Tristan interviews his good friend, counselor, and pastor, Loren Fritze. Loren shares about the great sufferings he has faced over many years and how God has brought healing and redemption in his life and work. 00:00 - Introduction 01:17 - Growing up and Chronic Illness 05:26 - Close to Death at 18 07:25 - Facing Death Again with Horrible Injury 12:34 - Never Going to Walk Again 15:22 - Long Rehab 17:07 - Keeping Perspective 17:50 - Miracle of Walking Again 19:44 - Returning Home 20:18 - More Suffering, Boils and Fevers 22:03 - A Month in Isolation, the Darkest Time 25:09 - The Year of Trials 25:37 - Beginning to Heal and College 28:02 - Two More Years of Great Sickness 31:00 - Becoming a Counselor 31:32 - God prepares us through suffering 32:27 - Dark Night of the Soul 34:16 - The Wounded Healer 37:25 - Counseling and Gettiing to the Root 39:56 - God Making Sense of our Suffering 43:24 - God Uses our Suffering

Tristan and Kayla return after a few weeks break to talk about some big news and finding hope and joy after suffering.

Tristan talks about the good and the bad of the internet and our need to find flesh-and-blood, healing relationships.

Tristan and Kayla reconnect and talk about what's going on in their lives.

https://smileagaingriefministries.org

Tristan is flying solo this week, so he talks about the struggles that men often face going through grief and gives practical advice on how husbands and wives can learn to grieve and go through hard things together.

00:00 - Lonely Tristan

00:25 - Men and Women and Grief

01:11 - Scary Statistic on Divorce and Grief

03:44 - Generalizations and Stereotypes

05:49 - A Time Not to Grieve

08:46 - A Time for Grief Must Come

10:47 - Not Knowing How to Deal with Tragedy

12:37 - Avoiding our Inadequacies

14:16 - Push Through your feelings of Inadequacy

16:58 - When Tristan’s Life was Falling apart

20:12 - A Suggestion of Wives

Tristan and Kayla talk about how their faith in God has been strengthened and stretched during their times of hardship.

00:00 - Faith in God in a world of Suffering

03:27 - Don’t answer questions people aren’t asking

06:56 - Scriptures and suffering

11:39 - Unchanged aspect of faith

13:30 - Do I really trust God?

15:18 - The Scripture is full of examples

16:42 - Redemption and Suffering

19:38 - The Pieta

22:06 - Love is greater than Freedom

24:30 - Trusting the will of God

26:33 - How do you actually trust God in tragedy

28:16 - Tristan’s faith recently growing

31:17 - God actually cares for us

32:59 - He’s not safe, but He’s good

34:44 - God can and will use terrible things

35:36 - God understands

40:14 - It’s all mysterious and messy

42:58 - Beauty

47:39 - Think about these things ahead of time

49:00 - Sitting with people in Grief

Tristan and his wife Jill talk about meeting, planning their wedding, and then going through the unthinkable process of planning a funeral for their 3-year-old daughter. They recorded this over three months ago when preparing to start this podcast.

https://smileagaingriefministries.org/

00:00 - Intro

00:57 - Our baby hates me

02:06 - Planning a Wedding and Funeral

03:03 - Jill meets Tristan

04:17 - Tristan’s perspective

06:11 - Asking permission to marry Jill

08:13 - Jill is cautious

10:05 - Making a plan

10:51 - Simple, Meaningful, and Enjoyable

15:53 - What would you do differently

17:12 - Losing our daughter

18:46 - Jill gives birth and funeral postponed

21:29 - How do you plan a funeral for your child?

24:26 - Planned Too Much

26:45 - The Power of Music

27:42 - The Graveside

30:24 - Jesus Loves Me

34:39 - What would you do differently

36:34 - You do the best you can

37:16 - Laughter even at a funeral

Melanie was a 26-year-old wife and mother of two young girls when she was diagnosed with life threatening cancer. She comes on the podcast today to share her story of faith, joy, and defiant hope in the midst of her diagnosis and eventual amputation. http://smileagaingriefministries.org