First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: David and Nancy Guthrie

David and Nancy Guthrie – These parents watched helplessly as two beloved infants died of Zellweger Syndrome. They talk to Wayne about how God has used their grief to reach out to other hurting parents through Respite Retreats. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 29 Oct 2010
Audio Format:: other

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

You know God promises us and we hold on to this promise that he will use the hardest Experiences in our lives and he will use them for our ultimate good He will use the worst things we can imagine for good and we have just been so blessed to see him do that Welcome to first-person conversations with people who share their stories of God at work and their lives I'm Wayne Shepard glad you've joined us as we talk today with David and Nancy Guthrie You'll find more information about today's guests as well as past and future programs online at first person interview calm We have a page on Facebook Which you can find easily when you visit first person interview calm and by the way will also provide links to today's topic Which you may want to follow up on As parents Nancy and David never expected that their infant daughter Hope would be diagnosed with Zell Wiggers syndrome and dies an infant sometime later after taking steps to ensure that she would not again become pregnant and pass the gene on to another child Nancy did become pregnant and gave birth to a son named Gabriel. He also died in infancy I've known David and Nancy for some years now and the remarkable thing about their story is how they've turned their grief into offering God's comfort to other families grieving the loss of their children through what they call respite retreats couples have a place to go to talk with other families I Sat down in the studio in Franklin, Tennessee to talk with David and Nancy and explore the grief that parents go through Starting with the fact that no one wants this to happen. I think that's the that's the fear of every parent, isn't it? And the question we have in the back of our mind as to What will that do to me? What will that do to our family? How could I ever? Get get through that. How can our marriage survive that because we hear so much about couples who? Break apart when they experience that devastating loss for us, you know, grief was very foreign territory and new territory for us and I think a big part of grief is that unknown the fear of the unknown for me it was that sense of feeling more pain than I had ever felt before and Wondering beginning to wonder well, will I always feel this way and I think that's one of the scary things about grief at the beginning that fear of Wondering if the pain will ever ease or if you're destined to hurt that much forever David when that grief was so fresh What impact did it have on on your relationship with Nancy? Well one of the things about losing a child that all parents experience I think is you just it affects every part of your family and every part of your life And that's one of the really hard things you you just have to deal with and no one is really prepared for that Life had to go on for you and your son. Yes, and and you're you're surprised that life is going on all around you As if nothing happened to the rest of the world and here you are this this experience this loss this emptiness now affects everything in your life your work your your marriage your other children and It's very disorienting and it's uh, I think I it hit me like it does probably most fathers and husbands Did you react differently each of you though? Mm-hmm. Oh certainly, you know, and that's one of the struggles for couples to learn how to grieve alone, but together if that makes sense because our grief is our own and Uh, there is a desperate loneliness to grief. Sometimes I think if you boil grief down to its essence is loneliness There's a sense which as a married couple We have an expectation that if I feel this lonely me then you must not be being there for me Like you ought to be and for most men, you know, we're just kind of wired this way We want to fix things and when Nancy was in the depths of grief and sadness Um, I felt like I'm not doing my job somehow. She I can't pull her out of this. What's wrong with me or what's wrong with our? relationship and Nothing is wrong. Uh, this is the overwhelming power of grief So you had to learn to allow for each other's differences and how you reacted to this tragedy? Oh, absolutely And I think David and I were helped in that early on even when we were still in the hospital right after We got the diagnosis that hope would die We weren't really sharing that with family or friends yet, but of our nurses knew and we had these wonderful godly nurses and One of them gave me a book written by a woman who whose child had drowned and There was a chapter about how she and her husband had grown apart during grief and That she'd come to the part where she just thought he's just moved on. He's not even thinking about this He's not talking about it and then she found out he Drove off every day for work and pulled along the side of the road and wept for a while on his way to work and I read that chapter out loud to David still in the hospital right after hope was born just saying, you know, we have to watch out for this um that we figure out how to do this in a way that we don't grow apart because honestly, there's there's nothing sadder then uh to meet someone who has lost a child And then their grief has become such a crushing burden That has been so awkward and so difficult to share that then they become alienated from the one person Who shares that grief with them most profoundly and so You know, David was really good in that he has always Let me just grieve my own way and shed tears when they come which has always been easily Not before I had hope or gave but since then, you know very easily but Honestly, you know, we're 10 11 years down the road and sometimes grief can still be awkward for us in the way that you know Are you an anniversary of hope or Gabe's death or their birthday comes around and you're not sure how the other person is with it? Are you are you feeling sad today? Are you wanting to? Um, or you feel marked this anyway. Yeah, or gee I didn't even you know once you get a ways down the road They're not quite as significant anymore in terms of You notice but they don't dominate your emotions like they used to and so You know, you're kind of checking the emotional temperature of the other one. Is this how are you feeling about this today? Yeah This may be speculation in my part, but david i'm guessing that nancy had some pretty close personal friends who rallied around her Pretty typical of women. I did I have the best friends. What about you as a man though? Did you have somebody? A good question probably also typically of men You know, I didn't have I haven't had close friends who Have come in and been a big part of this grief experience guy friends We have some couple friends. I would say who have been just incredibly important to us in Just supporting us Sometimes very practical ways and sometimes just the kind of being there You know when when they knew they were important dates or important moments lots of dinners around the table with other couples Talking through All the questions that's brought up in our lives I mean beginning immediately during hopes life and following your death and then of course when we had gave and There were so many perplexing questions all the way along about Well, what's god's role in this that he planned this for us? Do this just happen because of this broken world and talking about prayer and healing? So we had lots of good conversations with well mixed in with all this I mean you took steps that you wouldn't get pregnant again But you did and and gave came and then you had to go through it all again Yeah, we did grief was different that second time around the same bit different if that makes sense I mentioned that a part of grief is that fear at the beginning of will will I always hurt this much and So I think the second time around I didn't have as much fear about that because I knew how much it hurt But I also had experienced some healing from that and I had that hope of healing Quite frankly, we just weren't as shocked, you know when hope was born. We were expecting a healthy daughter who would grow old with us and there was this huge drop off of disappointment with hope that she wasn't who we expected and I wouldn't have the long life with her growing old with me that I had hoped for And with gave that wasn't the case, you know, we knew early on that he would have the fatal syndrome and We weren't thrown into his hail spin trying to figure out the syndrome when he was born So immediately we were able to enter into just enjoying him for who he is for the length of time that god gave him to us Knowing it would be short. Yes. And so, you know while it was Desperately quiet and empty after gave died and that sense of here we are back to three again And how is this whirlwind happened? The grief was different in a sense because it was just that deep sadness, but also just So much joy that he had been here at all was a big part Yeah, we knew more what to expect this time, which is a mixed blessing quite honestly because it took some of the horror away from you know, just the realities of death which is so frightening but Same time every day of his life was still tinged with that Of what we knew was was to come any moment and we just knew it would be it would come all too soon for us And then we knew it would take a while to get over that again Did you guys have to sort of relearn how to pray together or read scripture together? I mean, was that a struggle at first? I think that's always been a struggle for us in our marriage and for many couples. Yeah I would say in some ways it was easier because we were so desperate so desperate for God and To lie alone in the bed and call out to God actually came in some ways easier We needed him. We always need him. We were more profoundly aware of our need And of our need for each other and to draw close in that. That's right. That's one of the real blessings of our experience with both hope and Gabriel Was that um, you know, we were just kind of sailing along through life like like you do, you know, and um suddenly this uh unexpected but kind of uh overwhelming experience came with hopes diagnosis and Suddenly all of our life was kind of uh oriented in an in a new way and we began immediately uh with hopes diagnosis that she would only live a short time in uh asking well god What are you doing and and it just caused us to look again at how brief life is That's the blessing in the midst of the grief. Absolutely. Well, we'll continue this conversation with David and Nancy Guthrie And when we do we'll talk about what they call respite retreats [music] When you join us next time on first person our guest will be Rob Walgate who fell prey to a gambling addiction I have been game with in over 10 years and every day it's a struggle And i'm thankful that god keeps it real in my life because I think of for one minute I thought yeah, I could play poker here I could go to the track and I could handle it this time I would be in that same mess Powerful conversation with the young man who found Christ's strength through his own weakness on the next edition of first person I'm Wayne Shepard. Let's continue today's conversation now with David and Nancy Guthrie Nancy explains what motivates them to reach out to other grieving families You know god promises us and we hold on to this promise that he will use the hardest Worst experiences in our lives and he will use them for our ultimate good He will use the worst things we can imagine for good and We have just been so blessed to see him do that You know, he doesn't he doesn't owe us To allow us to see that he calls us to trust him that he will do it and He continues to just pull back the curtain and show us how he is using our loss for good I wrote a little book actually while I was pregnant with Gabriel that came out on what would have been his first birthday called holding on to hope And it's now in nine languages around the world and so I got a letter this week from Norway and an email this week from south africa, so I hear from people all over the world and That is an incredible blessing to me David this grief had to be so private where you reticent to Start reaching out and help other people who have suffered grief like you have Not not reticent at all to share our story and share our experiences Reticent in the sense that you know, neither nancy or nori or our counselors or psychiatrists or pastors Just real people. Yeah, and and yet We really discovered through nancy's writing and she mentioned holding on to hope she wrote a daily devotional book called the one-year book of hope And it was it was just remarkable To see how god was using those Experiences and then nancy's reflection and writing and bible study in that context To to really help and encourage a lot of people and that motivated us just to be open And it's a cliche. I know but we just Determine that has got open doors. We'd walk through them and respond to them And that's all we've been doing. You didn't have to look very far to find hurting people. Oh my goodness They're just everywhere, you know, I think before hope and gave they were there and I just didn't see them And once your heart has been broken Then it just opens your eyes to the hurting people all around you And plus people do look for me. They come to my website nancy gethrey.com and so I hear from a lot of people And about a year ago I heard from a couple their daughter had died tragically run over by a parade float And she and her husband had been helped by my books and they were coming through nashville And they asked if they we could get together with him for dinner and David and I end up doing that a lot getting with couples because Couples have a real need to Be with another couple who understands their loss, you know, when you've lost a child you have all these friends Who so want to be there for you. They want to say the right thing Do the right thing. God bless them and they so want to be there for you. Um, but for so many couples As good as their friends are there's just there's a relief to be with another couple Who really gets it who's been down that hard road to talk about some hard parts about it and so David and I got together with that couple for dinner And uh, we were driving home. It was a beautiful night And we'd had a really sweet time with them as they talked about their struggles and I looked at david and I said, you know We ought to we maybe we ought to start a retreat for couples who have lost children and david you said Well, honestly, I said that's a great idea I mean part of what we experienced when we sit down with these with couples who come through like this is that um It there there's some dynamic about the four of us together husband wife husband wife and especially I think for the guy You know, there's there's something really helpful in In talking to another guy another father who has lost a child and and and they often ask about did you guys Grieve differently. How did this affect your marriage? And so we could tell that's an issue and We weren't sure where people could go to uh address that issue, especially in an environment where Somebody understands Experientially what what they're going through and and so yeah, we we kind of said that seemed like a good idea We didn't know anyone would come so what you do? Well, what made it so easy is that um, there's a wonderful ministry here in nashville called christian leadership concepts that has a beautiful 12 bedroom lodge out in the country that we'd been to several times for other ministry retreats And it's like the hiding place. Hello. That's perfect And so the next day I I called them said, you know, do you have some open dates? Could we use it and they were actually very excited because they love for it to get used for ministry? And I put together a little brochure and emailed it out to people who had emailed me through my website who I knew had lost children and to my newsletter list and Then also it was sent out to people who lead grief share groups at about 6 000 churches around the country and david And I are on the videos used in grief share groups There's only 12 bedrooms in a lodge so that meant we need a bed and so there was room for 11 couples And within two weeks that first one filled up and we scheduled the second one for october and it filled up quickly And this past library day weekend was our fourth respite retreat and so we've had four now 44 couples i've seen some of the feedback that comes afterwards It's got to be deeply meaningful to you to to have this opportunity To help people who are grieving? Honestly weighing their words for it, you know, we we kind of went into that first one saying Well, let's give this a try and see what happens and as david said, you're not professional counselors So although it was very easy. We knew exactly what we needed to talk about and we knew Exactly what the setting and the tone needed to be we knew that couples needed to tell their stories to each other We we had a list of things parents struggle with things like Dealing with their extended families who sometimes don't want to talk about it dealing with friends who have let them down How are they going to cope with the holidays this year? What are they going to do with their child's bedroom and their stuff? One one person wants to go to the grave the other person never wants to go All of those kinds we know what they need to talk about most of the people who come have they recently lost children or are they Years past that happening the majority have been in the in the last year or two. So it's very fresh So it's so they don't know anywhere. It's not all that's not always the case. There's some It's been a number of years and You know it that and that's one of the exciting things for us Is just to see this you know, we can't we can't really plan who comes, you know And yet god seems to do that and fits together People at different places on this road of grief I would say that pretty much every couple that walks in that door we can see the burden Just on their face and on their shoulders as they walk in and we can tell From the conversation that ensues pretty quickly that for most of them they feel so alone and to be in this intimate environment where there are others who Understand it they get it Is just a huge relief to people and it opens up The opportunity for some real ministry to happen for them just being together has got to be meaningful Just watching them over the meals and as the time goes on, you know, we go to bed and they you know, they We got to get up and make breakfast, you know, they stay up till late at night talking and so it's not all programmed out and oh no I mean we have a lot of guided conversation and we have some fun Because like i'm saring night. We have some fun I remember especially the first retreat one girl coming up to david and said that was the best part of the weekend for her when we played This game and laughed and she said I haven't laughed out out loud since my son died you gave them permission to laugh Well, and also, you know When when you've had a child that's died, it's kind of awkward to laugh around other people Honestly, you're you're afraid that everybody's going to look at you and think oh, she must be over it now So we can move on or did she even really love her child if she could be that happy To be with a group of couples that you don't have to worry about whether or not somebody thinks you don't care about your child And to be able to laugh out loud. There's just something really healing about that The couples that come do they equally want to be there or they did once about say how would you know that? Yeah, there there have been a few husbands who have confessed maybe at the end of the weekend Um, I didn't want to be didn't really want to come Or we asked them before just to share a few things with us so that we can be praying for them and be prepared And uh, we'll ask you know, what's your biggest fear and and sometimes the answers we get from men are pretty brief Um, but many will confess. Yeah, you know, I don't really want to be here But she thought it would be a good thing. So here I am Just another cool thing about the the weekend is to see how that Will kind of open up for guys over the weekend, you know, I think women tend we tend to be the PR people for our family You know and that we're the ones usually telling the story and talking about some of these things And I think one of the blessings for a lot of the women is to sit there besides beside their husband And hear him talk about their child and about what his grief has been like openly in a way they In many cases, I think have just not heard him do before because he hasn't been in a setting where that has been safe David nancy thanks so much for what you're doing. I I know it comes out of a heart that was broken in grief But now you you two just want to give don't you We would do this as many weekends as we could wane because we are seeing The fruit of it. We see it in the way they respond to us at the end of the weekend telling us what God has done in their hearts and lives Now we're seeing it from down the road where months later. We're seeing couples Emerge from this deep sorrow and begin their own ministries to grieving people. I mean that's incredible And so we just we would we would do as many as we can Because we really are seeing God use it It's amazing to me to see how God has turned the deep grief that David and nancy have experienced into such a positive influence to other hurting families I wonder how many families break apart or have nowhere to turn for the kind of care and understanding that the gotharies have offered today If you'd like to know more about these respite retreats visit our website first person interview calm We'll put links to this ministry that nancy and david have once again That's first person interview calm You also may want to find a list of the books and devotionals that nancy has written Those are linked at our website first person interview calm And if you know a family that would be helped by the conversation you've heard today Please tell them to listen to the archive of this program at first person interview calm When you join us next time you'll hear how a teenager got hooked on gambling as a lifestyle And how jesus christ offered him his only hope for redemption Rob wallgate tells his story next time on first person With thanks to joe carlson. I'm wane shepherd. Thanks for listening to first person (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]