From Mourning to Ministry: How God Redeems Our Deepest Sorrows

00:00 - Speaker 1 So here we are. We're going to start now, and thank you. We are here today with the International Fellowship Cafe podcast. It's a monthly conversation that we have just started this year, in 2025. And it's an opportunity for Christians to share either expertise through their field of work in the end-of-life care industry or, something like today, two of my friends who are also certified as death and resurrection doulas, who have impactful stories around not only the work that we do as end-of-life doulas, but around the testimony to God's grace and his faithfulness. So thank you for joining us If you're watching online, thank you if you decide to come to the cafe and be a part of this conversation. 00:55 So how it will work is we'll spend the first little bit in conversation with India, Tara and myself India, Tara and myself and then we will open up the room for people to engage in the discussion. So my name is Laurel Nicholson and I am the creator and founder of the Death and Resurrection Duel of Training Program, and now we have this wonderful outreach, the International Fellowship Cafe, and so this is a welcome to you, and I'm going to now, more formally, give India and Tara a moment to say hello, introduce themselves. Before we launch into stories, maybe just say a little bit about what you do. You can go first India. 01:50 - Speaker 2 Hello everybody. Thank you, Laurel, for having me today in this formal way. So my name is India Rice and by trade I'm a nurse. I'm a hospice nurse. I have been a nurse since 2006. I recently got certified as a death and resurrection end-of-life doula. Before that, prior to that, I was doing and I'm still doing, volunteer doula work. 02:13 - Speaker 1 Awesome, thank you. Let me hit this All right, and, Tara, can you say a little bit about what you're doing with your end-of-life doula? Death and resurrection doula certification yeah. 02:27 - Speaker 3 So, um, I am working with. I have one consistent dementia person that I work with. I do three days a week care and then sometimes I do a full respite weekend, so it's 24 hour around the clock. It's really funny because every time I go there and I expect the sundowners to be active, they sleep all night and I don't. So you know. But I also volunteer time through hospice as well. 03:03 Familiar with hospice. I've had family members in the past on hospice as well. I'm familiar with hospice. I've had family members in the past on hospice and you know it's really a. It's a wonderful program, you know it really is. And through the hospice volunteer I've been able to get some private clients. So that is a great way. You know hospice phone, they background you before they put you on their list of people you know, and so that just gives an extra layer of reassurance. You know, to the families when you're coming in their homes, because it's a. It's a pivotal time in everyone's life, not just the patient but for the families as well. And the last thing you want to have to worry about is if someone's going to be nice to your loved one or if they're going to be stealing the pain meds or things like that. So you know that's kind of what. 03:58 - Speaker 1 I'm doing right now. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad you brought that up. It can be hard to have a whole team in your house and then you add on when someone's dying and then you add on you know another person, a death and resurrection doula, and it can be. It can feel overwhelming for the family for sure to go through so many changes and get to know new people. Well, you sound very happy with the opportunities that you have and I know you're doing a great job. So I appreciate you and thank you for upholding the dignity of a death and resurrection doula out in the world. So I am very, very grateful, Tara and India both. 04:40 Well, so now we're going to dive into your stories a little bit, and one of the things we talked about offline is about faith, and when a tragedy such as losing a child strikes in your family, we could very easily question God's grace, his faithfulness, his ability to change our circumstances, his ability to heal. The scriptures show dynamic healing encounters and even dead people that have been raised. And then here we live in the 21st century and we experience something that doesn't necessarily look like that and it can certainly shake our faith. But I think that the little bit I know about your two stories. You're going to have something to share with us, that God has increased your faith and shown you who he is through both of your experiences. So I'm going to call on Tara to start first, and really this is spirit led. You know, I want you to have some time, maybe to give a little background of you know, of the incident with your son and then, just you know, go from there and share what you feel led to share. Thank you, okay. 06:02 - Speaker 3 Yeah, glad to share. Thank you, okay, yeah. So in 2003, I was at a roadside pedestrian event and you know to for the sake of time my son was ran over by someone who was looking at what was going on and not paying full attention to the road. He lived 21 hours and his brain herniated between the base of his skull and his spinal cord and it caused a heart attack. He had the best surgical team out there. You know mortal man, you know flesh wise, but you know God is the great physician and God healed my son the way that he knew would be best for my son. 07:08 I wanted my son, no matter what quality of life he would have had, because we're selfish Humans. We're selfish and we want what we want and we don't always stop to think about how our wants are going to impact the lives of others. And God gave him a complete healing, he restored him, he gave him eternal life. You know, my son will never have to go through the pain and the suffering and the depravity that this world is going through, and it's only going to get worse. And I didn't get angry with God at first. You know it took me a minute, but I did go through that stage, because we have to go through that stage. When we're going through the grief, you know we have to. When we are floundering in the sea of tears that have been spilled by our grief, we are some point going to get angry and we're going to question and we're going. 08:21 I used to go to my son's grave twice a day, every morning and every evening. I would go tell him good morning. I would go tell him good night. I slept by his graveside. I was lost in the sea of grief for a long time, long time. 08:50 And you know, the thing that we have to understand is that grief looks different for every person. No, two people are going to grieve exactly the same. I don't care if you're identical twins. You're not going to grieve exactly the same way and your timeline of grief is going to be different. It took me a lot of years of being in that wilderness, in that desert, in that sea of grief, and then God brought into my life an amazing church family. 09:20 You know you can have a million good people in your life, but until you have that one person that God has intended for you to sit and converse with, and cry with, and laugh with, and share the bittersweet memories with you're not going to start moving forward with true healing and the restoration of hope and peace and joy. And I am so thankful to God that he endured with me, that he brought the right person and people into my life and the life of my children. And you know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have hope. My hope is not in this world. I am just like my son, a wayfaring stranger. I'm traveling through this world and my hope and my eternal home is on the other side waiting for me. 10:26 When we start seeing death as the usher of a better life, as the usher of eternity, and we start seeing death as a familiar friend, death is both a familiar friend and a foe. That's what I like to tell the people that I come in contact with and I give an opportunity to share my story and my testimony. This was never God's original plan, but it's the plan we're living in now and we have two choices. We can either meet it head on with the hope that lies within us because of the gift of salvation that Jesus has offered every one of us, and we can face death with dignity and courage and resolve, or we can do the opposite, or we can do the opposite, and you know, yesterday, today and tomorrow, I choose to face it with dignity and depth, knowing that my hope is in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 11:40 - Speaker 1 Thank you, Tara. Will you share your son's name, samuel Isaiah, and you've had two boys since then. Will you share your son's name, samuel Azea, and you've had two boys since then? You have two, three, three total, including Samuel, or three more, three more, oh my goodness. And they're teenagers, adults. Is that right? The youngest one is going to be a teenager this summer. Wow, wow, oh well, thank you for sharing. I have some questions for you, but I think I'll let India go and then I'll come back and ask you guys questions, because you could both share your answer. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. 12:23 - Speaker 2 India, Tara. Thank you so so much for sharing your story. Okay, Thank you. Thank was three years old, his name was Jojo and he spent. He went in the hospital on a Thursday, thanksgiving day, and gave me the date. I didn't really realize what date it was and how close it was to the day that he died. So today, to be transparent, if I would say that grief stops, it doesn't stop. It hits you like a layer, stops. It hits you like a layer. And telling our story. It's liberating and freeing, because we need to let people know that, just because we're Christians, we still grieve. And you are totally right, Tara. 13:37 It took that right person to sit there with me and let me express my hurt, let me express my tears, let me express my anger, let me express all the things that I was feeling, not only about the situation, but about God. You know, I love God, I love him. I loved him before, when I prayed every single day that Jojo would come home. I loved him. After I prayed that way and, as you said, Tara, God saw it a different way because he released him. They were talking about a lung transplant for my grandson, for him to be able to make it on this side of heaven to have a lung transplant, and my son, Tara, was just like you. He didn't look at the quality of life, he was just like whatever we need to do to keep him alive. And then, every single day at the hospital, jojo was showing us something different, and as a nurse, I saw that something different. Different. And as a nurse, I saw that something different. I saw that he wasn't going to make it on this side, and at that time I had to just wait until my son was ready to see it also and to have that conversation with him. But in the middle of it I was dying in the inside because it's like, Lord, you promised me that if I walk up right before you, that my seed seed will be blessed. And so, yes, I have 13. I have a total of 13 grandkids with Jojo. So I have 12 that still live in, plus three bonus grandkids. I still was selfish enough to say, Lord, you made this promise and you're not keeping good with your promise. 15:29 So at that particular time, after Jojo died, as a minister, I eulogized his funeral. After the funeral, I began to not deal with my grief, and I'm going to say not deal with it because I held it all in my emotions. I didn't think I had a right to grieve because I wasn't his mom. I didn't have a right to grieve because I wasn't his father like my son. So I just held it all in and I stuffed it all in and it was to. 16:01 One day God did a divine intervention for me at work. I was at work and one of the bereavement coordinators asked me how my day was and that one day, when she asked me that I was honest and I just let the tears come and I let her know I am not okay, and she was like it's okay, and that, as Tara said, started me on my journey of healing. And it took a lot of steps to get me to where I am now. Even today I was like I don't know how I'm going to talk to people because I'm just going to cry. But it took a lot of steps and the one step that it took for me is I had to go get counseling. I had to get on medications to help me with my depression. I had to do all those things. Even as a Christian, even as believing in God, I still had to do those things. 16:55 But then God started lifting that heavy burden. Then I started being able to pray, because I had stopped praying. I had stopped praying in my private life For other people. I would pray for them At church, people was asking me to pray, I would do all that. But in my private life, me and God, I was like Lord I'm not talking to you Because I was that upset and I say that and I don't want to go beyond my time, but God started showing me the blessing and I call it the beauty in the ashes. 17:26 He started showing me as I look back and started asking God what I need to do with the pain. That's when end of life doulas started coming up, like I was just seeing it and hearing it playing this day, like that's the purpose. Because, as I look back, those 40 days that we was in the hospital, that's what I was for my son, that's what I was for JoJo's mom, alyssa, I was their end-of-life doula and not even knowing it, because I made space for them to talk about how they felt. And so that's what started me on my journey of becoming an end-of-life doula, because sometimes we just need to sit and be attentive to that person and allow them to speak their truth. That was my beauty and my ashes God gave me as I was going through my grief. 18:18 - Speaker 1 That was really, really beautiful India. Thank you, and thank you again, Tara, and I haven't lost a child to death. I have had a two-year period where I had to move and but I was still able to or had not experienced before I was limited in the amount of time I could see him in person and I did have, you know, phone calls and FaceTime and all that and it's nothing to you know, to touch this area where you know you have to wait until Christ returns, but you have the confidence that Christ is going to return. And I believe that through losses here and there in my life and everyone here has them, whether you're watching or whether you're sitting on this call with us but there's an element that can happen inside a loss that is unfathomable, that even the hope of resurrection rises up. And I think that that is a faith experience. And we often go into something maybe an impending death, whether it be 21 hours or 40 days, and we're praying really hard and we're putting our faith up there and saying, Lord, I'm giving you like every ounce of faith that I have, and we know the scripture says you only. You know as a mustard seed, no bigger than that. And you know in both of your instances and you know my losses that I prayed against. It didn't seem to change the circumstances. All a waste of my time believing, or really I believe maybe we don't have the agency as much as it's God who finds us in the midst of our brokenness and ministers to us through another person, through his word, through Christ's ministry in our heart, and there is this resurrection there, even in the midst of the absolute worst loss there could possibly be. There is a resurrection that's not us anymore, it's not the person that was keeping all of that faith, it's a new person and it's a person that has a new way of service and that, I believe, is the new self that's in Christ coming forward. 21:11 And everybody's losses look different. Some may be a child loss and may be a divorce, financial. You know, it could be anything that this happens and we may think, oh, I've been through the worst, I'll never have anything again, and something else may come in our life. So the next question I want to ask and I'm saying all this to provide a place for someone struggling in their loss to see that there's hope. And I believe, and I know from experience, denial is really powerful and can actually I've seen it create an otherworldly reality that I was waiting for God to sort of deliver to me and it didn't come in the form that I thought. 22:02 And so if maybe, Tara, first if you might speak to your experience of denial a little bit. You know, anger, denial, bargaining these are three major steps that we go through with grief, whether before the death happens or the loss happens, you know, perhaps during, certainly for a period of time afterwards. So just want to talk about denial a little bit, because it's going to look different for everybody as well, and I'm hoping that maybe, if someone watches this and they're in that stage, they might be able to you know, they might be able to, you know find some hope through that, oh gosh, you know, when Samuel was at the hospital and they were doing everything they could do they were doing the fluid resuscitations they started him on a ventilator, you know. 23:02 - Speaker 3 Then they went to an oscillator for him and and, um, you know, I just kept thinking, samuels, dr Jane, the doctor who saved Superman, you know, was part of the consulting and the medical decision making, and I was just thinking, okay, he's got the best doctor in the world, he's going to be okay, he's going to get through this, we're going to be okay, no matter what it looks like, in the end he's going to be alive. And you know, we're just, we're going to. You know, your human instinct is to go straight for confidence in the medical abilities out there. And you know, then it got worse and then it got, you know, and they told me, they said you know, samuel's brain is swelling so much that the pressure is like up to 27. And they were like you know, we have one option left and that's a bifrontal decompression craniotomy. And for those who don't know what that is, that's just a big long name for a surgery where they actually remove. So it was the bifrontal, so they removed the front part of the skull to allow the brain room to swell and relieve the pressure. He made it all the way through the surgery. The surgery and then his vitals crashed and they came to me and they were like you know, we're sorry. 24:49 And I was like, no, that is not possible. You know you instantly go into the denial of reality because I mean, let's face it, who wants to look death in the face and say, okay, you can have my child, or you can have my grandchild, or, you know, you can have my mother or my father, or whomever it is? You know who wants to do that, who wants to be okay with that. I didn't, and I don't think anybody else does either. If we're going to get down to honesty and brass tacks, none of us want to give up people that we love. That's because you know, then, what is the depth of the love that you have for that person. But you know, to know deep grief, you must have first known deep love, and I remember going to the graveyard and standing at his graveside and saying, God, why don't you just raise him up right now? You can do that, you know. Like you can do like it was a challenge, like a come on, God, show me your power. You know, but God knew the events in my life that would follow and he knew where I would be at in this moment. 26:17 And Bringing my son back from the dead Was not part of God's plan, because it would not have been conducive for him. I would not have been able to share with people my story and the hope and the peace and I'm not saying that I walk through every day and, like you know, it's all butterflies and rainbows, because it's not. I'm always going to have that wounded place in my heart, but that wound is no longer larger than the healed part of my heart and it no longer, you know, chokes out the hope and the peace and the joy that I have. And so, for those who are out there, who come across this podcast at whatever time in their life, in whatever stage of grief they're at, I just want you to know that it's okay to feel the grief and it's okay to go through those emotions, because you have to to get to the other side. 27:26 You have to feel the hurt and the anger in order to get to the place of peace and joy. What you can't do is get stuck in that point of time. You know't get stuck in the hurt and the anger, because when that takes root, then bitterness and hate spring forth and you're just angry at the world and you're angry at people and you're just angry all the time and you carry that anger with you wherever you go and it causes grief to your loved ones and you don't want that because that that brings forth a whole new level of grief that you're gonna have to go through and heal from I imagine it's pretty easy to find like bitterness and jealousy of, maybe, mothers or grandmothers who didn't lose a child in the way that you did. 28:31 - Speaker 1 Is it pretty? Is that pretty? That's probably pretty normal, I would say, as part of the grief journey. 28:37 - Speaker 3 It is, it is normal, you know, to look at other mothers especially, you know, like my sisters, you know, and not be angry at them, but just be angry that they had their children and all their children were with them and every holiday that comes around or every special event. You know it's hard not to be angry and, to be honest with you, I would get most angry at strangers who, you know, like they let their kids run through Walmart parking lots and you know, mall parking lots and you know things like that, where there's lots of vehicles and pedestrian traffic and not everybody is paying attention, driving through the park, you know, and that would make me most angry, you know, like I would, and it still makes me angry, but not as angry. But, you know, in the beginning I would just want to jump out and and and be, like, you know, angry at these people and yell at them, and you know what are you thinking and don't you realize? You know it's a hard, complex thing to go through, especially, you know, when you witness the event happen. 30:02 Has your memory healed of that moment um, you know when you are talking about things, you know triggers and things, certain things still. You know, like I, I can still see that day and I can still hear the girls scream as they saw this whole event unfold. And you know I can, I, I know that I will never forget the sound that his head made, you know, as he hit the pavement. Head made you know as he hit the pavement, and so there are certain sounds and certain things that will bring that back and I have to remind myself that we are not in that place in time anymore. 31:09 - Speaker 1 he's okay, he's healed, he's perfect in every way and life is okay today. Well, you're a wonderful mother, I know it, and I want to go to India. But I have another question that maybe we can share in the other part, that is, you mentioned you prepared him for burial, is that right? 31:24 - Speaker 3 I did, I dressed his body. 31:28 - Speaker 1 I want to talk a little bit more about that before we go today, when everybody else comes on India. Thank you, thank you, Tara. 31:36 - Speaker 2 India. Thank you, ms Tara. So there's so many things that stuck out to me, Tara, as you were talking. Again is similar when you talk about denial. I watched my son in denial all the way up into the end. I watched him every opportunity. 31:54 They had my grandson on a machine called ECMO I had never heard of that before and it's kind of like a big hemodialysis for the heart. The blood just keep going through him. So that was the only thing that was keeping him alive. And I remember, as a nurse, the doctors looking at me and saying to me well, you know where this is going. Why don't you just tell your son? Or why don't you just, you know, have a different conversation with your son? Because we were planning for discharge, we were planning for getting his lung, you know, transplant, we were planning on him going all the way to Columbus. And again, that's why I know that God's hand was on the whole situation, you know, because in Columbus my son wouldn't have had the support of his family there. He wouldn't but me I'm going to say me he wouldn't have had his mama, because I couldn't have just took up and left my life to go, move to Columbus, to be there for him during that transition Not that I couldn't have, because I probably would have made a way, but God didn't see fit for that. 32:58 And then the denial on when he took his last breath, watching my grown son give his son CPR to try to bring him back to life. I saw the denial. And then my own self-denial Right after the funeral. I didn't want to look at JoJo's pictures. I didn't want to acknowledge that he really wasn't here. My kids, my daughter, was doing her own grief, my son was doing his own grief work and was just sharing pictures of Jojo and I couldn't even look at him and I couldn't even tell them. It wasn't until last year that I can pull his picture out from that hospital, um, stay and really look at it and be okay, um. 33:43 So yeah, I do know firsthand about the denial um of wanting to um, not realize that it was true, or, you know, not, uh, knowledge that he was really not here anymore. And when you talk about the anger of not really anger, but at the same time one of my closest friends, her son, she had just had a son. He was at the same hospital with Jojo. He was on like a floor upstairs. Jojo was on one floor, he was on the floor above and God saw fit to deliver him. And now he's three years old and he's full of life. And he was at that point. But I still pray for her. But every time I looked at him when she would show pictures on Facebook, it was a reminder that God didn't answer my prayer the way I wanted to. And one of the persons that's close to me he told me. He said, when you pray, you're praying that you trust God with the outcome. And, as Tara said before, I wasn't trusting God with his outcome, I was trusting God with my outcome. 34:57 And so, yes, I saw all the stages of grief working in my life and I just remember telling that same bereavement coordinator that I felt like a butterfly in the cocoon stage. 35:11 You know, I felt like I was in the cocoon and one day God will bring me out, and that's why hashtag everything that I do. She even bought me a butterfly, because when I did come out, I felt just as beautiful as that butterfly, because I can experience. I didn't think I was going to ever experience God's joy again. I didn't think I was going to able to love again. I didn't think I was going to be able to laugh again. So it just transformed my thinking and transformed me. So now I did the hard work so I can sit with people and, Tara, you said that you have to do the hard work. I had to sit in my grief, cry, get it out, yell, scream, whatever I needed to do so I can help my son. And now I'm seeing the fruits of that labor, of him being able to be whole again and be married and enjoy his stepkids and his kids that he still have here. 36:14 - Speaker 1 Oh, India. Thank you, and I appreciate to India and Tara for being willing to talk about these internal emotions, because they're personal and they're intimate, and so I think anger and denial are two of the ones that could produce shame and if you don't move through them, and so I'm just very grateful you were willing to share and I pray that another mother or father mourning the loss it could be an old loss, it could be a new loss Might find some connection to you and what you went through. We have about 15 minutes, so I'm inviting anyone who joined our live Zoom today to turn your camera on if you would like, and we have some time to just be a community and make a comment or ask a question, and so, as your cameras are coming on, I do want to see if Tara wants to say anything else about. Um, you know, dressing your son. You know what that experience was like. 37:18 You know, India, if you I don't know if your family did it, you know, did anything like that? You know, India, if you I don't know if your family did it, you know, did anything like that, you could just share that. So a lot of people they may not know, you know, no matter what the age of a deceased person is, but you know what, what kind of thing goes, goes on after someone dies. And you know, in preparation for burial, oh, your mute's on. 37:40 - Speaker 3 Okay, I'm having technical difficulties over here, so I needed to do that. I did not want someone else dressing my son. It was the last thing that I could do for him as his mother and it was much needed for me internally. I didn't know that, you know, but later down the road I look back and it was the start of the grief process for me. Truly, it was because I was putting myself in the position, because I was putting myself in the position or rather God put me in the position where I dressed his body. I touched the incisions, you know, and I saw the wreckage of his little body, truly, the wreckage of his little body, truly. And I am glad that God afforded me that opportunity because I don't know where I would be at today. You know the funeral home people. They did have to help me because of all the incisions and the embalming fluids and everything. They did have to help me. But I dressed him and, um, you know, I I encourage people, if they feel that they can and they need to, to ask the funeral home. You know what? What part of this can I actively do? Will you allow me to this? Um, just say a quick note. You know, um Samuel was a family name. 39:42 It was my grandfather's name, my father's name and his name. Three Samuels have I had in my life and three Samuels that I love are now waiting for me in heaven. My father went on to glory in December. In December and medically he was pronounced dead at December 26th 1.45 pm. But I watched his vitals and everything on all the monitors and I believe with all my heart he went home to glory on Christmas Day evening between 6 and 7.30. Because I saw that the change in the vitals and that change was permanent. But with my father's body they allowed me to anoint his body. I took oils to the funeral home and I anointed his body. It was a very intimate, wonderful time for me. 40:50 - Speaker 2 And for us, we were able to give Jojo a bath before they took him to the funeral home, so it was not as intense, you know, as going to the actual funeral home, but before when he passed away in the hospital, they allowed us to bathe him and allow us to give him his final bath after he passed away. 41:17 - Speaker 1 Thank you both for sharing that. My last comment I'm going to make is that you're two just extraordinary women mothers I know, Tara, you're not a grandmother yet, but India grandmother as well and often what we think that beauty comes from success, but really I think what we're seeing in your stories and can see in our own life is faith. That is what makes our stories really, really beautiful. So I thank you both. Jill or Michelle, do you want to ask anything or share anything? Yes, hi, jill. 41:59 - Speaker 5 Hi Ladies, thank you so much for sharing your stories. I'm encouraged by your faith and India. There's a lot of things you said that I feel like I went through with my parents passing and how that kind of led to not praying and but then eventually being like what you were saying Laurel ministered to by people on behalf of the Lord where he could have his impact and then sit me on that path. But what I wanted to say is this is why I feel like these stories are so important you ladies are so important is because in the secular doula world where they're saying death is a friend and there's better life on the other side, that's not a lot different than what we believe as believers. We know there's eternal glory on the other side of this. We know we're going to be in the presence of the Lord, but we also know that's not His will to be running ahead of Him. Right, and, Laurel, you had said denial brings shame, and I feel like that's what the secular dualship is doing is they're denying the fact that death is an enemy, that it's something to be fought for a time, that it's never anything to give into, ever. Like you know, we can say that of your son and your grandson. Coming from these, you know covenantal relationships with the Lord. He's defeated Jesus, already defeated the ultimate enemy, and so I'm very encouraged by that, knowing that it's good for us to have grieved, because how else do we help people who are grieving and how else do we admit that death is the enemy? How else do we have an open door to say Jesus has overcome and we too look at a resurrection because of His death and resurrection and not pretend that if we just let go? But I do have a question, and this is the balance. I want to know how you ladies weigh this balance. 43:55 As a doula, death is an enemy. We fight enemies. We are into battle with the Lord behind us. But at some point in our lives God may say I will fight for you. You need only be still. Like, how do you balance that? Like that Moses moment, how do you know when? I mean we're not going to do the experimental stuff anymore? How do you? And these are not your people, I mean they're your people but they're not your family anymore. You may not have the same kind of inroad. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you hear what I'm asking? Like, how do you encourage them in that and do you bring your own story into that? And I know both of you would have preferred other outcomes and you didn't get to make a lot of decisions about those outcomes. The Lord ultimately did that, but I'm sure you've walked through situations with other people where they were weighing. We had to, and our family had to weigh some of those things. 44:48 - Speaker 2 Can I answer that? So I have, as a nurse, as the doctors had told me. You know, I was seeing the signs when the body was starting to shut down. So I was seeing JoJo's signs when his body was starting to shut down. So it kind of is a twofold, because in that hospital setting I was seeing the shutdown, I was seeing that his body wasn't responding to the medications and the treatments and all the interventions that man said if he had to do or would keep him alive. 45:23 So I have been in a situation where I've been at the deathbed with, or the hospital room with, a few of my members at our church, a few of our members at our church, and one of them I showed the picture of Jojo and how he was hooked up to all these machines and how he was laying there and wasn't responding to man-made interventions. Yes, God, give us the wisdom to do it, but when to he give us the wisdom to know that it's out of our hands? Now? And so what I told, what I share with her and what I had to share with myself and share with my son, we not giving up, we releasing them back to God, we release them back to our God. So now we trust God with the outcome. 46:14 So it's never about just giving up. It's Lord. You know the plans that you have for me, Lord. I trust you with these plans. So that's how I was able to minister, from showing them the evidence and, like I said, it was the first time I ever showed JoJo's picture in that state, in that form, and say this is what. I'm not saying this now because I haven't been there. I'm saying this now because I've walked there and I've been with you, so I can tell you from a medical standpoint and I can share with you as a sister in Christ. 46:50 - Speaker 1 Wow, that's beautiful. That is beautiful because I think you know, kind of bringing back to that topic of denial, it's really hard to be grounded in reality of denial. It's really hard to be grounded in reality, and one reality we have that we can ground ourselves in is Christ has stood on his side of death. Therefore, we can too, and you did India, and I know your faith makes that possible and then God has called you to go be with other people as companions and and help them. And Tara, quickly, I know India's jumping off right at two and that's when we finish up. When you first came to me and inquired about training, I'll never forget the conversation and one of the things you said is that it was in that learning to let go that you feel that you could really serve people well. 47:47 - Speaker 3 Yeah. So you know, I part of my grief process was I had to go to the altar every day and I had to say, okay, God, he's yours, my, my other children are yours. I know what the worst case scenario for my mother's heart can be, but I know overall what the best case scenario will be and that's where I find the balance. You know, I, I connect with people. You can connect with your clients and patients on a personal level, on the emotional. If you get down on the raw, real brass tacks level with them, they're going to respect you and they're going to be open and honest with you. And they're going to say, I don't know if I can do this, or how am I going to get through this, or what's it going to look like after all this is said and done, or how long am I going to feel this way? And you know, until you can get real with someone, they're not going to be real with you. They're just not. 49:00 And if I could go back to that moment in time, the only thing I would do different now is I would have asked the doctors can my son's eyes give another child? That's the only thing that I would do different now, If I could go back to that moment in time in the hospital, if I could go back to that moment in time in the hospital, you know, if I could go back to the moment in time, I would have never stopped at that Event. But that's you know. That's not. You know, ultimately, what our conversation is about. But the one thing I wish I would have done differently is I would have asked how can my son, how can his death, truly save others? 49:54 - Speaker 1 Well, I think, Tara, that your work as a death and resurrection doula is, in a large part, coming forward from your experience from losing Samuel, and that it is you're going to have the opportunity I know you've already had one to witness and pray for someone who was at the end of their life, and so I know, without a doubt, there are going to be many, many more, and God is going to fulfill that deep desire in your heart and give you the strength to do it. I thank you. We have two minutes. You want to ask something real quick, michelle. 50:33 - Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't know if it can be quick though, but thank you guys for your story. I'm going to be with a friend in two weeks who had to put her son to rest. He died tragically and I don't know if he was a believer. But the question is, how do you know when someone is stuck in their grief? Because I know it's different for everybody and, like you said, the grief you'll always be grieving. And, like you said, the grief you'll always be grieving. But I think I heard one of you say when you start hurting other people with your anger and bitterness, that might be a clue. Or for me, Can you? 51:14 Yeah. 51:16 - Speaker 2 I know you've got to go. I'm so sorry For me. I feel like for me personally is when I wasn't dealing with it, I wasn't acknowledging it, and then I started having panic attacks. So you started seeing other manifestations of, as Tara said, the anger continues to lash out at people or hurt people. That's how you know that you're stuck. A sign of being stuck, you know, is compounded with that. But for me, I started having panic attacks. So for me not dealing with it, I started having physical things that I needed to deal with. 51:57 And Laura, if I can just say, this to Tara, things that I needed to deal with and Laura, if I can just say this to Tara before I leave, I just want to say, Tara, I thank you for starting the conversation. I thank you for being transparent enough to say if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't go through it, because that's what Jesus did in the garden. He said he didn't want to get, he didn't want to, he didn't want to take that cup, he didn't want to have that cup. He was like if there's any way that this cup can pass, pass me, Lord, please let it be so. I thank you for your transparency. I thank you for your love for Christ. I thank you for sharing your testimony. 52:38 - Speaker 3 You too, you too India. All right, you too, you too India. 52:42 - Speaker 1 All right, everybody. Thank you for coming. Thank you again to Tara and India, thank you to the couple questions and I look forward to next week's cafe, which is not recorded, not a podcast. We get to convene. I hope people will come that don't know about the cafe, come for the first time. So I just am very, very grateful. So, thank you, same link every week. 53:10 - Speaker 2 Thank you for the opportunity, Laurel. 53:12 - Speaker 3 You're welcome. 53:14 - Speaker 1 Bye guys, bye Bye Aaliyah.