Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 56 | Grief Is a Doorway… What People Encounter in Loss | Real Stories of Presence

Transcript

Ep. 56 | Grief Is a Doorway… What People Encounter in Loss | Real Stories of Presence · Sasquatch & Sourdough

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments when life doesn't collapse all at once.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It just quietly shifts.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: A phone call, a diagnosis, an empty chair at the table.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly everything familiar feels different.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: The world keeps moving, but something underneath it all has changed.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: You notice it in small things.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: The silence feels heavier.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Certain places don't feel the same.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Your mind reaches for someone before remembering.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in those moments you realize you're no longer where you were before.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're standing at the edge of something new.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not something you chose, not something you would have walked toward, but something you now have to walk through.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: A doorway.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And grief doesn't ask if you're ready.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't wait for understanding.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It just opens.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people say it announces itself, a knock in the night, a moment that feels off, before anything has been said.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Other times it comes quietly, a presence just for a second, gone before you can speak, gone before you can understand.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it comes in the middle of everything falling apart.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: When someone with nothing left to hold on to simply calls out and something answers.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not always in ways that can be explained, but enough to be remembered.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are the moments that don't look like encounters at all.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: A stillness, a peace that doesn't match the loss.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The kind that allows someone standing over the place where everything changed to write, it is well.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not after the grief, inside it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because grief doesn't just take something from you, it brings you somewhere.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And across time, across stories, across lives, people who have walked through this doorway keep describing the same thing.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not answers, not certainty, but a presence.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: A moment, an interruption, something that meets them there.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's the question we have to ask tonight.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not just what grief takes, but what we encounter while we walk through it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because this doorway may not be empty.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe we were never meant to walk through it alone.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Christina, and tonight, guys, I wanted to talk about something that we all at some point in our life will have to encounter or endure.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you're walking through it right now.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that something is grief.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Over the past two weeks, um, I have served at church for two families, uh, two different funerals, uh, two very sudden unexpected losses.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the most incredible thing that I was able to witness, it was actually such a blessing, was that these families have such faith that has carried them through these tragic losses that I was just amazed, and I still am amazed in kind of the aftermath of it.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all kind of, you know, mourning along and walking alongside these families, but it made me think about grief in a very different way.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of my pastors in a recent sermon, because of this, described grief as a guide through death and into what God has next.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of got this picture of grief being a doorway.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in his sermon, he kind of said, you know, this is something that we have to walk through.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to kind of investigate that and look at some accounts of people walking through grief, some experiencing some really strange encounters, some experiencing incredible faith.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the heart of this episode.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, welcome.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the best way you can stay connected and get connected is through Instagram.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I do most of my posting there, um, in between episodes and downloads and all that sort of stuff.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not exactly consistent because of my ministry as a mother, my ministry as a wife, my ministry of life at church.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, unfortunately, this project is my passion project for now.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of gets the time in order to do it right.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I am able to set aside time sporadically.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you the best content that I can.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why things aren't rushed weekly.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, let's take a look at grief and God's light.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: He described grief as knocking on a door and hearing it shut from the inside.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not anger, not rejection, not rejection, just silence.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes this doorway so difficult.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not just the loss, but the feeling that God is no longer where he used to be.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So as I was going through and just kind of finding a bunch of different threads and encounters, um, you know, kind of surrounding grief, I found this is absolutely incredible.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I never heard of this before.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, C.S.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis wrote a book called A Grief Observed.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said in that little cold open, it was when he lost his wife.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I want to read to you this encount.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an amazing, just such an amazing couple pages, this excerpt from that book.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It says, and no one ever told me about the laziness of grief, except at my job, where the machine seems to run on much as usual, I loathe the slightest effort.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not only writing, but even reading a letter is too much.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even shaving.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: What does it matter now without my cheek, or whether my cheek is rough or smooth?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: They say an unhappy man wants distractions, something to take his mind out of himself.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night, he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally dirty and disgusting.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, where is God?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing him, so happy that you are tempted to feel to feel his claims upon you as an interruption.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be, or so it feels, welcomed with open arms.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But go to him when you need when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: After that, silence.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You may as well turn around.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are no lights in the windows.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It might be an empty house.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Was it ever inhabited?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed so once.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that seeming was as strong as this.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: What can this mean?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why is he so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to put some of these thoughts to sea this afternoon.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: He reminded me that the same thing seems to happen, to have happened to Christ.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why hast thou forsaken me?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make it easier to understand?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I am or I think in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the main points that my pastor had that sometimes we can just want to polish over and apologize for how messy grief is.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love this honest questioning.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because in some situations, you can say, you know, well, maybe this person was suffering and maybe it's a blessing that they passed on and now they're in heaven.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then in other cases when things are so tragic, that is the first question we ask.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where was God?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer always is, He's right with us.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: In our grief and our struggles, he's right alongside.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 1800s, accounts collected by the Society for Psychical Research published in Phantasms of the Living describe something striking.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: People seeing someone they loved at the exact moment that person died.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not long conversations, not dramatic encounters, just a moment, a presence, and then it's gone.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: As if for just a second the doorway opened both ways.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Phantasms of the Living is a really interesting volume of um just collected accounts from the 1800s.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't really know how I feel about this stuff.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of does kind of creep me out when I read it.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it might just be something that I'm not really supposed to be be poking into, but it was a really interesting um couple accounts that I found.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this one actually stood out to me uh in particular.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's on page 552, July 17th, 1882.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: When I was about 18 or 19, I went to stay in Guernsey.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: This would be about 30 years ago.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: About 10 a.m., one day I was sitting in the kitchen blowing up the fire with the bellows.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I heard some very beautiful music and stopped to listen.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the same time, at the same time looking up, I saw above me thousands of angels, as tight as they could be packed, seeming to rise far above and beyond me.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: They were only visible as far as the head and shoulders.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: In front of all of them, I saw my friend Anne Cox.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: As I looked and listened, the music seemed to die away in the distance, and at the same time, the angels seemed to pass away into the distance and vanish like smoke.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I ran up to Miss White, the young lady staying in the house, and told her what I had seen.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: She said, You may be sure your friend Anne Cox has gone to heaven.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote home at once to Lynn Regis and found that Ann Cox had died that very day.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Anne and I had been very close friends.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was just my own age and was almost like a sister to me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is from M.A.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Larcombe.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Mrs.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Larcombe states positively that she was in no anxiety about her friend and had no knowledge of her illness.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: She cannot recall where the death occurred, and it has therefore been impossible to discover its exact date.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, I kind of haven't spent a lot of time in this book.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I can't exactly remember.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Someone had suggested it to me and I bought it.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I bought like a reprint, but some of it, it's just kind of gets into that like psychical research that was going on in the 1800s.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that is kind of tied to um kind of spiritism and all of that sort of stuff, which was hoaxy sometimes at best, but then also like a lot of dabbling.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know, it kind of feels like.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: John 1010 reminds us destruction is part of the story here, but that doesn't change our calling.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not to figure everything out, not to predict every outcome, but to walk through the doorway and keep loving.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so another interesting book that I have, um, so this is from supernatural strangers.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a really cool collection of like phenomenal creatures.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a little bit of an older book.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's from the 70s.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you guys grew up watching um the show, I think I've talked about this before, but Beyond Belief.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that show was amazing, and I watched it when I was younger, and basically every account comes from this book and this like series of books.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is called The Angel of El Angel.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are two children from the town of El Angel, Ecuador, who know for certain they have a guardian angel looking after them.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do they know such an incredible thing like this?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: That guardian angel saved their lives.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: High in the Andes Mountains, about 75 kilometers from Quito, Quito, is the town of El Angel, where Vera Alachea, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, and Amelia Espiniza, her 15-year-old classmate, reside.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: On the morning of October 15th, 1966, Vera and Emilia Emilio were climbing over the rocks of a high peak searching for wild bird eggs in the hidden nests there.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, Vera slipped and fell headlong over the precipice.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, she managed to grab at some at some shrubs.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: She managed to grab at some shrubs, which were growing out of a narrow shelf-like ledge on the rocks.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: It kept her from a terrible moment.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: It kept her for that terrible moment from dropping to her death, hundreds of feet to the jagged rocks below.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Emilio bravely climbed over the rocks and tried to reach her, but he had nothing to hold on to.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: He had to wrap his legs around a rock and dangle head downward in order to give her a hand.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: At that moment, when all seemed lost, there were suddenly a great flapping sound, like some giant bird near at hand.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: A huge figure descended in the air, and then strong hands caught them both and lifted them to safety.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dazed, the two children looked around them and saw flying away a huge white man bird.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: An instant later it vanished in it vanished into the clouds.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was an angel, cried Vera.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: He flew down and saved our lives.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Emilio was speechless.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: He had felt the strong hands clasping his body, and he had glimpsed the snowy white feathered wings.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Even as he had felt himself and Vera being lifted out of danger, he had been aware that something uncanny was happening.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Something which was truly miraculous.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: When the children returned to their homes and told of their narrow escape and their rescue, Emilio's grandfather hugged him and Vera.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Once a very long time ago, when I was a boy your own age, something like that happened to me too.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't be alive today to tell you about it had it not been for El Angel.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have no doubt that he still watches over the children of this town.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And why shouldn't he?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: This ta this town was named for him.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's so crazy.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's from the book Supernatural Strangeness.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, uh it basically was turned into an entire TV show that had, I think, pretty much every kid in the 90s that was weird watching it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fact or fiction.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like totally a meme now, too.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you look it up, you can see you'll recognize it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and as always, I would be remiss if I didn't have another for some reason there's a lot of Bigfoot encounters in this episode.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so another account from the BFRO, and this was uh strange howls heard at night.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks later, witness observes a large hairy creature, some physical evidence discovered the following day.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this takes place in the summer of 1991, uh, Harrison County, Indiana.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nearest town is Corridon.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually, um, when I was doing the looking at the analytics, uh, we do have kind of an uptick in the Indiana area.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this was the closest area that I could find from where the listeners are.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So this one is for my Indiana listeners.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It says, My name is Don.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I live with my brother in a small A-frame cabin on Corridon Ridge Road in Corridon, Indiana.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he gives a zip code, 47112.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I it was the summer of 91.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: It started with hearing sounds, uh, howling screams in the woods behind the house.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: It scared the heck out of us and our dogs, but we blew it off until it happened again.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Being young and very stupid at the time, I was 20.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I got the brilliant idea of shooting into the woods from where the sounds came from.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: From that night till we moved out about two weeks later, we would hear the screams getting closer.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: We kept shooting up in the air and out in the woods about 200 yards away.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the screams would stop after five to ten shots, but they would start a night or two later.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: My friend James came over and camped back into the woods.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: He said only there uh for he was only there for a couple hours, and he said he saw something humanoid, hairy, tall walk between two trees.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: He left shortly thereafter.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: The next night my brother woke up uh to a large shape staring at him in the window.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ugh.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: It had it had to be at least it had to be at least eight feet tall.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: The next night my friend Mike stayed over out of disbelief.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's when it howled and sounded like it was in the house.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was so loud.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was right under my window.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: My bedroom was upstairs.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like a second-story window.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: We went out the next day, no tracks, but the back steps, uh, wood two by eights, two of them had been caved in in the in front, something heavy enough to break the door jam.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: The knob was not hurt, the door lock was still locked, it was pushed with so much force it splintered the frame where the bolt met the wood.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: My dogs were cowering upstairs, they messed all.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Over the upstairs.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't even come out to me.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: The house was not touched inside.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: It smelled like feces, skunk, what hair.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It had it is hard to describe.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't overpowering.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was just very strong.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I moved out the next day.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: No one would believe me, so I only told a few people.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I asked the local people about it, and they all said it was nuts, or that it would slam the door in my face.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Some people bought a place a few years later.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was rental, it was a rental when I was there.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was odd.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: They disassembled the tiny cabin and haunted off in a flatbed truck.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: They sold the land.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a large brick home there today.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Cory Coridon is in Indiana here.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he kind of goes on to that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no follow-up.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: He said that it's woods near a forestry and a lot of sinkholes and caves.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: He says, if you want to ask any questions, contact me.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw anything.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this would be a Bigfoot.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what else it could be.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it looks like nobody.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, nobody followed up with him.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he submitted it um 1997.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'd like to see a follow-up to that.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Poor guy.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there you go.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a nice uh Indiana encounter.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because if grief is a doorway, then what we carry through it matters.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Horatio Spafford stood at the threshold in a very oh, I can't read.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if grief is a doorway, then what we carry through it matters.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Horatio Spafford stood at that threshold in a way few ever will.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: After losing his children, standing over the place where they had died, he wrote, When sorrows like sea billows roll, not after he made sense of it, not after he healed, but while he was still inside it.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what he carried through that doorway was faith.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Horatio Spafford had it all: a thriving legal practice, a beautiful home, a loving wife and family.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1871, his life began to unravel.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Great Chicago Fire destroyed much of his real estate investments.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Worse, scarlet fever claimed the life of his youngest child.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Desperate for renewal, Horatio decided to take his wife Anna and their four daughters to England for a much-needed vacation.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Last-minute business kept him behind in Chicago, so he sent his family ahead, promising to follow shortly.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the telegram.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: 226 people lost their lives, including all four of Spafford's precious daughters, Annie age 12, Maggie age 7, Bessie 4, and 18-month-old Tanetta.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Only his wife Anna survived.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Daughter Bertha Spafford Vester, born after the tragedy, explains in her biography, quote, from a watch one of the passengers carried that stopped when the ship sank, from a watch one of the passengers carried that stopped when the ship sank, they estimated that mother had been in the sea for an hour.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: She had been rolled under and down, and as she rose unconscious to the surface, a plank floated under her, saving her life.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Horatio immediately set sail to join his grieving wife.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Crossing the Atlantic, the captain made careful calculations by his charts, then called him to the bridge.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, this is where the shipwreck occurred.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some accounts tell us he uttered the words, quote, It is well, the will of God has been done, end quote.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: In a letter to his wife's half-sister, Horatio would later write, quote, On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down in mid-ocean, the waters three miles deep, but I do not think of one of our dear ones there.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: They are safe, folded the dear lambs.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Legend tells us that Horatio immediately penned his famous hymn right there at sea.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is even more beautiful.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than at a moment of instant inspiration, the hymn was born from years of wrestling with grief, of faith tested and refined through daily struggle.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: According to Ira Sankey's memoir, the crossing planted a seed that would bloom into poetry years later.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sanke recalls, quote, in 1876, when we returned to Chicago to work, I was entertained at the home of Mr.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: and Mrs.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Spafford for a number of weeks, during the time Mr.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Spafford wrote the hymn, It Is Well with My Soul, in commemoration of the death of his children, and quote, back in Chicago as grief matured into hope, Horatio carefully crafted the lines that would become one of the most beloved hymns of all time.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: The hymn may not have been written instantly at sea, but the faith it expresses was forged in that very moment when a father chose to see his daughters not in the depths below, but safe in the arms of God above.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that was actually from the website Hymn Dex, H Y-M-N-D-E-X.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's an index of hymn null texts.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's actually kind of cool.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: It tells you the story behind a bunch of different classic hymns.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: What a beautiful, beautiful testimony of faith.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, you know, if you're out there and you're still going through grief, it's something that we carry as our lifetime.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you need prayer or if you just want to share your your encounter your encounter with grief, um, you can send me an email at sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com or you can send me a DM on Instagram.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the truth we all eventually face.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: We will walk through this doorway.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Grief will come, loss will come.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: The question is not if, but how.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Will we close ourselves off?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Will we turn back?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Will we keep walking?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even when it feels like silence.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because if these stories tell us anything, from scripture to history, to quiet moments people don't always talk about, it's this the doorway is not empty.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: God is not waiting for you on the other side of grief, He is with you in it.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're standing there now or already walked through, you are not lost, and you're not abandoned, and you certainly are not alone.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because the light was never meant to remove the doorway.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is meant to guide you through it.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, it still does.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So until next time, remember, the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for tuning in.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: The best way that you can stay connected is by following us on Instagram.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do a lot of posting there.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can also send an email to sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com or check out our encounter map on the website at sasquatch and sourdough dot com.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, until next time, the truth is out there.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.