The Origin of While We're Waiting (The Finale)

This post is #200 in a series ... This is the final entry in a series of posts sharing our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire was to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really.  But I've been honored and humbled by how many of you have followed these posts over the past 15 months.  I really can't express in words how grateful I am that God has allowed us the privilege of seeing how He has used Hannah's life to touch others.  Thank you for being a part of that.

Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Read Part Four
Read Part Five
Read Part Six
Read Part Seven
Read Part Eight

On the evening we found out that Hannah had a brain tumor, our dear neighbor and retired pastor Brother Gerald Taylor shared Nahum 1:7 with us:  "The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.  He cares for those who trust in Him."  We clung to that verse throughout her year-long battle with cancer, and it now hangs over the door of the While We're Waiting Refuge for Bereaved Parents.

The entire building project was completed in October 2016, a little over two years from the day we starting digging the ditch for the water line.  By God's grace, and with the help of countless volunteers, generous financial donations, and gifts of building materials and supplies, it was completed (and beautifully furnished!) for less than $500,000 -- debt free.

I must share a few pictures so you can see how beautiful it is ...

We had our first retreat at the Refuge in October of 2016, and it was such a blessing to see how each area met the need for which we had designed it.  The meeting area ("Lifesong Room") was comfortable and made our attendees feel at home, the guest rooms were quiet and cozy, the sitting room and deck areas allowed for fellowship and conversation, and the dining room and kitchen were perfect for their purposes.  It was such a confirmation that God's hand was all over this place.

After the completion of the Refuge, we were able to host our retreats much more frequently.  We began to schedule 2-3 events per month, on average.  Even with these added dates, however, we struggled to keep up with the growing demand, and many grieving parents were still waiting a year to get in to an event.  

So God began to raise up people to meet the need.  He brought two couples back into our lives who had each attended retreats when WWW was just beginning, and gave them the desire to step in alongside us and host additional retreats at the Refuge ... allowing us to add more dates at this location without spreading ourselves too thin.  He brought us a couple from Oregon who was willing to begin hosting WWW Weekends in the Pacific Northwest, and we had our first retreat at Ochoco Christian Conference Center in April of 2018.  He recently brought us another couple from Maryland who is willing to begin hosting WWW Weekends on the East Coast, and we will be hosting our first retreat at NorthBay Adventure Camp in August of 2019.  He's brought us some wonderful ladies who have been willing to host Mini-Retreats for Moms in both northeast and northwest Arkansas.  And, He has raised up another couple who has started hosting WWW Weekends with a marriage focus specifically for bereaved parents at our Arkansas and Oregon locations.

We understand that there are bereaved parents who will never come to Arkansas, Oregon, or Maryland to attend a full-weekend or full-day retreat ... but if a 2-hour monthly support group meeting were available in their area, they might be interested in participating in that.  We've been blessed to have people from across the country attend our events and then go back to their hometowns and start support groups in their local areas.  

These support groups differ from other well-known grief support groups in two ways:  1) Attendance is limited just to parents who have lost children; and 2) They are unashamedly faith-based.  Those who attend receive Biblically-based encouragement and enjoy fellowship with other bereaved parents.  They leave each meeting a little better equipped to live well while they're waiting to be reunited with their children one day. 

While We're Waiting "By the Numbers":

* Since our first retreat in April 2011, there have been 99 WWW events around the country, including our full-weekend retreats, our mini-retreats for moms, and our dads' days.

* 660 bereaved parents have attended our events over the past eight years.

* These parents have attended our events from 29 different states and Canada.

* Currently, there are 30 WWW support groups meeting around the country -- in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas ... and one in Australia.  New groups are being added all the time!

I don't share these numbers to bring attention to the four of us co-founders of WWW ... I share them to give glory to the God who provided the vision, the funding, and the volunteers to make all of this possible.  We just feel blessed to be along for the ride ... and excited about where God is going to take us next!  

And to think this all began when a 16-year-old girl prayed for a storm ...

Thank you for following along over the past fifteen months of posts!  You've been a blessing!

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 8)

This post is #199 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Read Part Four
Read Part Five
Read Part Six
Read Part Seven

For three years, we had wonderful bereaved-parent retreats at Family Farm.  As awareness began to grow about the ministry via word-of-mouth, internet searches, and our Facebook presence, our waiting lists also began to grow.  Even with adding more retreat dates at other locations, we could no longer keep up with the demand for these events.

And as wonderful as Family Farm is, it was not an ideal location for the types of retreats we were hosting.  After all, it was a children's camp ... complete with bunk rooms filled with bunk beds.  Do you remember those plastic-y mattresses at the church camp you went to when you were a kid?  The ones that creak and rustle every time you roll over?  Yeah, that's what we were sleeping on.  And because they were bunk rooms, husbands and wives had to sleep separately.  Definitely not ideal for a grieving parent retreat.  Family Farm is also a very busy place, and was only available to us twice a year.

So we began to consider some other options.  The ultimate solution would be to have our own retreat facility ... a place where we could host as many events as we needed to, where our attendees could enjoy the privacy of their own rooms and feel comfortable and at home from the moment they walked in the door.

Our partners in this ministry, Larry and Janice Brown, owned a house out in the country on the outskirts of town.  They had lived in it for a few years when their kids were in college, but then decided they wanted to move back into town.  They had hung on to the house all those years, but it had fallen into disrepair.  But maybe, just maybe, we could use it somehow.

One evening, the four of us drove out to that property to look it over and consider whether or not it could be transformed into a retreat center.  To be honest, it was really hard to see the potential ...

... but before we left, we prayed in the driveway, turning the entire project over to God and making a commitment to seek His will regarding whether we should move forward.

We had had a website for a few years at this point with a clearly marked "Donate Now" button, and up until that time we had received zero donations ever from this source.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  When I got home that evening and checked my email, I discovered that during the hour we were walking around this property, we had received two donations through our website for a total of $900!

No one knew what we were doing that evening.  No one knew that we were even considering taking on a building project of this magnitude.  But God knew ... and we took those donations as confirmation that we were moving in the right direction.

A friend of ours got us connected with an architect who donated his time and drew up a plan for our dream retreat center.  The facility would incorporate the existing house, adding a large dining room, a commercial kitchen, and ten private guest rooms, each with its own bathroom.  No more bunk beds with creaky plastic mattresses or shared bathrooms!

This gentleman created a beautiful concept drawing and presented it to us one snowy Sunday afternoon.

It was everything we could have dreamed of!  After we reviewed all the aspects of the drawing with him, we asked him what he thought it would cost to build this amazing building.  He cleared his throat and said, "You'll probably want to sit down."  We dutifully took our seats, and he broke the news:  "A million dollars.  I believe it will cost about a million dollars just to construct the building.  Then you'll have to finish it out and furnish it."

Have I mentioned that we don't charge for our retreats?   Because of this fact, we had a grand total of $3,000 in our WWW bank account at the time, including the $900 that had been donated the night we prayed out at the property.  The thought of coming up with a million dollars was beyond imagination.

The four of us took a ride out to Family Farm a few days later and spent some time visiting with Stan and Donna May (better known by the locals as Daddy and Mama May) who operate Family Farm.  They had been our partners in this ministry from the very beginning and we knew they would have some godly wisdom for us.  We showed them the concept drawing and explained that we were in need of at least $997,000.

We had made a commitment early on in this process that we would not go into debt to build this facility.  We explained to the Mays that we would have to do some very serious fundraising before we could even start ... something the four of us felt extremely ill-equipped to do.  We acknowledged that we would probably be waiting a long time before beginning this project.

I will never forget what Mama May had to say in response to that:  "Oh, no ... You don't wait.  You start!  God will provide what you need."  When she said those words, we knew she was right.  It was time to step out in faith and trust God to provide.

So we did.  In September of 2014, Brad and Larry started digging a water line from the road to the house ... we had enough money for that!  We had agreed that we would just do what we could do until we ran out of funds, and then we'd just stop until God provided some more.

As the months passed, we watched in awe as God provided volunteers, donors, equipment, building materials, and funds.  Not only did we never have to stop, we never even had to slow down!

The slabs were poured for the dining room/kitchen area and the ten guest rooms ... and the first wall was raised on September 13, 2015.  Five days later we had a "Dedication Day" and invited everyone we knew, especially people who had attended one of our WWW retreats at Family Farm, to come out and see the building project and join us in a prayerful time of dedication.  Bereaved parents were invited to write their children's names or favorite Scriptures on the studs.  There were enough people there to completely encircle the guest room slab and as we dedicated the facility to the Lord, we prayed for all the moms and dads who didn't even know at that time that they would ever need a facility like this one.

It was a day I will never forget!

To be continued ...

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 7)

This post is #198 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Read Part Four
Read Part Five
Read Part Six

That first bereaved-parent retreat in April of 2011 turned out to be above and beyond all we could have ever asked or imagined.  We knew from our experience at the Respite Retreat what God could do when a group of like-minded bereaved parents got together ... but this first While We're Waiting Weekend was such a sweet confirmation of what we believed God was calling us to do.

Buoyed by the success of this first event, we quickly scheduled our next retreat for November of 2011.  And you know what?  That retreat almost didn't "make."  We still didn't have a good way to get the word out, and we had just a few couples interested in coming.  Then at the last minute, some of them dropped out, and we found ourselves facing a decision whether to cancel or proceed with basically just the four of us facilitators and one couple.  We all chuckle about this now, but we gave God a deadline:  If He didn't provide some more attendees within the next 24 hours, we would cancel.  Of course, He came through ... sending us two more couples and a single mom!  And what a wonderful weekend it was!

After that first full-weekend retreat, we began discussing the possibility of hosting some events that were for moms and dads separately, and we decided to move forward with that idea.

In June of 2011, we hosted our very first While We're Waiting Mini-Retreat for Moms at Janice's home.  Our desire was to provide these ladies with a day of pampering in a beautiful, relaxing setting with gourmet food, on-site massages, and most of all, faith-filled fellowship with other moms who understood the experience of losing a child.  This special day was also a wonderful success!

In October of that year, we held our first While We're Waiting Weekend for Bereaved Dads.  This event took place in rural west central Arkansas at my husband's grandmother's home.  Seven men attended and enjoyed spending time outdoors, riding ATVs, grilling steaks, and just hanging out with other dads who understood the experience of losing a child.

By this time, it was clear that God was calling us to continue moving forward in this ministry.  We created a website to help get the word out and to make it easier for people to register for our events.  We started a closed Facebook group just for parents who had lost children as well as a public page on which we could post ministry events.  We even began the mountain of paperwork necessary to become a nonprofit ministry and received our approval letter without complications in a surprisingly short time.

Between these three types of events, we hosted four retreats that first.  In 2012, we hosted seven, and in 2013, we hosted eight.  Word was beginning to spread, people were starting to register, and before we knew it, we had waiting lists a year out into the future.  So in 2014, in addition to the retreats we were already hosting, we traveled to Wichita Falls, Texas, Picayune, Mississippi, Wynne, Arkansas, and Gravette, Arkansas, to host additional events in an attempt to meet the demand.  Every one of these gatherings was so special, the parents we were meeting were so phenomenal, and God's hand was so evident upon this growing ministry, and we knew it was time to take the next step. 

To be continued ...

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 6)

This post is #197 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Read Part Four
Read Part Five

Eight years ago this evening, we kicked off our very first While We're Waiting Weekend for Bereaved Parents.  I could try to describe it now, eight years later, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective as pointing you to the blog post I wrote on April 5th, 2011, summarizing the events and sharing pictures of that incredibly special weekend. 

Click HERE to read about our very first While We're Waiting Weekend. 

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 5)

This post is #196 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Read Part Four

Over the next few months, we met with Larry and Janice Brown frequently to discuss plans and pray about our upcoming retreat for bereaved parents.  Several times we drove out to Family Farm and included Stan and Donna May in our planning meetings.

I can't stress enough what a step of faith this was on the part of the Browns and the Mays.  Brad and I had been to the Respite Retreat.  We knew what a bereaved parent retreat could look like.  We knew what a beneficial experience it had been for us.  Our partners in this endeavor did not.  They could only trust what we were telling them.  And to be perfectly honest, they had some misgivings, though they did not say so at the time.  Donna May told us later (after the first retreat) that she was worried we would be bringing a "great big ball of pain" to the Farm and she couldn't imagine how this was going to be a good thing.  After all, we and the Browns were still kind of stumbling through grief ourselves at that point!

But you know, the fact that we were so ill-equipped to be tackling a project like this was a vivid illustration of 2 Corinthians 4:7:  "But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."

Part of the planning process was getting the word out about this retreat.  We talked to a number of bereaved parents who lived locally, I shared the event on my blog, and I posted on my personal Facebook page about it.  I have to chuckle to myself when I think back ... We honestly believed that when we announced this retreat, we would have bereaved parents beating down our doors begging to be allowed to come.  That's not exactly how it worked, and that initially surprised us.  I had to remind myself how hesitant I had been about attending the Respite Retreat.

The weeks passed and our planning meetings and prayer times became more and more frequent.  Finally the day arrived.

We had instructed our guests to plan to arrive between 4:00 and 5:30 pm on that Friday afternoon.  I clearly remember the six of us sitting huddled together around a table in the Family Farm dining room around 3:30.  We were so worried that none of these people were going to show up.

On the other hand, we were even more worried that they were going to show up, because we had no idea what we were doing! 

We truly were just jars of clay.

We spent a large part of that afternoon in prayer, acknowledging our inability to do any of this in our own strength and asking God to be present in every aspect of the weekend.

Four very brave couples did show up that evening ... eight of the most precious people I've ever met.  Including the three couples who were facilitating, there were fourteen of us present at that first retreat.  Seven beautiful children were represented between us.

God did exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or imagine during that weekend together.

To be continued ...

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 4)

This post is #195 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2
Read Part 3

Brad and I returned home from the Respite Retreat still basking in the glow of the new relationships we'd formed, the things we'd learned from spending time with other bereaved parents, and a renewed hope that it was still possible to have joy in life in spite of our great loss. 

We had a strong sense that God was calling us into a similar type ministry for those who had lost children, but we had no idea how to move forward with it.  We talked about it a lot, and we sought God's direction, but we just didn't have any kind of catalyst to push us forward. 

Then we met Larry and Janice Brown.  Their son Adam, a member of Navy SEAL Team SIX, had been killed in action in Afghanistan just six months previously.  We had attended the same church with them for a number of years but didn't really know them.  Our church is fairly large, and we sit on opposite sides of the sanctuary ... and you know how it is ... you just don't move much outside of your comfort zone in the pews around you when it comes to meeting new people.  Or maybe that's just me.  They're also a little older than we are, so they were in a different Sunday School department and traveled in a different circle of friends.  We just had never really had an occasion to get to know them. 

But after Adam went to Heaven, we had a desire to get to know them.  They were greeters at the back door of our church where we entered every Sunday morning, and one day, we invited them to go out for lunch with us.  They agreed, and we made a plan to meet at a Mexican restaurant after church.

Janice freely admits that she really didn't want to go to lunch with us that day.  She didn't think we would have anything in common.  They had a 36-year-old son who died in war, we had a 17-year-old daughter who died of cancer ... our stories really couldn't be any more different.  But she graciously agreed to go, and I'm so glad she did!

I remember exactly which booth we sat in that day, but I don't remember what we ordered to eat.  We were so busy talking, I'm not sure we even ate what we ordered!  Janice's concern that we would have nothing to talk about quickly dissolved as we discovered the common bond that every bereaved parent shares.  Three hours flew by as we sat in that cramped little booth. 

At some point that afternoon we shared with the Browns about the retreat we had recently attended and what an encouragement it had been to us.  We told them how we felt that God was leading us to start a ministry like this in our area, adding that we just weren't quite sure how to get started.

And these dear folks, who we were meeting for the very first time, said, "Let's do it." 

We were a little taken aback at first.  Really?  Let's do it?  Are you serious?

They were.

So we started seriously discussing the idea.  The first hurdle was determining a location where we could possibly host these retreats.  We brainstormed a bit and thought of a Christian day camp in our area called Family Farm.  We knew that the wonderful couple who run it had lost a son many years previously and we thought they might be open to hosting us.  We decided that spring would be a great time of year to have our first retreat.  We even tossed around some ideas for a name for this fledgling ministry.

We left the restaurant that day with a plan to contact the folks who run Family Farm and see if they would be willing to host a retreat for bereaved parents in the spring.  Brad gave them a call that evening, and they didn't hesitate for a moment.  Our first While We're Waiting Weekend for Bereaved Parents was scheduled for April 1-3, 2011.

It literally happened that quickly.  When God said it was time, it was time.

To be continued ...

The Origin of While We're Waiting (Part 3)

This post is #194 in a series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during and following our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that period from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Read Part One
Read Part Two

Even though I didn't really want to go, and this thing was waaaay outside my comfort zone, Brad and I signed up for the Respite Retreat scheduled for Labor Day Weekend in September of 2010.

Respite Retreat was an event hosted by David and Nancy Guthrie specifically for parents who had lost children.  At the retreat, we spent hours listening to bereaved parents pour out their hearts both in group meetings and with us privately over meals and during free time.  We did our own share of pouring, as well!  There were twelve couples there from ten different states and Canada, and our stories of loss were, for the most part, very different. But here are some things that, over the course of the weekend, we discovered we had in common:

-- The pain we share is deep, and it is very real. There were parents there whose son lived for only two heartbeats after birth, and parents whose daughter lived to be an adult with a child of her own. There were parents whose child had suffered months or years of illness, and parents whose child's life was gone in one earth-shattering moment. Two couples had lost two children. I still don't know if the conversation I overheard 17 years ago was completely accurate.  I do believe there are things that could be worse than death when it comes to your children, but the pain and grief I heard and felt that weekend was immense. It didn't matter how old our children were or how we lost them ... the pain was deep, and it was real.

-- Most of us who were there had come to terms with God's sovereignty in taking our children to Heaven sooner than we would have liked, but as one dad put it, "We reserve the right to protest." While we all agreed that our faith has gotten us through our experiences, nearly all of us had experienced some real spiritual struggles.

-- All of us had struggled with feeling "different" or "out of place" in the world. Our thoughts are different, our outlook is different, our conversation is different. One mom said, "Everyone around us is talking about kindergarten and we want to talk about calculus!"  I agreed with her.  Who has time for small talk and chit-chat, when there are issues of such great importance to discuss? I think that's one reason we enjoyed visiting with these other parents so much!  We spent all our time talking about issues and experiences we felt so passionately about.

-- All of us had struggled with getting back into "real life" after the death of our children. People usually don't know what to say to us, or if they should say anything at all. And we're no help ... sometimes we want them to talk to us and sometimes we don't! One couple said that they felt like they carried death with them everywhere they went, and it had deeply affected their relationships with others.  Oddly enough, the place we all agreed was the most difficult to go back to was church!  I think part of that is just the emotion inherent in attending a worship service, but I suspect some of it may be that we seem to feel it necessary to keep up a "front" in church so that others will think we are just as perfect inside as we appear to be on the outside.

-- We had all experienced some degree of memory loss or "brain fog" related to our child's death and the time that's passed since then. I had thought it was just me, or the fact that I was getting older, but I realized that was not the case. Maybe it's because our thoughts had become so consumed with "calculus" all the time. I was just glad to know that I wasn't the only one!

-- All of the moms felt like they had aged rapidly since the death of their child. All of us described the experience of looking in the mirror and wondering what had happened to us! And not just in appearance ... it seemed that that extra weight of grief has taken a toll on our bodies as well.

-- This may be surprising, but when one dad described their experience of losing their 3-month-old baby as 100% terrible and 100% wonderful at the same time, we all murmured in agreement. We all agreed that as awful as losing our children has been, so much good has come from our experiences as well and we could be thankful for that.

-- All of us had a strong desire that our children not be forgotten. Every one of us, in different ways, had sought ways to memorialize our children. I had never thought this would be a big deal for us ... we truly believe Hannah's storm was more about God than it ever was about Hannah ... but as time went by, I did find myself wanting to make sure that Hannah's life was not forgotten.

-- Finally, we all agreed that we could never survive these experiences without our faith in God. I often heard people at that retreat wondering aloud how people got through things like this without Him. I had said that many, many times myself. And as difficult emotionally as the retreat was, we all left there uplifted, because we all knew we would be seeing our children again. Best of all, we all left knowing that the time we've spent without them here will be redeemed in Heaven someday ... every minute will be made up for. And that was a cause to rejoice.

This retreat was an incredibly valuable and healing experience for Brad and I.  Before the retreat was even over, we began talking about how wonderful it would be to bring this bereaved parent retreat concept back home to Arkansas.  We felt strongly impressed by God that this was something He may be calling us to do.  We had no idea what the first step might be, but we were prepared to take it.

To be continued ...