FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

We tend to retreat from grief and sort of go into ourselves. And we also tend to think that children can't handle it, but they're actually tougher than we think in some ways.

And then by bringing Ben into our grief, he wrote it better than we did in some respects. And he actually buoyed us in our grief by being with us in that time.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.

All right, so we've got a special guest. We have Jackie in the studio.

And, you know, we talked about Johnny a lot in the last episode, but now we get to meet him.

Speaker 4

Now we get to hear from the man himself. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Johnny, welcome to Family Life Today.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dave and Anne, for having me on. This is a nice surprise.

Speaker 3

Yeah. My first question is, you're at home with the kids, and Jackie's, you know, lounging around in the pool in Florida. How's it going with the kids?

Speaker 1

Let's just say it's going.

Speaker 3

We should ask them how it's going.

Speaker 1

It's going downhill very quickly.

Speaker 2

Well, we have loved getting to talk to Jackie. And as we were finishing up Joni, she was saying, you guys should read my husband's book, the Moon is Always Brown.

Speaker 3

Of course, she talked about her book much more than yours, but then she threw out a carrot for you.

Speaker 2

But she did say, it's your best book.

Speaker 4

It's true.

Speaker 2

And then so we looked it up on Amazon, but you have a promo video. I mean, I was crying. It's so powerful and beautiful about the miscarriage of Laila. So can you just tell us a little bit about that of even what prompted you to write the book?

Speaker 1

Yeah. So as Jackie will have explained on this episode or program, we in 2016 had the tragedy of a little girl who we were expecting to come into our family at nine months, our daughter Leila. And she died in the womb and then was stillborn four days later. As we were trying to deal with the grief of all of that, we brought Ben to the hospital to meet his little sister. We had an older son, Ben, four years older. He was three and a half, actually, at the time. We brought him to the hospital to meet Layla. We wanted him to have as much tangible memory of meeting her as possible. We spent four hours together in the hospital, and then I drove him home to be with a friend for the night who was going to stay over at our house. I would go back to the hospital and spend the night with Jackie.

In the car on the way home, Ben said to me, as it was just silence and I was crying in the front, "Daddy, do you think mommy will ever grow a baby that wakes up?" Because he had met Layla, held her, but obviously her eyes were closed and she never woke up. I said, "Well, Ben, I don't know. Let's pray that she does." Then he said, "Why isn't Layla coming home with us?" I said, "Well, because Jesus called her name, and she went to him." He asked, "When she's been with Jesus a few days, will she come to us?" I replied, "No, Ben. When you're with Jesus, you don't want to go anywhere else."

Then he said, "Does she not like us?" I said, "No, she does like us. It's just that she loves Jesus more." I explained, "She's not going to come back to us. We're going to have to go to her one day." I then reminded him of the little catechism I taught him six months prior. He was fascinated with the moon, so I would hold him up at our bedroom window and we'd look for the moon. I would ask, "Ben, what shape is the moon tonight?" He would respond with things like, "It's a slice of an apple," or "It's a banana moon," or "It's a little orange moon, like a three-quarter moon."

I would then ask him, "But what shape is the moon always?" and taught him to say, "The moon is always round." I would follow up with, "And what does that mean?" to which he would reply, "God is always good." I had taught him this little catechism six months prior to Layla dying, never knowing it would come into good use. That night in the car, I said, "So, Ben, do you remember the catechism that I taught you about the moon?" He said, "Yeah." I continued, "You know, tonight, Ben, it's hard to see the whole of the moon, but we need to remember that the moon is always round and God is always good, even though we can't understand why Layla's not coming home to us."

That was a conversation I had with my son. He was three and a half years old, and I thought, what a conversation with a three and a half year old asking, after she's been with Jesus a few days, will she come back to us? He was just trying to work it all out in his little mind. It struck me so much that a few days after that conversation, I took out my phone. I thought, I don't want to forget this conversation, so I just wrote it down on my phone in a little notes app and put it away.

Then a year later, by that stage, we had had the funeral of Layla. We moved nine months after that to the United States for me to work at Westminster Theological Seminary. One night, when I was procrastinating before a lecture, when I should have been preparing, I thought, I think I'm going to write a book about that conversation. So I started writing a kid's book. Long story short, it evolved into the book that you're talking about called "The Moon Is Always Round." It's basically a book about the conversation that Ben and I had in the car that night and me talking about different stages of Jackie's pregnancy and what shape the moon was at different stages, with the repeated line throughout the book being, "But the moon is always round."

So that's the book. It's told from Ben's perspective. "When my mommy was expecting a baby, the moon looked like a banana." And so it goes through, told from his perspective, with my dad saying, "The moon is always round." That's the repeated line on each page.

Speaker 3

I mean, that's just beautiful. I'm in tears. I haven't even seen the book yet. I've just seen your video and heard you tell that story.

And I think part of my tenderness is I had a little brother die when I was seven. He was five and a half. And, you know, my mom. My dad was gone by that time, divorced, but my mom and I never talked about it. It was unspoken for decades.

And the fact that you entered into your, you know, your children, and I know Jackie's told us you're still talking about Laila with them. But to be able to walk with them and answer questions and walk through grief, that's such a model for parents, you know, to do. We need to do that. Way to go.

Speaker 2

You don't know this, Dave, but I already ordered books because it's such a great conversation.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I think that we tend to retreat from grief and sort of go into ourselves. And we also tend to think that children can't handle it, but they're actually tougher than we think in some ways.

And then by bringing Ben into our grief, we find that he actually sort of wrote it. He was upset and confused, but he wrote it as better than we did in some respects. And he actually buoyed us in our grief by being with us in that time.

But, yeah, it's a generational thing, I think. My grandmother had two children born at 6 months, one who lived for 55 minutes, the other for 9 hours. My mother only discovered this 20 years after my grandmother had passed away, that she had two other brothers. Her mother never told her about these two boys.

And so I do think it was a generational thing, in a sense. But we have found it a great help for the process of our own grief. We also want our children to grow up knowing they have a sister in heaven and that that might even make them more motivated to be Christian and want to meet their sister one day.

Speaker 2

Joni, we talked about just as Jackie dealt with her grief and you gave her space in that. Can we just ask you, like, how did you deal with your grief?

Speaker 1

Yeah. I find after Laila was buried, I would visit her grave three or four times a week. I was a pastor in Cambridge at the time, and I would go out on pastoral visits, and I would always think, right, I can nip by the grave here on my way to visit this person or that person. So I would do that. And even if it was just five or ten minutes, for me, it was the time to go, to cry, to pray. Of course, we believe Laila in soul was in heaven, but we also believed her body was in the grave, obviously, and that there's a sense in which Laila's in the grave. I wouldn't talk to her or anything like that, but I just felt close to her.

And perhaps you've talked about this with Jackie, about the importance of the grave. You know, that's where she will rise from the dead. And so that place became very special to me, to us. Our tradition became that every Sunday after I would lead worship and preach, we would make our way back from church via the grave and sort of have a picnic in the graveyard. That became a sort of a Sunday routine. For me, it was being at the grave on my own, but with my family on Sundays and really just reflecting on her and her life and then talking to my brothers and my dad and mom and others close to me. I find that helpful.

There were people in our church who reached out to us who said, you know, 37 years ago, I had a stillborn daughter or stillborn son. People in your church you've known for decades, and you don't know that that's their experience. It all came out for them when our daughter died. I found it helpful talking to people like that as well. I think the body of Christ was so real to us in those days of grief. The people coming and giving us meals, praying for us. Our minister prayed every week in church for us.

Speaker 2

And so sweet.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I still remember that night. And then, you know, it started.

As the year went on, it sort of became a bit less. Once a month he would pray for us.

But it was really helpful that he had us on his heart for those weeks and months after. So those kind of things helped me process my grief.

Speaker 3

A question we didn't ask you, Jackie, and now we got Joni and you together. How did this journey affect your marriage?

You know, every marriage is different. Every road of grief is different, but it impacts a marriage.

So either one of you or both of you, from your perspective, how did this impact your marriage?

Speaker 4

A couple of episodes ago, I was talking about the fact that you enter the valley together. But then your journey within the valley can be very different. And we certainly found that to be true. Initially, you're going through that raw grief and shock together, and you feel very close in that grief in the days following the loss.

As time goes by, there are days I would be more sad and other days Johnny would be more sad. It was sometimes tricky to enter into the other person's grief when you're feeling differently that day or when something else has been hard. I would say, overall, thankfully, by God's grace, this suffering brought us closer together and strengthened our marriage.

It has also strengthened us as we do ministry now as a couple. Ministering to other couples has been a gift to us, allowing us to enter into other people's grief having gone through that together. I would say this will not be everyone's story, but for us, it was positive that it strengthened us in our marriage.

Speaker 2

You've walked through the valley together?

Speaker 4

We walked through it together.

Speaker 3

Do you feel the same, Jonny?

Speaker 1

Yes, very much so. I think Jackie's put it quite accurately there. We entered together and we're very close in the early months. And then, as I said, I would go visit the grave three, four times a week. Jackie didn't feel the need to. Sometimes I would be a bit upset that she didn't want to come during the week. But she also didn't have the time like I had, because I was out in the car. For her, once a week was enough. That was fine for me. I wanted to go as often as I could.

And so that's where we sort of cut our own trail in the grief path for the months following. But we always stayed close together through it. I think the key thing was just talking together about it and listening to each other. As Jackie said, there were some days I wasn't quite in the sore spot that she was, and so she would be upset, and I would have to come alongside her. You sort of have to jump out of your mood that you're in and sort of go back into that, and then vice versa.

But I think we also gave each other space. You know, we give each other space to be sad, but also space to not be sad some days. Of course, that first year, we were sad every day. But I just mean, as the years have gone on, there are times where we also give each other space to not have to be grieving all the time about it.

Speaker 4

I also want to say I'm so grateful that I have a husband who was willing to express grief deeply. He was not afraid to cry in front of other people. And I think possibly that can be harder for men. Maybe they feel like they need to show their strengths in a way that's like, bite. Bite your lip and hold it together for the family.

But actually, that was such a gift to me that my husband was willing to enter into that grief, express it, share it with others, share it with other men, even if that meant those men felt a little uncomfortable.

But it then gives permission to other men. You're allowed to grieve this. This was your loss, too. This was your daughter. You're a father.

Speaker 3

I mean, Joni, is that something you've always been comfortable doing? Or, Jackie, you could even answer. Or is it something that became more comfortable because of this journey?

Speaker 4

I'd say he has always had a tender heart, but those tears probably come more easily now. Just after the death of Laila, for sure.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I was brought up with a father who was very measured, very quiet, but he expressed his emotions and grief. I still remember him crying at his father's funeral. My papa, who died suddenly on the farm, was a farmer, and it was a shock to us all that he died. He just had a heart attack one night and died. I still remember watching my dad, like, really physically weeping at his funeral, nearly uncontrollably. That's an image I'll always remember. So I had a father who cried openly over things like this. In one sense, I was used to that.

But I would say the first year, whenever I would be in the car on my own, I would just start crying. It was this bizarre thing. Jackie and I would talk about this, and I would literally start whimpering. I would have this whimpering sound come out of me. Nobody was in the car with me, but I would just start crying because our daughter had died. It was often when I was with someone in the car, and I dropped them off, and then I would go back home alone; I would just start crying.

I then found that when I was preaching, and I still find it sometimes, I preach now on a weekly basis. I still find myself randomly getting emotional during a sermon, sometimes on a point that's not even that emotional. It happened just this past Sunday, as I was making my final point; I could feel myself getting emotional. I was thinking, this isn't even that emotional of a point. But I thought this is part of the scar and brokenness that I have now. When I'm in public, when I'm speaking or preaching, I can just find myself getting emotional.

I don't dislike that; it's more just that I have to be careful it doesn't become a distraction. But, yeah, that's the way I have expressed it over the years, and it still catches me sometimes, even now.

Speaker 3

Is there a sense in a marriage when one of you is feeling that whimpering, crying, and the other isn't? You know, I understand that journey happens because it's different for each of you.

And Johnny, you said you got upset sometimes. She didn't want to go to the graveside. Do you get upset when the other isn't where you are?

And what does that look like? How do you manage it?

Speaker 1

I think that it's the. That I mentioned earlier about giving each other space, you know, I think what I learned early on was, Jackie, we're going in this valley together, but the Lord is her shepherd, and he's my shepherd. He's our shepherd together.

But Psalm 23, it's so personal, isn't it? The Lord is my shepherd. And so I had to accept that Jackie had her own journey with her shepherd, and I had my journey with my shepherd, obviously the same shepherd, but he walked us through that valley differently.

And that helped me to know that she wasn't alone. I needed to let her go with her Savior through that valley, and I wasn't alone. And then obviously we were together as well in another sense, and he was leading both of us.

But that was helpful to me to think that the Lord is her shepherd. And so I can entrust her to him on the days where she's maybe not feeling as sad as I am, or maybe she's more sad than I am, but I can entrust her to her Savior, the good Shepherd.

Speaker 2

And, Joni, I can relate to, as you're preaching, how you just become emotional out of nowhere, maybe. I had told Jackie that my sister died when she was only 45, and as I was grieving, she was my best friend.

When I would go to church in worship, I couldn't sing, because if I did, there's a connection, I think, between our soul, you know, and our heart. If I would start to sing, I would—well, it would be uncontrollable. I would have to just lay on the floor and grieve, I think.

But there's something profound about that connection. So when we're in church and we connect our heart and our soul and all those pieces together, it creates a powerful experience.

Speaker 3

And the community.

Speaker 2

And the community, there's an emotion that rises up that I think is so beautiful and healing, but it can also be embarrassing.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Yeah. We had the same experience, I think, Jackie, you can speak for yourself on this one. But I recall not being able to sing, really, the opening hymn. I would just start singing and just start crying.

Speaker 4

Oh, yeah. I remember that. We were just sort of shoulders shaking next to each other, unable to get the words out. Yeah.

Speaker 1

And yet we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. It wasn't like we were feeling awkward. It was more. We just are overwhelmed. But the stinging was so beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker 4

Needed it desperately.

Speaker 1

And, you know, Anne, you spoke about church there. There's the connection in your soul, with your heart and singing and people around you. For us, it also became a connection with Layla because Hebrews 12:22-24 tells us, "We have not come to Mount Sinai, but we have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, to an innumerable company of angels, to the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect." And that's our loved ones in Christ who have gone before us.

So when they die, actually, for us, going to church was when we got to be with Layla because we were joining the invisible church in heaven. The visible church on earth was joining that choir for that one hour of worship. We were present with her. She worships by sight; we were worshiping by faith, but we were both worshiping in the same worship service.

Speaker 4

It's like when you sing the Doxology, praise him above, ye heavenly hosts. I think of Layla every time we sing that on a Sunday.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

So that's for us, why? Church also became a deeply important and emotional day. But it was a lovely day because we were like, let's go to church. We're going to go and be with Layla.

I taught my kids another catechism, and my two younger kids who were born after Layla, but taught Bennett as well. I would, on the Lord's Day, on a Sunday, say, "What day is it?" And they would say, "It's the Lord's Day." I would then ask, "What do we do on the Lord's Day?" and they would respond, "We eat croissants and pancakes." I would say, "Yeah, that's right, we do. And where do we go?" They would answer, "We go to church."

I would then ask, "What do we do at church?" and they would reply, "We worship the triune God." I would continue, "And who do we get to do it with?" They would answer, "With Layla." Then I would ask, "Where's Layla?" and they would point up and say, "In heaven." I would follow up with, "Who's she with?" and they would say, "With Jesus." Finally, I would ask, "What's she doing?" and they would respond, "Singing with the angels."

And so that's our little catechism. I don't do it as often now, but when they were really young, that's what I taught them because I wanted them to realize we are going to church, but we are going to join another church that's invisible. And that your little sister for Ben, big sister for Zach and Hannah is present in Singing with the Angels.

Speaker 3

And you've got us all crying in the studio.

Speaker 4

A lot of sneaky stuff.

Speaker 3

I think I want to sign up for your Old Testament course. Man, you're quite a teacher.

Speaker 2

Oh, and I'm just thinking of listeners that are thinking, my kids are complaining about going to church and we don't go to church. This is why the catechism is so important. Like you're building foundations for your kids of what's truly happening and why it's so important.

And I don't know about you, Dave, but I can only picture all of you in heaven having a picnic with Layla, actually being in your presence in the daffodils sea with the daffodils. Yes. And that's our hope. That's the hope of the gospel for all of us, that we will one day be with those who have trusted Jesus.

Can we just cry anymore right now? And I just want to say thank you to both of you.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Because it's been nine years and yet you are still helping people walk through, keep their eyes on Jesus to teach us how to do this together in a marriage.

How the church is still so important and it helps us to heal.

And just being open to sharing your story has brought us incredible joy and comfort.

Speaker 3

I mean, you know this, but this is your mission, this is your call and you're doing it so well.

Speaker 2

I think they have a lot of calls. Can you guys just come down to Florida and be with us a whole bunch and parent and teach us how to do catechisms with our children and grandchildren?

Speaker 1

Did Jackie tell you what we call our daughter? Did that come up in your conversation?

Speaker 4

That's a good time to share that.

Speaker 1

If you said, you know, this is your mission. Well, at Layla's funeral, there were about 180 people who came to her funeral, and the minister, you know, one hundred and eighty people who never saw her. Only two people in that church had ever held her or seen her, apart from Jackie and I: the minister and Jackie's best friend, Sarah.

But in the sermon, in the middle of the sermon, he's preaching and he said Layla's testimony was a great testimony. And I thought, where is he going with this? Like she never gave her testimony. She never lived outside of the womb. He said hers was a great testimony. She pointed us all to another world. She pointed us all to God. And then he just had this offline comment that he said was not in his notes. He said, "Layla the evangelist," and everyone, "there's some more tears for you, Anne."

Everyone who was there, to this day, if they talk about Layla's funeral, they say we've never forgotten Layla the evangelist. And so for us, this book that I wrote, *The Moon is Always Round*, the book Jackie has written, we see it as our daughter's ministry. So Dave, you said you're on mission, you'll be given a mission. And you're right, we have. And it's our daughter's ministry.

She, being dead yet speaks, and she only lived for nine months. But she has reached so many more people than I, as a preacher of the gospel, will ever reach. You know, that book, *The Moon is Always Round*, has over 30,000 copies sold and it's still selling well. And for those listening, every dollar of that book goes into a fund called Layla the Evangelist. So all the royalties go into the Layla the Evangelist fund. We are saving up that fund to support people at seminary to then go and be evangelists like our daughter was.

So you're right, we've been handed a mission. And this is why when Jackie got the invite from you, she said, "I can't go to Florida like this." And I was like, "Yes, you can't, because that means I have to look after three kids at home." Yes, you can't. But then I thought, that's crazy. Florida, two days, I'm too busy. And then I thought, no, that's my daughter's ministry, so Jackie must go to Florida.

And so that's what we view it as. We accept these kinds of invitations even when they don't suit our timetable because we think, no, this is the way we serve our daughter's ministry.

Speaker 2

It's beautiful. And I would ask our listeners, what is your mission? Because God has given each of us a mission. As long as we have breath in our lungs. What is your mission?

Speaker 3

You know, I got my voice back. Now I can talk. But in that moment, it was so tender. And Johnny was so great to have after a couple days with Jackie, just to hear his heart. He was wonderful.

And you know, Johnny wrote a book as well. It's called *The Moon is Always Round*. And it's just a powerful truth to sort of teach your children. You can get it. It's in our show notes—a link there. Familylifetoday.com. Just go there and click on that link, and you can buy that book as well.

As if you'd like to get Jackie's book, *You Are Still a Mother*, that's there as well. Familylifetoday.com.

Speaker 2

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