Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

John Fuller: Almost long we are talking about persevering through challenges and a lot of those challenges are because our kids are doing something or not doing something or we're pushing them to do something, but today we're going to talk about a very difficult topic of loss and that is miscarriage, something that many parents, myself included, have dealt with. I'm John Fuller with Dr. Danny Huerta who leads the Focus on the Family Parenting team and Dadly Focus on the Family Parenting team and Danny, when we had the first of our two miscarriages, I was surprised at the numbers of people that we found out had also experienced miscarriage.

This is pretty common.

Dr. Danny Huerta: It is pretty common and I was looking at statistics that are out there that are official and it said of around 15 % but within my church, within our friend group a large percentage have gone through this season and in in some cases multiple times.

John Fuller: Yeah.

Dr. Danny Huerta: It is a tough season to go through and you many of them, most of them said they felt very alone or they felt guilty.

John Fuller: Mhm.

Dr. Danny Huerta: And those are big feelings to carry when you're already also grieving the loss of of of this baby that you thought you were going to have and enjoy. And so it's a it's a time that is

John Fuller: Yeah. Mhm.

Dr. Danny Huerta: that can be extremely difficult but in very silent and it's happening all around us.

John Fuller: Yeah. And the good news is we are not alone as followers of Jesus, we are not alone. He knows, he sees, he's with us. And we're going to hear now from popular podcaster and author Annie F. Downs. She joined her sister Tatum Green in a conversation with Focus president Jim Daly and Tatum opened up learning to trust God after having several miscarriages.

Jim Daly: You do come from a close-knit family. That's awesome. I'd love to spend a half hour talking to you about that, but tell me about your family and about your special boy Sam and how he came into your life. This would be

Annie F. Downs: So I'll do our nuclear family. Our parent We grew up in Georgia.

Jim Daly: Yeah.

Annie F. Downs: Parents are still married. They're awesome. We grew up in church. I'm the oldest, clearly. Tatum is about 15 months younger than me and then we have another sister of about seven years younger than Tatum.

Jim Daly: About 15 months? You're such a firstborn. Very exacting.

Annie F. Downs: Yeah, approximately. So approximately. And and then my parents also helped take care of some of my cousins. So when we do family things, there's a lot more of us and that all kind of operate We call it cousin siblings. We all kind of operate as one big crew. And Tatum is married to Jacob as you said, John. And so I'll let you take it from there, Tatum talking about Sam and TJ.

Tatum Green: Yeah. So Jacob and I got married. We were in our mid 30s which you know in the Christian world is like grandparents.

Jim Daly: Well, but it's kind of It's more normal now and then for young people to marry a little later.

Tatum Green: It is getting more and more normal. Yeah. Yeah. And so we were hoping to start a family pretty soon and it turned out that was really hard for us. We had four miscarriages in our first three years of marriage. And we also had a failed IVF. So after all of that heartbreaking loss, I found out I was pregnant with our boy Sam and he is like you said, he's our miracle boy. And

Jim Daly: And that went well and he was healthy and

Tatum Green: Oh, perfect. Like textbook perfect.

Jim Daly: How much And again, this is just off the cuff, but how much fear did you and your husband have with Sam's pregnancy? I mean, you've already had four miscarriages. That has to be in some way a terrifying event as well as a joyful event.

Tatum Green: It was both so much and you know we did some testing early in the pregnancy to to prepare our hearts if there was some sort of a genetic issue or and because especially because we'd had so many losses and I didn't realize how much fear I was holding until we got those results back and it was perfect and there was no genetic issues at all and I wept so hard. It was this huge release. I didn't realize the fear I was holding on to because I had already trained myself that through those other four pregnancies that today there is an internal being growing in me and I am thankful for that life.

And so I just had to live in that each moment. And But then when we got that incredible news and my OB said, you're not even high risk. Like everything is perfect.

Jim Daly: Wow.

Tatum Green: It was I mean, literally textbook perfect.

Jim Daly: Let me ask you this and we're going to talk about your other pregnancy with TJ in a moment and that was more complicated, but I want to ask this here which is kind of the grief of all that. You know with the four children you lost. We've had women and their husbands sit with us and talk about just that experience, the loss the miscarriage of a child and how we often will disregard that well, you know it didn't happen and you just need to get moving and try again or whatever it might be. But to go through that four times I can't imagine.

Did you have that discussion with the Lord like, Lord, seriously, four times? How do I have faith in you that this fifth pregnancy is actually going to end in a positive way? Did you have that chat?

Tatum Green: It was I I had a lot of chats with the Lord in that season.

Jim Daly: Is it okay to have that chat with the Lord?

Tatum Green: Yeah. You know and that's actually one of the things that I feel like these losses have taught me is that it's not only okay, but it's good and right to have that chat with the Lord. Yeah, it's healthy. I mean, it's like with your spouse, you would never want to just shut down and not have those conversations of things that are challenging for you. And if we want to be like in a intimate relationship with the Lord, then we need to have those real conversations with him. And honestly, like I would I wish I could change our story.

I would change every detail of those losses but I'm grateful for what I learned in them. And in one specific loss, our second loss, I was 14 weeks pregnant and I delivered our daughter and in that one it was really really hard and I kind of like went toe-to-toe with the Lord about that. And I'm so grateful for that because at the end of that I said, God, where else would I go? I am not going to leave you. There's nowhere else to go.

John Fuller: Well, Danny, I really appreciate the the tenderness and the transparency of that conversation and I'm transported back to the first of our two miscarriages where I was driving to the doctor's office for a follow-up with the physician and I just sat in the parking lot and wept. And I realized at that moment I am so pro-life. That was a 12-week pregnancy. That was a baby that we lost and I had hopes and dreams and expectations even just knowing for only a couple of months. So you have to go through that trial, but God can be He is there with us and hope can be found even after a miscarriage.

Tatum Green: John, thanks for the openness that you that you're bringing there, the genuineness because it's it's a hard thing to talk about for couples and I've been around friends that have had a hard time getting sentences out. They've attached to that child. There's no way around it and a reassurance is that God is near the brokenhearted. He says that and shows that all throughout scripture. In knowing that what I've the way I've seen couples do this well is that they allow themselves room to grieve they surround themselves with a community of people that they can talk with and they they normalize the fact that this is tough.

Even though the the baby has not been born and some people say, well, wasn't born yet. Well, no, there there's just this baby inside of the womb and there's an insensitivity that they sometimes experience in their friend groups. And in this case be with friends that understand the grief you're in and can pray with you and also allow this time to be a uniting time for you as a couple. They unite whenever you're having an emotion come up as spouses commit to being present, putting things down and and being present with each other in that emotion in that moment because it can be at any moment.

Maybe you're cleaning the house, maybe you're cooking dinner and all of a sudden a thought comes in, an emotion. If you give yourself space to have those moments of memory, emotion, grief you will heal together as a couple and then make sure you take time to pray for each other. That is uniting, it attaches you together and then as you do that, you're showing that trust and faith in God that he still has you that this is all within his plan and his orchestrating his his oversight and he wants life for you as a couple.

So continue to press forward and that is doing that together.

John Fuller: Yeah. Yeah, and our own experience was that we we clung to God in that despair and in the grief. And my wife Dina really had the presence of mind. This was odd to me but it happened that she felt very strongly that we should have a little ceremony just to kind of commemorate the life that was that we had expected. And so when the second miscarriage occurred, we did the same thing. We we had a moment We had loving people here at Focus that just they gave flowers, they watched our three-year-old so we could have some time together as a couple and we had a little kind of a a ceremony just to commemorate the life that we had invited into the world but hadn't come to fruition, hadn't been born.

Jim Daly: I'm glad you brought that up. A lot of couples have done that with powerful

John Fuller: So Yeah. Yeah, I want to I want to encourage you. You'll find other couples who have been through this and they'll surround you with love. And if you're feeling totally alone in this, if this is something you've dealt with, then give us a call. We have caring Christian counselors. They'll call you back, they'll listen to you, they'll they'll grieve with you, they'll pray with you and they can connect you with ongoing support if you need that. 800 the letter A in the word families the number and we'll also have a link in the show notes.

And then Tatum Green and Annie F. Downs have put together this beautiful children's book, Where Did TJ Go? And it really is a a wonderful resource if you've gone through this kind of a loss and you're trying to explain it to your kids. Get a copy from us when you connect with us through the show notes. Well, turning a corner, we're going to continue talking about challenges in parenting next time with Dr. Ken Wilgus and Jessica Pfeifer. They'll be tackling what to do. This is kind of an echo of a previous episode. What to do when your child, your team is disrespectful.

I hope you'll join us then. For now, I'm John Fuller and on behalf of Danny and the entire team, thanks for listening to the Focus on the Family Parenting podcast.