Focus on the Family Marriage Podcast

John Fuller: Sooner or later in your marital relationship, grief will come. You'll have some significant loss, a family member, a friend, a parent, child. Those moments are opportunities for God's grace to come in, and we're going to be exploring that today. I'm John Fuller along with Dr. Greg Smalley and his wife Dr. Erin Smalley, and they lead the Focus Marriage team. We're going to begin with a conversation Focus President Jim Daly had with Dr. Gary Chapman and his co-author Candy McVicker. And they talked about how to deal with grief as a couple.

Candy McVicker: All of us who go through a traumatic loss, you you have shock that kind of carries you through. You function, but you don't even know how you're functioning. And it sort of feels out of body, like you're watching yourself going, how am I doing this? And and you know, my my thing is when I'm in pain or hurting, I'm highly alerted and awake. So I I went into an insomnia mode. I couldn't sleep, which is devastating cuz the rest would have been so helpful. But no matter what, even with a sleep med, it just really I couldn't get more than 2 hours of sleep.

And my husband's mode is sleep. And so I would stare at him and I would say, how can you sleep? Like he just he just when he was, you know, exhausted from the the stress and the strife and the grief of what that caused him and watching me, you know, he he's my provider, my protector, and he's an amazing father. And so for him not to be able to protect us from that was really painful for him. He felt, you know, like gosh, I can't even keep my baby safe and my wife safe. And And so his mode was to shut down emotionally.

He went to sleep, and I would just stay awake and I would cry. And eventually I found my way to a computer and started reaching out to the world out there of grief and reaching out to others who had gone through a stillbirth. And that was my survival link. That's how I got through this was starting to connect with other moms and dads who had been through this before me, and they were able to be a guide to help me get through. And is actually how I got introduced to the five love languages too.

Jim Daly / Greg Smalley: Well, and thank the Lord that you had that lifeline. And Gary, we're right up your alley now. This issue of dealing with grief and how we do that as human beings. What How do we recognize that we're in that state? And then what are some things to cope?

Gary Chapman: Well, I think anyone who's gone through the death of a stillborn baby or any death in a family for that matter, it's a loss. It's a tremendous loss. And I think natural response first of all is we cry. If that is if we are emotional at all, we cry. And we cry and we cry and we cry. And And that's good because it is releasing some of those painful emotions. And we know that grief We work through grief best when we talk about it. That is when we get to the place where we can talk, that we talk about it.

And we And we ask the questions that are in our minds. And those questions are in everybody's mind. And so we ask the questions. And let's face it. They're not always satisfactory answers that come to our mind when we say, why God? You know, why did this happen? But it's okay to ask the question. And it's okay to tell God how you're feeling, whether it's anger or hurt or disappointment or whatever. So I think we pour As Christians, we pour our hearts out to God. And then we also pour our hearts out to members of the family.

Get our immediate family as well as our church family. And in in so doing, if people listen to us and just affirm us You can't fix it. If you're with the person, you can't fix it for them, but you can show empathy. You you can identify with them. You can acknowledge, you know, you can understand the pain and the hurt and all. And And I think that's that's The primary way is processing it by talking. And it takes time. It It does not happen in 2 weeks or 3 weeks. And that's Part of the problem is sometimes we after 6 months or 9 months we say, you got to get over this now.

Life's got to go on, you know. And And And in a family where husband and wife Husband can say that to a wife, you know, you got to get over this now. And she wants to get over this, but the reality is we don't ever get over this, not when you lose a baby. You don't ever get over it. But you do learn how to cope and you learn how to go on and you learn how to trust God even when you don't understand the why questions.

John Fuller: Well Erin, certainly in the wake of grief that goes on and may even be debilitating for some couples or maybe one party in in the relationship. What's a roadmap that you offer to those couples that you meet with for kind of finding their way out of being stuck or overwhelmed?

Erin Smalley: Well, as couples come in and one or both have experienced a great loss, it's so important to just name that you know, either one is grieving, both are grieving, one is grieving because the other is grieving, whatever is happening, but to just name it that we are grieving. And what we know to be true is that people grieve in different ways and in different paces. And it's okay. But we want to create a place in our home, in our marriage that both matter and that there's room for both of them to grieve however they want to in healthy ways.

Research shows that often men grieve in the shower, that they cry alone in the shower. And

John Fuller: What is that about, do you think?

Erin Smalley: I I don't know. What would you say, Greg?

Jim Daly / Greg Smalley: I mean I mean I think it's a safe place. You're by yourself. You've already got water running down your body.

John Fuller: Distractions are pretty minimal.

Jim Daly / Greg Smalley: Tears, but I think through grief it's the noise that's out there that can often keep us from really leaning in. In In a shower you're hearing that soothing water. There's no other distractions. It's just a place where you can be alone with your thoughts. And I think since grief is right there bubbling to the surface, it just would make sense that that would be a place. I have actually never heard that. So I think that's cool.

John Fuller: I'm sorry to have interrupted you, but

Erin Smalley: Yeah, no. No, I think it's it's important to to acknowledge that because often women are going, well, I'm weeping and crying over the our parent that has passed. And my husband doesn't seem to have any emotion. Well, he does have emotion. He may not be as comfortable showing it externally. Or maybe he's crying in the shower or crying on his way to work. What does that look like? But it is important that they engage. They both are grieving. They both have their individual processes. But what about that shared process that they're checking in on each other, that they're supporting each other, encouraging at each other?

Cuz we can't just set the marriage out to sale during this grieving process. We have to care for the marriage too. So making sure that all three entities, both husband, wife, and the marriage are being attended to is important.

Jim Daly / Greg Smalley: And that it's not a linear process. In other words, there's a clear point A and we're going to, you know, point B and it's going to follow this, you know, exact path. It's spaghetti. It's just going to be all over the place. You just never know from 1 hour from 1 day to the next and let that be okay. Just that's normal. And so just know for both of you, you might be at a good place for this particular moment and your spouse isn't. And that's okay. And we can talk about that. But don't Don't expect that it's going to lay out like you were saying exactly in this linear fashion, exactly the same for both.

No way.

Erin Smalley: Yes. I recently had a wife come in who said that her husband's dad had passed away and that they didn't have a super close relationship with him. Specifically her husband didn't have a super close relationship with his dad. And he was The husband was isolating off from the wife. And so she was concerned going, okay, is he okay? Are we going to be okay? And we processed it and she went back and visited with him about what was happening. He ended up getting into a grief group. And as he's processing, he's realizing the real loss was the relationship he never had with his dad.

And she was able to lean into that as he was able to share. And so it doesn't The way you think you would grieve doesn't mean that's how your spouse should be grieving. And helping them to dig in and just being curious with them is so important.

John Fuller: It is. You've got to have room for each person in the relationship. Probably not unusually for our 40 plus years now Dina has been the one to articulate emotions. And I'm the guy that has to take five showers over the course of 5 days to even know what I was feeling. But we've gotten better. And And As you all know, this past year we went through a very difficult season with one of our kids. And there were moments where I was the expressive one. And we kind of prop each other up. That's the beauty of the long-term marriage that we have that you see You see safety.

And that 's our our topic this month is emotional safety. So permission granted to feel differently, to feel together, just to stay together and to stay strong. And if you're struggling with some sort of grief and you're not quite sure how to step out of it, give us a call and maybe talk to one of our Christian counselors. They care. They will listen to you. They'll give you some steps forward. That's a free phone consultation that we offer thanks to the generous donors who support Focus on the Family. The number is 800, the letter A and the word family.

And they'll give you a callback as they can, of course. Also follow up by getting a copy of the book by Gary Chapman and Candy McVicker. It's called Holding on to Love After You've Lost a Baby. Now this is a very specific resource for a very specific loss, but it's got general principles for dealing with grief. And we'll offer that to you for a donation of any amount. You can learn more by clicking the links in the show notes. Next time Dr. John Townsend explains how healthy boundaries with your spouse can really contribute to the success of your marriage.

For now on behalf of Dr. Greg and Dr. Erin Smalley, I'm John Fuller and thanks for joining us for the Focus on the Family Marriage podcast.