Erin:   Hi, this is Erin Michele, and welcome to steps to trusting it is my goal here to meet you, where you are in your faith journey and encourage you to continue to take steps to trusting the Lord more fully.

[00:00:20] Hi everyone. And welcome to the show.  We’re going to be talking about processing grief and asking the question is God good. Even when I’m faced with loss.

[00:00:30] I’m here with Shelby Hughes. Shelby as a wife and mother of three. You can find her@shelbylhughes.com where she encourages mothers to focus on what’s right in front of them.

[00:00:43] Shelby is the author of every little life process, your grief at your pace and in one place.

[00:00:49] Every little life just came out this November. I put a link in the show notes, so you can go check it out.

[00:00:56]Shelby, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:58]I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about who you wrote your book for  and why you wrote it.

[00:01:05]Shelby: Actually the book was written, when I had a miscarriage. So the vignettes are written  in real time. And when I was writing in the journal that my mom  gave me, I did not ever anticipate for it to become a book. That was not the plan. In fact, in the introduction, I had wrote something to the effect of if I had known that it would be a book I probably would have stopped writing it. Just because it was so personal.  It was for me to process, my own grief, in having a miscarriage. But, the book itself is for those who’ve miscarried it’s for those who have had a stillbirth it’s for those who struggle with infertility.

[00:01:44] Erin: Yeah, well, Shelby, I’m sorry that you had to walk through that loss. and I said to you before, but I think it’s brave of you, to be sharing the vulnerability that you went through.  Sometimes it is good, when you don’t know that you’re going to have to share it,  that you can be more honest, but, yeah, I’m sorry you had to go through that.

[00:02:04]When we come to having a loss, when we are grieving, that really can disrupt our faith  and I know that as you were in that loss, you began to ask the question is God good.   I was wondering if you can tell us more about your journey as you set out to answer that question is God good. 

[00:02:24] Shelby: I’ve been a believer for many years. I gave my life to the Lord when I was 13. And so, growing up, You have that childlike faith. And that had carried me through all my years, all my adulthood years, even.   I’d been through different challenges and trials before, but nothing like this, again, it’s very personal.

[00:02:45] I think there were just so many questions surrounding, well, why, why would God allow babies to die? And why do I have to walk through this when I’ve been walking with him my whole life. All of these why questions? Right.  it’s one thing to have, I’ve always had the mindset of like, yes, God is good.

[00:03:04] And even when I had miscarried, I could speak it. I could say, yes, God is good. He’s still good. But like my heart response wasn’t God’s good. It was. No, you’re not good. It was hard when I was going through the process because I had always seen God is good.  I knew that if I have this heart issue, I’m going to have to work through it and I’m going to have to grieve well.   The only place I knew to do that was through the lens of scripture and just getting into the word to go deeper and to really, let the word impact your heart  is what I had to do.

[00:03:38] Erin:  How do you find time with the kids to dive into scripture and to study like you do?

[00:03:45]Shelby: I had to do it in the morning time. before, well, they wake up really early. Sometimes it would be while they were eating their breakfast. I would take a little time.  If that didn’t happen because it was too chaotic, then I would wait until the evening time. when my husband was home and I would just get away be in the word and to grieve well.

[00:04:08] Erin: As you were seeking to see if you could trust God, what was the beginning of those first steps to find that trust in him?

[00:04:19]Shelby: It was really just going into scripture.  Into the particular stories where, I don’t know, for me, sometimes it’s easier to see the consequence, that God has laid out rather than his compassion.  You always see Jesus as compassionate. At least I have. He heals and he raises the dead. And he does all these miracles out of love and compassion. But then for me old Testament, God is like scary. You know, he’s like consequence, consequence, consequence to the Israelites. And so just going back and looking at some of these different scriptures, and seeing, okay. Yeah, there’s a consequence, but let me read the whole context and here’s also compassion laid out.  I think one of the ones that hit me the most was, in Genesis, I think it’s chapter three where Eve is tempted. She eats of the fruit and then Adam does as well, and God kicks them out of the garden. And  I’ve always heard that scripture, like, Oh, God’s kicking them out of the garden, it’ a consequence. It’s huge. But not only that,   he’s given women, this consequence of pain in childbearing.  That hit me really hard. But then as I kept reading the scripture, it came to the part where it says, but God closed them and you see that compassion.

[00:05:41] And even when he kicks them out,  it was for a redemptive plan. He continued to walk with them.  He had to do that because that was the only way when sin entered. It was the only way for, for us as humanity to come back to him.

[00:05:58]Erin:  I appreciate that idea of watching God’s compassion.  And looking for his compassion so much.  Even just thinking about compassion is usually seen when there is a problem.    But it’s active.    Compassionate is not just, Oh, I feel bad, but it, compassion is taking action.

[00:06:18]And so when I think of you talking about God, clothing them, he didn’t just say, Oh, I feel bad. You did this. And I feel bad. This happened to you, but he took care of them .  How did you feel like God was taking care of you in your loss?

[00:06:36]Shelby:   He did it through his people. I had so many people who sent over food or they took the time to write letters. Actually on the day that I miscarried, I was supposed to have a dental cleaning and, you know, we called them up and said, we’re not coming, and, they ended up sending a card in the mail and that just spoke so much to me. Because, in a world where we’re being told that life isn’t life, unless it starts  at birth. It spoke so much to me. And that was going on while I was miscarrying. There was all of this, I guess, social media uproar of, trying to pass different laws for abortion rights and whatnot. And so that just, that was something I had to work through too. It was, you know, here’s what culture is saying.

[00:07:26] Here’s what God’s saying and, and get to this place of  certainty.

[00:07:31] Erin: You had said at different points in your life that you could say, I trust God, but to say I trust God versus coming to the end and feeling trust for him.

[00:07:43]What happened in your heart? 

[00:07:45]Shelby:  The symbolism of the breaking of bread just kept coming up over and over again.. and so I started paying attention to that so there’s this place  in scripture it’s in Luke 24, where, Jesus he comes back and, his disciples don’t recognize him  and there’s this part where he takes the bread and he breaks it. And it was in doing that.

[00:08:14] The disciples realized who he was.  It hit me  in that season,  God wants us to see him in the blessing and in the braking. And that sat with me for a very long time because it was like, well, yeah, I can say he’s good in the blessings, but in the breaking too.

[00:08:30] Can I see him in the breaking?  That’s where I wanted to be, where I wanted my heart response . I wanted to get back to him, so to speak.

[00:08:37]  Within, my own life. my daughter had made a comment one time.

[00:08:42]It was after Thanksgiving. So I had miscarried before Thanksgiving and then had to have a  surgery a couple of days before Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, I just wanted to keep  busy. And so I started decorating for Christmas. Like it wasn’t even December yet. And I was sitting with my daughter at the table and we were cutting out paper snowflakes.

[00:09:03]She was, three at the time.   She’s cutting out the snowflake with me, with her little kids, safe scissors, and then we open it up and I’m waving the sniff, like all around. Cause I’m like, look at the snowflake, look how pretty it is. And she could not have been interested in that snowflake no matter what I had done.

[00:09:21] And instead she picks up the clippings, you know, the stuff that you discard when you’re done, she picks it up. “Mommy, look at this pretty mess, isn’t it a pretty mess”. And she takes it and she just lifts it up and she lets it fall all around her. And she’s just so happy. And I just had a moment where I just froze and it was like, God was speaking to my heart, like, will you let this mess, will you  look at it differently. Look at it like your daughter’s looking at the discarded clippings of the paper snowflake,  that moment for me. And that was early on when I had the miscarriage.  , little things like that. When in the eyes of your children that, that hit you.

[00:10:01]But I found so much, healing  in my children and , in their child, like response to God. The songs that they write with saying like, God is so good, he’s so good to me. Songs that I taught them that they were singing over me loudly and obnoxiously sometimes, but they were singing over  me.  It was just like these little moments  of reminding that,  we can trust him. We can trust him like a child trusts Him.

[00:10:29] Erin: Yeah. To help you see from a different perspective.

[00:10:32] Shelby: Right.

[00:10:32]I finally  got to this place where I could see God is good again. And so. My heart goes from like, Oh, I don’t really know what I think, to I trust you.

[00:10:44] So here’s what I wrote. I’ll go ahead and share that if that’s okay. So it says, “God has heard my cries over the hardest months of my life. He heard me from heaven and saved me from drowning and grief. God has raised me up. I will stand remembering his strength in this season, remembering as I move forward.”

[00:11:03] So just to remember his compassion, you know, to always remember it and to not ever let circumstance, even the ones that are most personal change my trust for him. 

[00:11:15]Erin: What do you see differently now, having gone through what you went through?

[00:11:21]Shelby: Well, obviously we’re all going through this really hard season right now. Right? It’s the pandemic that’s going on. And some of us are somewhat back to normal. Most of us are not.  I think for me, it’s like not letting that particular circumstance. I don’t know. I feel much stronger being in the midst of it than what I would have been had I not gone through what I had gone through because I had already done that the heart work needed for just being like bring it on.

[00:11:53] Just bring it.

[00:11:56] Erin: Yeah. Well, it’s so interesting. Yeah. I mean, what I hear in you is that you just, you trust God for what is coming. Right. I hear that you have dealt with the loss in a way of saying,  I trust God that somehow you used that, or are you using that to change me.  I think it is so hard to put words around, like, how do we go from one place to the other?

[00:12:21] Right.  There’s so much work that God is actually doing in us. But there’s also the, I think this willingness in us that we have to have to walk that road with him.

[00:12:33] Shelby: definitely.

[00:12:34]Erin:  What kind of steps did you feel like that you had to walk in obedience to find yourself going down that path, but you’re were following  after him and wanting to trust him?

[00:12:45]Shelby: One thing that  came to mind  related to my husband and how, he didn’t experience all the things I experienced in  all those weeks.  There were 12 weeks before, we realized that we were miscarrying. And so, He did grieve, but his grief didn’t last, nearly as long.

[00:13:04]  He moved on pretty quickly and I just felt like I was left like, what am I supposed to do?    I had to learn  that my husband, wasn’t the one who could heal me.  I had to look to God for that. 

[00:13:15] Erin: I think that’s huge because it’s easier sometimes to look at someone we can see and be like, help me.  

[00:13:23] Shelby: Especially when in general, we know that, a marriage is an example of Christ in the church, but that doesn’t mean my husband can fill in as Christ.  I’ve got to come to him with that stuff.

[00:13:35] Erin: How would you support someone who was going through what you went through?

[00:13:40]Shelby: Actually I have had several close friends who have miscarried.  A lot of times it comes down to praying for them. That seems  not very tangible.

[00:13:51] But I think that in order to have the right response, because everyone grieves differently. Right. So in order to have the right response, we need to. Be praying for them first. how can I help them? What will reach them in their grief? And so  I just began praying that for my close friend at the time.

[00:14:08] How can I help her?   I’ve been there and I’ve done that. But I don’t want to put all of my grief on her, because hers is personal and it looked different for her.

[00:14:18] Then I think it  comes down to being a listening ear. If you have gone through a miscarriage, being able to listen and pray.

[00:14:26] As far as tangible things, the things that spoke most to me were when people would bring over a meal  or I’d get a random letter, a couple months after the fact and that would really just bring healing to me. You know, your friend’s best, you know, your loved one’s best.

[00:14:42]Even if you don’t really know how to handle the grief, just doing something, even if it’s misconstrued or even if it doesn’t come out right. Doing something is better than doing nothing.

[00:14:54] Erin: Yeah.

[00:14:55] When you are first faced with the question of is God good?

[00:14:59]Was your first reaction. Was going to God’s word, your first reaction?

[00:15:05] Shelby: It was, I know that some people  they might have to step away , but faith has always been a huge part of my life and it’s, I didn’t want to be in that place. I didn’t want to be in that place of wondering is God good?

[00:15:20]Because I’d always known him as good. So the only way I knew to, I guess, find the answer to that was to go and be in scripture, and surround myself with good worship music. Yes, my heart was conflicted. Like, is God good? Because all this is happening and I’m grieving and I’m trying to process this loss, but it wasn’t out of a place of like, Oh, well, I don’t think he’s good so now I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna search him out.  I had to search them out and I had to get to know his character. I guess I just never really looked into how compassionate he was and how you could see that all throughout scripture.

[00:15:57]Erin: So, how has the depth your relationship with Jesus changed because of your search to answering that question?

[00:16:06] Shelby: I’m sure that if I had just sat back and said, well, because of this, he’s not good. He can’t possibly be good. I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would probably just be, I don’t know, it’s hard. Cause like I would probably still be going to church and maybe I would just be like going through the motions, but my heart response wouldn’t be it would just wouldn’t be right.

[00:16:29]  Erin: I relate  so much,  I went through a struggle of faith in college . I grew up in a Christian home. I always believed in God. I  trusted him  as my savior.

[00:16:39] and in college I questioned so many things to the point of asking the question if God is good,  then why do I need Jesus? I don’t really get that,  I, as a kid, I just was like, I believe in Jesus. I know I need Jesus. I know he forgave me. Right. But  for me, like when you actually said in the beginning about the old Testament, God, for me, it took looking at the depth of God’s character, looking at the old Testament part of his character and knowing that he’s not different now, but what’s different is we have Jesus now.

[00:17:14] Right. And so like looking at God is still a God who, who gives punishments, but he’s not a God that gives punishments without compassion. Right. And, and the punishment is still there. It’s still  the wages of sin is death. Right. But the gift of God, I’m losing the verse right now.

[00:17:38] Shelby: Is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our Lord.

[00:17:41] Erin: Thank you. Thank you. But like, right. Like that’s his compassion for us? That’s  his compassion is that like, he’s the same God that punishes sin that kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden, but that didn’t leave us out of the garden, that  brought Jesus  and himself, Jesus came and  became man and was willing to die and was willing to sacrifice.

[00:18:07] I feel like I needed to understand that full depth. And so as a kid, like you were saying before,  I would be like, yeah, I trust God. Yeah. Jesus is my savior. And he was because I had a child like faith, but then all of a sudden they needed to know why.  Childlike faith had to  be filled in.

[00:18:26] What’s filled in for you? 

[00:18:27]Shelby:  I began to see the whole narrative  of the story laid out in scripture because as a child, you know, you’re reading specific little stories like Daniel in the lion’s den or Jonah and the whale.

[00:18:39] And is there a child like faith based stories, of like they trusted God. They didn’t trust God. Here’s what happened. All of these stories, that you don’t necessarily have the context for, because you’re only reading like a chapter and then like you’re moving on to the next story somewhere else in scripture. But to go through and really just see the whole grand picture.

[00:19:02] I think for me, as far as I think stepping out of scripture for just a moment, you know, as a parent now,  we have this ability to sort of see things through the lens of a parent. Kind of like God is our parents so to speak. And so a good parent is going to have consequences for their children when their children do wrong.

[00:19:24] Like, that’s just, how will they learn if not, you know? but that doesn’t mean you don’t love them. You have to give a consequence  and because we have a sin nature, we can sometimes parent out of frustration or we parent out of anger or we just don’t discipline in a way that is loving and kind.

[00:19:43]And so I guess  taking our parenting that we are doing in our house and the discipline and the consequences, and looking at that  side by side with God and how there’s consequence for when we do wrong. But there’s also compassion. Like I still love my children even though I have to discipline them, you know, just because we have to teach them.

[00:20:04] And that’s the same for what God’s doing throughout scripture. A loving father disciplines, his child.

[00:20:11]Erin: Our talk has taken a little turn. now we’re talking about consequences.

[00:20:16] Can you discuss how this idea of consequences and punishment of sin relates to your experience?

[00:20:23]Shelby: So when it comes to a consequence, don’t believe that God gave me a miscarriage because of something that I did wrong.  I have written about that in the book. “I don’t understand why he took my baby. He promised Abraham generations that if Abraham could count the stars, he know how many would come after him. And yet there I was bleeding sputtering at God and my grief.

[00:20:48] “A woman at my church said it was okay to be angry with God that he could handle it. But I hate that I’m angry with him. I hate that in one moment, he feels so near to my broken heart and then feel so distant unreachable. The next moment, I’m angry that people keep saying, this was part of God’s plan. I know they’re trying to comfort, but it doesn’t feel comforting to me that God would have wanted this to happen.

[00:21:10] “Perhaps he never wanted it to happen. Sure. He knew it would. But before sin entered the world, he never intended pain. Pain and suffering are a result of the fall. Surely our good God, isn’t sitting in heaven, planning ways to break our hearts, to take a life that’s been prayed over and hoped for just because that’s what he wants.

[00:21:29] “Sin entered the enemy, placed a wedge and that wedge included infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, and all the pain that comes with motherhood. I need healing. I need to see God as good again.”

[00:21:41] It was almost like an awareness of the fact that even though people were saying  this was God’s plan, this was God’s will.

[00:21:49]It was almost like I knew that  yes, he allowed it to happen,  it wasn’t a consequence because I did something personally wrong.

[00:21:59]  Erin: I was scrolling the other day and I saw somebody just talking about like a miscarriage  even the name of it,  how people could feel like with it being a miscarriage,  did I do something wrong?

[00:22:12] You know, and that’s that’s so not

[00:22:14]the truth.

[00:22:15]Shelby: that was something I had to deal with too. It’s not the truth.

[00:22:18]Erin:  If you were to describe the steps of your journey from the beginning of your grief, to feeling that trust in your heart for God, how would you describe those steps?

[00:22:28]Shelby: the first step would be to acknowledge, I had to acknowledge that. I had an issue. I had to acknowledge that there was something that was keeping me from the heart of my father. And so that’s the first step I feel is to acknowledge it. The second step is going to be to search. and maybe like I said, I went straight to scripture.

[00:22:50] I had to, I was like, we’re going, we’re going deep. We’re just going to do this. Maybe that might not be right away because everyone’s going to grieve differently. And so if you  can’t do that, I think simply playing worship music, or just praying, the way I pray is just like I’m talking to a friend it’s not anything  super formal.

[00:23:09]Those are some steps. I think that you can take. I think I had to dive deep and go right into it. Cause  I just wanted my heart to be back where it was. But not even just back where it was, because  I knew that this was going to change me. I knew it was going to change me for the better.

[00:23:27]In some way, I knew it was going to help women. I didn’t think I was going to write a book about it, but I knew that it was going to help me relate to others who would end up having miscarriages down the road and it has done that. 

[00:23:39] Erin: I really love your faith that even in your questions, you were just driven to know the Lord. Because I mean, I said to you before, but I don’t believe that we can say we trust God without really  seeking to  know the depth of who he is.  If we’re not trusting him in something, I think it, because we don’t know enough about  him. 

[00:24:02] I love  that you felt that way too. You know, it’s like, I’m mad that I’m mad at God. Like, I don’t want to be mad at God. And so I need to figure out why this happened, why this is okay. Because I know that he’s good, but I don’t know how these things fit together.

[00:24:20]Shelby:  Absolutely.

[00:24:21]For me, I process really well when I’m writing.  So I’ve included in this book, journaling pages. There’s scripture readings. There’s actually coloring pages and journaling pages too. And so maybe you take those journaling pages and you’re writing your story. Maybe you’re writing out scripture.  It doesn’t have to necessarily be something that you come up with. It can be something, a quote or a poem  you can fill it, however you would like.

[00:24:48]I wanted this book to be something that it, wasn’t just, you’re reading my story and then that’s it. But more than that, you also have a place where you can process your own grief.

[00:24:59]Erin: I think that’s a necessary thing for people and I think people also need sometimes that leading to nowhere to go and to know where to look when you just don’t have the strength to do that.

[00:25:11] Would you be willing to close us in prayer? 

[00:25:15]Shelby: Certainly.  Dear Heavenly Father, God I thank you for, this time that we’ve had to be able to just talk about grief. Because it’s certainly difficult to navigate, especially whenever you have all these other things, when life has moving forward, or you have your children to take care of, or you have your work to do.

[00:25:34] Sometimes it’s easy to stuff that grief way down deep and to not even deal with it, because we’re so busy,  or we just don’t want to.   I pray Father God, that for those who are listening, that you  work on their hearts. That they will  realize that you are near and that you are a God of peace and comfort and compassion. You love them with an everlasting love. Father God, I pray for those who are grieving. Help them be surrounded by a community of people who will  reach them, where they are, and the best way that they know how.  I pray that you will put someone in their lives that they can  talk to, that, that they can be real with and honest with, without the fear  of judgment . And I pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.

[00:26:20] Erin: Shelby. Thank you so much for sharing a piece of your journey with us today. and thank you to our listeners for joining us.

[00:26:30] I pray that it was a blessing to you.

[00:26:32] if you want to process this a little bit further, I have been including journaling questions in the show notes.

[00:26:38]To find the show notes, when you are on my channel and you see a list of all the episodes, click where it says details, and you’ll find all the information about that show, including those journaling questions and the link to Shelby’s book.

[00:26:53]If you love journaling and specifically journaling about topics related to the Bible and scripture, then I have a journaling resource for you.

[00:27:03] The link for that is also available in the show notes.

[00:27:07] If you guys were encouraged, please like subscribe, and share with a friend,

[00:27:12] You can find me @stepstotrusting on Instagram, or Facebook, where I would love to continue this conversation with you.

[00:27:20] I hope you join us back here next time, where we will be looking at the compassion of God. We’ll be looking at some passages, including Nehemiah nine.

[00:27:28] So if you get a chance, check that out, see you next time. But till then I wanted to leave you with this reminder from Ephesians two 10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Friends. I’m praying for you as you keep on stepping.