Julie Brenton: processing the loss of parents in different seasons

Whit's End: Real People, Hard Questions

Today I have the privilege of sitting down with a very special guest, my mom, Julie Brenton. For those of you who know my mom, she has a devoted faith in the Lord, she loves his Word, and because of this, she overflows with wisdom.

What led me to reach out to her was that I had been thinking recently about how many people in my world have dealt with the loss of a parent, including my husband. And truly as we grow up, we realize it’s one of those sobering things we will likely see happen in our lifetime.

One of the things I like to do with this podcast is to offer encouraging, practical, biblical wisdom as people are dealing with the hard, the painful, the nitty gritty details of life. So today, my mom and I talk about the death of both of her parents in different moments of her life story and in ways that have profoundly shaped her.

She lost her dad unexpectedly and tragically at a young age almost 40 years ago, and she lost her mom, my dear grandma Cuie, just a little over a year ago before recording this, and her decline and her death happened slowly over several years. But before we talk about her dad’s passing, we talk about who he was and who she remembers him to be.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Don’t you ever forget, boys are a dime a dozen. Wait for a good one.”

• “I was processing the reality of how much I loved my dad and the truth that someone you can love with what feels like all your heart and soul can actually make a decision to not be in your life any longer.”

• “A lot of times things that are manifesting themselves in our children, especially very young children, really is…how they are breathing and reading and sensing what’s going on in the home.”

• “I think God wants to give us His Word to meet us in those places.”

• “When my dad took his life, fear entered into a lot of the ways I processed things.”

• “I think I was learning to think rightly about the sovereignty of God.”

• “I feel like God is wanting us to think true and right things about Him at all times, so He values getting us to those right places if we let Him.”

• “I spent a lot of time looking for someone who could answer my why that would have happened to my dad, and it wasn’t until I realized that’s the wrong question. I need to lay that down. My answer is going to come in my who. Who am I trusting. That’s going to come in the sovereignty of God.”

• “It was so much of an out of body experience to take this woman who has always meant strength, courage, wisdom, intelligence, beauty, who is nothing but a shell of that now and place her there…It was daunting to think how our lives get reduced from enormous quantities of stuff to just a room, and eventually nothing. Quite a visual reminder of how to live.”

• “How pointless and utterly dark and depressing this life is without the indescribable hope of eternity with Jesus.”

• “I feel like saying yes to caring for my mom was also saying no to my children and my grandchildren, for a season, and I didn’t know how long that season was going to be. Looking back, it was this profound opportunity that God gave me to honor my mother.”

• “My mom died just the way she lived…mom was kind all the way to the bitter end.”

• “Either God is sovereign in all, or He is not sovereign at all. And I have learned the truth of that through the loss of both of my parents.”

• “God’s timing is His kindness.”

• “I never heard my mother tell another person about something she had heard from someone else. I learned it is incredibly valued to be a trustworthy person.”

• “There’s such joy in knowing in a mom that she’ll listen to you no matter what. And she wants to hear.”

Show Notes/References:

• Psalm 56:3-4, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?

• Psalm 3:4-5, “I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.