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Dads Hurt Too — Miscarriage, Masculinity & the Gospel with Eric Schumacher
232 Plays5 months ago
What does it mean for a man to grieve the loss of a child through miscarriage? In this vulnerable and raw conversation, returning guest Eric Schumacher joins Ken Freire to talk about something most men never speak of out loud: miscarriage from the father’s perspective.
Eric opens up about losing four children through miscarriage and how it challenged his identity, faith, and masculinity. Together, they explore how Christian men often bury their grief, avoid weakness, and wrongly carry shame over losses they can’t explain or fix.
This episode is a powerful reminder: grieving as a man isn’t weakness — it’s worship.
📍 TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Ken welcomes back Eric Schumacher 00:25 – Reflecting on The Good Gift of Weakness01:00 – Why Eric wrote Dads Hurt Too: A Father’s Memoir of Miscarriage02:45 – The origin of the original essay & unexpected response from men 04:20 – Why a short, narrative book was needed for grieving dads 05:06 – “You’re a dad”: Validating the father's grief 05:37 – Why men don’t talk about miscarriage 07:00 – Fix-it mode: The trap for grieving husbands 08:47 – Your grief is not a distraction — it’s a way to love your wife 09:16 – Ken on compartmentalizing pain and fear of breaking down 10:07 – Why men resist weakness — and how Jesus meets us there 11:44 – Shame in miscarriage: “I couldn’t protect my family” 13:34 – The mental spiral of “what if” and the illusion of control 14:14 – Ken shares his own miscarriage story 15:03 – The death of dreams and future hopes 16:53 – Grief delayed: When the due date hits 17:56 – Say something: Breaking the silence after loss 19:08 – The shame of not sharing early pregnancy news 21:01 – Why mourning publicly matters 22:30 – Ken’s honest confession: “I’ll never know if it was a son or daughter” 23:34 – Why stuffing grief doesn't work — and the better way forward 23:45 – Gospel hope for grieving fathers 25:09 – Jesus is not a stoic: A Savior who wept and felt anger at death 26:58 – Jesus understands weakness, failure, and being let down 28:04 – Shame wants to isolate you; Jesus wants to comfort you 29:22 – Ken: “God understands. He lost a Son too.” 30:23 – Trust in the God who will not fail you 30:58 – Eric’s final encouragement: Mark the dates, remember the loss 32:18 – Honor the life in ways that help you grieve 33:56 – “Grief is a way of loving what’s lost.” 34:40 – How men can reach Eric for support 35:24 – Ken closes the episode: Kill shame, stand strong in Christ, live on mission
📘 Resources Mentioned:
- Dads Hurt Too: A Father’s Memoir of Miscarriage by Eric Schumacher
- The Good Gift of Weakness by Eric Schumacher
- Gospel Care Collective: https://gospelcarecollective.org
📱 Connect with Eric Schumacher:Instagram, Twitter, or through ericshumacher.com (Full links in the show notes)
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Book Overview
00:00:29
Ken Freire
Welcome back to another episode of the Shameless Podcast. Today, have a returning guest, Eric Shoemaker. Eric, man, how are you doing, man?
00:00:39
Eric Schumacher
It's great to be here with you, Ken. I'm doing okay. So I'm just glad to be back on the podcast.
00:00:41
Ken Freire
Yes.
00:00:45
Ken Freire
Yeah, man, we were just talking right before started hitting record how we were talking about the first time you came on was The Good Gift of Weakness.
00:00:51
Eric Schumacher
Mm-hmm.
00:00:53
Ken Freire
That was your latest book.
00:00:54
Eric Schumacher
Mm-hmm.
00:00:54
Ken Freire
And I told you, this was probably my top, still, it's 2025 October, still probably my top book of 2025 when I pronounce, announce it to people.
00:01:02
Eric Schumacher
nice.
00:01:03
Ken Freire
i've read a lot of books and was just like i keep going back to it actually i just like oh because there's just certain parts that i've highlighted that that have really hit home for me in the season so really have enjoyed that book but today we're talking about your newest book that depending on when this podcast gets released you'll be talking about and it's dad's hurt to a father's memoir of miscarriage and eric what made you decide to write this book
00:01:06
Eric Schumacher
Mmm.
00:01:09
Eric Schumacher
Mmm.
00:01:11
Eric Schumacher
Hmm.
00:01:20
Eric Schumacher
Hmm.
00:01:24
Eric Schumacher
Hmm.
Personal Experiences with Miscarriage
00:01:28
Eric Schumacher
Yeah, so my wife Jenny and I went through four miscarriages. And growing up, I hardly ever heard miscarriage talked about.
00:01:37
Eric Schumacher
And I think the first time I ever heard of miscarriage was probably sometime in high school when I heard that a relative had had a miscarriage. And then I heard very little about it until think when I was in seminary, and Russell Moore was my theology professor, and he shared about their miscarriages.
00:01:54
Eric Schumacher
is the first time really heard someone talk about the impact that miscarriage had. And then, you know, Jenny and I went on to have three children, healthy births, and we knew of other friends who'd had miscarriages, but,
00:02:10
Eric Schumacher
It hadn't happened to us yet, and then it happened. We went through miscarriages, and I can talk about some of those different experiences as we go through the conversation, if that'd be helpful. But as we walked through that, it was kind of a confusing and bewildering journey, not knowing how to think about it, how to process it.
00:02:28
Eric Schumacher
And there was nothing that I found that was written and available for men that were grieving miscarriage. And it was probably seven, eight years ago now that my friend Emily Jensen at the Risen Motherhood podcast, she co-authored that book, Risen Motherhood. And she asked if I would write an article for their website about my experience as a father with miscarriage so that moms could understand, you know, uh, what their husbands or partners are, were going through during a miscarriage.
00:03:02
Eric Schumacher
And I'm just so grateful for Emily's foresight and thought to even make that request and provide space to, to write and think about it. And I, I went away and just really started just going in deep into what that experience was like for me as a dad and wrote this piece for the Risen Motherhood website, which was the same title, Dad's Hurt to a Father's Memoir of Miscarriage.
00:03:27
Eric Schumacher
And we published it and just started hearing from all these moms who were so thankful that someone was speaking about the father's experience and And then started hearing from dads who were saying, wow, there's no one around that I've been able to talk to. It doesn't seem like anybody understands what I'm going through. And dads reaching out who wanted to talk.
00:03:51
Eric Schumacher
and that led to me sharing Abby Wedgworth's book, uh, held a devotional for moms grieving miscarriage. And when that came out, with the, the good book company, I contacted them and said, Hey, you need to publish something for men, which led to my, uh, devotional hours, uh, biblical comfort for men grieving miscarriage. That's a 31 devotional for men. It's a, you know, it's a,
00:04:16
Eric Schumacher
It's an accessible book, but it's a longer book. And it's had a lot of good response. But it's a lot of, you know, it's 31 chapters where I'm taking common questions that men face as they go through miscarriage and finding answers from who Christ is.
From Article to Book: Helping Fathers Grieve
00:04:31
Eric Schumacher
But that could be a lot to put in a man's hands the first day after miscarriage. And in God's timing, Risen Motherhood has ended their ministry and they're archiving their website.
00:04:44
Eric Schumacher
And so they said, hey, your content is yours to do with what you want. And I thought... I want to put this into a little book that's simple that we can put into the hands of men who are walking through miscarriage in the early days. This is just a very narratival first person, just me telling my story of these four different miscarriages, what was going on in my heart, in my mind, the emotions I was facing, the challenges I was facing, and then how Jesus met me there in the middle of it.
00:05:14
Eric Schumacher
And my hope is, just want to tell dads that, first of all, you're a dad. When you've lost child to miscarriage, you've lost a child.
00:05:25
Eric Schumacher
And that's a real loss that it's right to grieve, and it's okay to be sad, and you should be able to talk about it. And so... So that's why I'm out here trying to just tell my story to help guys be able to open up and tell theirs.
Challenges Men Face with Miscarriage
00:05:43
Ken Freire
Yeah. Well, why do you feel like men have such a hard time talking about it?
00:05:48
Eric Schumacher
Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, think there's some obvious reasons. And the first is just that the mother's the one who's carrying the baby and she's the one who's physically going through miscarriage.
00:06:01
Eric Schumacher
And we often think about, for obvious reasons, pregnancy as a woman's experience.
00:06:12
Eric Schumacher
But it takes two to conceive this child, father and a mother. And when a child's born, want to have, at all possible, there's unfortunate circumstances, but we want to have a father and mother that are celebrating this child and raising this child. And so we understand that It's good for a child to have a father and mother.
00:06:30
Eric Schumacher
And for some reason, though, when it comes to miscarriage, we think, well, this is a woman's experience. And we forget that a father's grieving too.
00:06:40
Eric Schumacher
And so I think that's one reason. She's going through the physical experience and all the discomfort and pain and everything that can come with it. Another is I think that dads, husbands will often, when the miscarriage strikes, she's having a medical crisis here, a medical event that's painful and challenging, and it requires doctor's visits, and she might be in bed resting, and prescriptions need to be picked up, and there might be duties that she normally takes care of in the household that suddenly someone else has to take care of. If there's other children, someone has to get them to school and prepare meals, and
00:07:14
Eric Schumacher
And I think dads can quickly move into the fix-it mode. And they busy themselves with a lot of tasks that need to get done around the house.
00:07:25
Eric Schumacher
And they neglect their own grief and neglect to think about the fact that they're losing a child in this experience as well. And, and, and then I think fathers can also, men can also think too, if I talk about my own grief in this experience, I'm somehow diminishing the mother's experience because I'm shifting away from the pain that she's going through my own.
00:07:53
Eric Schumacher
Which is really, I think, a wrong way of thinking, though it's understandable. Because like I just said, this child has a father and a mother. And often what can happen is he moves into fix-it mode, running and picking up prescriptions,
00:08:08
Eric Schumacher
you know, fixing meals, you know, all the things that need to be done. And she can begin to feel like she's grieving this miscarriage alone. Like, does he even care? Is he thinking about it? Does he hurt?
00:08:20
Eric Schumacher
How's he doing? And, and I often remind fathers that the, you know, the, you typically have not always, but often you have a friend group or a church group or family who can do all the other things around the house and in your life.
00:08:36
Eric Schumacher
uh, during this miscarriage. But the one thing that nobody else can be is, the husband to your wife and the grieving father. And so there's a unique opportunity to actually grieve with your wife, uh, to grieve with the mother as she's as she's in her sorrow and she doesn't have to walk through it alone. And that's actually way of loving her dealing with your own grief. Well, is a way of loving her and her grief.
00:09:04
Ken Freire
Yeah, you know, Eric, one of the things that I was thinking about when it comes to reasons why men don't talk about it, I'm just thinking about general suffering overall, right?
00:09:12
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:09:13
Ken Freire
We tend to, like you said, we want to fix it. Or I'll just use myself as an example. will want to compartmentalize. I'm like, I don't have time to deal with this situation.
00:09:21
Eric Schumacher
Yes.
00:09:24
Ken Freire
don't want to feel these emotions right now. Because if I do, I'm to break down. And if I break down this whole thing, this whole ship is going down.
00:09:31
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:09:31
Ken Freire
Right.
00:09:32
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:09:33
Ken Freire
So you almost kind of like you feel like you have to be strong. Right. I feel like I'm about to do little ad for your other book.
00:09:38
Eric Schumacher
Yeah. Go for it.
00:09:40
Ken Freire
But but like it's where in weakness we see God's power. Right. It's where he can actually move in us.
00:09:43
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:09:46
Ken Freire
But why is it that we so much don't want to feel those feelings or why is it that we don't want to grieve?
00:09:53
Eric Schumacher
Yeah. I think it's exactly what you just said that we're afraid be weak. And this, this really does dovetail so much with the weakness book because, know, I was just out at a, at a multi-day retreat that I was teaching on the good gift of weakness with a group of men, a men's retreat.
00:10:12
Eric Schumacher
And And commenting on how it's such a strange topic for a men's retreat to talk about embracing and celebrating weakness. And mentioned at that retreat that we had gone through miscarriages in my introduction and how painful that was.
00:10:31
Eric Schumacher
And I had a approach me later on, pull me aside and share with me that I want to say it was 25, 30 years ago, something like that. Their first child was miscarried late in the pregnancy.
00:10:43
Eric Schumacher
And so he was telling me, sharing that with me. And he said, don't share that with very many people. And then he started tearing up. And he said, but he said, you know, sometimes I still cry about it.
00:10:55
Eric Schumacher
And, and it just struck me that he was, he was this guy that wasn't able to share with many people. And, and part of it was part of it is, as I, as I talked to multiple men, not just this guy, but multiple men about miscarriage is I think because miscarriage is so, hidden, no, no one's seen this child. No one's held this child apart from the mother's womb that.
00:11:24
Eric Schumacher
we can feel, there can be a sense of wrong shame over grieving someone that in some sense you never met. And there can be this sense of, well, we never held this baby or this life didn't last that long.
00:11:40
Eric Schumacher
And so my grief legitimate? And I think there can be a sense of shame, especially,
00:11:50
Eric Schumacher
if we don't hear other men talk about it, if we don't hear other men grieve about it, then we start to think, there must be something wrong with me. If no other men are being public about this, I must be the only one.
00:12:05
Eric Schumacher
And that must mean that I'm somehow a failure, somehow a failure at manhood. And there's also the sense of, I remember feeling this sense of shame.
00:12:17
Eric Schumacher
it sounds ridiculous to even name it, but want to because wonder if there's other men who feel it too. I felt this sense of failure as a man.
00:12:28
Eric Schumacher
that I couldn't protect my wife and my unborn child from this child's death. You know, you feel this sense of obligation to be a protector of your family.
00:12:41
Eric Schumacher
And of course, there's nothing you could do to prevent the miscarriage. But it just made me feel so vulnerable that this is entirely out of my hands. There was nothing I could do to protect my wife, nothing I could do to protect my child, and really nothing I can do to fix it.
Misconceptions and Emotional Impact of Miscarriage
00:12:58
Eric Schumacher
And that's just total weakness because it's outside of our power.
00:13:03
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:13:06
Eric Schumacher
And that's a hard thing for men to admit.
00:13:08
Ken Freire
Yeah. And I think that the guilt and the shame compounds when all the what ifs come up, right? They're like, well, what if we would have just been eating healthier? Or what if we didn't do this, right?
00:13:18
Ken Freire
You start playing all these things in your mind of like, what could we have done to save this child?
00:13:20
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:24
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:25
Ken Freire
And sometimes in God's providence, right? We're in the fall of man. Like it happens.
00:13:28
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:30
Ken Freire
those things that the child did not survive.
00:13:34
Ken Freire
But I know for me, I struggle a lot with that in just general life, I can imagine. And we did have a miscarriage early on, I think was right when we're getting ready to have our second child, we miscarried.
00:13:45
Ken Freire
And then we had my now son, Alex, where I remember my wife and I just both being like, what just happened?
00:13:45
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:53
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:53
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:13:53
Ken Freire
And it was so early on in the pregnancy.
00:13:55
Ken Freire
So it was that feeling that I was like, well, I haven't been able to feel the baby. haven't heard the heartbeat. But I know it was real.
00:14:05
Ken Freire
I know that when we get to heaven, we're going to have six children.
00:14:10
Ken Freire
But it just felt like this moment of just pause and just like the life is gone.
00:14:16
Eric Schumacher
Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:17
Ken Freire
And we never had a chance to cherish this child. We never had a chance to see this child grow up. And I think for me and then for people who might have lost it, and you can speak into this, Eric, is that like there's also certain dreams that you have, right?
00:14:30
Eric Schumacher
Mm-hmm.
00:14:31
Ken Freire
Especially if it's like your first child or your second child, like that you're like, oh man, we're finally going to have a child.
00:14:31
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:14:36
Ken Freire
You miscarry. It's like all these dreams that you thought you were going to have are all of a sudden just gone.
00:14:41
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:14:44
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:14:44
Ken Freire
And you don't know what to do with that. So how do you speak to a father who's kind of struggling in that season right now? Just like the confusion. might not even be guilt, but just like, what just happened?
00:14:56
Eric Schumacher
Yeah, you raise a really good point there. And I think this is actually one aspect of, I think there's a dynamic that happens between how husbands and wives grieve miscarriage sometime, sometimes where
00:15:12
Eric Schumacher
She, think because she's been carrying the baby, she's often a little more attuned to the pregnancy. And when the miscarriage happens, she's grieving that loss right away.
00:15:23
Eric Schumacher
The father kind of moves into this fix it mode, take care of her mode. And then as she's reengaging the normal rhythms of life in a week or two, as she's been recovering, think that's sometimes where it settles on the father.
00:15:36
Eric Schumacher
the loss of this baby and he's starting to to realize you know i'm not gonna go hiking with this son i'm not gonna you know dance with this daughter and you start realizing that you've lost lost a life and and that really is what you've lost is is sometimes think we think of miscarriage as a moment in time event as opposed to the loss of a whole life and especially I think as you move out from that miscarriage and you move towards the due date, then it can strike you, we would have been having a baby at this time.
00:16:17
Eric Schumacher
And five years down the road, when your friends are posting first day of school pictures with their kids in the front steps of the house, and you're thinking, oh, we would have been posting those pictures now if we hadn't lost this baby.
00:16:28
Eric Schumacher
Sometimes you don't realize the fullness of what you've lost, the life you the whole life until you hit those milestones. And sometimes, like you mentioned, it can come on so sudden and so fast. Like our first miscarriage was so early in the pregnancy that if Jenny hadn't taken a pregnancy test the day she did and she started bleeding the next day, we might've thought it was a late period.
00:16:54
Eric Schumacher
And so it was sort of like, what just happened? We just found out we were pregnant as soon as we found out we miscarried this baby.
00:17:02
Eric Schumacher
And it can be, you know, I think I just want to encourage dads to be, be honest about all the confusion. Like, we, we weren't meant to live in a world where anyone dies.
00:17:15
Eric Schumacher
You know, this is like you said, this is part of the fall. This is part of the pain that comes now with childbearing, Infertility and pregnancy loss is part of what it means to live in a world that's decaying and our bodies are returning to dust.
00:17:31
Eric Schumacher
And we're not doing things necessarily to cause these miscarriages. It's part of living in this broken world that we need Jesus to make new. And so like any loss, it can be just very confusing.
00:17:46
Eric Schumacher
What I would really encourage men to say is say those things. Even if you can't put it into words, just say to your wife, I'm just feeling very confused about all this, or I'm sad and I don't even know how to express And I think in saying those things to your friend or to a pastor, like tell people, even if you have to say, hey, it's okay if you don't know what to say to me, because I don't even know how to think about this, but I need somebody else to know.
00:18:20
Eric Schumacher
I feel like that's really important because... I don't know if this is changing, but I know for a long time there's been sort of like this practical wisdom that sometimes couples will be told, like, don't share that you're pregnant until this many weeks into the pregnancy.
00:18:38
Eric Schumacher
And the reason is often in case something happens. Well, what do we mean by that? What we mean by that is like, I think we communicate it's somehow shameful to share if you lose a pregnancy or a miscarriage.
00:18:52
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:18:54
Eric Schumacher
Because, man, it would be awkward. You wouldn't have to do the awkward thing of telling these people that you were pregnant, that now you've lost the baby. But in keeping it a secret, which every couple needs to decide what's right or wrong for them.
00:19:06
Eric Schumacher
There's not a right or wrong for when you share. But sometimes I fear what we do we we subtly communicate it's a shameful thing to share about losing a pregnancy and and now if you've been waiting until 20 weeks or 12 weeks or or whatever to share about the pregnancy and then you you lose the baby now nobody knows you were pregnant and and now
00:19:36
Eric Schumacher
you either don't share about the miscarriage and you have to suffer in silence. And God said, it's not good for the man to be alone. Like we're not supposed to, we're supposed to live in community.
00:19:48
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:19:48
Eric Schumacher
And, or then if we do share about the miscarriage, we're now sharing with people who are learning about the pregnancy and the miscarriage at the same time. And so they didn't have the opportunity to rejoice with us in the good news of the pregnancy which I think actually affects their ability to grieve with us in the sadness of the miscarriage.
00:20:09
Eric Schumacher
And so just want to encourage, you know, that's part of what this book is about again, is just encouraging dads and moms to talk.
Community Support and Personal Choices
00:20:19
Eric Schumacher
And we're called to rejoice with those rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. And we can't do that unless we know each other.
00:20:29
Ken Freire
Yeah. You know, Eric, you bring up such an enlightening statement because even my wife and you know, we have we have four kids at the time this recording and she's pregnant with baby number five.
00:20:40
Ken Freire
And with all of our kids, we've always been pretty quiet about it, except for our close friends.
00:20:44
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:20:45
Ken Freire
Like our close friends knew right away. But we always wrestled with like, well, do we tell the people around us? Or do we post it on social media? Do we not? Like, you know, because you didn't want to deal with the, hey, I posted about this beautiful thing, but now I'm going to have to post about this sad thing.
00:21:05
Ken Freire
But the inverse is that if you don't post about it, no one knows why you're sad. No one knows why you're grieving.
00:21:11
Ken Freire
And it's something that I have wrestled with. Thankfully, I've always told my close friends, my guy friends, I'm like, hey, we're having another baby.
00:21:19
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:21:20
Ken Freire
And they were always very kind, like, okay, let us know. So I remember when we lost that first miscarriage, I remember just telling one of my close friends at the time.
00:21:30
Ken Freire
I was like, he knew I was super excited because we were like, I just had my first daughter. My first child was a daughter. then we're getting ready have the second one. And I'm like, oh man, I hope it's a boy.
00:21:41
Ken Freire
I'm just like young dad.
00:21:42
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:21:44
Ken Freire
And when I told him that, I remember, texting him and saying, I will never know if I would have had a son or a daughter.
00:21:51
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:21:54
Ken Freire
And it's like, it's these weird things, right? Where it's like, now I have other kids. like, would, would my second, my, my second now be this one that miscarried? Like, you know, all these weird metaphysical existential converse questions come up. Like, how does that change the order of everything?
00:22:09
Ken Freire
So you could almost feel guilty of like, well, if I grieve this child, what am I saying about all my other children that I have now?
00:22:17
Ken Freire
And it's this weird dilemma that I find sometimes in my own heart and then in men's hearts that they're just like, well, the best thing to do is just shove it and just move on. But like you said, we can't shove it. We got to name it. We got to process. We got to allow ourselves to grieve.
00:22:32
Ken Freire
Where do now people find hope? And how does the gospel speak into this? Because I think for a lot of men, like I just said, we would want to just shove it. But that's not what the gospel says to do.
00:22:43
Eric Schumacher
Yeah. Yeah. I think, well, thank you for bringing up just that element of the weird, like what if thing, because that is, that is a real difficult aspect of this. You know, we had two of our miscarriages were back back and,
00:23:03
Eric Schumacher
And first three, we had children after them, and then our last pregnancy was miscarried. And you do do that. Like we have these children, living children now that we love.
00:23:17
Eric Schumacher
And if these other pregnancies hadn't miscarried, we wouldn't have these children because of the way the births happen. We would have been, when Jenny got pregnant with one, she would have been pregnant or just had this other baby.
00:23:33
Eric Schumacher
And so there's the, I wish this would never happened, but if it hadn't happened, then this other child wouldn't have happened. And it's, it's so confusing in your head and, and we are tempted just shove it down.
00:23:48
Eric Schumacher
And I think there's, there's several ways in which the gospel gives us hope.
Finding Hope and Solace in Faith
00:23:53
Eric Schumacher
I think one of those is that we have a savior. Jesus was, again, we talked about this in The Good Gift of Weakness, Jesus was fully human.
00:24:03
Eric Schumacher
He had a full human nature beset with all the same weaknesses as us. And he had a full range of human emotions. He stood outside of Lazarus's tomb and that was his friend.
00:24:16
Eric Schumacher
And he wept, he wept hard over the death of his friend. He was sad. And then also, that same passage says that he was deeply moved in his spirit, which is the Greek word behind that is for like a war horse that's snorting, when it's about ready to charge.
00:24:33
Eric Schumacher
It's a word for deep anger. And so Jesus was, think he was angry at death and he was ready to charge the tomb and he raises Lazarus from the dead.
00:24:44
Eric Schumacher
Jesus wasn't a stoic when he faced death. Jesus faced death with deep sadness, with anger at the enemy of death.
00:24:56
Eric Schumacher
He went to his own death, deeply sorrowful and anxious as he faced the cup of the Father's wrath. He's going to go die for our sins. And he says to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, I'm sorrowful to the point of death.
00:25:10
Eric Schumacher
I'm so sad that I could die. And so we don't have to be afraid to face our emotions in facing the loss of a child in the womb, because we have a Savior who's experienced all those same emotions. And it's not sinful to grieve. It's not sinful to be sad. It's not sinful to be angry with death.
00:25:34
Eric Schumacher
And if Jesus experienced all those things, who do we think we are that we can get through life without experiencing them?
00:25:45
Eric Schumacher
And so even if we go to our buddies with this loss and they don't know what to do with us and they don't know how to respond, we have a brother in Christ who's proved his love for us by walking through similar experiences of loss and pain and understands what it's like to want help from friends who in the garden fall asleep on him.
00:26:14
Eric Schumacher
His friends fail him. He knows what it's like to deal with that. he's not ashamed of
00:26:21
Eric Schumacher
Hebrews says he's not ashamed to call us his brothers. And he went through, died for us and he rose from the dead for us. And he dwells within us through his Holy Spirit.
00:26:34
Eric Schumacher
And he's promised he'll never leave us or forsake us. And so we have a savior who knows what it's like to walk a path like this. And so he knows what it's like. He knows what kind of help that we need in the middle of it.
00:26:46
Eric Schumacher
So we can trust him. We can trust him with that. And even in the areas where we feel deep sense of shame and failure, there were areas where I felt like I really failed my wife and failed as a man.
00:26:57
Eric Schumacher
And just to know that Jesus isn't ashamed of me and Satan wants me to feel shame, but Jesus reassures me with his love and his presence.
00:27:09
Eric Schumacher
And he's such a good friend, good friend to sufferers as well as sinners.
00:27:16
Ken Freire
Yeah, I think you hit it, the nail on the head when you talked about failure just now, because so many men and women feel failure, right? You talked about that earlier, failure that they could have done something better, but then failure afterwards, like, how do manage my wife?
00:27:30
Ken Freire
And how do I manage this process?
00:27:30
Eric Schumacher
yeah
00:27:32
Ken Freire
How do I tell my friends? How do I like, it's just the constant feeling of failure and then the shame and the condemnation that could come. uh is huge you know for for me one thing that i i felt helped me uh i remember sitting there and being really confused like what do i do with this emotion like i don't know what to do and i just remember sensing like god the father was like i understand i lost the child too
00:28:03
Eric Schumacher
Yes. Yes.
00:28:06
Ken Freire
And I just thought about that. like, oh my gosh, he knows more than I know about loss. And anytime I hear about someone losing child, whether early pregnancy, late pregnancy, or even like when the child is on this side of earth, you know, outside of the womb, and they lose a child, like, oh my gosh, God knows exactly what they're feeling because he lost a child.
00:28:27
Eric Schumacher
Yeah.
00:28:30
Eric Schumacher
Hmm.
00:28:30
Ken Freire
And that brings me to tears and be like, God, you're so merciful. And even in this broken world, you've made a plan to restore all things. And like, I'm going to hope in you, God, like I'm going to hope and trust in you because you you are the one that could truly change everything in our world in an instant.
00:28:48
Eric Schumacher
Yeah,
00:28:48
Ken Freire
And that's what I hold on those moments of despair that I think sometimes men can feel this situation or just even sadness or grief or anguish of just like,
00:28:59
Ken Freire
I'm always, the thing that attacks me all the time is like, I'm always gonna keep failing, you know, or I won't be able this way. And it's like, well, I'm gonna hope in God, because I am gonna fail.
00:29:10
Ken Freire
Like, I'm human.
00:29:10
Eric Schumacher
yeah, yeah.
00:29:11
Ken Freire
I'm gonna mess up, but God's not gonna fail, and God's not gonna fail me. Eric, with all that being said, man, any last words of encouragement for men as they're
Honoring Lost Children and Seeking Closure
00:29:20
Ken Freire
listening to this? Maybe we haven't touched on it yet that you're like, hey, don't forget about this part of the grief process or just as you're walking through this, what they should be thinking about.
00:29:32
Eric Schumacher
Yeah, I think one thing I'd encourage men is a way of loving your wife, come back to it from time to time.
00:29:48
Eric Schumacher
And what I mean by that is few weeks after the miscarriage, just ask her how she's doing and share how you're doing.
00:29:59
Eric Schumacher
when you think of it, two months down the road, know, definitely I would say write down the due date and write down the anniversary of the miscarriage, put your calendar and have a reminder pop up.
00:30:11
Eric Schumacher
Uh, she's going to be remembering that, uh, even if you don't, And it's important to remember those dates. More important for some people than for others.
00:30:22
Eric Schumacher
But even then, whether it's two months or two years or 20 years down the road, when that comes to mind...
00:30:31
Eric Schumacher
say to her, you know, acknowledge it. You know, sometimes I'm still sad that we went through that miscarriage and I'm sorry that that happened. it's a, it's a loss that you carry with you for, for life.
00:30:45
Eric Schumacher
And, and it's different for different people. Uh, but, and I, and I would also say the immediate aftermath of a miscarriage,
00:30:56
Eric Schumacher
Do what you need to do to grieve as a couple. If we were able to bury one of our miscarried children because Jenny was induced and labored in the hospital,
00:31:09
Eric Schumacher
And if you want to do that, do that. If you want to name the baby, name the baby. If you want to, you know, don't be afraid to ask a pastor or just a friend to say, would you do a little service with us to, you know, like a mini funeral service or just memorial service for this child?
00:31:27
Eric Schumacher
You don't have to do any of those things. But if they would help you, don't be ashamed to do those things. Often those things are private and they're unseen. And so you wonder, am I making too big of a deal about this? But I want to do this. And we did that. We had a little ceremony at a cemetery for one of our miscarried children, the one whose body we were able to hold and then bury.
00:31:50
Eric Schumacher
But that wasn't possible with the other three. And we didn't do it. But don't be afraid to honor and to celebrate the value of this little life, uh, in whatever ways you feel would be helpful to you because this baby at the end of the day was child, no matter how small, no matter how brief their life, this was the image of God.
00:32:16
Eric Schumacher
And, and this child's existence brought God glory. And so it's good to love this child.
00:32:26
Eric Schumacher
And grief is a way of loving. It's loving what's lost. And so don't be afraid to do what you need to do to grieve.
00:32:36
Ken Freire
Eric, thank you so much for that word. And, you know, even I'm sitting here just thinking about the profound statement, like, you don't have to do this, right? But just like, man, hold a little ceremony, have closure, right?
00:32:47
Ken Freire
Because even how many people miscarriage and like, okay, let's move on.
00:32:48
Eric Schumacher
Mm-hmm.
00:32:50
Ken Freire
But then it's like, how do you move on from that?
00:32:50
Eric Schumacher
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:53
Ken Freire
You know, so that was super helpful.
00:32:56
Ken Freire
Eric, if there are people who are listening to this, men specifically, and are like, I need to talk to someone. Obviously, like, let's go talk to your pastor if you can, but you can't, you want to talk to someone who understands this process.
00:33:10
Ken Freire
What's the best way to reach out to you and just say, hey, let's have a conversation together.
00:33:13
Eric Schumacher
Yeah, you could reach out to me through social media. I'm also starting to do some counseling with Gospel Care Collective. And so I'm starting to take clients there. And so there's a man who needs some counseling to work through grief, I'd be glad to work with him there.
00:33:29
Eric Schumacher
But yeah, through my social media channels, I think most of my direct messages are mostly open or you can comment on a post and I'll get back in touch with you.
00:33:37
Ken Freire
Awesome. Eric, I'll put all those social media channels on the show notes too for those of you guys who are listening. Men, as always, as you are walking this life, this journey, don't do it alone.
00:33:48
Ken Freire
Do it together and focus on killing shame, standing strong in Christ, and being on a mission. Hope guys have a great day and God bless.