Growing Through Infertility and Loss
Image by Jerzy Górecki from Pixabay
Marriage and motherhood are the expectations of many women. What happens when life is not that straightforward?
Few transformative learning experiences are more painful than those that challenge our sense of personal identity. Through infertility and multiple failed pregnancies Dr. Valerie Coffman’s assumptions about how life is supposed to work were challenged. By the grace of God her faith has been strengthened and deepened. Keep reading to hear her story.
“Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come.
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far.
And grace will lead me home.” John Newton
What follows is an approximate transcript of my interview with Dr. Valerie Coffman:
[00:03] Mike Gray: This season, we're concentrating on “Tales of Transformation.” Transformation is most often catalyzed when our assumptions about how life works don't match our lived reality. Join me today to hear Dr. Valerie Coffman's journey from thwarted assumptions about fertility and motherhood to a deeper understanding of the wisdom and mercy of God. We're talking today with Valerie Coffman. Valerie, like all the people I'm going to interview this season, was one of my students back in the day. We won't talk about how many years have gone by since then. So, Valerie has somewhat unusual set of gifts. I think when I met Valerie, she was a math major.
[01:07] Valerie Coffman: Yes.
[01:08] Mike Gray: And then got involved with some genetics research that I was working on and has kind of melded her mathematical approach to pursuit of biological questions. Many biologists are absolutely horrified at mathematics. They don't tend to think mathematically, at least at first blush. It's not the way they default. But God has purposes in the way he gifts us. And Valerie's been able to use the combination of mathematics and genetics in particular in her quest for what God made her to do. So, Valerie, you were married when you were a little older than average in my generation. This came after time. You were involved in biological research in California, and then some years into your pursuit of a PhD in molecular genetics from Ohio State. You were married at what point in your graduate school journey then?
[02:22] Valerie Coffman: I had just finished my second year when I got married. It was a little frightening to have to ask my advisor for time off to go get married and go on a honeymoon. But I was fortunate to have enough research ready to go for a paper. So, I was simultaneously planning a wedding and working on writing a paper, my first paper that I'd ever written, which isn't easy. And I was trying to time it so that I could submit the paper, go get married, and take my honeymoon, and then come back, and the paper would have gone out for review during that time, and then I could come back and work on revisions, and I was fortunate that it all worked out that way.
[03:08] Mike Gray: Part of the graduate school journey is not disappointing the people who will make the ultimate decisions about whether you move on.
[03:16] Valerie Coffman: Exactly. My advisor was a workaholic, so I had to be careful.
[03:23] Mike Gray: My PhD advisor was, too. I had to take off some time one summer when my parents were home from the mission field and needed me to help them with some deputation travel, and I remember asking my advisor what he was thinking about summer and vacations, and he made some comment about, well, I take off a week at Christmas and a week in the summertime, and anybody who takes off more than that is suspect, in my view. And I was planning on taking off more time than that.
[04:06] Valerie Coffman: Sounds familiar.
[04:10] Mike Gray: As you neared the end of graduate school, you and your husband decided it was time to take the next step in forming a family. It was time to have a baby. So, what were your assumptions at that time?
[04:25] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, I think I assumed. I can kind of decide when to have children. I have control over the course of my life to some extent. Right. I grew up in a home with a mom and dad and four kids. There was seven years from between my oldest brother and my youngest brother. That seemed like a good amount of children and a good amount of time. And I think I assumed that people could make those decisions and it would go the way they wanted.
[05:04] Mike Gray: So, nothing particularly problematical. You kind of schedule it in when it's most convenient.
[05:11] Valerie Coffman: That's right.
[05:12] Mike Gray: Or least inconvenient, whatever it is.
[05:14] Valerie Coffman: In academia, there's not a good time. And I definitely wasn't going to ask my advisor for time off to have a baby, so I waited until I was done with graduate school. I made sure my postdoc advisor was a more amenable person to that sort of thing and decided to go for it.
[05:33] Mike Gray: Was you still at Ohio State then?
[05:36] Valerie Coffman: I did stay at Ohio State. I went into a mathematical biology lab at that point, so I was sort of not changing fields completely, but a little bit. But I was still at Ohio State.
[05:47] Mike Gray: It didn't quite work out like you thought. How were your assumptions challenged?
[05:53] Valerie Coffman: Around the time I finished grad school, we decided to start trying to have a baby. Several months into it, I think I had a regular physical scheduled, and I kind of mentioned to the doctor that we were trying and it hadn't happened yet. And she said, well, most people will get pregnant within eight months, but if it takes more than a year, then we can start doing testing and try to find out what the problem is. It did end up taking more than a year, and I was 32 when I was diagnosed with infertility. And of course, at that point, we didn't know the cause of it, but the diagnosis is mine because that's just the way it works. What surprised me about it a lot was kind of the overwhelming sense of loss that I felt every month when, again, I was not pregnant. Of course, hormones are involved with that, but it felt strange because I kind of prided myself on being a very rational and logical person. And that emotional side of me was something I wasn't super fond of. I'd kind of grown up thinking, well, if the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, I probably shouldn't listen to it. So, I would sort of maybe suppress that side of me a little bit. And medically speaking, it's like, well, I don't know what's going on, but we'll figure it out and we'll get this done. I think at that point, I still felt like there were things I could do to still kind of control my situation, and I was going to do them.
[07:40] Mike Gray: So, there's the emotional side. There's also, particularly in the Old Testament, the scripture indicates quite clearly that children are not just, how do we say it? It's not simply a matter of biology. I guess it'd be the best way to say it. The children are an inheritance from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is a reward. So how did infertility challenge other assumptions that you had?
[08:10] Valerie Coffman: Well, if fruit of the womb is a reward, then does my not being able to get pregnant mean I'm somehow —Is that my demerit? Am I being punished for something? Is this because of a failure of mine? A lesson I need to learn? Because I'll hurry up and learn it so I can have a baby, because that's what I want. I think there was still in my mind a lot of negotiating with God that needed to happen so that I could get what I wanted. I still felt like somehow I could manipulate the situation to come out where I wanted to be. It was three years of waiting.
[09:04] Mike Gray: It's a long time. Eventually, you had a normal birth and a healthy little girl, Julia. So how did welcoming her into your home provide some healing and sense of normalcy and adjustment back into what you had hoped for years before?
[09:25] Valerie Coffman: Yes. Julia is a big blessing in our lives. Before I got pregnant with her, I really had started to feel kind of disillusioned with life. Kind of “What's the point?” I know marriage isn't just about reproduction, but it felt a little bit like that's all it was about at that point because we were so focused on it. Something like decorating for Christmas and putting on the lights and enjoying the music just wasn't really bringing me joy anymore. Things I had always enjoyed. It was just kind of like, okay, I'm going through the motions. I don't know why we do this. I didn't know it at the time, but now I hear myself describe this, and it sounds a little like, things that I used to find joy in. I don't. I kind of had a lack of feeling about anything else because so much of my emotional energy was focused on trying to have a baby and the fact that we weren't. When Julia came along, it was really a fresh perspective on my life. I used to imagine she would look around with sort of wonder in her eyes, and I would imagine her saying, I've never seen this before in my life, because literally everything is new, and it made me see things with new eyes. Fresh perspective. I would say it was very helpful to me. I felt like my identity was complete in a way. I was a scientist, I was a wife, I was a child of God. But I desperately wanted to be a mother. And so now that I could claim that identity as my own, it was a relief. But I kind of, even then, still wanted more. I grew up with three brothers, and I just sort of thought siblings was the way to go. So, I still hoped that I would have more children.
[11:40] Mike Gray: And maybe assume that, now, things were back to normal, and in due course, you would have other children. But after Julia, you had several miscarriages. So, miscarriage is not a totally atypical part of the life of married couples. My wife and I have had a couple. Several of our children have had miscarriages as well. What kind of challenge did the miscarriages create for you?
[12:13] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, after Julia, it seemed surprisingly easy for me to get pregnant, but surprisingly difficult for me to keep a pregnancy. And that's what's known as secondary infertility. So it's unclear whether the cause was even the same as it was originally. But I think I learned for sure that there's a whole lot we still don't know about reproduction, and I think that's probably on purpose. There's a great mystery surrounding all of that, right down to the arguments over when is it alive? When is it human? I think I was pretty settled on those matters already going into it. But I think just the confusion about those terms that we see in our society, it's because it's a mystery. There's a lot we don't know. Typically, you know conception happens inside a woman's body, and it's not something that we necessarily could watch. I mean, we can now, but it isn't something we've always been able to see. And so there is a lot of mystery to it.
[13:30] Mike Gray: So, after you had Julia and had experienced several miscarriages. Miscarriages take an emotional toll, but that was not the only emotional challenge that you faced. Last of all, you had a stillborn little girl. I know it's difficult to talk about, and maybe you want to talk about the difference between a miscarriage and having a stillborn baby. I’ve experienced that as a grandfather with grandchildren. And I know it's difficult to talk about, but maybe talk about the difference between those two, first of all.
[14:16] Valerie Coffman: So, yeah, medically speaking, a miscarriage happens before 20 weeks, and a stillbirth is when you lose a pregnancy after 20 weeks. The causes of it are not always known. In my case, my first miscarriage was around seven weeks. My second miscarriage was around ten and a half weeks. And it was like with each subsequent pregnancy, when I would make it past the point that I had miscarried before, I would kind of breathe a sigh of relief not knowing that the challenge was yet to come. When I was pregnant with Kira, I made it almost to the ten week mark, and I started bleeding. And I thought, oh, here we go again. I'm going to miscarry this baby. And I went in, got an ultrasound. They said, the baby's fine. Boy, was I shocked. I was like, okay, but I'm bleeding. Well, you have a subchorionic hemorrhage. We don't know why, but you may bleed some more. Baby's fine. Okay. This went on. I was bleeding off and on, going in for ultrasounds. Baby was fine. At some point, they told me my placenta was sitting down low, and that was probably the cause of the continued bleeding. They did say there was a risk of infection, but I don't think I understood what danger was lurking behind that risk. Nobody told me that if the placenta became infected, I could go into preterm labor, which is what happened. I always find the term stillbirth a little bit ironic in my case, because a lot of times, the way it goes, somebody goes in for a regular appointment, they find out that the baby has died, and then the body goes into labor to expel a dead fetus. This was not the case for me. She was alive and well. I could feel her moving. My water broke. So, I went to an emergency room. They did an ultrasound. I heard her heartbeat, and this was just a couple of hours before she was born. But, of course, they told me, you're having a baby, and she's not going to make it because it's too early. So, when she was born, she officially didn't have a heartbeat. So, she was officially still born, but I know she was alive just hours before that, so it always feels like that term doesn't quite do it justice. Right.
[16:58] Mike Gray: Well, and there's something a bit different about having a baby that you can view, that you can interact with the body that's left, compared to a miscarriage, where there's a lot of mystery involved about what went on there inside that I didn't see. So, you can imagine what the child might have been like. But there's no imagination required, really, when you have a baby in front of you who's not. . .
[17:33] Valerie Coffman: That's right. We were able to spend several hours with her at the hospital. We had to wait many hours after she was born. Labor stopped, but I still had to deliver the placenta. So, we were waiting. But I remember being able to spend that time with her. She was about ten inches long. So very small, but perfect little hands, perfect little feet. Just. I think the fact that she looked so good really contributed to me feeling like I had failed her. My body had failed her because I didn't know it right when she was born. But later found out the placenta was infected. And that's what caused me to start labor early. But as a pregnant woman, I've got one job. It's to grow a baby. And I couldn't even do that. I think I really struggled with where it says in scripture that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. It was clear to me that she was. But I had to deal with the fact that I was, too. Even though my body didn't do what I had hoped it would be able to do.
[18:58] Mike Gray: Taking responsibility on yourself, that really is beyond your ability to pull it off. God's the one who decides all of these things. But when we're thinking in terms of what ought to be and what I ought to be able to do, we're integrated, whole persons. So, there are emotional, mental, physical, and particularly spiritual dimensions to the problem, to the difficulty that we face.
[19:35] Valerie Coffman: Julia was not quite two when Kira died. And of course, she knew that a baby sister was on the way. And probably didn't really understand what that meant, like most two-year-olds don't. But when we came, had we found ourselves in a position of having to tell her what had happened? And I think our tendency is to say someone passed away, or someone's no longer with us, or she's gone, she's not coming home. And I had read somewhere that these phrases are not helpful to a two-year-old. Two-year-olds do not think in the abstract. They're very concrete. What they see in front of them is what they know. I've always been very candid about what happened, especially with her. Kira died we buried her body in the ground and she's not using it anymore because she's in heaven with know, having to put that into very simple language for our young daughter. That's the reason why I don't use some of the euphemisms that you hear about death. I just say she died.
[20:55] Mike Gray: Yeah. As difficult as that is to say. But it's the only thing that's going to be helpful on any level to a two-year-old, as you say, who maybe has some expectation of what was supposed to happen that didn't happen.
[21:13] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, we did find her to be very clingy, especially in the months right after. We were very careful with saying things like, mommy and daddy are going to go away and then we are going to come back. Of course, we can never guarantee that, but we wanted her to know that just because we leave for a little bit doesn't mean that we're not going to come back the way that Kira did. Right.
[21:38] Mike Gray: Right. Do you think your theology was impacted by Kira's birth?
[21:49] Valerie Coffman: Yeah. I grew up hearing the Bible, of course, all my life, and I knew the stories of Job and the man born blind that Jesus healed. His disciples asked, well, why was he born blind? Did his parents sin? Did he sin? Of course, if he was born that way, he would have had to sin before he was born. You scratch your head about that question a little bit, but I think I was really confronted with that because, again, the same when I was dealing with infertility was my thought of, well, what have I done? Why is this happening to me? But I look at that story and Jesus said, no, nobody sinned. It's for God's glory. If I believe that God is sovereign and if I believe that God is also good, then I have to believe that he did this and he had a good reason for it. That's easier to think about when something like this hasn't happened to you, right? When it's more of an academic question. Right. Is God good? Yeah. Is he sovereign? Yeah. Does he work all things together for good? Yes. But now I've lost three pregnancies, and one of them went long enough that I could meet the child, sort of feel her loss very acutely. We buried her. And I didn't mention this before, but my husband and I were on a trip for our 10th anniversary when I went into labor. So she was not born at home. I was in a place that wasn't familiar. We had to get someone from the funeral home to drive up to Toledo to get her body so we could have her buried back here in Columbus, where we live. And on our 10th anniversary, she was born a few days before, but on our 10th anniversary, we were actually back at home visiting cemeteries to try to find plots because we didn't have any yet, but we thought we might as well get some so that she could be buried where we will eventually be buried. We went to the funeral home to choose a casket. I mean, those aren't things that you expect to do on your anniversary, certainly.
[24:26] Mike Gray: Again, in the abstract, we know that God's timing is perfect, that he means all of this for our ultimate good, although in the moment, it doesn't feel good. So that encounter with suffering in a way you had not experienced before created some challenges for you. It wasn't over in a short period of time. What were the nature of the challenges that this brought into your life? Again, we can say with God's intentional purpose behind it, just like he had with know at the end of Job. Job said, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees, you know, Job was a different man at the end because of what God had done, right. So that was a process. Obviously, that's the end of Job. In the middle, Job hangs on real well for about three chapters, and then things start going in odd directions. Part of it from his non helpful friends, but part of it for Job's out loud, anguished struggle with what he's experiencing, that he doesn't feel like he's deserving of this set events in his life. So, is there any parallel to that in your story?
[26:01] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, I read somewhere that the only way to get past grief was to go through it, and that was a tough thing. I think probably a lot of us have heard of the five stages of grief, and I came to recognize some of them in me, but I also realized that they don't just come neatly in an order. It's almost like you're bouncing back and forth between all of them, sometimes all at once, and sometimes you don't know which way is up. And I think, mentally, this type of thing, this type of loss and grief, it takes up a lot of space and time in your brain.
[26:48] Mike Gray: You're saying it kind of takes over your life.
[26:51] Valerie Coffman: Yeah. I just felt like I didn't have much capacity to think about anything else for a while. When I was dealing with infertility, the clinic where we were being treated required a visit to a therapist. That was my first experience with such a thing. I found it to be very beneficial. And so, after the loss, I was looking into therapy. My company provided three free sessions at the time related to an incident, so I would be able to claim those sessions. And I made it through a couple of steps, but never actually made an appointment. It was like a chemical reaction that needs a catalyst, and I did not have the catalyst. Right. Like, I just couldn't get over the energy that it took to get that done, I think.
[27:41] Mike Gray: To talk about it?
[27:43] Valerie Coffman: No, to actually make an appointment. I called Cigna. I got a list of providers. I even called a few. Some of them couldn't take me for several months. I felt like that wasn't soon enough, so I never made an appointment. And eventually those few months went by, and I thought if I had made that appointment when I first called, I could be talking to someone now. Eventually, I found other ways to get through it, but I think that is a good example of how everything is hard when this kind of thing happens. It affects all of you.
[28:22] Mike Gray: Besides the lack of energy to follow through, do you think maybe there was some difference in your mind, some conflict about whether or not this was going to be worth the investment if I actually went?
[28:41] Valerie Coffman: During our infertility treatments, I had found the therapist to be helpful. I had left her office thinking that maybe I could handle it if I never had a baby. So, I did feel that it was very helpful. I think I knew that it would be helpful to talk to someone, but at the same time, I just couldn't get it done. I just couldn't make the appointment. So, there could have been a part of me that was not willing to do it, maybe not ready to talk about it, even though I thought I wanted to. So, yeah, certainly that could be part of it. I think physically, I had baby weight to lose, something that I hadn't realized before. A friend of mine who had a stillborn baby had reached out to me when it happened, and she told me, she warned me, your milk will come in. And she sort of helped me through that and how to relieve the pressure, but also not. The more milk you produce and release, the more you'll produce. So, it's kind of a vicious cycle, and you don't want to keep producing milk at that point. That was just something that I had to deal with physically that I never even would have anticipated. I had a pretty bad separation of my abdominal muscles, which I went to physical therapy for. And physical therapy actually ended up being, I think, one of the best things for me, because that mental focus that I had on the exercise really gave me something else to think about. And I've heard grief compared to your fight or flight response, and I think it's probably true with other mental health struggles. Your body inherently knows that something is wrong, and the response is almost physiologically the same as if you're afraid. Exercise and movement really turns out to be very good for someone in those situations, even when it's mostly an emotional kind of struggle or a mental kind of struggle. I found physical therapy and going on a walk in the middle of the day to be some of the best coping mechanisms that I came up with. I was also journaling, so those kinds of things helped me through it.
[31:16] Mike Gray: Christians who haven't faced mental health challenges may be naively simplistic when they interact with people who do. What are some unhelpful ways that you've seen it happen or heard of it happening? People who are simplistic about other people's mental health challenges?
[31:40] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, I think before I went through all this, I probably thought that you could just tell someone with that kind of a struggle to stop, and they could, and I don't think that anymore. That's a very simplistic view of it. But I think also sometimes we say very unhelpful things, like, really anything you might say that sort of makes the problem about you is not helpful. Right? Like, oh, you've just lost a child and you're grieving. I've lost someone too.
[32:15] Mike Gray: And we think that we're dealing with a parallel situation.
[32:18] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, we think that we're being helpful in sort of coming alongside them in their misery, but in fact, it's not about you, and that shouldn't be the first thing out of your mouth. In fact, sometimes there isn't a right thing to say. I think something I've learned through all of this is that sometimes just being there is really the best thing you can do. When I was in the hospital earlier this year, I read a book called Just Show Up. It was written by a cancer patient and a friend of hers, and it was literally about just showing up. And how do you show up for someone who is suffering and struggling through something? I think we've all been guilty of saying, hey, let me know how I can help. Right, because we say it out of a genuine desire to be helpful, not realizing that the person who is suffering is really, like I said, mentally, it's very big. It takes up a lot of time and space. Everything is hard. I don't even have the capacity to figure out how you can help me. That may seem crazy, but one of their suggestions in the book that I found so helpful was decide on something, some way that you are gifted and make that your offer. So maybe you'll say, when can I watch your children? Or even, I'm picking your kids up from school today and watching them for the afternoon. And now you've taken that responsibility for a decision off of that person's plate. And sometimes that's the most helpful thing.
[33:58] Mike Gray: You can do when their bandwidth is almost nonexistent anyway, right? They have at least enough to agree to something that sounds like that might be helpful.
[34:12] Valerie Coffman: Right? Or you show up with your cleaning supplies and say, hey, I'm cleaning your house. Which room do you want me to start it?
[34:22] Mike Gray: Yeah. Practical kinds of things. I remember reading about somebody who, when they heard about a death in their church family would show up, their way of interacting was, all right, there's a funeral coming up, and everybody needs to be dressed properly. So, my thing is, I'll shine everybody's shoes. You don't have to interact with me at all. I'm just going to ask, what shoes are you going to wear? And I'm going to make sure that they're all shined. We've got the lesson of Job's friends who realized that something as catastrophic as Job had experienced, they probably should shut up for a while. Which happened for a little while. Yes, they did just show up and didn't say anything for a while. It's when they started vocalizing their views about why this had happened and how Job could get on the other side of it. That's when things went the wrong direction. I think there are definitely lessons for us in that.
[35:28] Valerie Coffman: Right.
[35:28] Mike Gray: So, you talked about some really practical things. What treatment options for mental health struggles do you now see differently? Does it go beyond seeing a therapist?
[35:41] Valerie Coffman: Yeah, I mean, I think we know more about this kind of stuff probably now than even when I was a kid. I don't remember anybody talking about mental health when I was a kid. I remember another kid in my high school who committed suicide. And I felt like the attitude of most adults around me was, well, he made a wrong choice and he should have known better, and that's not helpful to anyone. I definitely believe therapy can be helpful. I also think that sometimes medications are going to be needed. That wasn't something that I ended up needing. It may be in some cases beneficial to take care of those chemical imbalances. And I think at one point in my life, I would have thought that person just needs more prayer and more scripture and more worship. But I don't think those things can always handle it though they are good. I don't think that can always be enough for me. I felt like my worship in the days after Kira's death. It was mostly prayerful. I might be singing a song like It is well with my soul. In fact, we sang it at the graveside. But in my heart that was a prayer like Lord. I desperately want it to be well with my soul. But it doesn't feel like it's very well right now. That's more what was going on in my mind when I was singing that. There's another song we sing in church called He will hold me fast.
[37:25] Mike Gray: Right.
[37:26] Valerie Coffman: And that first line, when I fear my faith will fail. I mean, I told the Lord many times after Kira's death, I don't have it in me to remain faithful. God has to do this. He has to hold me fast. Because on my own, I look at this situation and I go, it's terrible. It's hopeless. It's not what any of us wanted for our family and for our lives. And yet it's where we are. And if we're going to continue to follow God and worship, then he's going to have to grab ahold of us and not let us go, which we know that he does. There's another song we sing where there's a line that says, from life's first cry to final breath. And I always. Every time I sing it, I mean, for several years, every time I would sing that song, I would be in tears. But I would think about the fact that sometimes there is no first cry or final breath. Kira didn't have one. It's. It's still in his hands. It's still in his will. And I've always been firm in my theology that she went straight to heaven. We wrote on her tombstone, born into the arms of Jesus, because that is what we believe. We will see her again someday. So that part, I guess, was comforting to me. The fact that I know where she is, I know I will see her again. And I know that she was spared a lot of suffering herself.
[39:21] Mike Gray: Indeed, mental health challenges are part of the Christian experience. We talked about Job, another person, and maybe we'll close with this. In the 1700’s, poet and hymn writer William Cowper wrote out of deep spiritual and emotional struggles, his poetry and his hymns. And Cowper wrote, among other hymns, God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. Sometimes a Light Surprises, and probably the best known one, There is a fountain filled with blood. So those are all theologically sound meditations on theological truth that would make you think Cowper always had the upper hand in his life, but that's not the case. In fact, some people who are gifted in expressing theological truth with emotional depth have some challenges that the rest of us don't experience. In a poem called the Castaway, Cooper wrote these words, “No voice divine, the storm allayed, no light propitious shone. When snatched from all effectual aid, we perished, each alone, but I beneath a rougher sea and whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.” That obviously was not when he was on top mentally and emotionally, spiritually. I think it's interesting, particularly in light of the practical nature of what we've talked about, about helping people who are in the midst of that. One of Cowper's friends, who was his pastor for a time and was a friend and counselor for life, was John Newton, who, of course, wrote Amazing Grace. And Newton never gave up on Cowper, even though Cowper never renounced his faith, remained a Christian until the end. Cowper was actually so emotionally and spiritually distraught that he stopped attending church the last 27 years of his life, which is shocking, really, that Newton would not just write him off. In fact, they didn't live in the same town anymore at that point. They lived some distance from each other. But Newton didn't give up on him. When we have friends, family members who are struggling spiritually, we need to resist the temptation to make a quick, rational diagnosis of what's happened and why it's happened and how they get out of this. We don't know the depth of the person's struggles. We're not the ones who are anybody's savior who comes along to fix them and get them out of their problems. As one writer put it, “if we only hear the testimonies of those who overcame, it can feel like it's our fault if we're not healed.” If we're the one who's not healed, then it must be our fault, because God obviously is capable and it's not happening to me, so it must be my fault. Does that strike a responsive chord in you?
[43:00] Valerie Coffman: It's interesting to talk about Cowper because some of those songs that you mentioned were part of a compilation that I put together for myself in the months after Kira's death. I asked friends on Facebook and other sources to send me songs or poems that encouraged them in times when they were down. And I spent some time just putting them together with pictures that I had from the funeral, all the flower arrangements that were so pretty. And those flowers don't last forever. So, I made sure I got pictures of all of them. And I would put these different poems and song lyrics on backgrounds of those flowers, and I called it my encouragement compilation. I put it out there on Facebook. It's probably still there. It's something that was also part of my healing process, I think. But, yeah, several of those songs of his were there. And so, it makes me think, well, he may have never seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but what a legacy he left.
[44:07] Mike Gray: He was to be able to voice what other people are experiencing that they can't give words to.
[44:13] Valerie Coffman: Right. He was still able to encourage me. Yeah, what I hope that I can be one, as I think it's. Paul says that we can comfort others with the comfort that we've been given from God. And of course, maybe Cowper never really felt comforted, but he certainly knew how to lament. And I think that's something we, as Christians are not always good at. We see it in the Psalms. Many of the psalms are called psalms of lament. And I think I've learned from those that it's okay to express my feelings, especially to God. He knows them anyway.
[45:04] Mike Gray: No secrets there.
[45:06] Valerie Coffman: Right. But it's beneficial for me. Prayer isn't so much about changing the world as it is about changing me. I've heard that as well, expressing my raw emotion to my God and expecting him to answer, to help to change me as I experience his mercy through times of difficulty. These are areas that I've grown in. I mentioned earlier that I used to pride myself on being very rational and logical. And I think I've come to realize that my emotional side is also part of being made in God's image. And I think we see in scripture that God is very emotional, not in the fickle way that we are, but he does express emotion, and that's part of how I'm like him. And I think that's an area where I've certainly grown through these difficulties. I also mentioned earlier that I spent some time in the hospital this year. It was completely unexpected, and yet I really feel that I was able to mentally and emotionally deal with that situation much better for having learned what I've learned years ago from infertility and loss.
[46:41] Mike Gray: Well, thanks so much, Valerie, for making the investment to help others again with the comfort with which you yourself have been comforted of God. And I pray that listeners will seek out some of the sources of comfort that you've already articulated. And I'll link to some others in the show notes. Thanks for making time and taking the energy emotionally and spiritually that was required to share with us today.
[47:17] Valerie Coffman: Yes, thank you for having me. I appreciate the time. I appreciate your podcast. I've been listening since the beginning.
[47:28] Mike Gray: Join me in two weeks as we hear another tale of transformation. We'll be joined by Dr. Daniel Hindman of the Johns Hopkins University Hospital system. Dr. Hindman asks the big questions about healthcare that no one else seems to be asking. Questioning the assumptions that both society and clinicians make about healthcare leads to a transformation in perspective that could revolutionize medicine if it were broadly implemented. See you in two weeks.
Helpful Resources
William Cowper:
There is a Fountain Filled with Blood
Cowper’s story:
Personal recommendations from Valerie Coffman:
The Infertility Companion by Sandra L Glahn and William R Cutrer (a Christian woman who experienced infertility and her Christian doctor). In the last chapter they gave a rule of thumb for when to stop trying to have a baby: "When it hurts more to go on than it does to quit, it's time to quit." That's where we found ourselves after Kira's death.)
Loved Baby by Sarah Philpott (31 devotions for mothers after pregnancy loss).
Safe in the Arms of God by John MacArthur (My theology was already sound in this area, but this is very helpful for someone who may be uncertain about what happens when a baby dies.) John Piper has a number of resources as well on this topic.
Sufficient Grace by Kelly Gerken (We met Kelly at the hospital in Toledo where Kira was born. After losing two babies years ago, she started a ministry called Sufficient Grace, and she and others prepare clothing and keepsakes and come to the hospital to take photos for people like us. She is the reason we have footprints and hand prints, and we had clothing the right size to bury Kira in, etc.)
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop (Lament was not a regular part of my prayer life before reading this.) Free ebook at