Join the Beach family as they recount their faith-driven journey through the uncharted waters of parenting twins with medical complexities. Confronted by an array of formidable challenges, they celebrate a miraculous Red Sea moment that transformed their lives. Through candid dialogue, discover the profound impact of prayer, community support, and unwavering belief on their path. This episode offers hope and resilience to families navigating similar trials, affirming that faith can illuminate even the darkest corridors of life’s journey.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us. Welcome today to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. I’m Gary Bauer, Senior Vice President for Public Policy at the Dobson Policy and Culture Center. I’m also the host of the Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast. It’s no secret that biblically based marriage is under fire. It’s under attack in our culture today. And husbands and wives that dedicate themselves to each other and bring children into the world face a lot of challenges. There’s a lot of people in government and the popular culture that think they know how to raise our children better than we do. And so when you bring children into the world, it’s a blessing, but it’s also a challenge. Now, Think for a moment if the children have special needs, and I know many of you out there are in that situation. Well, then what goes on in the family can even seem like a battlefield. And if the family has two special needs children, well, you can imagine what a home can deal with and what a mother and father have to face every day. My guest today knows what it’s like to experience this kind of this kind of spiritual warfare. And yet the challenges they have faced have made their marriage and family actually stronger. They have grown to become the kind of everyday heroes we love to feature here on Family Talk. Carson and Tori Beach are with me today on Family Talk. For many years, they have been blessed by the teachings and ministry of our founder, Dr. James Dobson. In fact, Carson and Tori had a personal relationship with Dr. Dobson, and hopefully we’ll be able to share a little bit with you today about that. They went through a season of infertility in their marriage, and eventually though, the Lord blessed them with twin daughters. But this answer to prayer simultaneously unleashed an even greater challenge that the Beaches had to deal with. Ultimately, they even went to the brink of actually losing custody of their children during the COVID pandemic. But God provided them with a rescue, with a Red Sea moment. And today they are passionate advocates for parents raising special needs children. Carson and Tori Beach are truly everyday heroes of the faith. And they join us today from their home in Bishop, California. Carson and Tori, welcome to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. I know if Dr. Dobson was with us today instead of being with our Lord, he would be insisting that he do this show and he would enjoy every minute of it because both of you were special to him. So welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you on as guests.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you for having us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you, Gary. You know, Carson and Tori, we know you, but our listeners by and large don’t. So let’s begin with you telling us a little bit about yourselves, how you met, and just share whatever you think it’s important for our audience to hear.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, we’re both lifelong Dr. Dobson listeners. I think the radio was on by the time we were both eight months old, listening to the doctor. And we’ve followed him through the years and We just love his ministry. It’s been a really important part of our lives. We were both raised in Christian homes, thankfully, and we really appreciate the foundation with Dr. Dobson’s teaching throughout the years. And as we grew up under his ministry, it really set the tone for being able to face life’s challenges. We met, I was in college, and Carson had moved back home to Bishop. He approached my dad at church to kind of be a mentor to him. And my dad called Easter. I met a really nice young man. I was like, okay, dad, let me introduce you. And I think my dad took full credit at the wedding. So we’ve been together for about 20 years now and definitely seeing challenges, but The Lord has been faithful and we continue to lift up every aspect of our lives in prayer. We bookend our days with the Bible. and our family so when we had our twins um they were diagnosed with cystic fibrosis neither one of us had ever even heard of what that was before being diagnosed and it quickly escalated to some other health issues one of our daughters ended up needing open heart surgery at 18 months old. The other daughter needed cysts removed from her skull, also at 18 months old. I don’t know what we were thinking, but we scheduled the surgeries three days apart, which ended up not unfolding that way by the grace of God. We pulled one of the surgeries the day before because we weren’t comfortable and we just knew that the Lord had something better. He had paved the way for us years before we had these girls. and things that came through that were only a God job for us. Carson had friends from a Bible study right after college that stepped forward. One of the daughters needed a blood transfusion. It was people from his Bible study that stepped up that were a perfect match for our daughter in this time of medical need. And the Lord paved the way for us during the whole process. It was… Glory to him and truly amazing.
SPEAKER 02 :
What a wonderful synopsis. I feel like you’ve just went through 20 years, guys. And we still have a little bit more show to do. That was a wonderful, detailed summary. Let’s go back to the beginning. So is your wife’s account of how you guys met through her dad, is that accurate? Or is there anything you want to add about that?
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I think you had an agenda here that we were all quite aware of.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s what it sounded like to me, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we went, so kind of back up with my story, very similar to Tori’s, and we didn’t know each other younger. So I grew up with Dr. Dobson on the radio. Dr. Dobson’s voice was just a stable figure that just really appreciated his guidance and just message of hope. and through childhood. And that just carried on when I went to college and I got a profound book that he came out with was Life on the Edge. And it came out just when I was going into college and just really appreciate the doctor’s bedrock foundation. And after I graduated, I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and then went to work in the Bay Area for a while. And that was just kind of in the dot-com boom after my first year or two there. And then came back home to work at a family business. And that’s when we met. It was just kind of a short-term stay here. And so Tori’s dad had some plans along the way there when I was here for a six-month stay in Bishop. And she happened to come into town as well. And yeah, so it worked out pretty well.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s fantastic. It is amazing all the different stories that people have. about how God brought them together. And Dr. Dobson always loved pulling that out of people. I remember we used to go to retreats in Montana at a place called Elk Canyon. And on the first night, he always asked everybody at the retreat to share with everyone else how they met. And the stories arranged the whole panorama of of human emotions. And some of them were astonishing. Some of them were, you know, a parent got involved behind the scenes and the rest was history. Now, do I, am I correct that when you first got married, it wasn’t completely clear to you that you wanted to have children right away?
SPEAKER 04 :
We wanted children right away. Yes. But not, not right, right away, but yes, we knew we wanted children. We were starting out Working at one point, I was working four jobs because we didn’t want to have any debt going in our marriage at all. We wanted to purchase a home. So we thought, OK, let’s work really hard and then we’ll have kids. But then when we wanted to have kids, it didn’t happen right away. So lots of prayer. We looked into adoption. I’m adopted. And I think it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. And so we had actually started the adoption process and then found out we were pregnant with twins. I prayed, yeah, Lord, if this is the one shot, hey, we’ll pray for two. And so when we went in for our first appointment, and I can read imaging, there were two. I wasn’t surprised at all. I was like, oh, thank you, Lord. Perfect. The twins were a little early. but not too early. And they were both over five pounds and brought them home, had no clue there was anything wrong. They weren’t actually diagnosed until they were eight months old. And then came a flurry of doctor’s visits, appointments every few weeks, navigating insurance, a lot of sleepless nights. I think Carson and I were both up about eight times a night. For the first four years with the twins. But God was gracious. A lot of those times when we were awake at night, we would listen to a lot of different podcasts, including Dr. Dobson. And it became a time. even though we were exhausted, became a time where we both actually ended up finding wonderful mentorship in online mentors like Dr. Dobson that kind of carried us through. He reached out and talked to us about the twins. He had gifted us the Bringing Up Girls book when the girls were infants. And that was special. We appreciated his kindness and his mentorship and The long hours of fatigue with raising special needs kids is the draining part. Trying to keep a strong marriage when you’re absolutely exhausted takes a lot of effort and even more prayer. So one thing we say to each other all the time, you know, I love you. That’s pretty common. But I think we say I appreciate you. just as much as we say, I love you. Because we have to be a strong unit to take care of these twins, but also to be a force together against all the things that come against you in raising special needs kids. The medical world can be difficult to navigate. We found that out the hard way in a few cases. We realized quickly that Most of the medical world is not biblically based. So standing up for our faith, standing up for our children, and also trying to be a witness into a very dark platform has taken a lot of interesting navigation. We, at one point, had a very liberal nurse who was our head nurse, and she knew that She knew we were Christian. She knew we were very conservative. She knows we homeschool. And so we were definitely a target. It was interesting. Even if we weren’t voicing our faith, our kids were. So the doctor came into the office and he was like, oh, hi, Ari, I’m going to listen to your heart. And she looked at him. I think she was about three years old. She said, that’s where Jesus lives.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, my goodness. What a wonderful story. What a wonderful story.
SPEAKER 04 :
I guess we’re raising, we’re trying to raise children of the Lord, but we’re also raising patriots. They had no hesitation marching up to any medical staff, especially Joelle, and asking, are you going to heaven? Yes or no? There’s no gray area with these kids. We feel the truth is always quicker, and they do too. So if somebody would hesitate or pause, she would just quickly say, if you don’t have the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you’re not going to heaven. And she was very serious and very adamant about that. And then if anybody brought up any kind of politics, she would say that they vote for life. proud moment, but also led us to, um, during the COVID timeframe, um, we wanted to have open discussions about our children’s health, what we felt was best for them. When you get an extreme liberal nurse involved who thinks the parents do not know best, um, that was a challenge. They, um, threatened medical custody for the twins based on the fact that we didn’t want to follow all of the medications they wanted to pump into them, which we felt weren’t the right move at the time. The Lord provided us with an absolute Red Sea moment. Carson was able to get a different job that had different insurance, and we were able to leave the state to continue their care so that we weren’t in danger of losing the kids. And medical custody is interesting. Parents often still have physical custody of the children, but any medical decisions are turned over to the state. You’re then locked into the state. You can’t leave the state. Similar to other kind of custody issues. The Lord provided and paved a way for us out that was amazing. All I actually ended up having to do was call the facility we were seen at in California. and say we’ve had a change in insurance and we’re transferring care to where this coverage is going to be available to us. I didn’t ask for records. I didn’t ask for any fight. I just said we’re transferring care. The wonderful thing about the new care facility we’re in is we originally saw them over Christmas. walked in, the head doctor said, Merry Christmas, girls. We’re so happy you’re here. And we knew we were at home and also in a safe place to provide medical care for them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wow. You know, the problem you’ve touched on there is a growing problem. We hear stories all the time about people in the medical profession that are so anti-Christian and anti-God, that it raises serious questions for a Christian patient about whether or not they’re going to receive the appropriate medical care. And in a different area, but the same theme, there have been a number of doctors and nurses in the last year or two that were foolish enough to go on social media and share with the world how much they hated Jews. And literally talk about if I get a Jewish patient, I think I’m going to do this. And they literally have been fired from major hospitals because that came out. So we’re in this great, not great good, but in this large civil war over values in this country. It’s been raging for a long time. And Dr. Dobson used to get frustrated like I do about this. so many believers still are confused about it or think it’s an exaggeration but but it isn’t i mean it’s a it’s a clash of two completely different world views you know one of the things dr dobson uh always promoted and we do it today is that he wants uh his friends around the country to send to him what he would like us at the James Dobson Family Institute to pray about. And my understanding is that you did that at some point. You shared a prayer request, and I believe that was brought personally to Dr. Dobson’s attention. And if I’ve got that right, can you share with us what happened next? Because I believe you actually started personally communicating with him.
SPEAKER 04 :
We did. A lot of late nights, a lot of different podcasts listened to. We support family talk and we love the ministry. So we were speaking with Janann about some things and And she mentioned, oh, do you have any prayer requests? And it was Carson that was speaking with her. And he said, yes, we actually do. And he relayed what we were going through with the twins, their medical. And he called me one Sunday afternoon. Hey, Tori, this is Jim. Just surely now you’re praying for you. How else can we help you? What can we do? And it meant a lot to us that he reached out and was praying. It means a lot when people pray and uphold us. We often say you can’t reason with crazy, but having an opposing prayer team really helps ward it off. And we appreciated that. More than anything, he did personally help us with some of the girls’ medical bills, which were very touched.
SPEAKER 03 :
It was mind-blowing. When Family Talk first got spun up, we were supporting Family Talk, and we’d have some of the workers give us a call for thank you notes and phone calls. And one was Janann, and she said, oh, do you want to have a – I forget exactly what the details were, but I’d love to send you over a bringing up girls book. And it was just when we found out we were expecting twins and knew that they were girls and they weren’t even born yet. And she sent over bringing up girls. And so I got the book, but that was just right when we were finding out if we’re kind of in a questionable state at the time, if the girls had cystic fibrosis. So actually the book kind of sat on the shelf for about a year. And during that time, we finally got confirmation on, on the cystic fibrosis diagnosis. And then we found out one of the girls had to have open heart surgery and the saw the note in the book, like, oh, I never thanked Janann for this book here. So I contacted her and said, thank you. And said, anything you want to pray for? And that opened up that dialogue and just the love from family talk and Dr. Dobson and staff was, and the support was just amazing during that process.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. I did not face what you were facing, but I first met Dr. Dobson when I was working the reagan white house and i was involved in a number of political controversies about issues related to the family not with the president who was on our side but with other folks in washington that did not particularly enjoy the values of the reagan administration and dr dobson saw me getting attacked and picked up the phone and called me one day at the White House, introduced himself over the phone and said, you know, Gary, you sound like the kind of guy I want to work with. Are you allowed to go on the radio? And I ended up going on the radio about 200 times over the next 10 years with him. We wrote a book together. But it’s amazing how many relationships and people that loved Dr. Dobson and still love his memory now, he and Shirley, began with him reaching out to them in their moment of need or their moment of trouble. And it’s a reminder of what each of us can do ourselves as we cross paths with folks that are carrying their own particular cross. Because everybody we pass in the street is carrying a cross. We just don’t immediately know about it. Well, Carson and Tori, I can’t believe how quickly the time’s going. And I’ve got… So many more things I want to ask you. I really think your experience is an inspirational experience. I know there are countless families out there that are getting valuable insight about how to handle their own challenges like the ones that you face. Is there any way, I know you’re busy, you’ve got great challenges even today, but could you come back again tomorrow to be with us for another show?
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely, Gary.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’d love to. Fantastic. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, Carson and Tori’s story reminds us that faith doesn’t eliminate life’s hardships. It transforms them into opportunities to glorify God and raise the next generation of warriors for Jesus Christ. You’re listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, featuring Gary Bauer’s conversation with Carson and Tori Beach. or at jdfi.net. You know, raising children with special needs can feel isolating. And as the father of a daughter who has different needs, as we like to say, I can totally relate. But you know, you don’t have to walk that road alone. When you go to JDFI.net, you’ll find that our website offers a wealth of encouragement for parents navigating difficult circumstances. You’ll find articles. broadcast archives, and practical resources to strengthen your family through every season. So go to jdfi.net and scan through the resources available to you without cost or further obligation. You know, programs like the one you heard today are only possible because friends like you believe in our mission to strengthen families through biblical truth. For over 15 years, Family Talk has been a trusted voice for millions of listeners, offering hope, practical wisdom, and encouragement for every season of life. And your generous support makes it possible for us to bring messages of hope like this one to families all across the country. When you donate to the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, you’re helping us defend biblical truth, strengthen marriages, and encourage parents navigating life’s toughest seasons. And every gift makes a difference in reaching families who need to know and need to hear that God is faithful even when the road is hard. To make a secure donation, visit our website at jdfi.net. You can also give a gift over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Or you can write to us. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado. The zip code 80949. Once again, our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, or just use the initials JDFI for short, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80949. Well, I’m Roger Marsh inviting you to join us again next time right here for part two of Gary Bauer’s conversation with Carson and Tori Beach. That’s coming up on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you can still trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute has been standing firm on these three pillars, faith, family, and freedom. We believe these foundations are essential for society to thrive and families to flourish. Every day here on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, we reach millions of listeners through the airwaves and online with biblical truth and practical guidelines. Your partnership makes it possible to continue this important work in a culture that opposes Christian values. Thanks so much for your prayers and your continued support.
