Ep37—Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage, with Eric Schumacher

On this episode, pastor and author Eric Schumacher joins host Marty Duren in a coversation about the challenges men have grieving miscarriages. 

Transcript

Marty Duren:

Welcome to Launch-The GCC Podcast. I'm your host, Marty Duren, director of communications for the Great Commission Collective. We're a global network of churches partnering together to plant churches and strengthen leaders. My guest today on Launch is Eric Schumacher. He's a pastor and author. We're going to be talking about his book, Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage. This is a timely subject. It's always applicable, whether you're dealing with miscarriage in your own family, or whether you're a pastor and you're dealing with people who are struggling through the aftermath of having had a miscarriage. This is a timely and helpful book. Paul David Tripp says "This book is full of helpful insights and answers, but the best thing it gives you is Jesus." I hope both this book and this conversation are helpful to you.

Marty Duren:

Welcome back to Launch. As previously mentioned in the intro section, my guest is Eric Schumacher, and he has written a really, really helpful book. If you're a pastor, you possibly have been through this yourself. If not, you definitely have counseled someone who has been through, a couple who's been through miscarriage. The unique thing about Eric's book is its biblical comfort for men grieving miscarriage. This is just recently out, right?

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. It releases July 1.

Marty Duren:

Oh, so it's recently not out.

Eric Schumacher:

We're recently not out.

Marty Duren:

We're recording just before it releases.

Eric Schumacher:

For a limited time only, it's not out.

Marty Duren:

That's right. So prayerfully by the time you get this, you can pre-order it on your favorite online website. So welcome to Launch, man. It's really great to have you here.

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. Thanks, Marty, for having me. I've enjoyed knowing you over Twitter for quite some time. So it's good to put a face and a voice with the account.

Marty Duren:

Oh, okay. So putting a voice with it means you've never listened to my other podcast, right?

Eric Schumacher:

Well, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Let's talk about my book, shall we?

Marty Duren:

Okay. Truth comes out. We're not editing this part either, dude. Hey, for folks who don't know who Eric Schumacher is, take a couple minutes to...you're a pastor, but what else?

Eric Schumacher:

I'm a husband of Jenny for almost 24 years. So next month we'll celebrate 24 years.

Marty Duren:

Congrats on that.

Eric Schumacher:

We have five kids in our home, four teenagers right now. Oldest will be 20 next month. The youngest is 10; four boys and a girl. That keeps life very busy. And my wife, Jenny, is a... She's my better 9/10. She's tremendous.

Marty Duren:

That's awesome. I can believe that. I can believe that she's 9/10 of the better.

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. Although, don't multiply me by nine and think that's all she is. I'm being very generous with myself.

Marty Duren:

So, you got all these kids. You got a 10-year age range with five kids. Are they at least involved and interested, that like all play soccer one game after another? Or is like one in dance, one in piano, one in soccer, one in archery, that kind of thing?

Eric Schumacher:

The oldest one's in college, so he's pretty self-sufficient. And the 17-year-old has a really nice girlfriend, and that keeps him busy. And he has a summer job, so I'm thankful for that. The 15-year-old, he is involved in soccer and just started in a robotics competition team, that they went to the world championships in Houston. He was the robot driver for the whole team.

Marty Duren:

That's cool.

Eric Schumacher:

He's our outdoorsman. He's always outside doing something. He took over the shop in our garage when we moved to this new-to-us house. And he, unknown to any of us, discovered he had some kind of saw that would cut metal. So he started cutting circular saw blades, strips out of them, and making knives and like a [inaudible 00:04:19], throwing bat-sharpened things that could probably do a lot of harm to somebody.

Marty Duren:

Do the robots throw those?

Eric Schumacher:

No, he hasn't figured that out yet. I'm trying not to suggest that idea. Right now his dream is, he says when he turns 18 and graduates high school, he's going to be moving to Alaska and living as a survivalist. And he thinks he's prepared for that because he watches Life Below Zero and Bear Grylls.

Marty Duren:

Okay. I mean, what could go wrong?

Eric Schumacher:

I know. Buddy, there's a little bit more-

Marty Duren:

Has he read Into the Wild?

Eric Schumacher:

No, he has not. And I'm thinking about showing him that film.

Marty Duren:

Yes.

Eric Schumacher:

Buddy, there's a little bit more than knowing how to skin an animal and drink your own urine to living in Alaska. Although he was out at a friend's acreage a year or two ago, and their dog ran up with a rabbit that it had just caught. He was probably 13, pulled his pocket knife out and he skinned the rabbit, gutted it right there, and put her on a spit and built a fire and cooked it over it and ate it.

Marty Duren:

Wow. He went [inaudible 00:05:27] Castaway in about 10 seconds there, didn't he?

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah, he did. I'm going to get him a volleyball just to keep him company.

Marty Duren:

That's awesome.

Eric Schumacher:

Our daughter's 13. She's wonderful. She's a budding author. She's 50,000 words into a novel she's working on, and it's good. Better than I've written as an adult. Our 10-year-old, he's the sweetest and friendliest of all of our kids. And we're just trying to desperately figure out how to keep him that way.

Marty Duren:

Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. That's fantastic. Well, let's talk about Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage. I'm going to open up by saying that my wife and I never went through this, so I don't know how common or uncommon that makes us, and as a pastor, and I was in full-time pastoral ministry for 20-plus years I think, I can barely remember one or two incidences. So I think I'm somewhat of an anomaly that this is not a thing that I dealt with in ministry a lot. Of course, there's the possibility that people didn't even talk about it. You know, it happened in our church and people didn't say anything about it. But you're addressing the men in the story, so the dad-to-be and the unique struggles. What I love about your book is that you relate it to so many things were happening in the life of Jesus. So let's talk about it. First of all, how did you come to write this book?

Eric Schumacher:

Years ago, for your listeners' sake, my wife and I have experienced four miscarriages. I believe the statistic is one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. As a pastor, one of the reasons you don't often hear about it is because people don't talk about it. I had written for Risen Motherhood, an article about my experience with miscarriage in order... They asked me to write it in order to help women understand what their husbands are going through. And so a few years back then, Abbey Wedgeworth asked me if I would include a testimony as a father in her book, Held. It's actually a companion volume to ours, but a 31-day resource, journaling resource, with devotions, walking through a Psalm. I got the book, and it's just fantastic.

Eric Schumacher:

It became immediately my go-to resource on miscarriage. And I just loved everything the Good Book Company did with it. All through our miscarriages, one of the things I talk about in the book is that I just never heard men talk about miscarriage, and I experienced firsthand how unprepared other men in the church were to care for a man walking through miscarriage, and even hospitals, just everywhere. For obvious reasons, miscarriage is thought about as a woman's thing, which it is, because they're the ones that are miscarrying, they're the ones that were pregnant. But every child has a mother and a father, and every mother wants the father to be involved in the pregnancy and wants the father to rejoice over the birth of the child.

Eric Schumacher:

I don't know who picked the title of the book at the Good Book Company, but that's what the name Ours is all about, is that this is ours. And so I just wrote Carl at the Good Book Company an email and said, "Hey, fantastic work on this volume. It's really good, and you really need to write one. You need to publish one for men, and I want to write it." They were gracious enough to do it, take a risk on it.

Marty Duren:

Is that how that works? Is that how that works, I just find a book and say "This is a great book and you need to write a companion and I need to write it." Is that how it works?

Eric Schumacher:

Sometimes, I guess. I don't know. First time I've tried it, but it won't be the last.

Marty Duren:

Worked for you. What I want to do is read some of the chapter titles and just let you comment, because it's set up with really short chapters. There's 31. So it's a month's worth of brief devotions with some opportunity for reflection. So it's not just, "Hey, I'm going to read this and go to work," it's "I'm going to sit with this a little bit. I'm going to process this and process myself as I process this." Let's hit just a few of the chapter titles, give everybody an idea of what's going on. And then I think this is going to become a go-to for a lot of folks, to be honest with you. Second chapter, Have I Really Lost a Child? What is that? And why is it significant?

Eric Schumacher:

What you mentioned earlier about incidents from the life of Jesus for your listeners, the book walks through the book of Luke in over 31 days. What I did before I wrote it is, I wrote down questions that are common for people to ask as they're going through miscarriage, and then put them together with the Suffering Servant and how he cared for suffering people. And so I picked Luke. One of the many reasons I picked Luke is because it starts with barrenness with Elizabeth and Zechariah, and then it opens with a chapter dealing with children in the womb. We're in a culture that you and I and everyone listening, we all know this, that there's a lot of debate about abortion right now. And we're in a culture that does not always value life in the womb, or diminishes the value of life in the womb.

Eric Schumacher:

And miscarriage is an unseen suffering in the sense that, maybe if you've been able to have a sonogram, you've seen the child, but often it's unseen, a very unseen loss. And so you didn't know this child, most often you weren't able to hold the child unless it was far enough along you could, after delivery. And so it's easy to say, was this really a baby? Was this really this? And I love the fact that right there in the first two chapters of Luke, he uses the word [inaudible 00:12:01], which is the word for baby, or child. And he uses it of what leapt Elizabeth's womb and what Mary laid in the manger. And it's every bit as much a child.

Marty Duren:

Does God Know What I'm Going Through?

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. That question. It's easy to look at Jesus and say, "Well, he was never a father. Does he know what I'm going through?" But the main event in the Gospel of Luke, what it's leading up to, is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. And that means our God knows what it's like to lose a child, to watch a child die, and he can sympathize.

Marty Duren:

What Do I Do With My Anger?

Eric Schumacher:

Miscarriage is one of those situations where I think, as fathers, we feel this right and benevolent desire to protect our wives, protect our wife, and protect our children. And miscarriage is one of those things where it doesn't matter what you do, there's nothing you could have done to protect your wife or your child from this pain and its loss. So anger is a common response to feeling an injustice, to feeling frustrated because what the good thing you want to have happen, you're not able to do, something's frustrated it. So, yeah, I think Jesus offers some good hope there for men who are experiencing anger in response.

Marty Duren:

You have a chapter on caring for the man caring for his wife. I can't imagine much more of a minefield for a guy, especially for guys, what we think of as the typical guy, who's not greatly in touch with his emotions and doesn't always know how to respond when the wife is deeply in touch with hers. Talk a little bit about the guy who this has happened to, or the pastors ministering to a dude, and he's just like, what do I say to my wife?

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head. Everyone grieves in different ways and at different times. And that really comes out in miscarriage, because often when they find out about the miscarriage, the man moves into not necessarily fix-it mode, because he can't fix it, but to-do-list mode. And if there's other children, I need to make sure they get to school, I need to run them to soccer practice, I need to make sure meals are covered, I need to go to the pharmacy to pick up medications for her. I'm going to do all the things I can to sort of just bury my emotions in busyness. And there can also be the temptation to think, if he is grieving and feeling emotional about this, to think, well, man, I can't really say anything about that. I can't say that I'm not doing well, because this happened to her. And I don't want to diminish her grief by just sitting on the bed with her and weeping.

Eric Schumacher:

I tell guys, your wife, you were both there when this child was conceived, and she wanted you to be there when the child was born, and you planned to raise this child together. Don't make her walk through this loss alone. This was always yours together. Somebody else can run the kids around. You have church, family, friends, somebody else can get the meals. Somebody else can do all the things, but you're really the one who needs to be sitting with her and mourning with her. And if you don't feel those feelings right now, just sympathize with hers, and your feelings will come. And sometimes the Lord allows us to grieve at different times so that we can care for each other in those seasons. If the Gospel of Luke is about anything, it's about God taking on flesh and being present with us. Be that with your wife.

Marty Duren:

So here's the chapter that when I saw it, it really grabbed my attention. Does My Grief Make Me Useless to Jesus? Does My Grief Make Me Useless to Jesus? How did you even come up with that [inaudible 00:16:33]?

Eric Schumacher:

Depending on what sort of tribe people are in spiritually and all that, you, we can get this mindset that to be useful to Jesus, we always need to be doing something, out there accomplishing something, serving somebody else, these sorts of things. When grief gets to be so intense that all we can do is sit there and cry, we can begin to think, well, now I'm not only a failure to my wife because I can't do all the things, and I'm not only a failure to my children, now I'm a failure to God. Because if I really had faith, I'd be strong enough to get up and get out there and brush this off and go do things.

Eric Schumacher:

That's not the Jesus we meet in the gospel. He's weeping at Lazarus's tomb, and he's so sorrowful in the Garden of Gethsemane, his soul is sorrowful even to the point of death. And I would add our grief is not useless, it's a form of worship. Because grief is a way of saying, "God, I know you exist. I know that you're good. I know that this situation is wrong in some sense, because the world's broken," and there's no reason to grieve unless you believe those things about God. And so it's an acknowledgement of his goodness and that he's the only one we can turn to.

Marty Duren:

How Should I Care For My Other Children?

Eric Schumacher:

Depending on how each of the parents are doing, it can be difficult just to interact with the other children in the midst of grief. But the other thing is, is what can these kids, depending on their ages, understand? And I don't think it's wrong to bring our children into our grief. This is a sibling. They may have known about the pregnancy. It may have been early enough they didn't know about it, but they are going to live in a world that is filled with death and sorrow and brokenness, and this is an opportunity to show them how we face it and hope in Jesus through it.

Marty Duren:

I don't think you addressed this in the... You don't have a chapter by this name. You might address this, so I'm going to ask you to talk about it a little bit, because it's right in the same narrative. A lot of miscarriages do happen, and you just referenced this, really early on. The mom knows that she's expecting, has probably shared it, probably showed Dad the lines, or the line, whichever way it goes, on the test. And then they may not have told other people. So you mentioned [inaudible 00:19:40] they might not have told anybody yet. Because maybe it's pre a certain amount of weeks and they're going to [inaudible 00:19:45] a certain amount of weeks, then there's a miscarriage, they lose the baby.

Marty Duren:

Talk to a pastor who's counseling, or a couple who are going through that very scenario, and they're trying to decide who they tell and what they tell and when they tell. Because if they're really grieving, they can't hide the grief. And so they go to church on Sunday or they go to church on Wednesday night or go to some activity related to church, and they're grieving. They can't hide the fact that they're grieving, but they don't just want to come out and say it. Walk through how to address how you share that story.

Eric Schumacher:

I think it's a really great question. One thing I like to emphasize is that every miscarriage is unique, none of them duplicate entirely, the circumstances stage the pregnancy, all those things. And the people are unique. So all of that needs to be taken into account as you answer that question. I would begin by just sympathizing with them, validating their grief, that it's right that they feel this way. It's a right and good way to feel, and then to ask them, who are the people that know you best, and that you feel like would understand and be safe to share with? They could share with the whole church if they wanted to, or if they wanted to just share with you and the pastoral staff or their small group leaders or their small group, or whoever it might be.

Eric Schumacher:

I would encourage them, who are the people that are going to understand and care for you? Because particularly, even with an announced pregnancy, you live with that every day. And the people you tell rejoice with you, but they're not preparing a nursery; they're not dreaming about playing football in the backyard; and they're not acquainted with this child in the ways that you are and dreaming about this child the way that you are. So it's very easy for people to hear the news, be sorrowful with you, and then just move on and sort of forget about it, which is tragic. And that can be very hurtful if a church responds like that. And so I think part of what I want to do as a pastor is point them to people who are going to sit with them in the grief and remain with them in the grief and make sure they're cared for after the initial announcement.

Marty Duren:

Eric Schumacher, your book is Ours: Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage, will be available I think you said July 1st,

Eric Schumacher:

That's right.

Marty Duren:

From the Good Book Company. Do you know if they're going to be offering, if a church wanted to buy 20 or 30 or whatever, can they order directly from the company at a rate or [inaudible 00:22:42]?

Eric Schumacher:

You can. And, in fact, if you're with a church or ministry, the Good Book Company on their website has a ministry partners program, where if you sign up through whatever ministry that you help lead, you can get a free sample of any resource you want, and then I think 40% off for ministry purposes purchases. It sounds self-serving, but I would just encourage every pastor to grab two or three or four or five copies of both Abbey's book, Held, and Ours, and just have them in your study so that you don't have to wait to order it when the miscarriage happens. You can grab a copy of each and head to their home with a meal and just leave it as a gift for them.

Marty Duren:

That's awesome. Eric [inaudible 00:23:31], hanging out today, man.

Eric Schumacher:

Yeah. Thank you, Marty. It's been good.

Marty Duren:

Thank you for listening to Launch-The GCC Podcast. If you haven't subscribed already, why not take a moment to do that in your favorite podcast app. Also, rate and review the podcast when you get a moment. That helps us with search results. And recommend us to your friends, maybe other pastors that you know who will benefit from the content from this podcast. Also, don't forget to check out our website, if you haven't done that already. It's gccollective.org. That's gccollective.org, and there's a lot of helpful information. There's articles, there's how you can join the GCC, whether a church planter or an existing church, and plenty of other content that'll help you grow spiritually and encourage you in your leadership journey.