Ep. 009 | Receiving Help and Service with Irene Sun

Sep 23

In this episode of the Held Podcast, I chatted with Irene Sun about help and service in the wake of pregnancy loss. We talked about everything from why it is sometimes difficult to ask for or receive help, to what we should do when the attempts of others to help actually end up hurting us, to where we can go when we feel like no one is offering to help us. Whether you’re wrestling with pride, acutely feeling your need, or experiencing disappointment over the lack of help from your family and community, I pray that Irene’s vulnerable reflections and biblical insights will be a help and a comfort to you.

About Irene Sun:

Irene Sun was born in Malaysia but has lived all over the world. She is the author of the picture book God Counts: Numbers in His World and His World. She studied liturgy and literature at Yale University (M.A.R.) and the Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Th.M.). She now teaches her four boys at home with her husband Hans, is the pastor of a Chinese Church in the Pittsburgh area.

Questions in this Episode:

Would you start off by just telling us a bit about your own experience with miscarriage?

What are some of the ways that people cared for you in the wake of your loss that were really helpful and meaningful?

What do you think some reasons might be that people refuse to ask for help or decline it when it is offered after pregnancy loss or suffering in general?

What word does the bible have for women struggling to allow others to help them?

Are there good/ non-sinful reasons to refuse help?

Maybe we’re overwhelmed by general offers of help like “let me know if you need anything” and even though we are overwhelmed and hurting, we don’t know how to respond specifically. What help/ suggestion would you offer here?

Sometimes helping hurts. Maybe we feel violated or offended by the way someone helps us. How does God’s word and the Bible offer comfort and help when this happens?

Maybe someone listening doesn’t feel like anyone has offered to help or maybe feels disappointed by her husband, her family, or her church or community’s response to her loss. What encouragement would you offer her?

Questions for every guest:

What’s one way God has used your experience of miscarriage to work in your heart and life?

If you could encourage a woman to meditate on or memorize any verse or short set of verses in this season, what would it be and why?

Noteworthy Quotes:

“To be a Christian, by definition, is to be helpless. And so, from the very beginning, the moment even before the fall...even when God created the world and it was good and it was perfect, even in our perfection we needed help. When Adam was sleeping, God made Eve, and Eve was to be a helper to Adam because it was not good for a man (or a woman) to be alone. And God himself described himself as the helper. He is our helper. To reject the fact that we need help, is to reject God himself. The entire bible calls us to ask for help.”

“Another way to think about this is the gospel itself. We cannot save ourselves, just as the Israelites are not able to save themselves from slavery in Egypt. And when we think of the Old Testament, some of us might be tempted to think “law” but we have to remember that salvation proceeds law. Law follows salvation. It was after God delivered them that he gives them the law. And even the law God gives them is to help them, to help them communicate with him and to live a life in Yahweh. So from the first page to the last, we are helpless and we must know that, and we must confess it: “Lord, you are a great Helper and we are in need of you.”

“It might be helpful for us to think about what is a sinful reason to refuse help. I think it’s helpful if we look into our hearts and see whether there is pride in our hearts and to see if that’s why we refuse to ask for help. The very act of childbirth and miscarriage requires us to confess our weakness.”

“Sometimes the best help we can be is to be weak and to be helpless.”

“As Christian women, as women who belong to the Lord, we should always be in the posture to minister to people, even in our weakness. And I think that when we offer opportunities for other people to help us, that is a form of ministry too. To have some prayer requests ready to give to friends who would like to pray, I think that really ministers to them.”

“During times of misunderstandings and hurtfulness from others, I just keep reminding myself that I have no one on earth (not even my husband and my family who know me really well and by and large are very loving towards me but ultimately they cannot read my thoughts. They cannot empathize with me the way that God can and so I pray, “whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, he has to be the person that we look to in our times of need and in our times of pain because he is the only person who is capable of knowing us inside and out. And we cannot put that kind of burden on another human being. They’re just not capable of knowing us the way that God does.”

“At the end of the day, the experience of miscarriage is a very lonely one. And there is no prayer except to pray, “ Lord, just stay with me, I don’t know why you’re allowing my body to go through this, but I just need you to stay with me.” And the only person who is capable of staying with us in that very lonely pain is God himself. And so my word of encouragement to a sister who is listening is that he does stay, and that he is a God who laid in the tomb for our sin. Jesus died our death in order that he might be Immanuel. Jesus laid in the tomb, so that we would not be alone as our body is becoming a tomb.”