While We're Waiting® - Hope After Child Loss

"Every scar says, 'Here's where I was broken, and here is where God met me.'" ~ Pat Elsberry What if the deepest wound in your life could one day become your greatest testimony of God's faithfulness? In today's episode, returning guest Pat Elsberry joins us to discuss her newest book, When Scars Become Stories: A Journey to Healing, Restoration, and Faith. After her daughter Melanie died due to addiction in 2020, Pat began the difficult journey of child loss ... a journey that has deepe...

The death of a child by suicide leaves parents with heartbreaking questions, overwhelming emotions, and a complicated grief journey. In this first episode of a two-part conversation, I speak with author, speaker, and leadership coach Wende Gaikema about the loss of her 24-year-old son, Matt, who died by suicide in 2018. Wende first shares Matt's story and the day that changed her family's life forever. She then introduces the central theme of her new book, From Heartache to Hope: Navigating t...

My guest today is Heather Oden of Sterling, Kansas. Heather is a woman who wears many hats ... She's the executive director of a nonprofit called Light Up the Dark, a worship leader at her church, the wife of a fifth-generation farmer, and the mom of five children. Today, she joins me to share the story of her son, Jacob. Jacob was an athlete, an encourager, and a young man with a remarkable gift for noticing people who were hurting and speaking life into them. But on August 3, 2016, Ja...

"God doesn’t ask us to live the whole story at once. He walks us through it chapter by chapter.” In this second half of my conversation with Tricia Patrick, we move beyond the events of February 2014 and into the long journey that followed the loss of her son Jeremy to suicide. Tricia describes those early days as a fog — returning to work just ten days after Jeremy went to heaven, sitting with her Bible open and unable to process the words, and simply trying to survive one hour at a ti...

If you’ve lost your song, that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. In this second half of my conversation with Kristi Kirk, we focus on what healing can look like over time after devastating loss. Kristi reflects on the long road of grief following the death of both her husband and her son, and how her faith, perspective, and purpose have been slowly reshaped. Kristi shares what it meant to walk through her son’s senior year without him, how fear gradually loosened its grip, and how she learned t...

Today, we resume our conversation with Ken and Mary Sue Grein as they recount the events surrounding their son Jacob’s unexpected passing in 2019, the way their family was gathered together, and the profound sense of God’s presence in those hours. They speak honestly about shock, sorrow, and the weight of saying goodbye, while also sharing moments of comfort, reassurance, and hope that met them in the midst of deep grief. We also explore what the long road of loving and losing Jacob has taugh...