Join Dr. James Dobson and Jan Harrison as they explore the profound impact of faith in overcoming life’s devastating tribulations. Jan details her personal account of loss and the journey towards healing that she and her family embarked upon. With heart-wrenching honesty, she shares how God’s grace provided comfort and strength, eventually leading her to transform her pain into an inspiring testimony of hope and resilience. Tune in to discover the deep peace and joy that can be found even amidst life’s fiercest storms.
Hello, everyone. You’re listening to Family Talk, a radio broadcasting ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Dr. James Dobson, and thank you for joining us for this program.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh. You know, life can change in an instant, can’t it? And sometimes those changes bring unimaginable pain. Today here on the program, we’re sharing a powerful conversation Dr. Dobson had with author Jan Harrison as Jan and her husband Frank experienced the sudden, devastating loss of their 27-year-old son, James, who was serving in the mission field in Africa. Jan Harrison is an accomplished author, speaker, and Bible study teacher who has inspired thousands of women through her ministry over the past two decades. She serves on the board of directors of the ministry called With Open Eyes. That’s the ministry she co-founded with her husband Frank and their son James to accelerate the gospel in Africa. Despite her deep faith, Jan’s journey through grief really tested her in ways that she never imagined. And she wrote a book about this amazing journey called Life After the Storm. In this work, Jan shares how she discovered that even in our darkest moments, God is still present. She found that while pain doesn’t simply disappear, God’s grace provides the strength to move forward one day at a time. Now, Jan has recently updated and expanded the Life After the Storm book and it just came out last week. We encourage you to go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk to learn more about the brand new updated edition of Jan Harrison’s powerful work on grief and survival. It’s called Life After the Storm. You’ll find that information at drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Now let’s get into today’s program with Dr. James Dobson and his guest and dear friend, Jan Harrison, here on Family Talk.
SPEAKER 04 :
Our pastor a few years ago preached a sermon on this subject. He said that everyone, and he put the emphasis on everyone, is either in pain or will eventually be in pain. There are no exceptions. This is the human condition. And I believe it’s true. Jesus told his disciples right before his crucifixion, in this world you will have tribulation. I mean, you can count on it. But be of good cheer for I have overcome the world. You know, that is one of the strangest scriptures in the Bible because tribulation and good cheer don’t really go together. You don’t think of them as experiences that would come along side by side. But that is what Jesus taught us. And the reason is because when you put your faith in God, you can deal with anything that life throws at you. although it will not be easy because that is, again, the experience that we can expect. Well, our guest today has learned how to do just that. She’s Jan Harrison. She’s married to Frank Harrison. These are my good friends. I love these people. And Jan has been married to Frank for 38 years now. You have had four children.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
And you have written a book called Life After the Storm, God Will Carry You Through. And given what we just said about tribulation, it’s obvious that you’re talking about this subject. Now, you have actually grouped the content of this book into three categories. categories that i want to talk about we went to lunch recently and you said that when you talk about this matter of of difficulty and tribulation and hardship and some sorrow that people all come up to you because they’ve all gone through it haven’t they
SPEAKER 03 :
They have. There doesn’t seem to be any exception to any human relationship or life where storms and difficulty have not been a part. What I want to tell people and encourage people and offer to people is that no matter what the storm is, no matter how dark or how difficult the experiences are that they are going through, that God has provided for them, and He will take them through it. He has… Already gone before. He knows the other side. He knows what we will need. He has forecast that we’re going to have trouble. You shared that scripture. It was the forecast. And He loves us. And He has given us all that we will need to get through those troubles. And we have to take advantage of that.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Let’s make it personal here because— this is something you and Frank have gone through. And you sometimes share this, and in fact, in this book, Life After the Storm, you talk about your low point, a time when you, as a family, went through what you felt at the time was the most difficult thing anybody could ever experience. Describe it.
SPEAKER 03 :
In 2010… It was a beautiful October afternoon in North Carolina. Everything seemed to point to another regular day going about our business. And Frank received a phone call that was the phone call every parent tucks deep down in the recesses of their heart that they hope they will never, ever receive. And it was the U.S. Embassy in Kenya calling to inform us that our 27-year-old son, James, had died. That was all the information that we had at that point. And Frank came home. I was working in my office. And I heard him walking through the kitchen at an odd time of day for him to be home. And he stood in the doorway to my office. And he looked at me and he said, Jan, I need to tell you something. I want you to come back here. And so I followed him back to our bedroom. So I was walking behind him. And when we got back there and he had turned around to face me, he didn’t say a word, but I looked at his face and I knew that something horrible had happened.
SPEAKER 04 :
Did you guess what it was?
SPEAKER 03 :
I didn’t. I looked at him and he said, Jan, we’ve lost James today.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
And you can’t process that kind of news. What? Are you sure? It’s too much.
SPEAKER 04 :
He died of an illness. He died. It was not an accident.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. He got sick suddenly. And in the course of just a few days, he died. And we did not know that he was sick. We had spoken with him on a Friday. And this was a Tuesday afternoon. So we had no idea. And you know that it’s a compromised environment. It’s dangerous to some degree. But you don’t expect to be told that your 27-year-old son is dead.
SPEAKER 04 :
Had he been healthy before?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, he was basically healthy. He had been in Africa off and on for five years. He had had malaria. He had had a pretty serious bout with blood poisoning from infected wound. But he was healthy.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and then those other things weren’t life-threatening things.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
At the time. So there’s no reason to suspect that you might lose your son.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. What was he doing in Africa?
SPEAKER 03 :
James was living with a Kenyan pastor who was a mentor and a friend that he had met years earlier when he had gone to South Sudan and begun to just develop a love and a compassion and a Kinship, really, with the indigenous people in South Sudan and then in Kenya. He was so touched by their faith, but they had such hope and such joy.
SPEAKER 04 :
What did you do during that time of sorrow? Going back to it today, what do you remember?
SPEAKER 03 :
God is so good. As any listener would know, when something first happens, it’s as if he just drops a veil of protection down over you, his protective grace. And you take care of the things that need to be taken care of. In our case, Frank had to go to Africa to get his body. I stayed home to receive our three daughters who were coming in from various places and college and living out of town.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, this is not just the loss of a son, as terrible as that is. It’s a family affair, isn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. James was the only boy, so he was the only brother. And all of those interpersonal relationships happened. are skewed on a dime. They change. And nobody knows how to prepare for that or anticipate that or what to do with it when it happens. But God just, He led us through those first days. But when everyone leaves and the services are done and all of the arrangements are taken care of, and the numb starts to wear off a little bit, then you walk into that dark, dark season. You cannot absorb it. It takes a long time to accept fully that you will not see him again this side of heaven.
SPEAKER 04 :
When you speak on this subject, people come up to you and say, I’ve gone through this too. Or something on the same level as loss of a child, loss of a spouse. You know, I can think of many possibilities. And what do they say to you? What do they ask of you? What do they want from you?
SPEAKER 03 :
They want hope. particularly if they are in that dark period. And, you know, there’s no way to put a time frame on that dark period. And the dark goes from really deep pitch dark at some times, and then it becomes grayer. And it is just a An up and down period of time, you don’t know what to expect. So people just want to know that there is light and there is hope beyond this dark place because they don’t feel it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Jen, the subtitle to the book says, God will carry you through. He doesn’t always do that immediately, does he? I mean, there is a moment there where he’s not even talking to you sometimes. Did you go through that?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, it gets very quiet. And he carries you through. And I think a lot of times until you look back, you realize you weren’t even there. walking or moving. So for you to be where you are now, he had to have been carrying you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I don’t want it to sound trivial as though you go through something like this and you say, well, what do you know? God took away all the pain. And that’s not what you’re saying.
SPEAKER 03 :
For me, it is most definitely been the darkest time. And yet I do want to say in the deepest, darkest place. I knew he was there. Not so much that I could feel it. But I knew He felt my pain, and I knew He cared for me. I had the Word of God. I had the Spirit of God. It’s supernatural. It’s not something that you can work up. You’re not strong and you’re not full of faith. It’s what He is doing within you that is beyond yourself. But He does allow the pain. And in hindsight, I think He allows it in order to stretch us to see how desperately we need Him. You know, as parents, we want to pick them out of the pain just as fast as we can. It’s so painful to watch someone you love hurt. And I know our Heavenly Father grieves when we hurt. But His love is so complete. That he leaves us in that pain so that we can know him in a much deeper and more precious and more powerful way.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s really important to understand that because if you have not yet gone through something like this, you’re often confused about the lack of response from the Lord. And I hope people understand my saying this, but just read the book of Job. And he uttered these incredible questions. I mean, they’re so articulate and so intelligent, you can hardly believe that a human being going through what he did was saying these things. And the Lord never answered a single one of his questions. If I could find his throne, if I could just go find his throne, I’d explain myself and he would understand. But sometimes for reasons we don’t understand, he lets us go through the valley. But he is always there. That’s your message, that even when it’s the darkest, he is there. And you were aware of it. I was.
SPEAKER 03 :
I… Often recall, weeping lasts for the night. The night is the duration of that dark time.
SPEAKER 04 :
But joy comes in the morning.
SPEAKER 03 :
Joy would come because joy is Jesus. And he would come and… Pick you up and wipe your tears. And just that ever so subtle whisper, you’re not alone. You’re not alone.
SPEAKER 04 :
You drew comfort from knowing that James was a believer, didn’t you?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, my goodness, yes. The marvelous hope of seeing him again. the reality that he has never been more alive than he is right now today, the understanding that I’m just waiting. Life is a waiting room. And so for God to give us grace to wait, but I know that I will see him again.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Can you imagine the reunion when that occurs? With your three girls, my heart goes out to the parents who had a son or daughter who didn’t know Christ. And that must be incredibly painful and difficult.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, it is profound, but it was very simple. Frank was in Africa, and I was at home. These were in the days immediately following James’ death. And our pastor was there, and he looked at me, and he said, we’re not going to tell you how to grieve because grief belongs to you. And this is your relationship, and nobody knows but you and the Lord what all is involved here. But he said, I want to say this. There is nothing you can do that is wrong. I was just like, really? And he said, nothing. This is between you and the Lord. So I filed that away in my heart. And over those months after the initial period of time, and we settled into now husband and wife and grieving and dealing, we dealt very differently. And thankfully, because both of us were in the Word, both of us were hanging on to eternal truth, though we comforted each other, neither one of us depended on the other one to be the comforter. We simply knew it was too big and too hard and too deep. My relationship as a mom, I had to accept he could not understand some of my mother’s strengths. And if I got frustrated or if I would think, Frank went into a male, or it seemed to me, a male response, which was do more. Go harder. Give more. I went into more of a withdrawal and shutdown. We gave each other permission and freedom. And when I would get like, you’re just doing all these things, I would hear that nothing he does is wrong. This is his grief, and it is between him and the Lord. And so we cried together. We prayed together. We took space from each other. And God just protected us. That’s really why we are in a statistic.
SPEAKER 04 :
Another way of describing that, Jan, is that you allowed each other to grieve in your own particular way and didn’t demand the same response from your spouse that you were feeling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. And it didn’t come at the same time. Sometimes if he would want to bring something up and I would think, I’m feeling kind of OK right now. Do you have to go there? But it’s surfacing for him right now. And I think he did the same for me. We just God just gave us the grace to grieve together, but separate. And we still do.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s now been five years. Have you turned a corner?
SPEAKER 03 :
The summer of right before the fourth year, we went on a family vacation. We take everybody in the whole family, children, spouses, their children. And I remember when I came home, it was just an especially sweet time. And when I came home and I was looking back thinking, wonder what was so good about that, I realized for the first time I had come to peace with our new normal. And I say that, and then just last night,
SPEAKER 02 :
For some reason, this time, I said, I wish James was coming.
SPEAKER 04 :
There’s still an empty place in your heart.
SPEAKER 02 :
It always will be, and it should be. It’s okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
When you have lost someone, there’s something called the attack. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that concept before, but you kind of come to a plateau where you feel like you’re dealing with it. And you feel like you’re getting over the grief. And then you’re in a grocery store and you see something or you run into somebody out in the business world. And it’s suddenly back. It’s the attack. Because you really haven’t totally conquered it yet. But the Lord understands those processes as well.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, what a raw and vulnerable discussion we’ve shared today here on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. And we’ve reached the midpoint of the conversation featuring Dr. James Dobson and his guest, Jan Harrison. You know, grief truly is a strange and unpredictable journey, isn’t it? each person walks through it differently. And yet, Jan found her anchor in knowing that Jesus remained faithfully present with her through every dark moment, ultimately promising to transform her mourning into joy. Now, if today’s program touched your heart, maybe you know someone who’s walking through their own season of loss, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. There you can listen to part one of this program again and learn more about Jan’s book, Life After the Storm, God Will Carry You Through. Just this past week, Jan released an updated and expanded version of this resource that shares how God has been healing the hearts of Jan and her husband Frank and their family through the loss now of nearly a decade of James’ passing to go home to be with the Lord. I encourage you to look at this brand new updated edition of Jan Harrison’s book called Life After the Storm, God Will Carry You Through. You know, in today’s rapidly changing culture, the work of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute remains essential. Since day one, we have stood firm in defending biblical truth and providing practical wisdom for families just like yours. Whether through our radio broadcasts, our online resources, or our culture center and policy center, each aspect of our ministry aims to strengthen and support families according to God’s design. This life-changing work continues because of friends like you who share our passion for building strong families. Your gift today will help us reach even more homes with messages of hope, healing, and biblical guidance. So partner with us in this mission when you visit drjamesdobson.org. You can also give a gift over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. And remember, you can also download our free Dr. James Dobson Family Institute app. where you can get biblical wisdom for marriage and parenting right on your phone. Plus, updates on family policy issues as well, available now at Apple and Google Play stores. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, thanks so much for making us a part of your day. Please join us again next time right here for part two of this moving conversation featuring Dr. Dobson and his dear friend Jan Harrison as she shares more about how God brings beauty from ashes and Purpose from Pain. That’s coming up right here next time on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
Join Dr. James Dobson and Jan Harrison as they explore the profound impact of faith in overcoming life’s devastating tribulations. Jan details her personal account of loss and the journey towards healing that she and her family embarked upon. With heart-wrenching honesty, she shares how God’s grace provided comfort and strength, eventually leading her to transform her pain into an inspiring testimony of hope and resilience. Tune in to discover the deep peace and joy that can be found even amidst life’s fiercest storms.
