Hi, this is Erin Michele, and welcome to steps to trusting. Steps to trusting is a place where we explore how to take active steps in our faith and trusting God more fully. I hope that you’ll join us as we continue to explore how to take these active steps to trusting.

[00:00:21] Erin: I’m here with Kristen VanRaden today. Kristen is a wife, a mother of two.

[00:00:26] She resides in the Olympic peninsula in Washington state. She is an avid reader and writer, and you can follow Christine’s story on Instagram as Kristin reads and writes. I’m so pleased to welcome to the show. Kristin van Raiden. Kristen, thank you so much for being with us today. 

[00:00:42] Kristen: thank you for having me,

[00:00:43] Erin: Kristin and I are going to be discussing the topic of releasing control.

[00:00:48] I’m sure a lot of us can relate to the feeling of desiring control, but feeling like it’s just beyond our reach. And I know personally that I have struggled with being willing to surrender control to God.

[00:00:59] Kristen, would you be able to share the story that you had shared with me about your son and how you struggled with not having control in that situation?

[00:01:08]Kristen: So when I was pregnant with my son. , I was really excited and he was somebody that we had prayed for and we had longed for, and I had a really good pregnancy.

[00:01:20] Things were pretty textbook. And then we had a, a pretty textbook delivery things didn’t go necessarily exactly how I had wanted them to, but they had gone within a normal range and we had this. Beautiful baby boy. And everything was kind of shaping up how I had expected it to be. And how maybe like, when you read parenting books, when you’re preparing to become a mother and because I would read  probably to sometimes have control.

[00:01:47]I could make a plan of how I was going to parent this child before he even was in this world. And I have these expectations of how things were going and things were kind of going along that way.  he came and he was perfect. They said, and the first day was absolutely beautiful.  I think that that first day was really a gift. Because I can go back in my mind and think about that, how wonderful that first day was.

[00:02:13] Because the second day things really changed a lot.  He was  a little over 24 hours old, and I had left him with my husband and gone into  the bathroom. and when I came back, the nurse was wheeling him out of the room and I’m like, Wait a second.

[00:02:34] Why are you taking my son away? And she’s like, Oh, he’s just having a little seizure. It’s just, it’s going to be okay. I’m like what?

[00:02:44] Erin: Wow. That’s a really hard thing to hear as a mom.

[00:02:48]Kristen: Yeah. It’s like when I put him in my husband’s arms to leave, he was fine. And then like, 30 seconds later, I hear this commotion and come back out and he’s getting wheeled away.

[00:03:00]and that was the first seizure that we noticed. I, and he had, I think it was six more that day, probably within a 12 hour period, the longest of which lasted eight minutes and didn’t stop until they sedated him. And he’s just this little tiny thing.

[00:03:19] The hospital that we were at, didn’t have  the facility to take care of a baby that  had become medically fragile. I mean, we had gone from him being this healthy, perfect baby to, medically fragile and just this split second.  So they took him, to another County where they put him in the NICU.  A little while later I was discharged from the hospital and I could follow him. And that just started this whirlwind week.

[00:03:48]I think about it now, I’m like, Oh, it was only a week a week. Isn’t that long. But when you’re in that situation a week is forever of just living every single moment. You can’t think about the past, you can’t think about the future. All you have is that moment of what are we doing right now? And there was a lot of waiting.

[00:04:10] Waiting for doctors to come and talk to us, waiting for test results. it was one of those situations where I realized now thinking back that it didn’t matter how much I had prepared to become a mother. I had no idea what was happening and all my preparations hadn’t really done much to help me in this moment, because I had learned about, you know, how to change diapers and how to swaddle and how to do all these things that you do when you’re thinking about bringing a baby home, but I’m spending, 24/7 sitting in a hospital room. And there’s nurses all around and they’re in control of the baby.

[00:04:50]I’m not in control of the baby. They tell me when I need to feed the baby or they feed the baby without me, they do the diaper.  His life  went on without me from pretty much the moment he was born.

[00:05:04]Well, a day after he was born, that he was this individual outside of me that I don’t have any control over.

[00:05:13]Erin: What was your first reaction as far as, trying to control or trusting God,  do you feel like you had, been prepared for that moment or did you just feel completely out of control?

[00:05:27] Kristen: I felt very much on autopilot, which I think is my default  when I get in these extremely stressful situations. Where it becomes just one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.  What is the next thing that has to be done to keep progressing in life? I did not feel prepared. There was a lot of times looking back in the situation,  like he came home and he was a mostly formula fed baby.  I didn’t even own a bottle because that was not my plan.

[00:06:02]I had planned to exclusively nurse. And instead I have a pump and a bucket of formula and I don’t even own a bottle. And so I didn’t feel prepared at all. We just did one day at a time one step at a time and just trying to figure out the answer to one problem at a time, because I couldn’t make a master plan.

[00:06:28] I didn’t know what was happening even after we got him home. A week later, we still had a lot of doctor’s appointments. Appointment every week, or at least every couple of weeks.  Hopefully to figure out what had caused the problems, , and whether we were going to have to deal with continual problems. So it very much was just a walking day by day, because when he was in the NICU, we had learned that he had had a stroke while he was in utero. but we didn’t know really what that meant. Like was he going to have lifelong vision problems or learning problems or anything like that? And so as was this going to be something that affected him daily? As he was little or as he, as he got older. And so we were just walking one step at a time.

[00:07:23]Erin: You sound,  Very calm now.

[00:07:25] You’re distanced from  the timeframe that this happened  and you’re saying how you were just taking one step at a time, but how are your emotions in all of this? What was your internal struggle? What was going on in you?

[00:07:38]Kristen: So my son is now eight and I have had. Eight years of processing what happened?

[00:07:47] Because at the time, I shoved a lot of emotion down in the sense of, you know, we were in survival mode. So I didn’t feel like I had the time or the emotional capacity to deal with what was going on inside of me. Which was just this deep deep seated sadness and disappointment.  there was various levels of,  probably guilt and maybe even shame in the fact that, well, was there something that I did , as the mother, as the person that was carrying him at this time, That he had this, like did I do something wrong?

[00:08:26]I felt very alone.

[00:08:28]I had a lot of friends who had had children right around the same time that, my son was born and they were healthy.

[00:08:36]They were doing the motherhood thing, kind of like I had expected things would be, but I had to be worried about seizures and I had to be going to, you know, a neurologist and a hematologist and a geneticist. I had all these ologists that were part of my son’s medical team. Then that were part of this schedule that I had to keep.

[00:09:01]And they were just dealing with naps and which naps are a big deal. I get that naps. Your kid’s nap schedule means a lot. But there was a distance  between my friends and I, because I didn’t really relate to them with their journey. I also didn’t really feel like I could relate to a lot of the parents who  had medically fragile children because my child wasn’t a preemie.

[00:09:25]And so he was fairly healthy in a lot of ways.  he was doing well  and he was growing appropriately. He was meeting all of his milestones. So when I would go to doctors and they would ask me about things,  or they would talk about support groups and things like that, I didn’t really felt like I fit in those either because my baby was fine or he was turning out to be fine.

[00:09:51]But there was still all this baggage from when we didn’t know if he was going to be okay or not.

[00:10:00] Erin: It sounds like you were walking  not knowing which direction it was going to turn out where you were going to end up.

[00:10:08]Kristen: Yes, there was a lot of times you’re just kind of waiting for the Oh, we finally figured out what was wrong with your son. He has this longterm medical issue.

[00:10:17] It was like that for a long time, probably until he was nine months old.  then we got to the point where some of his doctors were like, you know, he’s doing really well. And  I don’t think I need to see him anymore.  Which was wonderful, but then you felt a little out of, again, out of sorts because you start to identify with these different aspects.

[00:10:37]Erin:  as we talked before, you mentioned that the pressure and the stress and the lack of control was affecting you in other areas of your life.  would you be willing to share some of that with us?

[00:10:47]Kristen: Yes. So pushing down all of these emotions, it might’ve worked in the short term to  get me through the day. pushing them down, didn’t push them away. They just started to  sort of building up these fears, this feeling that I lost a lot of time with my son that were really important with him being in the hospital.

[00:11:11] there is probably , jealousy of these other moms in my life that we’re having the motherhood experience that I had expected and hoped for. And I had just been, instead of dealing with these, shove them all down.  I was carrying just so much emotional weight that I didn’t really  function anymore. I was angry all the time. I was sad all the time. I felt like a horrible mother because I didn’t feel like my son needed me. I felt like he would be better off without me and these feelings, they just kind of became their own living thing. It’s it’s almost like like a whirlpool, it starts small and it just starts to build this momentum and it got bigger  and bigger, and it was just sucking the life out of me.

[00:12:00]I kind of knew what was going on, but I, then again, I was in denial because I like to be in control. I like to have it all together. And at that moment, when I felt like it matters so much to be in control and to have my life together because I was a mom now I was responsible for this tiny little human, but instead I am losing myself more than I’ve ever lost myself before.

[00:12:27] Erin: so what brought you to a point where it was clear that something needed to change?

[00:12:32] Kristen: I knew something was wrong. I knew something needed to change, but I was in so much denial that I felt I needed to change it, but I had to somehow control the situation and make it better, but I couldn’t do it because I had already gotten sucked too far down the hole and this situation had gotten very difficult.

[00:12:52] I was trying to mother  and do a lot of this very much in isolation. My husband,   he’s very involved, but while he’s at work, I was alone. I didn’t have a good network. I had friends, but a lot of them had gone back to work. And so I was in very much denial.  I was very much, I’m going to do this under my own power and in my control, I’m going to fix the situation.   it just kept getting worse and worse. And I never really got to the situation that I admitted it until my husband staged an intervention.  My family had spent some time with us, my parents and my father had noticed the biggest change in me.  He and my husband apparently had a conversation.

[00:13:33] It was the day after our seventh wedding anniversary. My husband called the doctor and scheduled an appointment for me because they were fairly certain that I had  postpartum depression and I was not going to get help for myself.  So I was at home with my son and I got this call from the doctors saying, your husband called us.

[00:13:55] He says that you need to come see us. And of course, because of patient rights and stuff, he can’t force me in. I have to make the appointment. Okay. But, he could be. He could help them help me.  When I got that call, I was kind of so relieved in that moment. It was like, Oh,  I physically felt a release.

[00:14:19]And so I made the appointment  and then I called my husband and I yelled at him because I was so angry at him for making that appointment or making that phone call. Which seems so strange. Cause to be so relieved that someone saw me and saw my pain, but also being so angry that he had taken it out of my hands and out of my control because I was going to fix this myself.

[00:14:43]I was going to do certain things and fix it myself. And he was intervening in that, in my control.

[00:14:51]Erin: That’s really hard and really a blessing, I think at the same time.

[00:14:55] Kristen: Yes. He was stood and probably still withstand so much.

[00:15:01] Erin:  I have heard you say that learning to trust and learning to let go are synonymous. You said, because by me letting things go, I’m letting God catch those things. What changed for you to be able to come to a point to say that, to say that you could let go of these things and let God catch them.

[00:15:20] Instead of being in that place where you were upset that you had to. Let someone help you.

[00:15:26] Kristen: I think it’s been a very, very gradual change. It would be wonderful to say that there was just this one thing that happened and all of a sudden it’s like the light bulb moment, but it, it hasn’t been like that. It’s just been a really gradual process.  I wish I could say there was just one turning point. But it’s just been this slow change of realizing that some of these things that I’m really trying to control are out of my control.  I can’t control certain things within me. I can’t control certain things  outside of me.

[00:16:05] Erin: I want to try and switch over a little bit  to, your relationship with the Lord and  how he was with you in all of this.   Amidst the struggle and the pain that you were going through and the trying to control. How did you feel God meeting you or sustaining you in that time?

[00:16:26]Kristen: I wish I could say when I had this situation with my son. And the depression and things that I really, leaned on God.

[00:16:33]I think in the pain, sometimes I would forget to go to him. But the thing is God is, he’s always there with us, even if we don’t go to him that he’s with us anyway.

[00:16:46]And I think  the biggest step forward in the healing process is when I have been drawn back to him in quiet seeking. And then I can see so much more how he was there the whole time.  In the midst of the pain, there was a lot of crying out to him. Like, Lord, why is this still happening?

[00:17:06] Why do I still feel this way?  Why does it hurt so bad? 

[00:17:12] Can’t  you just make this stop? I wouldn’t necessarily feel or see an answer. And then  I would get really frustrated. Sometimes. It’s like, I have asked you to take this burden away, this anger, or this despair away. And why do I still have it?

[00:17:28]But as I have gotten better, and made a priority of spending time with God, not just in desperate prayer, but  communing with him on a calmer level and reading and praying.

[00:17:44] I have a better sense that he was there and that he is using my experience to reshape me and to create in me a person that is less, maybe self-sufficient  a person who is more willing to seek help, not just from other people, but mostly from him. That recognizes,  I can’t control the situation, but that he is in control of the situation.

[00:18:15]You sound like you’re describing something. I would call severe mercy. I like to borrow this term from a book by Sheldon Vanauken  because the concept really sticks with me.

[00:18:25] Erin: God allows us to go through these really hard things in our life, but it’s really a mercy, all be it very severe. It doesn’t feel like mercy during the time, but when you get to the end of it and you see what God did in your life over that time, I can look back and say that it was God’s mercy.

[00:18:46] That’s what I hear when I hear you tell that story.  It’s this very hard thing that you had to walk through.  Even in the midst of it, you may not have felt close to God, but he was with you. Now you’re different because of having walked through that and learning who he is through that.

[00:19:07] Kristen: I feel like going through pain gives us a fuller image of who God is. Because  if we only see him in the good times, we’re missing so much  of the story of who he is as our Redeemer and as our savior. Because if I was perfect and had my life all together, it’s very easy to feel like I don’t need somebody. I don’t need grace. I don’t need to be saved. But when you are experiencing so much anger and pain, it really brings to light how lacking. We are as humans and how lacking our earth is, especially when I think of something as beautiful as motherhood, where it is hard is very, very hard, but you have this new life, this pristine little child and that somehow something so beautiful and new brings so much ugly up in you.

[00:20:10]  this whole experience has really taught me how much I need Jesus.  I think  would be for, it was easy to gloss over and think I’m a good person. I have self control. I have patient time, a lot about me, and this whole experience has taught me that I can’t do anything, it feels like without Jesus . And how  good that comes out of me is because of him.

[00:20:41] Erin: If you could just name a couple things that you learned in that time about who God is, who Jesus is, what would they be?

[00:20:50]Kristen: I just thought of a whole bunch of synonyms for patient.

[00:20:55]Patience and long suffering, merciful.

[00:21:01]Erin: How do you think you’re different because of having gone through that experience?

[00:21:06]Kristen: I have a lot more compassion. I think when you hit a spot that people don’t understand, it makes you a lot more willing to try to understand people that maybe you wouldn’t, you would have counted off before. I think before I would have been. More like a lot of people who are like, well, why can’t you just do this, this, and this and this, and get control of your life again, like you just need to go to bed earlier and you just need to get up earlier and you just need to eat this and do that.

[00:21:39]  I’m a lot more understanding that there are things outside of your control that are influencing your life and making things difficult. And that we can’t just, necessarily pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps as the cliche goes. Cause I tried that a lot and every time I did it, I just landed flat on my face as much as I tried it didn’t work.

[00:22:07]And I think we’re living in a time where.

[00:22:11]There’s a lot of emphasis on trying to fix yourself and do it  your way on your own being that individual liststick that’s part of our culture that I don’t need help.  to realize that you can’t do it on your own, that we need each other.  but that mostly we need God and we need grace that’s helped me to be more compassionate to those in my life who are struggling.

[00:22:38]I think it’s also given me a fuller picture of who God is. And so I have a stronger relationship with him because I’ve had to lean on him so hard at different times.

[00:22:51]Erin: Speaking of leaning on him, you had said that you had a verse that was important to you.   What was that verse?

[00:22:58]Kristen:  So, my story started back in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2016 that I really leaned on this verse.  I had known this verse, but it hadn’t really captured my heart quite yet.   It’s Philippians 4,: 6 – 7. It says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your  requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ  Jesus.”

[00:23:34] I think I come back to this one the most. In my mind, even though I had memorized that at one point I’ve forgotten probably all the words, but the idea of do not be anxious and that peace, that passes understanding.

[00:23:48]I think that’s a big part, because there’s times where you’re life is going crazy or you’re in pain and you don’t understand it.  You feel like you should be going crazy , but God gives you that peace. You’re like, why, why am I okay right now, things should be really hard.

[00:24:04] How am I functioning? God’s giving you that peace that passes understanding to just keep going in that moment.

[00:24:11]Erin: It makes me think of another verse  Colossians 1: 17.  It says “he is before all things and in him, all things hold together”  just thinking about , how he holds it together , and gives us that peace.

[00:24:24] When it doesn’t make sense, we should feel like, well, I don’t have it all together because we don’t. But knowing that he holds it all together and that he does give us peace.

[00:24:35] Kristen: yeah, that’s a great verse.

[00:24:37]Erin: How is your son doing now?

[00:24:40] Kristen: He’s fine.

[00:24:41] Besides for that first day, he never had any other issues.  He has brain damage in his visual cortex in his brain and he sees fine.  I don’t think it’s still, he started kindergarten. I realized how much stress as I still carried from the situation, because I was worried about his learning abilities.

[00:25:03] I think that’s just something I put on me, but then once he started school and like, he’s doing great.  and for me I think it was something way back then when it was all happening. I was like, when he starts kindergarten and start school and I know that he can learn and he can read,  then we can close this chapter.

[00:25:21]Even though he’s been fine. , but yeah, I mean, he’s still scan his brain. There should be a little dead spot somewhere in there.

[00:25:31]Erin: That is amazing that he’s fine.

[00:25:34] Kristen: Yeah, and actually, I think it was last week I was reading a story about a child  who had had a stroke in utero, like my son. And it had caused them to lose their arms. Wow. Because of where the blood clot. And so there is a bit of that, part of the story where I don’t know how much of a miracle it is that we have him, how close we were, to losing him or to him having more significant brain damage. I think a lot of times we focus so much on he’s fine . Everything’s okay. Everything worked out. there’s good. And focusing on the positive, but also to realize that maybe he’s a little bit of a miracle.

[00:26:24]Erin: You made me cry.  It’s not that hard to do,   But  I think when you hear stories about how things didn’t go perfectly, we should all be reminded how fragile life really is. We all just assume that things will go great. When the reality of it is we all should be praising God that our kids are with us. 

[00:26:46]Kristen:    That was part of the thing that was really hard.

[00:26:48]  I would go sit there and all of these ologists offices and my kid had had this issue, but I was in these rooms, like the hematologists with all these cancer kids. And it’s like, my kid is fine and I’m here and I’m having all this emotional stress because I don’t know what the test is going to resolve, but this isn’t the problem.

[00:27:08]Or I would go with the neurologist’s office and these children who, I don’t know their stories, but they would just be so I don’t even know what you say. You know, they are quadriplegic and they’re mothers, they’re taking care of them. And it’s kind of back to that part of the story where I felt very out of place because my son had issues, but my son did not have these issues. It’s like, how can I he’s he’s okay. And you just look at these women and these children, and you’re kind of in awe how strong they are and how brave they are to keep it going through because I’m still holding this kid that is pretty much fine as far as we can tell. And I’m like falling apart inside  I

[00:27:54]it’s  very humbling in our situations that we have.

[00:27:58]Erin: Desiring control is a constant struggle for a lot of people.  I know I personally have gone through that as well.

[00:28:05] My story is different.  When I, as a mom realized that I didn’t have control,  they were a bit older. But still, I think that it almost becomes this struggle of identity when you’re expecting to be a certain way or seen a different way. And all of a sudden you feel like you can’t control that that’s how people see you or how you even see yourself. That was a big, almost identity struggle for me.  . What wisdom would you want to pass on to someone who is feeling like that currently?

[00:28:40]Kristen: I think this experience was a bit of an identity crisis because I was the person who had it all together. I was the person who would do the research and make the plan and do the work.

[00:28:51] And then things generally went well. And then I had done the research and I had made the plan and things were not going well.

[00:28:59] If I would go back and either talk to myself or talk to a best friend who was going through something similar.

[00:29:07]  I think the three things I would tell them, be patient, get help. .  And your identity is not found in the things that you do, but your identity is found in Christ.

[00:29:17]Erin:  I just want to slow down for a second so we can help that advice sink in, be patient, get help and our identity can only be found in Christ.

[00:29:27]I feel like there are so many struggles that, that stem from that very thing of our identity.  C.S. Lewis talks about putting the first things first (in God on the Dock) and how the second thing’s then fall into place. But if you put something that’s of second importance first, then it gets all out of whack.

[00:29:44] That’s a really bad translation of what he says, but,  that idea of,  when we put our identity in motherhood or whatever else, that thing may be, then we lose those things of first importance. Like our identity is really in Christ and if we put our identity in Christ, then our identity as a mom falls into place and it works itself out because that is not the thing that gives us value or,  identity.

[00:30:15] However, we are still moms and we are still called to walk in a way that we would Shepard our children and love them. Well, But  if that is our, first importance identity, then when our kids don’t listen or when our kids,  go through struggles and problems, and we feel like we , cannot make it go right then our  identity can fall apart.

[00:30:37]But when we put our identity in Christ and when we let him be our strength and when we go to him,  when we are anxious in prayer and petitioning him,

[00:30:45] then we find that peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding.

[00:30:50]So this is a really hard question, but if life was easy and your son was born and,  you didn’t have to go through that struggle, but you would miss the things that you’ve learned and the ways that you’ve grown. Would you take it back?

[00:31:04]Kristen:   I think, I think because my son is healthy, I can much more easily say no, I wouldn’t take it back. If things were different, that would be a lot harder to say.  I think it’s easier to sacrifice ourselves than other people.

[00:31:22] I think the thing that would keep me from saying that  was just the pain that I put my family through. And the only reason I think I could even say this right now is because I’ve come so far and I’ve seen so much healing in my process. And I see so much hope for what my future has because of what I’ve  been through. The learning process and the healing process and all the therapy that   I have a lot better grasp of who I am and I think I have a vision I’d have never even dreamed of having before I went through this whole thing because I see more purpose.   One thing I’ve had to learn is I tend to downplay the situation.  And to honor it as what it was. one part of the process of healing. And I think of the reason that I went through it and is sharing it . There’s fear with sharing something so vulnerable, but I feel called to do it and it’s healing for me and hopefully it can help somebody.

[00:32:22]Erin: I’m sure it can.  thank you for sharing your story.  I’m so thankful for the time to spend with you today. It was fun to catch up and to just hear your story.    I also know it will be encouraging to other people to hear how you’ve walked through the challenges, but you felt God meeting you in that time.

[00:32:42] So, thank you.

[00:32:43] Kristen: Thank you.

[00:32:44]Erin:  I’m just going to close us in prayer. Okay.  Dear Lord. I thank you for this time with Kristen. I thank you that she was willing to share her heart and, to share, some of the hurts that she walked through and how she was able to learn more about who you are and the peace that you give Lord.

[00:33:02] I pray for those listening Lord that they would. Be able to relate and apply, Kristen’s story to where they are in their story. Lord, I pray for peace in their lives and I pray that they would take the active step of coming to you in prayer, giving over their anxieties and letting go of the things that they’re holding so tightly, knowing that you’ll catch them.

[00:33:27] And it’s in Jesus name that I pray. Amen.

[00:33:31]Thank you so much to all of you for joining us today. I want to give a shout out to Jim Dougherty and say thank you for making the music for this podcast. You guys can check him out on Apple music, Spotify, or where you do your music. Looking up his album, the city of God. Also, don’t forget to check out the show notes where I link to where you can connect with Kristin as well as some topics that we covered today.

[00:33:56] The next show I’ll be here looking at some scripture and talking more about the  topic of control. So see you next time till then I want to leave you with this reminder from Ephesians two 10 “for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

[00:34:15]What is God working in you through the season you are walking through, what is your next step? I’m praying for you as you keep on stepping.