have to think about it from our perspective of not just our children's testimonies, but all the people in their life and our friends and our family and our circle of influence that are watching us grieve and watching us go through these hardships.
There's glory there for the Lord and there's a powerful testimony for the people who are witnessing it.
Just like those people in the house that were like, “Whatever. We watched her die. What do you mean she's asleep?” And they're laughing at Him and then they got to witness this beautiful miracle.
And to your point, in this world there are babies that are going to die and God's not going to resurrect them right now when we pray that prayer. But our promise is that we are awaiting the Resurrection. We are guaranteed that Resurrection. We're in the already, but not yet. We've been redeemed, but not yet resurrected. But that Resurrection is promised.
And so we know with certainty that our babies that have gone to Heaven before us, that they will be resurrected and they will be given glorified bodies and we will be with them in the flesh forever and ever. And that is our hope to always be looking forward to what's to come.
And so many times I struggle with the different things with my son and having to go to these different doctor's appointments and read all the ingredients of everything he eats and pack his lunches for things. He can't eat when we go to parties or events. There's so many things.
It's such a minor sacrifice when I think about the fact that one day he's going to have a glorified body that will be healed and he will be able to feast in Heaven and these things will be no more.
But right now, there's sanctification that's happening in him and in me and in my husband and in our family, like you said. And there is a strong correlation in God's economy with suffering and future glory. It's in the Old Testament. It's in the New Testament. Suffering produces glory for God because in suffering, I believe that's where we're sanctified.
That is where Jesus prunes the branches that are bearing some fruit. He prunes them so that they'll bear more fruit. And He takes away the branches and throws the ones that are not producing fruit into the fire.
And so we want to be producing fruit, not because we have to earn His love, not because we have to earn our salvation, but because we're so grateful for what He's given us that we want to bear fruit for Him. And we do that in the painful process of pruning.
So would you talk about sanctification in the midst of medical crises and hospitalizations, illnesses with children, even the death of children, how the Lord can use our suffering for His glory?
Jessika Sanders: [00:36:17] I’ve seen it in my children.
Ezra's sisters are now seven and 11. He was born four-and-a-half years ago. They were three. This is my math, three and seven, I believe, if I'm doing it correctly. And what I've seen is they have a level of compassion that I couldn't have taught them. Because they have walked through this, they not only have compassion for their brother and they look up to him and admire him for all that he's been through, they pray for him. I've seen their prayer life, just flourish.
We often, with our ministry, I have pictures and names of the babies that we're praying for that are hanging up in our family room. And my seven-year-old said, “I really want to be a volunteer. I really want to, I want to be on the prayer team.”
And so I said, “Okay.” So I gave her a picture of a baby who was going to be having a brain surgery the next day. And without prompting, she literally got down on her hands and knees with her head bowed, held his picture and began praying for him. And it just melted my heart to see that, to see the level of compassion that they have.
They also come with us when we do prayer circles outside of the hospitals. So the fact that they want to be a part of that, I think, is so beautiful in such a way that the Lord is really using this suffering to shape them and to grow their faith and to build it.
And I also think too, with Ezra, we pray together each night and he will repeat after me.
And there's just something so beautiful about hearing a sweet little four-year-old ask for the Lord to heal him because he knows that He can.
And just the tenderness and seeing that relationship develop has been so beautiful. And Ezra from the beginning has just had a heart of worship. So even after that medical crisis three months ago, as soon as neurologically he was able to talk again, he asked me to hold him and he wanted to watch See a Victory.
So we put that on the TV and we worshiped together right after. Oh, that was a really beautiful moment for me to join with my son in worshiping the Lord. So just seeing how the Lord has shaped our hearts through this all, and it's just been an honor.
Ashley Opliger: [00:38:49] Oh, beautiful, Jessika.
Jessika Sanders: [00:38:50] Yeah. Sorry. I’m very emotional.
Ashley Opliger: [00:38:53] That’s okay. It’s so beautiful to see the Lord working in your kids’ lives.
Jessika Sanders: [00:38:57] Yeah.
Ashley Opliger: [00:38:53] Eric, do you have anything you want to add to the suffering and glory?
Eric Schumacher: [00:39:02] As we think about sanctification in our suffering and how God transforms us into the image of Christ through our suffering, I forget what book it was, just recently an author who said that pain is a feeling of discomfort that we experience in a moment. But suffering is the experience of that pain over time. And the greatness of our suffering is dependent on the intensity of that pain and the length of the time.
And when we experience that suffering, it brings up a lot of questions in our mind. We're faced with the question of, and I don't even know that we always put these into words, but like, “Why does this hurt? What's the meaning in this?”
And especially in our society, where we're not predominantly Christian anymore, and instructed in naturalistic evolution and atheistic theories and those sorts of things, like, “Is this just all material? We're all chemicals and atoms and, and this is just what happens and there's really no meaning behind it? If that's the case, why does it hurt so much? Is what God has said in His Word true?”
It challenges us in that; “Is there a Resurrection that's going to come? Has a Redeemer come and conquered the curse, the curse that's caused all of this? Has He really removed my sin and given me His own righteousness so that God is entirely for me and that death cannot separate me from His love in Christ?”
There's all those questions that suffering thrusts in our face. And it's in those moments that by the grace of God making choices that, “This is true, and I believe this, and no matter how long this pain extends, this experience extends, I'm going to keep believing this.”
And that's where our suffering, we’re trained in endurance, and it produces hope in us, because often the longer that experience of pain goes on, and the more intense it is, our hope becomes that much more a confident expectation of what God has promised to do.
And it's in that way, I think, that Paul can say that these light, momentary afflictions are producing in us a weight of glory that's beyond anything we can comprehend. That doesn't make it any less painful. But the extent of our pain and the extent of our experience in it, I think, expands our understanding of how great the Gospel is and how significant our Resurrection hope is.
Ashley Opliger: [00:42:10] Amen, Eric. So beautifully articulated.
Ashley Opliger: [00:42:15] We hope you are enjoying this episode so far. We want to take a quick break to tell you about some resources our ministry provides to grieving moms.
On our website, bridgetscradles.com, you can find hope-filled resources on grieving and healing including memorial ideas, quotes & Scripture, featured stories, and recommended books and other organizations. We share ideas on how to navigate difficult days such as due dates, Heaven Days, and holidays.
In addition, every month I lead Christ-centered support groups for bereaved moms called Hope Gatherings, both in-person and online. You can find a list of upcoming dates and sign up for our next support group on our website.
Lastly, we would love for you to connect with us on Facebook and Instagram. You can find us on these three pages: @bridgetscradles, @cradledinhope, and my personal page @ashleyopliger. You can also join our private Cradled in Hope Facebook group for grieving moms to find community. We would be honored to hear your baby’s story and be praying for you by name. Now let’s get back to our episode.
Ashley Opliger: [00:43:25] I love that you talked about the foundation of our faith. That's the beginning, that we really believe that Jesus is who He said He is, that He really is the Messiah that was promised and that came and lived a sinless life and died on the cross and was raised from the grave three days later. That is our firm foundation.
And to your point, we're putting all of our hope into the Resurrection and to the hope that our babies are in Heaven and that one day our children that suffer from different medical issues on this earth, that they'll be given glorified bodies and they'll be healed, for all of that to be true and that these trials to be light and momentary, Jesus has to be who He said He is. And that foundation of faith is so important.
And so I actually talk about that in my book. I have a whole chapter on it, about why do I even believe that Jesus is who He said He is? Because Paul tells us we need to have an answer for the hope that we have. Right?
We need to be able to defend our faith and know that all of these things that we're banking on and we're saying is true and that's giving us that hope to press into the trials and to go through the suffering, because we know that there's glory and we know that there's hope. We have to have that firm foundation.
Obviously, in Matthew, we have the parable of the builders who put their house on the rock and on the sand. And when the winds blow and the floods came, the house on the sand did not stay standing, obviously. There's a parallel to our life there in if we don't have a firm foundation of Christ, the Solid Rock, when troubles come, when tribulation comes, we're not going to be able to withstand it because we don't have that firm foundation.
So, Eric, I love that you brought us back to that. And that's probably a whole ‘nother conversation for another day just going into apologetics and things, and I kind of touch on it because I think it's so important. Right? If we're encouraging grieving families to put their hope in Jesus and that He is the answer and He is the only hope. It's like, “Why should we believe in Him?”
And so I don't know if you guys have ever done this before, but could you give me, in a sentence or two, why you believe in Jesus? I know this is an interesting question, but I actually force myself to do this because I'm like, “I need to have an answer for why I believe in Jesus.”
And my biggest answer is the radical life change of His disciples and what they were willing to endure, being persecuted and martyred for their faith and that they believed in Jesus. That to me is the single greatest apologetic for the Christian faith and I think it proves His Resurrection. They were willing to die because they knew that this was the truth, that their friend was resurrected. So, do you guys have just a quick way of saying, “This is why I believe that Jesus is who He said He is.”
Jessika Sanders: [00:46:11] Mine is more of my personal testimony that was very much a Saul to Paul. I was on the bathroom floor ready to end my life and the Lord literally pulled me out of the pit and placed me on a firm foundation and I am so different from who I was seven years ago.
Ashley Opliger: [00:46:30] Wow, Jessika, that's amazing.
Eric Schumacher: [00:46:34] Yeah. Wow, I'm such a word guy that I don't know if I can put things into one to two sentences.
But my initial answer is because I can't not believe. Christianity with its message that there is a good, holy, righteous Creator who created the Heavens and the earth, His people in His image to represent Him on earth, and because of our sin, the world's under a curse.
Then, just the message that He sent His son to bear the penalty for our sins in His death on the cross and rose from the dead, having conquered sin, death and Satan, and promises to forgive us on principles of justice because His Son was punished in our place, and that He's going to make all things new, it is very intellectually and existentially satisfying.
I can make sense of this world and the full human experience through that message. It explains why I have a strong need for there to be justice in the end. If you don't believe this, horrifically evil people die and there's no justice. If you don't believe this, there's no way to make sense of your pain.
Your kid dies and those atoms of those chemicals ceased operating in a certain way, the same way that a head of lettuce withers and dies. Why does that even matter?
But if this child's made in the image of God, and they have real value, and death is really wrong, it's not how God designed us to live, that makes sense why we would hate death and why we would grieve it and strive against it. It makes sense why we have this strong sense of justice.
If this is not true, Paul says if Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, we're of all people most to be pitied. There is no reason to sacrifice our lives to serve anyone else. There's not even a reason to keep living. Like Job's wife said, “Curse God and die.”
And I just come back again and again, when I face my own doubts, coming back to going, “Is there any other story that makes sense and offers hope than this one?” And there is none. And I can't argue that and convince anybody of that apart from I can give all my reasons. At the end of the day, the Holy Spirit has caused me to believe and I can't stop.
Ashley Opliger: [00:49:24] So much of it is intellect, right? And then also the heart change and the Holy Spirit in why we believe. It is hard to put it into two sentences. And there's so many reasons that I believe, obviously, personal reasons and the heart change and the Holy Spirit conviction.
But then there's this scientific and historic evidence and all of these different reasons, right? But I think it is important to really think about that and to be able to defend your faith and to say, “This is why I believe in Jesus, and I believe that my baby is going to be resurrected and I'm going to spend eternity with them, because I have this hope and it's grounded on the Truth.”
We're not putting our hope in some brainwashed thinking. We're not putting our faith in a conspiracy. I know that in the Gospels, it even talks about how they were concerned about, “Well, if we don't put a stone in front of the tomb, there will be a conspiracy that someone moved the body, right? And so we're going to put a guard there and we're going to put the stone there because we want to make sure that no one can say that someone moved His body.”
It says in Acts that Jesus presented Himself over the course of 40 days to over 500 people. So He was there convincing people that He really did. People saw Him dead on the cross and then they saw Him again for 40 days alive. And so there are just so many convincing proofs.
But I think obviously that head knowledge and the intellectual knowledge has to then come into our hearts. Like you said, Jessika, that life change, where it's like He pulled you out of the pit and He set you apart and put that truth in your heart.
And like you, Eric, it's like, how can you not believe? What other hope would I have? Who else can give me this hope? There's no one else, no other name. I love that you shared that.
This has been such a beautiful conversation. I feel like I could talk to you guys for hours and hours, so we'll probably have to do another episode at some point.
But Jessika, before we close, I just want to know more about Praying Through Ministries. Tell our listeners how they can get involved and how, if they are themselves experiencing a medical crisis with a child or they know someone who is, how can they be a part of what you're doing?
Jessika Sanders: [00:51:31] Sure. We deliver the hope of the Gospel to families that are navigating childhood illness, hospitalizations of any length, and also child loss. So miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, child loss, all the way through adult loss, because your child is your child, no matter how old they are.
So we have about six different programs where we're reaching out to families through encouragement. Eric and I will be launching a podcast in a few months here, so that will be one form of encouragement, but we have a weekly email that has a short devotion as well as prayer requests for families there.
We have intercessory prayer teams. We conduct prayer circles outside of local hospitals around the country, praying for families; nurses and doctors sometimes will join us as well.
And then a huge part of our ministry is the outreach that we provide and we do for families who are navigating those hospitals. usually about five care packages we send, one a month, because that seven days felt entirely too long. So we send a care package every single month. That way we can help to spiritually feed these families that are really going through something that is just very traumatic and overwhelming.
And for the families who are navigating loss, we send five care packages over the course of one year, so sending them every three months. We’re intentional with every single care package that we do based on their circumstances. We're choosing the resources. We're also personalizing everything, writing their name in it, writing their child's name in it as well. So a lot of heart is going into all this that we do.
We also have one-to-one peer support for families who are walking through either grief or the medical crisis, where you're partnered with someone who has walked through something similar, and online grief support group, where we've been able to even minister to families in Mexico and in the Philippines as well.
Ashley Opliger: [00:53:35] Wow. That is amazing. And we will be sure to link your website and all of your social channels in our show notes and on our blog. But would you mind sharing how people can get connected to you?
Jessika Sanders: [00:53:46] Yeah, absolutely. So me personally: Jessika Sanders, writer, on Instagram or Facebook. It is Jessika with a K, so just a heads up on that. And then Praying Through Ministries on Instagram and Facebook as well.
And the website is just prayingthroughministries.org and you'll see requests on there too. And everything is free with the ministry, thanks to generous donors who make that possible.
Ashley Opliger: [00:54:12] I'm so excited to talk through some ways that we can partner our organizations-
Jessika Sanders: [00:54:17] Yes, me too.
Ashley Opliger: [00:54:17] … and have our moms be able to have your resources as well. So thank you for your obedience in starting and leading this ministry. It is touching so many people's lives. So thank you, Jessika.
Eric, would you mind sharing your website and social channels as well?
Eric Schumacher: [00:54:32] Yeah, certainly. My website is emschumacher.com. We pronounce our last name Shoemaker, but it's spelled Schumacher. So emschumacher.com and then emschumacher is also my social media handle on all the platforms. So that's the easiest way to find me.
Ashley Opliger: [00:54:50] Perfect. And your book In His Hands and Ours, they're available anywhere books are sold, right?
Eric Schumacher: [00:54:56] That's right.
Ashley Opliger: [00:54:57] We'll have those in our email and our show notes, so you can check those books out. Eric, would you mind closing us in prayer?
Eric Schumacher: [00:55:04] I'd be glad to. Sure. What I'm going to do is just read a prayer from In His Hands, and this is from the section on Prayers for Our Family, and it's a prayer called For Growth in Our Faith.
Our family has grown through this suffering, Lord. We've grown in our fear of suffering, sickness, sorrow, and death. We've grown in our knowledge of tests, diagnoses, causes, and cures.
But Lord, more than anything else, we want to grow in our faith in You and our knowledge of You. Remind us again of who You are, the God who made us and sustains us, the God who seeks us and calls us to Yourself, the God who redeems us and raises us to new life, the God who says, “I will never leave you or abandon you.”
Faith comes from hearing the message about Christ, who died for our sins and rose from the dead to save us. So cause the Word of Christ to dwell richly among us so that our roots might go deep into the Gospel to build us up in Him and establish our faith. Amen.
Ashley Opliger: [00:56:19] Amen. Thank you. That was such a beautiful prayer. I love that you have an entire book of prayers that is going to be such a blessing to families walking through this. So thank you both for all that you do for the glory of God. And thank you for your time here on the podcast today.
Eric Schumacher: [00:56:35] Yeah. Thanks, Ashley.
Ashley Opliger: [00:56:36] Thank you.
Thank you for listening to the Cradled in Hope Podcast. We pray that you found hope & healing in today’s episode.
Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss new episodes when they release on the 1st of every month. You can also find this episode’s show notes and a full transcript on our website at bridgetscradles.com/podcast.
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If you’re interested in volunteering or donating to Bridget’s Cradles in memory of a baby in Heaven, you can find information on our website on how you can get involved and spread hope to other grieving families.
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Thank you so much for listening and sharing. Until next time, we will be praying for you. And remember, as Jesus cradles our babies in Heaven, He cradles us in hope. Though we may grieve, we do not grieve without hope.
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