What if you could actually grow in your faith after loss?
After 6 pregnancies, 1 child, and multiple losses, I had every opportunity to ask Jesus a ton of questions and walk away from my faith. However, I actually used these times to grow in my faith.
You can too.
In Episode 1 of the Foreknown Men Podcast, I tell my story and how we go to this place, this ministry, and this hope in Jesus after hard times.
GET THE EPISODE GUIDE
Episode 1 Transcript
Here’s the transcript of the Foreknown Ministries Podcast Episode 1 with Ryan Cole:
It was the middle of the night.
We had just lost our son in our 38th week or pregnancy, 2 days before delivery and there were literally NO answers.
We were both in shock. Couldn’t sleep.
This is not how this weekend was supposed to go. We’re supposed to be celebrating but instead, we’re feeling lost, abandoned and alone even though we knew where we were; had each other, and were surrounded by people that care.
I looked over at Kelsi and she was scrolling on her phone. She seemed to be looking for any answer to her questions. I happened to be attempting to pray for the same. We wanted answers.
Why did this happen?
And the biggest one:
Where are you God?
Welcome to the foreknown men podcast My name is Ryan Cole and I’ll be your guide here on what I hope is a journey you’ll take with me through the dark valley of miscarriage, stillbirth and infant loss to hope.
That was just an excerpt from my baby-making journey. More of my story in a second.
You may not want to hear it right now or feel distant from god but he loves you and seeking Jesus in this pain it truly the only real way to overcome the deep pain of loss.
You see, my wife Kelsi and I have been through the baby-making ringer and through Jesus , we’ve managed to stay together and dare I say heal a little bit. I offer you that right off the bat to give you a glimpse of what your future could hold. A place where you and your spouse can remember your child but heal through your pain. That may seem so far off that you can’t even imagine it. Shoot, you may want to punch me in the face for even having the audacity to bring you hope through something so hard. But I’m doing it from experience and I’m real wrestling with Jesus.
In my pain, I’ve had to hold onto two truths that I’ll show you.
God is still good
Faith is worth having even after losing a baby
So as we kick off a new place for men to connect and grow learning about faith in the middle of loss, I felt it fitting to start this episode with my story and how we got here.
About me.
First, my faith
I grew up going to church every now and then, knowing a little bit about Jesus and thinking I was a good person. It wasn’t until my late 20s when I went all-in with Jesus and my pursuit of him. I dedicated my life to following him at 29 and have been attempting to grow in my faith ever since. I used to do that by reading my Bible, being in church and serving. But I learned there was so much more Jesus wanted to teach me. Over the past few years I’ve wrestled with words like “calling” and “purpose” but these things we’ll talk about today helped me see the need for jesus, the hope of jesus and the truth of jesus. I needed that concrete black and white to take my faith from fairytale to father.
Now, my pregnancy journey
I guess to be pregnant, you need a wife.
I met kelsi DJing a friends wedding. We love to tell the different sides to this story. She thought I had poor discernment blaring baby got back at the country club where she was coordinating weddings. She came over to sternly tell me to turn it down.
I turned to my good friend Clayton Whitson, remember they name, In awe of her beauty and clear heart for the lord. Or something like that. We had to bolt from the setup to get to the wedding and I looked for her all night never to be seen again. She was gone forever.
Until my friend Ashley a few weeks later asked if I wanted to meet somebody perfect for me. I was hesitant but asked “what does she do?”
Ashley replied “she’s the wedding coordinator at the country club.”
Game on.
I married Kelsi in August of 2010:
I’m terrible with dates and Needed an even number.
Married 2010: Rocky start. Kelsi and I are passionate people and we wanted to figure out how to do this marriage thing well. We were in counseling early on to learn how to combine two lives and learn how to communicate. Little did we know how important that would become.
We got pregnant Thanksgiving 2011
- Told everybody
- Prendnacy Announcements/ Christmas Cards out
- Lost the next day
- D&C
- had to tell the story over and over for 3 months.
The answers we got were very vanilla:
- This happens all the time
- You’ll get pregnant again
- You still have each other
- Oh, that’s very common.
I really didn’t engage. I didn’t feel emotionally connected like my wife did. I just tried to figure out the problem and “get over it.”
Struggled with infertility. We had to have help getting pregnant but in 2013, we used a fertility prescription called clomid. That pregnancy was rough. Kelsi had really bad preeclampsia but after a rough pregnancy and birth, we welcomed Kennedy. She was even in the NICU for a week. Really hard, but blessed to have her!
2015- 1 Early Miscarriage
I had to ask my wife when this was because I forgot. Maybe that’s you, you remember there was one, but not when. Remember, I’m bad at dates.
Finally, with 3 pregnancies under our belt, we were pumped to get pregnant in 2017 with our son Whitson (remember my DJ friend Clayton Whitson?)
because of her history, Kelsi was under tight observation. She took it easy. Lots of checkups. Felt like everybody was really careful and there’s no reason this should have gone awry.
This is where our story takes a turn.
2:30 PM Friday, 2 days before delivery
“Don’t worry, I’ll find it”
Huge Tears.
Disbelief. Our Pastor was the first person we saw off the elevator. He followed us home and had people hard-core praying over Kelsi and her body.
Delivered him the next morning, parents in town, we delivered a perfect-looking boy in the same room we delivered our daughter, except this time there weren’t tears or crying… from a baby anyway.
This is where we started this episode. Deeply hurt, asking a lot of questions from a deep place of pain. You may be there too. In my journey I learned that Jesus was there.
It just took me a while to see him.
He was in the timing of the appointment
He was in the coming of parents
He was in the delivery room with crazy peace
He was in the hard decisions.
He was in the hurt and the pain and those he surrounded us with.
Including Alyson and Jono Brown.
You see, 2 weeks before we lost Whitson, Kelsi’s co-worker at the time Alyson and her husband Jono lost their daughter Cora to a chord wrap. It was a terrible experience for them, as you can imagine.
We were all dumbfounded.
In their pain, they walked with us in ours.
They were there with the playbook immediately after their loss to help us with ours.
Jesus works in crazy mysterious ways. He places people in our lives for seasons, yes, but other times he anchors us to people when we go through pain.
We experienced yet another miscarriage in the summer after losing Whitson.
We went through 2 years of asking God difficult questions and dealing with health and infertility. Month after month we would experience pain and letdown— More heartache and a yearning to grow our family. We looked into Foster Care, and adoption. We asked hard questions and kept leaning in to Jesus.
2020 was a hard year for everybody. But for us it was particularly painful. In early spring, we were elated to find out that we were pregnant again. We told everybody. We had announcements, gender reveals and all the things. The world shut down, but we were excited and gung-ho for this new miracle baby. Somebody even said prophetic gift. We believed it!.
Until Monday, April 20, 2020. Kelsi went for a normal check-up and because of COVID, I had to stay home. I remember cleaning my garage and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s been 45 minutes and she hasn’t called. Sure enough, I called her and she was crying. Our son Lennox was with Jesus. The next morning we delivered him in the same room at the same hospital we’ve been in before. Room 3302- it’s the last room in the hospital so you can be alone and start to grieve.
Now if you’re keeping score, that’s 6 pregnancies, 1 child, 2 burials, and a ton of pain.
In all of that, Kelsi and Alyson started Foreknown Ministries in the fall of 2018 after losing Cora and Whitson to add the hope of Jesus to those going through a miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss.
So, The good news is that there was a ministry already going that Kelsi led that had all the perfect answers to this pain!!
Except— when you have to continue to live through the pain, it doesn’t matter if you know all the right answers, it still sucks. How do you walk that out? Do you do it publicly? Privately? What do you do when the ministry you lead is the ministry you need? What are you really, like really, really going to do when you hit the bottom?
Jesus says I’m John 16:33:
““I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.””
I think as a person of faith in Jesus, I want just the good stuff, but I learn to grow in the hard stuff. When you get to the bottom, there’s nowhere to look but up. It’s dark down there. You may be there now. I know the pain and hopelessness and bitterness and anger and really, really honest questions you have for a guy labeled “Savior.” Kelsi and I threw all those questions in his face and questioned his goodness and you know what, Jesus met us with each and every one. He sat with us in our grief. I’m time, he showed us where he was and the undeniable truth that he wants to give you about who he is, his love and purpose for you life and how, with him; not apart from him you can heal.
If you’ve grown up around church at all you’ve heard the term mustard seed. It’s like a really small seed. Tiny. Minute.
Through our journey, we had a mustard seed of faith. It got really, really small. I had the option of choosing whether I was going to lean in, or blow off Jesus. Kelsi did too.
Miscarriage is a deep place where you can grow in your faith. I’m talking the REALNESS of God. What do you really believe about Jesus? When you’re at the bottom of the deepest hole and all you have is a tiny seed of faith, it’s incredible what can grow if you learn to water your faith with your tears. God was in that place to show us who he is and how he can get us through anything, even if we have enough faith to just make it to lunch.
Over time, my healing has brought me others whom I can speak and share my experiences with. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1:4:
“He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
You see, I’ve always wanted to lead people to Jesus. This just happens to be my place. My faith wasn’t “tested” in these seasons because I don’t think Jesus took my kids away from me to build a place to serve him. That’s pretty horrible and if you’ve heard that in your story, let me be the first to say it’s a lie. God didn’t take your kids to fulfill some purpose. But through these hard places, my faith was refined and Jesus was made real.
So now, I lead other men through their journey of pregnancy or infant loss.
I started Foreknown Men in the fall of 2022 to add hope to men after loss. Like Kelsi scrolling for answers I’m the hospital, I too needed a place of hope and encouragement and truth to help me heal. There are a ton of questions men have and a wide range of pain in that spectrum. You may be a guy who’s dreamed of having a son and playing ball. You may have wanted your princess. I’m here to help you through the yearning for more. You may also be a guy who, can I say is detached? You don’t know why your wife is still in pain after all this time. I totally get that. I’ve been there. There were days when I desperately wanted my wife to “get over it” so we could move on. I learned that was selfish and really based on the awkward deficiencies I had as a man to care for my bride as Jesus does his church. I had to learn to care for her deeply in these times, they were in my vows and I’m committed to her- her up and downs. Highs and lows. She’s been there for me in my journey, so I continue to support her in hers. Or should I say, ours.
So that’s our pregnancy story. Our journey of having kids isn’t over. I don’t know what the future holds, but even in the waiting, i have hope. I cling to it. I trust it. The painful things I’ve endured have healed, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a scar or I still don’t have painful moments. I’ve just learned that Jesus is with me and still cares for my future when I’m having a hard day.
In this podcast, you’re going to get the real and the raw. I don’t have all the answers, but I know Jesus does. I’m going to bring other men on here to help you see the workings of Jesus in the middle of loss.
With each episode, I’m adding a guide to help you process what you hear and how it can help you. Sure, these things are for men who have gone through miscarriage, but really they are opportunities for you to prayerfully connect with Jesus about whatever’s going on in your life. We’re never really that far from pain. You’re either in a storm, coming out of one or going into another one.
So from this episode, let me ask you a few leading questions:
Where are you on your journey to trusting Jesus fully?
Who do you have around you to help you process through pain?
What’s Jesus saying and showing you from my story that you want to lean into on your own?
Go to foreknownministries.org/podcast and get the worksheet to answer these questions. I’ll also include it the show notes.
At Foreknown Ministries, we want you to find healing after losing a child. In order to do that, you need somebody who gets it. The problem is the overwhelming pain, which makes you feel hopeless and lost. We believe that through Christ, healing is possible and you don’t have to walk this alone.
We understand as parents who’ve been there which is why we have guided hundreds of moms and dads like you on their journey to joy. The easiest way to learn more is by checking out foreknownministries.org. We even have a number you can text and connect with a real person right now if you’re going through loss. It’s pretty awesome!
Next time, Jono brown. Alyson’s husband. He and I present all the time and you couldn’t pick two polar-opposite people. He brings an awesome and unique story to the table and I can wait for you to learn from him.
Let me leave you with this. I believe that you can actually grow in your faith in loss. The choice is yours. You can ask all the questions and I promise Jesus wants to walk you through them. He gets us. He knows you. Learn to lean in and seek him. Grief is a powerful emotion. Ask him to help you. Seek him and he’ll give you the answers you’re looking for middle of your Pain.
