#7 Heartache & Heaven

How to Make it through Love & Loss.

Randy Kutz is and ordained Pastor & has a Masters in counseling.  Randy & his wife, Jennifer Kutz share their life's journey & loss of their beautiful 10 year old daughter, Ellie.  Even though their heart still aches, in this encouraging message, they give practical tips & guidelines that have helped them make it though the tough times of life.

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The spiritual world is a very real place and we have an enemy of our souls that is trying to mimic, mock and make light of the real and psychics, any type of medium and those things. Though they be real as far as the spiritual experiences that you might encounter with them, they are leading you down an absolute path of separation from God, and you will never find the fulfillment. You will never find the happiness. That is promised us by having a life filled with the truth. Hi, my name is Camille Battaglia with Heavenly Hookups. I'm so happy that you could join us today. I'm here with Randy and Jennifer Kutz. You're in for a treat today. Randy is an associate pastor at Foundation Stone Church in Ohio. He has a passion for the prophetic, also if anybody needs counseling, we can talk more about how they can get ahold of you later. Let's start at the beginning. How did you two meet? It's funny actually I was a youth pastoring at the time and of course this beautiful, a woman sitting here next to me was a member of the youth group. I had to be really careful at first not to spark any scandalous anything. So I had to had a long time to wait until she we're about four years or so apart. So as I was ministering to the youth. And I was ordained an elder at the young age of 21 years old. Being put in charge of the youth group I waited patiently for just a year or two until Jennifer graduated. Then I just approached her and what's comical about it as I'll let her tell this part in a minute. I went to her parents to ask permission before we ever started dating or before she even knew that I had an inkling of a liking of her. So I went to them and to simply ask them when I went there, they thought because I was an elder in the church. They thought I was there on some official church business to talking about something real important. And it was very important, but I wanted to ask permission if I could date their daughter, who happened to be on a mission trip to Acapulco at the time. And so it just started off on this weird note. I'll let Jennifer jump in here. So yeah, I was in Acapulco and I hadn't thought anything about it. Randy had been chatting with me a little more often prior to this all happening. I was one of the leaders in training for youth group and I just was really involved. He was just really getting me connected in with everything. So right before I left for my Acapulco trip, he gave me a big hug. It was a Christmas Eve service and he looked at me, said, Hey, don't have too much fun down there. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, all right, have a good Christmas. I thought I sent a pretty clear message. I had no clue. So I get back from Acapulco and it's this whole ordeal, like all of our flights, there's like hundreds of kids down there with this youth ministry. Our flights were all delayed and so here I am I'm 17 at this moment. I'm 17 and a half, and I'm all by myself in a Mexico airport trying to find my way home. And I was making arrangements with my parents over the phone and the airline put us up in a hotel for the night. I was talking to my mom and as I was closing out the conversation, she said, Hey, by the way, what do you think about Randy? And like Randy Kutz, she said, yeah. I said he's a good youth pastor. Why? Just oh, nothing, honey, we'll see you tomorrow when you get home. And that was it. That's the weirdest question ever. And as I laid my head down that night, I was just about to go to sleep. The Lord just told me like, just point blank. He says, you're gonna marry Randy. And I'm like what? He said, you're gonna marry Randy. And so when I got back home, my parents just had so much to tell me, they were like, you'll never believe what happened while you were gone. And they told me the whole story of him coming to talk to them and they just thought I'd be so surprised that they didn't want me to go into a conversation with them not knowing what his thoughts were and intentions. So which I was quite nieve. But I ended up approaching her and asked her out in the, I don't know, the rest is history. We became good friends. And then we tried to, we did our best. We really felt the Lord gave us a strategy and how we should handling our dating and courting life and kept ourselves pure by the grace of God and was able to have a wonderful dating courting relationship, always with the intention of, we're in this to see if marriage is a real possibility, we didn't want to go into it, blindly just, throwing darts at a dartboard, wondering, we wanted to be very intentional from the outset and of course the Lord had the plans and like I said, the rest was history. The hard part about our dating relationship came towards the end of our engagement when we were just a few months about to be married. And we experienced the loss of my father and he was only 46 years old. That's part of our story. Very young and very surprised, he went in for a pretty standard operation and ended up with a pretty severe infection and he died very inexplicably one night. This was about exactly two months before our wedding. It was actually the day of my bridal shower. And so, it rocked our world, but it just it's amazing. Suddenly impacted just absolutely everything. My father was the, at the time he was the associate pastor, the role, I currently know fill and he was associate pastor at our church. It just rocked the whole, the church world our family life obviously. And because it was so unexpected everybody just went reeling and we actually even talked in considered, do we postpone our wedding? Do we go through all that? And we felt like the Lord said to continue on. And we were by the grace of God, able to find the strength to just continue on. And my mom was just an amazing woman of faith and her story is another amazing story, but just being able to latch onto the things that God had for us and learn how to trust. However, when we first got married, we had a rough couple of years. Let me say that way just as a young man and as a young woman trying to reel from a emotional shock as well as other issues. And this has been a part of her life that really never got addressed. We started off shaky, but by the grace of God, we learned how to trust in him and brought us through a lot of insecurities and brought us through a lot of my part. I'll speak for me, a lot of selfish behavior. And God really taught us some very valuable lessons, but praise God, his plan is always much better than ours, when you yield to the process and God ended up doing amazing thing with us, that's 23 years ago, 23 years. God has been faithful. Yeah. How did you guys get through that? What was the thing that made you trust each other? Was it just hanging on for three years or was there a strategy? Was a difficult time. When we got married, I was just barely 20. I'd had this whole fairy tale image in my mind of, we've saved ourselves. We've been pure, we've done all the right steps. And, God's going to honor that, and, our marriage is going to be blessed. And then we walk through this time of just great loss. And I'm thinking in my mind okay, Lord, this is not the picture I had. This is not how it's supposed to be. And here I am, I'm now married. And my husband is just he's grieving. He's lost his father. He's grieving. And I don't know how to handle that. And so both of us just really had to lean into the Lord. We both had to do some work of just growing up and letting ourselves grieve and and really just trusting the Lord. And as we trusted the Lord, we were beginning to just be able to lean into each other and trust each other too. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was. And, but some of those things, I know that from the bottom of my heart, that it's through the testings and trials that we go through that sometimes the greatest gems, the greatest blessings that come in our life come out of those things because we've learned something. And we, when we learn how to die to ourselves and our agendas, then the Lord can really, show us, that was the work of Christ. And my father was a prophetic man himself. Matter of fact, he was, I would say a greater prophet than me, certainly, and many others who he was a father in the prophetic in many ways in our church and in the whole prophetic movement that we're involved with and learning how to, and losing him was just so traumatic for me because I identified so much with him and we were very closely bonded and and helping me in ministry and walk alongside me was just the greatest joy of my life. And then all of a sudden that was gone. I was still an elder in the church and I was all of a sudden felt like a lot of pressure was on me and and I didn't know how to relate to my bride. Like I, I thought I, I could always think I'll go ask dad for questions. And I, we had great counseling. We had a good pre-marriage counseling heading into things but it just didn't set us up for what we, our expectations. I will say that, weren't on the same level. And again, until we learned how to really surrender those expectations, it was difficult going but God gave us a strategy. I remember talking to our senior pastor a couple of times and he just, had to really teach me how to love my wife, unconditionally and just say, this is the wife of my youth, and no matter what, it's, my selfish desires had to be laid aside and I had to look towards her needs and learn how to respect your needs and lay those things down. And that through a process of time, we just learned how to embrace each other in a dramatic way and praise God, I believe were very strong, healthy marriage, and this is the glory of God, we're pressing on, even to this day, we go through our things, but we just continue to look to him for everything. Was there a pivotal moment where you both realized we've made it through this season? I think they're there. I would point to a couple of things actually, but earliest on, I point to, it was probably, it was. I would say three, three or four years into our marriage. After my, of course my father had passed, we had to make a decision about, how are we going to be able to buy a house? And, we had, we were living in a mobile home at the time and we had to make the decision to move back home for a little while with my mom, partially to help her out because she was still going through a hard time. Just still picking up the pieces after my dad left and us, being able to save enough to put a down payment on our first home and things like that. And it was a hard decision. And when we sat there and made that decision, we had to, we had a real come to Jesus meeting with ourselves and that was one of them. The next one was the birth of our first daughter, Eliana. When she was born. It, obviously we were still were living with my mother at the time. And that was just such a huge, I don't know, how would you describe it? It was a blessing and a trial, because, we basically had to make an apartment out of my mom's basement and it was just difficult, trying to work together to make all that happen. Jennifer working and me still in the throws of, I was working full-time at several different jobs before the Lord brought me full-time in the ministry, I was a director down at Toledo's largest homeless shelter. And those were some pivotal moments in my life. And I met a man when my daughter was just born. I met a man down at cherish mission, I'll say his name, Dan Rogers. And he was a tremendous blessing in my life and became a a father figure to me and mentored me and gave me opportunity. When, I didn't feel like I deserved it, but he helped me find who out who I was. Through that time of working with, some of the hardest conditions of, homelessness and alcoholism and all kinds of people that were dependent, he taught me how to find myself in that and find who I was in Christ and be able to minister. I would like to believe that bled over into our marriage. In many ways saved our marriage because we were. It was rough but God gave us grace and through a strong mentor, he was able to help hold our hand and to get us through a lot of very difficult times. I don't know if you want to say anything there? I don't think of a specific turning point. I know that each of us have been 100% committed to making this work. Divorce was never an option. No. And so it's just been this process, I just really felt like I was learning how marriage sanctifies us. It shows us more and more of the things that the Lord wants us to work through and work on. And I definitely think that he's worked up that process. I feel like we would go through really good seasons and then we would, oh, here's another thing we need to work on. And then we worked through that and then we'd go through a good season and, oh, here's another thing we need to work on. God's faithful. to continue to work those things in us, but it was around the time of our daughter's death eight years ago. Where we really dug in. We really dug in, it was, and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but it was in the darkness of coming out from that grief cloud, like at about nine months after her death that we really sought help. Like just, we just wanted it done. Like this time we got to get this thing, we've got to work it through. From a traumatic event of my father passing kinda pushed us into this mode. And then another traumatic event of our daughter's passing, pushed us into the mode of, it showed, it revealed all the cracks in the foundation. And we had to go to work. We saw counseling, we went to a a nationally known marriage therapy program. I started my journey of getting my graduate degree in counseling and it was a through all that, it was just such a, just a long while it was a couple year process of us, really, again, never, we never had considered divorce but we knew that we weren't living the kind of life and the marriage that honored the Lord in the ways that we needed to. We wanted more. We wanted better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted to grow. Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. What I'm hearing you two say is that you were engaged and committed. Like those are two key words, like maybe you weren't engaged to where everything was, the way you had imagined your married life would be, but you were engaged. You were committed, like divorce is not happening and we're going to work through this. So I think that's a key thing with the commitment is also to be engaged. You have to be present. And you have to do it together. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly the Lord's definitely brought us to this place where like we have the ability to help others and to speak into others' lives because we've walked through so many of the things that married couples will deal with. And so it's been it's been a blessing on that end to be able to comfort others and to walk with others and to have an understanding of where they're at. I can see that the Lord's definitely used it. To me, it keeps going back to the, the dark moments of your life. You know what I mean? It kept us engaged because, since divorce wasn't an option. And even though there was a lot of tension at times, it kept us focused on, on what we needed to be focused on and learning the process. And instead of saying, okay, we're just going to quit. Try something else. We stayed engaged and, again, through the pain, and then, like Jennifer said, when our eldest daughter passed away eight years ago, it opened up a whole new level of understanding for us that, Ecclesiastes 3:11 is something that comes to mind often, and it says, that he has placed eternity in our hearts. But that man cannot determine its beginning from its end. That whole verse just sent me on a quest of understanding, what is the heart of God towards us? And what is the heart of God towards us as not just as a couple, but as a family and as a human race, he wants us to be so engaged with him in those ways, even in our darkest moments where we all feel like giving up and giving in, if we can just continue to press in and press through, he will speak to us. And that's a lot of ways how it's shaped a lot of the prophetic things in our life that we share with people and share with couples and, as we help them and help ourselves really enter into a place where knowing Christ becomes the number one goal and understanding what's happening in an eternal realm. And you could use that eternity and call it the kingdom of God and, pressing into the kingdom and all those ways, it opens you up to be able to realize that there's freedom beyond religion. There's freedom way beyond just the day-to-day road of this is what I have to do, and this is what I have to be as a Christian. It opens you up into a whole new parallel existence where you are living. Even though we're having a life in the natural world, we're have this parallel life where we're living in the kingdom of God simultaneously and the richness and the blessing of being led by the spirit and letting him come and enter and dwell us is just the most magnificent thing. Yeah. Do you want to get into a little bit more about what happened with your daughter and then what happened after that? I'll let Jennifer jump in here and I'll just interject a few things here and there. I'm sure. All right. So Ellie, so we have just introduce the family a little bit, Eliana. She at this point, she would be 18. Sophia 16. Sam is 14 and Tabitha, the baby is 11. Now I'm going to go backwards a little bit Tabitha, when she was born. She surprisingly we had Ellie in the hospital and then we had Sophia very suddenly at home when she was born. And then that was such a great experience that we ended up having the other kiddos at home. That's how I'm going to put it. I delivered my daughter in the bathroom as we were trying to get to the hospital. So yeah, so Tabitha, we were planning the birth at home and once she was born, we didn't know it, but she had a congenital heart defect that was life-threatening. And she ended up by the grace of God. Surviving until we got her medical help and they deemed that she had a heart condition called transposition of the great arteries. And essentially she was getting no oxygen blood flow to the, her body. And 20 years ago they would say, Hey, we can't really do anything for you for this. Just enjoy your baby for a few days. And then you'll have to let them go. Maybe that was 30 years ago now, but they've come up with some really good surgery. They were able to do open-heart surgery, arterial switch on day, I think 10. And that whole situation was such a trial. It was so intense. We didn't know from one moment to the next, what was going to happen or if she would survive, they couldn't promise us that she would one survive or to have any kind of life. Once she did have the surgery, they couldn't promise anything. It was just this whole thing of trusting the Lord and it opened our eyes to a whole community of congenital heart defect families. And it just a whole nother thing that we'd never experienced. It was so intense. And I really thought, okay, the Lord's going to be using this one. This is the difficult thing that our families walk through, that the Lord's going to use, and we're going to be able to reach out to other people. And then just, what was it Three years later, three years later Ellie's 10th birthday. She right around that time she came down with a little sickness. We just thought it was a normal childhood illness. It actually, it was strep throat. But she had become a little extra delirious. And so we took her to the hospital and the doctors looked at us and said, mom, dad it's just a little fever. It's just a little virus. Give her a double dose of Motrin and go home. In the process though, and the testing, like it was a traumatic experience. So they did, they gave her a double dose of Motrin, sent her home. She came out of her like delirium that she had been in overnight. Then the next day it was church day and Randy was preaching that day. So Ellie and I stayed home and we laughed about what had happened the day before, because she had been so delirious that she was saying such silly things. And she's quite cognitive, she was with it. She was telling me the story. She had spent the night with grandparents the night before. And she was telling me stories from that. And then she was really sad. She's mom, I was hoping to go to church today. I had invited a waitress to church. She told me she was going to come. He said, I wish I could be there to greet her. It was just a sweet day that we'd had together. And then Randy and the kiddos came home and she placed her order for some soup from somewhere Trisha's or something. Then she said, mom, I want to get a bath before they come home. Cause she'd been sick and sitting in bed all for the last couple of days. And so she went up to get a bath and while she was getting a bath, she looked at me and she said, mom there's something wrong with my legs. Can you help me get out of the bathtub? And so I helped her out and she sat on her bed and she was like, man, mom, I don't, I think I need you to carry me down the stairs. I'm not feeling too well. And we got her downstairs just in time for everyone to get home and sweet Sophia. At that time, she wanted to be with her sister they're only 18 months apart. And she was sitting there trying to feed her soup and just telling her about the day at church and stuff. And in that process, like her leg started to cramp up and we were really confused. We thought maybe she's dehydrated. We were calling the doctor and trying to figure it out. But what really was happening was her body was shutting down. She had gone septic and from the strep, they'd never treated the strep. They actually scratched the back of her throat during the tests the day before when they swapped her and they swapped her. And there was a wound on the back of her throat. This is where the sepsis ending up going in, where the infection entered the bloodstream. So we raced her back. We raced her back to the hospital and I'm on the way there. I was sitting in the backseat with her and Randy was racing through all the lights and trying to get there quick. And as we were going, she was telling me, she was like, mom, I can't feel my knees now. And then mom, I can't feel, I can't feel my waist. And it was just systematically going up. And as we pulled into the ER, just like that moment, it just hit me like, oh my goodness, what's going on here? And I just was able to tell her, I said, baby girl, I love you. You're so beautiful. And I think we scooped her up and we placed her in the wheelchair and ran in just like any kind of ER, show you would say, you just yelling for help. And in that last moment she helped us get her into the wheelchair. And that, I think that was her very last thing she did. And. And Randy didn't even know it. He was parking the car as I'm running into the emergency room and they scooped her up and started yelling, cardiac arrest and doing all the things to try to bring her back. They worked on her for about an hour and then just couldn't get her back. So that was, yeah, that was very difficult. But in that time, yeah. We had so many people surround us, like within moments at the hospital. Yeah. I, I would pause here to say, that, you cannot devalue the body of Christ enough, and I would encourage anybody to everyone to get as involved as you can within the body of Christ. Even though there could be a lot of pain and a lot of hurt involved with being with people. There's, we found so much strength. We, I dunno how many people came to the hospital, a hundred people or so was there, and trying to support us as my daughter was fighting for her life and that she was actually, they were trying to work to bring her back. In the whole process, one of my dear friends came up to me and seeing the, just the outpouring of love and all the things that were happening. And he whispered in my ear, he said, Randy said, We get to keep this forever. And even though there was such a tragic loss, the reality that, that our family here is so temporary it's temporal and what the reality of it is in the kingdom of God it's not it's forever. And we get to keep that forever. We, that never goes away. And I have lived on that statement for these past eight years realizing, and knowing that the reality of my life is very little to do with what's around me, we have, since, the Lord has opened up ministry opportunities and we run a counseling center for grieving people. The Lord has brought properties into our life and all kinds of things that would consume our time. But. All those things are inconsequential to the knowledge. And knowing that what we're actually living in a parallel life is so much greater because we can enter into the spirit realm and we can interact with those that have gone before, and we can have experiences with Christ and he can bring us into a new understanding. And we're surrounded, the scripture says right, with a great cloud of witnesses and they're witnessing the fact that they made it, and if they were here with us in the flesh, I preached this many of the funerals that I do as a pastor. You know what I mean? If that person that passed on no matter their situation, if they were here, they'd be telling us one thing. And one thing only surrender everything to getting to know Christ. That's their message that be their message to us. So don't worry about anything. Just develop your relationship with Christ because that's where true life is and all these other things. That's what the scripture seek you first, the kingdom of God and his rights and all of these things that we worry about. All of these things that we want will be added to us. But when we have this amazing opportunity to see the kingdom of God in its fullness and its rally and live it, and he's invited us in by the power and the work of the holy spirit. It's beyond our comprehension in this world, which is great for me because I don't consider myself the smartest guy in the world. But I love the fact that the Lord does not have to use the most intellectual. He doesn't have to use somebody that can know the Bible cover to cover. All he wants is somebody that's willing, yielded and submitted to him. And he can open up the windows of heaven, not just as far as blessing us here in this life, but as far as blessing us for our soul and blessing us internally. And that's where the Lord is as just deposited in us, this desire to help people get through these difficult times and help them. To think about and look at and see eternity from a different perspective than how we just all wait for eternity as if it's gonna, the moment I die here, then I'll have to deal with it. I just could not believe, disbelieve that anymore. Your eternity is now, we are already alive forever, and Christ already gave us eternal life and we can begin to live that life now and reap the benefits of here in this life and have a mission and have a purpose and have goals in this life that are become meaningful, become filled with purpose because we're seeing life and seeing the pain and the joys and the life that we experience through his eyes and being able to help others as is, becomes the mission, because you're experiencing it yourself. Wow. A lot's going through my mind right now. Like, how do you deal with maybe unbelievers who've lost a loved one or, even speak to the fear that's going on in society right now, I feel like I'm hearing like all these questions that people might have surrounding what happened to you. You don't get to that place though. It's definitely a work in progress. I know that we didn't suddenly in this place, in this understanding when we lost Ellie we had to fight, we had to work through the pain. We had to work through the grief, the trauma we were desperate to have others around us who understood what we were going through. It was really important to be surrounded with people who would speak into that and influence that and walk with you and sometimes carry you. And that's important. On a very practical side of things, hearing somebody's story. And, somebody that maybe has experienced grief that say I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't understand, the spiritual world then, in talking with somebody that at the beginning of that processes is sitting down with somebody and saying, tell me your story, tell me, what you're dealing with. Tell me how what this loss meant to you and how are you dealing with it? And tell me about this person. Tell me about their life. Tell me about who they were and tell me, what hopes and dreams. And even though that is like, ripping a bandaid off in a lot of ways. It's such a could be a very painful experience. It's so necessary in the process of being able to share that story. And for the believers out there that are one of help and work with people that are struggling there, my advice would be to be that voice of listening ear, where they can just come to and they can just feel the openness and the warmth that, that Christ would ultimately provide through you. And for those that are struggling, that, that don't, have have the security and the knowledge of who they are in Christ. I would say open yourself up to see and to hear, what else is available besides just dealing with the pain. The pain is not going anywhere, the loss is not going anywhere, but we can have a relationship with the Lord that will help us. I don't know how? It'll be quite honest with you, when we're dealing with and helping people that are in the world, I it's a very difficult thing because they don't have this connection. That their whole world was wrapped up in this person. Their whole life was wrapped up in that person. And we have to help them get to the place where we can help them understand that, there's a hope, we have a hope, the scripture says we have the anchor of our souls, a hope that we have that, that we don't know what the future holds. We don't know, but we can begin to trust in Jesus and we can begin to put the anchor in our life that will bring us to the next place. And helping them navigate those waters but just by being a listening ear, just by being somebody that is open, you will see opportunities that will open in front of you. And we have to learn to develop that type of a mentality and a heart of, what Christ cared for everyone equally. He loved the people so much. He wasn't about, letting somebody just stay lost, he had a concern for those that were lost and he, wasn't just accepting, these uncertain times that live in, there, people are, they don't know what to do. I know the person that does know what to do, and that brings me hope and peace and life, and I can learn to trust. In the knowledge of knowing that he is, he's got this no matter what happens in life, he's got this and we just have to, we just have to live in encourage each other. You don't have to seek first, him seek first, the kingdom of God, let it become the thing that, that motivates you. And you that's the number one thing that we can do is to help people to get refocused on what is important. To speak to the fear. That was something I definitely dealt with after Ellie died. Lord, I can't handle the thought of losing another, that fear was really great. And I remember specifically wrestling with the Lord on that one because, she was young, she was healthy. There was absolutely no pre-existing conditions. This just came out of the blue. So to think that, life is so fragile as a mom, that's so difficult to deal with and when COVID comes along and we're dealing with all of the fears that the world has put in front of us right now. I'm challenged as a person cause I've already lost. I've already lost a kid to a very common illness. So I'm challenged to keep that fear in check. And I just feel like the Lord has challenged me. He said that we can't live in fear. We must, we absolutely must just keep our eyes on him and live. We have to live and we can't live in fear. We just need to live and be those that can walk with one another and carry the burden of those who are trying to break out of fear. But yeah it's hard when all those things are presented and thrown at you though. Yeah, I know. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. That's some really great advice because a lot of times, you look at someone who's lost someone but you don't know what to say to that person. I think that's very helpful and you're right Jesus was just concerned for everybody or non-believers. One of the, one of the comforting phrases that king David even writes about as though I'd make my bed in hell thou art with me. He didn't say, I take you out of there. It doesn't say I do. He says you're with me and this, and that's one of the best things we can do and be for people it's just with them in their pain with them. And even now, with the world, dealing with all this stuff it's dealing with, we have to be in the world. We're not of it, but we're in it, and just be present with people is a very, just a comforting thing. If we recognize the power that we have as believers, just at being present people, I think a lot of good will will happen. Come of it. Yeah. That's incredible. And was your marriage challenged during this time? About nine months and felt like I had alluded to this earlier about nine months after Ellie had died, that grief cloud, that kind of makes you a person numb was starting to lift for me. I started to go into this dark place. I just, it scared me how. How painful and desperate I felt. And it was at that time that I just, I told Randy, I said, listen, I have to get rid of all other pain in my life right now, because I can only, I can't handle anything else. I know that the grief is not going to go away suddenly. It's not oh, you grieve for a year. And you're good. It's gonna be something that we work through regularly, we've got to deal with this. We've got to deal with the pain and the difficulties, the things that we struggle with our marriage, then I really feel like we had the grace to really pull together and let each other grieve the way each other needed to grieve through that time. I feel like we've really had the grace to do that. There's a lot of statistics out there. It says that, those difficult things such as child loss and, it increases the risk of difficulties in marriage and stuff like that. I don't feel like it caused more difficulties in our marriage. I felt like it actually drew us together on one end on one side of it. But on the other side, it was time to get rid of this issue, these pains that we were dealing with in the marriage. And so that's when we really dug in and did our work. That's when we just really buckled down and committed. For me, it on my side of it, it had a lot to do with me, surrendering. What I needed to do, to be a man and be really actually accountable to other men, and my wife, and learning what that means meant to be honest and open and sharing. It's difficult, for men out there, it's very difficult for us to open up and to share and to be honest with our feelings and even for men, it's hard even to decipher what your feelings are. Sometimes, I still struggle even trying to figure out what it is I'm feeling, but then, once I learned how to convey that message, that's where some of the healing process begins in learning how to say something, and fortunately, I was married to a an understanding wife, who dealt with my sin, dealt with my issues and with with a grace and was able to deal with some stuff and likewise me with her. As we learned how to share and learn how to communicate with real spirit led emotion, where you're not letting your emotions control you, but you're surrendering them to the Lord and then letting him help you to figure out what it is that you're actually dealing with. Then you're able to communicate those things and able to share. And it opens you up to a new level of trust in one another, as a result. That's where the healing process begins, and speaking with kindness to one another and speaking, with an agenda, speaking life, and blessing, my senior pastor, one of the things that challenged me with early on and all the time as he's one of the guys that holds me accountable, he's are you blessing your wife? I said I pray for every day. And he said, that's not what I said, are you speaking blessing? Spirit led blessings and I had to stop and had to realize, the life and death is in the power of the tongue. As we said in 1st Corinthians 14:3 says he, who prophesies speaks edification exhortation and comfort. Revelation 19:10 tells us for the spirit of Jesus Christ is the spirit of prophecy, and so I had to realize that I had to speak kindness over my wife. I had to speak life. And as I began to bless her life, I begin to bless her coming in her, going in her health and her day and her conversation. And as they begin to do those things, that brings a healing process where you can begin to share and begin to be open and I teach that when I teach even the little kids, about the receiving the baptism of the holy spirit or mentoring into the prophetic realm, I say, it starts with us just speaking kindly, because the enemy doesn't want to speak in kindly. He wants us to speak negative and curses and all those things. But if we speak kindly, then you are beginning to understand what it means like to listen to the holy spirit, because that's how he speaks to us. I was learning authenticity and honesty and speaking those things in love. Like, I would appease in a situation, but I wouldn't speak honestly. That wasn't fair to my husband. I wouldn't be fully truthful. I wasn't holding integrity by not being honest and truthful with how I was feeling or, I would let those frustrations get all pent up inside of me. And then I, I would grow upset and frustrated and or bitter. And so that would lead to me, not being able to connect with them. And so I was just learning to that time, just how to be just how to be honest and authentic with him. And that was really important. That's hard to do. I don't know if or not, but I struggle with that too. It takes intentionality. And then after awhile with intentionality it becomes normal. It becomes, I have it. And then you have to sometimes practice it somewhere. But I think through that time to the Lord was working on healing us in all different kinds of ways. And there was specifically with the trauma of losing Ellie. I had one experience specifically where the Lord was just showing me he just showed me this vision. All of these pains and all of these emotions, I was trying to give them a name and to give them to him. And as I gave them to him, it was like they were these bricks, these heavy bricks in a bag. And, I'd have anger. I would have fear or, any of the emotions that I had, I was handing him each of these bricks and then I would hand them the brick that said pain. And so he take each of these and he would, he'd take them from that from me and dispose of them. But when I came to the one that was what that was labeled pain. He took that so preciously and his hands and he crushed it and he created this beautiful gem and he placed it back in my hands and he said, listen, this one is for you to hold. And this is not just for you, but it's for the people. It's for others around you, that our pain is precious. Our pain is something that we can relate to others on and it's a precious gift to be able to walk with others in their difficulties, in their trials and their struggles. And it's something beautiful that as humans, we can walk with one another. That was very vivid to me that he really, from that point on the trauma and the trauma responses that I had that were triggering every time I would go into flashbacks of the difficult time he healed me of all of that in that very moment. Like I hadn't, I have not had that experience since then the trauma responses. But that pain, it just, that, that doesn't go away. The pain, we don't lose the pain. We that's it's the love that you have for someone that you've lost that is not there with you. And that's a precious thing. It's a precious thing to be able to walk with others and their difficulty. So that was another thing that the Lord walked with me through that time and helped me to understand. Yeah, that's beautiful. Randy, do you want to talk a little bit about your experience with heaven? And yeah, so yeah it was it was about a year or so after Ellie passed. I had been obviously just grieving and I was with my senior pastor and we were doing what we title, our school of the holy spirit. And we were ministering to a church. And in the last session, we teach on just visions, entering into trance, like states where we, just let your faith go and you just let the Lord begin to, really speak to you and comfort you. As we were in this place of worship and deep intercession and deep worship and just deeply interacting with the holy spirit, the Lord just showed me took me on a vision. And the vision just became this, the most vivid experience that I've just about ever had. And as I was there, Lord took me into a place of just this beautiful pasture, beautiful green pasture. And I saw my father and I went over to him and as I'm walking over to him, I just started talking to him and say, dad, how are you doing? And I felt the presence of the Lord there, with me, holding me through this process. And my dad started talking to me and started saying, Randy, just share some personal things with me. I'm proud of you. And some things like that. And he said, your daughter's here. And we're, I'm just having such a wonderful time with her and, and I said, I know, and that I looked up and I saw Ellie off in the distance. And she was playing with another long dark hair girl who I'd never seen before. And Ellie, she come running over to me and embraced me and I had, it was just a very emotional experience. And as I was embracing her and talking to her, I said, who's this young lady you with? And she goes, oh, this is her name was Rebecca. I don't know why I remember that. But she told me her name was Rebecca. And she's waiting for her parents to get here too. And she's, she was alive, during Jesus' day. And I, that started to just, put a lot of pieces together in my brain about you, the eternal nature, the Lord. But then as I'm talking to my daughter, I failed to mention that I have a twin brother also that passed away when we were babies three months old, he died of SIDS and I never got to know my brother, Andrew and Andrew walked over. And as we were talking. Andrew came over to me. And my daughter ran over to him and hugged him and they obviously had known each other and Andrew walked over to me and just said, is it okay if I look out for her? Until you get, look over, look after her, once you get here. And of course my heart was just overwhelmed. And I said of course, and I started to put the picture together, my brain of the family of God, and how the family of God works, that we're all in him. And as we are in him, he was the one keeping us together. He was the one that even though this was a vision and I was using my imagination, it was such a real thing for me. And it began to put me on a quest. Like I mentioned, Ecclesiastes 3 and some of those verses that are begin to study. John 14, of course, that Christ, I've go to prepare a place for you. And this place has many rooms and all kinds of stuff. The reality of knowing that's in the here and now that's not somewhere off in the future. I could begin to enter into that now because he's there and he's prepared a place for me and he's going there and he's even invited me to be there. And anyway, so as, and then, and even now Camille I do it as faithful as I can, but lately in the last six months or so, I've just been on a, an amazing quest with the Lord, even during my personal times of worship or corporate times of worship, I have just been able to enter into this place and even see this pastor again, I go there all the time and I don't want to sound wacky or crazy or anything like that, but it's this place I, in the spirit that I just get to interact with the Lord, and as I'm interacting with the Lord I'm seeing, almost what's behind the veil. You know what I mean? The scripture says it's just this. Like looking through a glass darkly or just on the other side of this veil and that's how close it is, the reality of the second. And the Lord wants to show us those things. And so I can, I see things and I interact with the Lord and I interact with those that have gone before. And I see the beauty of what the Lord has created. And one of my goals is when I get to heaven, I want to be familiar with it. I know I'm going to be blown away. I'm going to be there's things I'll never be able to explain or, and all those things and be shocked. But at the same time, I want that familiarity in my heart. Like I know this place because I've allowed myself to accept what the Lord's doing. I believe that shapes us as a purpose person. And as people, when we can accept who we are in Christ and accept that, I've already received eternal life. I don't have to wait until this. I shed this mortal body, which I, this mortal body, when it goes, until it goes, I've got purpose, I've got destiny to fulfill and I've got a job to do. I've got a family to love and to train the people to train. But man when we get there, our joy will be fulfilled. The glory, the joy, unspeakable and full of glory. One of my favorite authors C.S. Lewis yeah, I'm sure everybody's very familiar with them. He, he has a devotional book called the business of heaven and I'll just give everybody the secret right now. The business of heaven is joy, so he gets that place. And one of the things he explains in this book is, the little snippets on earth that we have of joy, of the happiness, of even pain, of even the stuff that we go through. It's just a shadow of what is to come. You know what I mean? Because at some point, we can learn to live in that joy and if I learn to let joy become my portion. The joy of the Lord is our strength. It's his grace upon our lives. That gets me through these uncertain times. It gets me through the grief and the pain. I go through times of pain all the time, so missing my daughter. It will hit me unexpectedly, and as I've learned how to grieve. Over the years, I have learned how to let joy, just become my portion. And that's not to say tritely that, oh, I, every time I feel pain, I just make myself happy. But I allow the pain. If this makes sense, I allow the pain to, to reveal to me the joy that is set before me, it was the joy that was set before Christ by which he endured his greatest pain. The cross and if we can learn to emulate that behavior and Christ and the holy spirit can also show us the same thing that through our pain, we can see the joy behind the curtain, so to speak it's that makes this life worth living. And I know that it makes the one to come more than we could ever possibly explain as far as happiness and fulfillment and just that's the whole meaning. That's the whole purpose of what he created us for to rule and reign with him to be a part of him to not just be subjects of him, but to be part of his family, his bride, his beloved, and we're get to co-reign with them. It's just such a, an amazing concept. And sometimes, it's, blows the mind to think about, but boy, it's a lot of fun to think about the same time. Jennifer, did you want to say anything else about what Randy was just talking about? So I haven't, speaking of heaven, like it's really funny how losing a loved one just really puts an emphasis on the heavenly yearning. I'd grown up thinking about heaven and okay, that's our destination, but that yearning the becomes less scary. It becomes less out there. It becomes more normalized in your life. After Ellie died, we were, I was desperate. I was desperate to, to learn about heaven. I was desperate to learn about others who had walked this path. I ended up with a book in my hands from a dear family, friends. It was called my time in heaven and it was this gentlemen's experience. He was a pastor his experience, he was in a car accident and he woke up toe tagged in the morgue. And the story he wrote was his spiritual experience in the interim and in the in-between time. And a couple of the things that he wrote about it just really, it really comforted my heart. One was that when he was there he was in this waiting area and in this waiting area, he saw this elderly woman walked through the veil and as she did, she became youthful and he was just observing. And one of the things you saw was a little baby who sat there and had the full capacity to speak and have conversations and stuff. But the baby said, Jesus, let me stay little so that she could raise me. And just how precious it was and the revelation in that moment, in my own heart, that he's going to redeem every minute. Every minute lost will be redeemed. And that was such a comfort to my heart. Then another thing besides all the, just the glorious pictures that he painted that just brought so much joy to my heart, just to think about. But one of the other things that he said that in the center of the city of God, and there were these clouds in the sky and he says, I looked at him. I realized that there were people on these clouds and I'm thinking, oh, great. Cloud of witnesses or something. He said, no, It's those on earth who are worshiping. They don't realize that when they enter that place of worship, they are truly in heavenly places worshiping with us. And just how closely connected we are to the heavenly realm. And we just have no idea. And so I just love to imagine that I'm in that place worshiping alongside of Ellie and all of our other loved ones who are there already. And it's just, it's such an encouragement to my own heart to just to know, and to understand just how close we are in the spiritual realm that we just don't even realize. Yeah, that's beautiful. One thing I just feel like we need to talk about just for one minute for an unbeliever, this is not the same as going to a psychic, like there's a difference between what Randy experienced and I don't want people to think that they can go and experience this, by paying for someone that's false. Let's talk a little bit about that. The spiritual world is a very real place and we have an enemy of our souls that is trying to mimic and mock and make light of the real and psychics and any type of medium and those things. Though they be real as far as the spiritual experiences that you might encounter with them, they are leading you down an absolute path of separation from God, and you will never find the fulfillment. You will never find the happiness. That is promised us by having a life filled with the truth. Jesus Christ is only one way. There's only absolutely only one way. And to try to experience those through, through other sources is just going to lead to death and separation and brokenness. They make all the claims that they want to, but that is not how you get there. Those are fake experiences through demonic forces, through unreal spiritual beings, that are leading you down a path that have, that are forsaking their first state and forsaking their inheritance. They're trying to lead you into a place of destruction and so psychics and all those things are a, a very pale counterfeit because they don't leave you fulfilled. They don't leave you with peace. They don't leave you with joy. They leave you with questions and leave you with all these things. No matter what, they'll try to tell you, because they're masters at deception, but the reality of it is there's only one way and that's through the truth of Jesus Christ. And I would if anyone's trying to gain access to a spiritual realm through psychics or witches or mediums or any of those entities, they are, they're setting themselves up for I'll just be honest. They're setting themselves up for torture and their end is going to be much, much worse than they ever started out being. Thank you. You said that very succinctly. If there's anything else that you want to share, and then Randy, if you could close us out in a prayer for people who may have lost loved ones. Sure. Yeah. When do you have anything you want to close with dear? I would just say, just as a closing thought, the eternal realm is a wonderful, beautiful place. It's available through the finished work of Jesus Christ. It's something to look forward to, it's nothing to be taken lightly. If we keep our focus on Jesus Christ and we endeavor to be truly discipled by him and learn to have fellowship one with another and grow in our expectations of what he has called us to then that he's got a world available to us that truly will blow our mind. And know, I'd love to just say a prayer for all those that are grieving and hurting. And for those that are experiencing loss it's, sometimes it's inexpressible, even how to express pain and to feel it and what do you do? What do you say? But let me just offer this prayer. It's just a hope for us. Father in Jesus. Father. I just, I pray for all those right now that are, that have experienced loss that don't know how to deal with it. Lord that, and even ourselves Father God, it's not like we have the corner market on anything, Lord, we're just learning to trust you. And I pray that over everybody that's experiencing loss right now and pain that they would just learn to turn their heart towards you. Not even as an answer for the pain, but as a way to, to live a new life of joy and happiness, even with the pain in their life that you have caused a greatness of your glory to dwell with them and be upon them. Father, I just speak. Absolute grace, absolute blessing, absolute peace Father, God, right now, Father God, over the hearts and minds of those struggling Father, God. And as we look to you, Father, I pray for wisdom. I pray for hope. I pray for supernatural grace to understand what you have brought us into and the joy that is inexpressible and full of glory. Father, I bless all the listeners right now, Father God, even if they're not grieving, I bless them right now in the name of Jesus, with wisdom and power and supernatural might to overcome all the works that the enemy would try to do. He knows that his day is growing shorter and he's pulling out all the stops. But Lord we have a hope in you that is eternal. We have a life in you that is powerful beyond what we could ever possibly imagine or think so, Father, we bless all the listeners, Father God, and we speak life and grace and peace. And the precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. And amen. And Randy, how can the listeners get ahold of you and your wife for either speaking engagements or counseling? Yeah, the best place to, to reach out contact us would be through our website. It's Ellie's house.org, E L I E S H O U S E.org. And that would be, all our information is there and the story, and we'd love to hear from anybody that would like to to reach out and we can offer a hope and peace and no matter where you're at in the world, we can offer counseling through the likes of all the different technologies that are available to us today and different ways of connecting. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you and pray with you and be present with you in your time of grieving. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me here on Heavenly Hookups. Again, my name is Camille Battaglia. Thank you for hitting the subscribe button and following the podcast on all the social media channels. God bless and Have a great week!