In this episode Gina has a conversation with Julianna Wakeling about God’s redeeming love in the midst of grief. Julianna shares about her journey of breaking free from religious expectations to live a “perfect life” into living by God’s grace. This vulnerable conversation explores her journey of parenting a son with special needs and how intimacy with God in that place led to her transformation. Julianna also shares the painful journey of losing her son and how she found hope and blessing in the valley of her deepest pain.
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Listen below to follow along at 40:10
A Letter From God the Father
Julianna:
So I started looking at all God had done in my life through Brendan. Brendan was why I am the person I am. He’s all the best of human nature, because he was so innocent and he didn’t have all the trappings of the world to steal his identity. He didn’t know any better. So here’s this 18 year old that sees something he likes and he is love.
When he was mad, you knew it. He didn’t worry about what the world thought about him. He didn’t know to be anything different than who he was, which was the complete opposite of me. So all the best things about me, I learned through my special needs kid. Using and letting God show me what a gift he was, it became an honor to be his mother.
It no longer felt like I was being punished. Todd Boral, who’s our pastor at Mountain View at the time, released a book called Sustainable Spirituality. I started doing it and one of the chapters, and his wife had written this story to her younger self. As I’m processing it with God, he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t want you to do that. I want you to work with me and write a letter to yourself from me as your Heavenly Father.”
Now of the Godhead, my biggest breach, my biggest disconnect, was with Father God. Father God was a little scary, He was distant. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, I was totally comfortable with, but Father God, I couldn’t quite find that connection with him. So I started looking back, preparing for this women’s retreat that I’m going to speak at, on February 24th, I finished this letter to myself from Father God.
I was partnering with Him. I’d do it during my quiet time and so I composed this letter to my daughter Juliana. He wrote all of these things and he signed it: to my beloved daughter, from your heavenly father. I finished that on February 24th.
The Storm
Julianna:
So on February 28th, Brendan stayed home from school sick on February 27th. He seemed like he had a stomach bug and he had the stomach bug all of December, but he took forever to get well.
So that day when he woke up sick again, I was just like, “Ugh, we cannot shake the stomach bug.” I thought, “I’m going to do it differently. I’m going to just let him sleep.” Maybe he’ll get better faster. So I just left him in his room and I kept going in and checking on him. So about midnight, it was now February 28th at midnight I go to check on him, and he looked like he was sleeping.
I went back and then I heard a thump, and he’d fallen out of bed. So I ran to his room and I picked him up and put him back in bed. And I knew instinctively something was wrong. So Dave came in and I’m like, “Call 911.” And he’s like, “What? Like he just has the flu.” And I go call 911. There was just something not right.
So the paramedics got there and they put his IV in him and he didn’t even respond. I’m like, “This is not my kid. Like something’s wrong.” So we took him to Mission Hospital. So once we got there, he started having a seizure. So they gave him some anticonvulsant medicine called Keppra.
His heart rate was over a hundred. So I’m like, “Dave, go get the doctor, I think he’s still seizing.” So they came back in to give him some more medicine, and I just happened to pull back the blanket and his arm was all molted, like he was having an allergic reaction. So they gave him some Benadryl, but his heart rate was still really high. I just remember thinking it can’t be good for him that his heart’s so high and he’s so lethargic.
I start seeing his oxygen levels, they’re like 99, 98, 97, 96. They’re dropping rapidly. So Dave ran out and got the doctor again and they came in and they put us outside the room and they started to intubate him, and that’s when they put that tube down your throat. I knew instinctively that something was really wrong.
Then they got him stable enough to take him to get a CAT scan. Then when they came out they said he had what’s called a “strata valve shunt” in his brain. Hydrocephalus is when you accumulate too much water on your brain. So that’s what Brendan was born with. So they did brain surgery when he was four months old and put this strata valve in which they could adjust the pressure to take the fluid off of his brain, it was all under his skin.
That shunt had failed. So he had too much fluid in his brain again. So he had so much pressure in his brain, that’s why he was so lethargic. He was throwing up, he wasn’t sick, he was responding to that pressure. So he had his shunt put in at four months old. He’s one month away from being 19. He’s never had a shunt failure. So he has his first shunt failure.
So I’m like, “Oh, okay, I’ve never seen this before. We’ve never been through this before.” So I called my mom at that point, and I’m crying and I’m like, “Can you just pray? He just looks horrible.” They finally bring him out and we’re in a room and the nurse comes in and says, We’re going to airlift him to chalk. I was going to go in the helicopter, but they needed a neurological nurse.
They needed a cardiac nurse because his blood pressure wasn’t right. So there’s not enough room for me. So they send Dave and I ahead to Chalk and they’re like, “It’s gonna take a while because the helicopter has to get here. We have to get him stable, we have to get him on the helicopter, and we have to get all the equipment. So you guys just go ahead and go.”
It felt like forever. We’re sitting in the lobby of Chalk waiting for our kid, and we hear the helicopter and they’re like, “Wakeling!” And so we get up and we get into the back ER part and Brendan’s neurosurgeon meets us back there, and we’re signing paperwork for him to have surgery. We are walking down the hall with him towards the OR, but Dr. Maho is like, “Oh, he is in stunt failure.”
You’ve just never seen this before. He goes, “My only concern is he had that seizure that’s abnormal during stunt failure.” Just to back up a little bit, on the way from Mission Hospital to Chalk, we are in the car, and I said to Dave, “I think we need to be prepared for the worst.” Up until that point it never dawned on Dave that maybe he wouldn’t wake up.
So when Dr. Mahoan came out, that’s his neurosurgeon, we were in the waiting room and he said, “The surgery went really well. There was a lot of pressure on the brain. It was critical that we got that done. He didn’t have any more seizures or anything, but I just want you guys to be prepared that he might not wake up.”
So I said, “Are you really concerned? Like, did you see anything?” And he’s like, “I just want you to be prepared. You could have anything from not waking up, to he’ll wake up and be exactly who he was before this.” And Dave’s like coming apart and he’s like, “I don’t know what you mean.” And Dr. Mahoan says, “Dave, I don’t think I’m telling you anything you haven’t heard before.”
I’m thinking in my head, “You may have told him, but he’s never heard it.” So they took Brendan up to intensive care and we got up there and we were met by a critical care doctor. So we walked into that room and his eyes were taped shut. He’s got a vent in his head, his head is shaved and bandaged. It’s like you barely recognize your kid, and my husband just fell apart.
When I saw Dave, I thought, “If this kid doesn’t wake up, I don’t know if my husband’s going to recover from this.” By that evening he was not responding at all. They started to get very concerned and they said, “If we don’t have any response by the morning, it’s not good.”
So, we went to bed that night. We shared a cushion in the window seat. I got up in the middle of the night and my husband was sleeping. I was safe that I wasn’t going to destroy him and just fell apart to God. Like, “Are you going to take my kid? Like after everything we’ve been through, are you gonna take my kid?” It was just so painful and my whole life revolved around him.
You know, here he is 18 now, and we’re moving into this new journey that I was so afraid of, but I’m like, I don’t care. I just want him here. I ended up writing Brendan a letter because I spent the night before his birth and the night before he would have died in a hospital praying for him. Begging God for a different answer than I thought I was going to get.
Because I knew Brennan had hydrocephalus when I was pregnant and I was in the hospital the night before I had complications with my pregnancy. So I was in the hospital the night before he was born praying like, “Please don’t let him need this surgery. Please don’t let me have a special needs kid.” Now I’m praying, “Please just save my special needs kid.”
So I just wrote Brendan this letter and poured out our life together in words. Then I finally fell back to sleep and in the morning I got up and asked the nurse, “Have you given him any pain medicine since he had his surgery?” And she went and I knew, I just knew.
So I went and got cleaned up in the bathroom and then when I came back and Dave was just awake and we just had this conversation and he’s like, “I don’t feel him here.” And I’m like, “I don’t either.” And he’s like, “We saw him die at mission, didn’t we?” And I said, “Yeah, I think so.” So we just processed that together.
The Covering of the Church
Julianna:
They came in that day and they said, we have to get him stable. His vitals aren’t stable enough, but once we get them stable we need to do a brain death assessment test. If that comes back positive, we’ll have to wait 12 hours and then we’ll do it again, but we think he’s passed. So we were just exhausted and my husband’s a mess, and we’re reaching out at this point to friends at church.
I go down to the lobby to get a coffee and it’s just mountain view people. There’s probably 20, 25 people just sitting down in the lobby. It’s during cold and flu season. I mean this is pre-covid. They still had those protocols that nobody could go up in the room during cold and flu season except the parents. So they can’t even see us and they’re just down in the lobby.
I would take little breaks during the day to just get out of the room and go down there and their was Lisa and Jean and Karen and all these people from church there. So that night, at this point my sister’s in, my mom’s in, and they’re all waiting.
I just want everyone to go home becauseI just want to be alone with Brendan and Dave and process. I’m pretty sure my kids’ dead. They can’t do the test, but I just exhausted. So finally, this is so uncharacteristic of me, I’m like, “everyone has to go home, you need to leave.” And my mom’s like, “What?” And I said, “I don’t want to do this test with anyone there. I want privacy.”
And everyone’s like, “Oh, okay.” And they’d get up and leave and the doctor that had been working with us came in early so he could do Brendan’s brain assessment test and it’s horrible to watch. They put a Q-tip on their eye and they, do all these things for reflexes to see if they respond and he didn’t.
So I’m just sitting at his feet crying on his feet and they are like, “Yeah, it’s positive but they can’t declare him dead at that point because it has to be 12 hours and another doctor has to do the test.” They can’t even have the same doctor because they don’t want that doctor assuming he’s dead and missing a reaction.
So I’ve to spend another whole day in the hospital. And at this point we know he is probably not gonna wake up. So we ask the hospital, “Can people come say goodbye?” So Lisa and Gene set up this checkin down in the lobby. People would come and check in. Only four people could come at it up at a time. They would text us who was coming up.
So Dave and I would know who was coming up before they got there. If it was someone that we thought we would fall apart and we weren’t in the space, we could go into this little room and then Lisa would come up and escort them into Brendan’s room. So like a hundred people, friends, family, church went through that day. So we gave them a four hour period of time.
So Dave and I sat down that night after everyone left and we’re like, “Okay, we can’t do this, we can’t do this if we’re not together, and we’re going to have to make some really hard choices the next couple days. How are we going to do this?” And he’s like,” I just want us to agree on everything.” I go, “Okay, let’s pray.” So God said, “If you agree and it puts Sav on your heart, if it puts ointment on your heart, if it feels good, move forward.” If you start to make a decision and you’re not in agreement and it hurts your heart, stop.”
Trusting God through Grief
Julianna:
So that night, I just can’t sleep. I get up and I would lay in a ball and hold Brendan’s feet and rub his feet and just want to touch him because I don’t know what the future holds at this point. I’m just like, “God, why? I don’t understand your ways.” And he said, “It was an unfortunate series of events and I need you to trust me.”
I’m like, “Why did you have me do all that work for that retreat? And I’m not even going to go?” And he goes, “I was preparing you and you know how I’ve been with you through it all, and I need you to trust me again. Beloved, I too know what it feels like to lose my son.”
I didn’t realize the impact of Him asking me to write that letter to myself as my heavenly Father. I didn’t realize how important him healing that breach, which He needed me to do for that dumb retreat that I never even went to. That’s how much he knew what I would need. If I can see it, if I’ll pause and look at what God prepared me for.
So I started reading that letter back to myself, but Jesus couldn’t have told me that, Holy Spirit couldn’t have spoken that to me, only Father God — Who gave His only son for us could speak that to me. So there’s just this trust there that I’ve never had before. It was supernatural. No mother can carry that.
Our nurse ended up being a Christian. A friend of mine came to visit and she happened to be in that nurse’s home group at Shoreline Church. I started seeing God just do all these things. So the next morning, on Sunday morning, at this point, we’ve been in the hospital for four days.
They did the second brain assessment test and they declared him dead. It was horrible. But my kid, he was still warm and smelled good. I could kiss him. It was just so awful. They started talking to us about would we consider Brendan being an organ donor? We agreed to talk to someone. So there was an organization called One Legacy, and they took us in a conference room. So we just took our older sisters. We said, “Okay, what did God tell us?”
So she presents to us this organ donation. She’s like, “Why don’t I give you some time?” And he’s like,”I don’t need time. I’m ready. It puts salve on my heart, I’m ready.” So I said, “Okay, Deb?” “ It puts salve on my heart.” “Kathy?” “It puts salve on my heart.” So they got to me, I’m like, “It puts salve on my heart.”
So we talk about the organs and then she starts talking about corneas and tissue. And Deb’s like, “I’m in pain. I’m in pain.” We’re like, “Okay, we’ll just do the organs. That’s all we can do. You’re taking me to places my mind can’t handle the pain. I can’t think that far.”
So we move forward with this. He’s declared dead. We’re going to do choose organ donation. So they switch all of his care from hospital to organ donation, and they have to find recipients. So we ended up being in the hospital Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesday. But I have a 14 year old who is traumatized.
We end up having friends and family from church take turns whenever we weren’t there because we were checking on Logan. Somebody was always with Brendan. I just had no idea what a gift it would be to other people to have time with him like that.
I found out just recently that our good friend Alicia, who’s also our chiropractor, she actually is the one that got Brendan to walk. She read him all his favorite books when she stayed with him. So he ended up being an organ donor. So again, I had that last night.
They were going to find his recipients the next morning. I didn’t sleep. I was up with God and he said, “My son, in his death saved lives.” He had the potential to save seven families from going through this pain. It ended up that his lungs had been damaged from the ventilator and his pancreas had been damaged, but he was able to give his heart his kidneys and his liver.
There was a 40 year old man that got his liver, but all the other organs were 20 year old and younger. So another family didn’t have to lose their kid. There was some collateral beauty through it all. Because it was this devastating thing.
Seeing how our church came and just took us in and took care of us, and how people came for hours and loved on our kid, and how people were willing to sacrifice their time to stay in a hospital with someone that wasn’t really alive, but they just wanted to be with him. That other people through our tragedy, we’re going to get an answer to prayer.
There’s all this collateral beauty if you’re willing to see it and see God’s hand in it. I was going to have to go through that. Whether I ran to God, or I ran from God. So just ran to Him. I’d done the running from Him before. It doesn’t make it better.
I could have been mad at God. I just had this thing, when I could look back and see how He prepared me, He loves me more than I know. It doesn’t mean I don’t falter. There’s times where I’m mad at the world that I’ve had to walk this. But when I look back, all he did beforehand to prepare me and care for me, that’s what this is all about, how much your father loves you.
Gina:
That’s crazy. And then I saw Brandon’s photo of Brendan. What do they call it?
Julianna:
The honor walk. They do this crazy thing where they make an announcement, “There’s a hero being escorted to the ER.” All medical personnel please report to the halls. I think there was 20 of our family and closest friends that they let be at the very end of that hallway before we went into the hospital. They basically said, “We’ve never seen the likes of you before. We’re going to break all the rules.”
So they made a way for everyone that had come that wanted to come after we said goodbye. They escorted us to an elevator, and when we came down the elevator, when the doors opened, the entire lobby of Chalk hospital was aligned with our church and family and friends.
It was this whole ceremony, but usually only the parents and the siblings are allowed. There were over 80 people at the hospital until like two o’clock in the morning. It was emotional. I was a wreck. It was surreal. It was like an out of body experience. I can’t even put it into words. So Yeah.
Gina:
That all leaves a mark, and it forms your faith. Because you are dealing with the weight of such an extreme loss. Yet in the midst of that loss, the demonstration of God’s intimate love and care for you in the middle of it. How are you?
Julianna:
I’m not going to say it hasn’t been horrific. It is. I mean, we’re not meant for death, we were meant for the garden. That’s just like our instinctual spirit in us that knows this is wrong. I know Brendan’s great. I mean, Brendan’s in heaven. He is in his glorified body. He’s probably having the time of his life.
It’s like every parent’s worst nightmare and you survive. There’s times when you don’t want to, but God’s given me glimpses of Brendan in heaven, so full of joy with Jesus. When I clinging to those, then it’s well with my soul. I don’t always understand it. I have faltered in my faith.
I went through a really dark time during Covid where I just thought, “What’s the point to follow Jesus if it doesn’t protect you from the hardships of life? What’s the point?” But that practiced obedience does sometimes rise up in you like, “I’m going to praise you, I’m going to praise you, I’m going to praise you.” When you feel like, “I don’t want to do this. I hate this plan. I hate your ways. They suck.”
I’m choosing to praise you out of pure obedience because I believe you are good. Even though nothing in this situation shows me that, I’m choosing to praise you. There is a form of worship that you experience there that you can’t experience when life is good.
Do you want the faith that you get on your knees? Where you rely on nothing but God. You just have trust Him so much, you’ll just get on your knees, and not worry about what’s in your bank account, not worry what tomorrow brings. Do you want that faith?
I want to have that kind of faith. I don’t want to be in a position where that’s all I’ve got. Because it’s scary and it’s messy and it’s vulnerable. So it’s well with my soul, but it has been hard. “Who does it hurt when you don’t trust me? Does it hurt me? I love you no matter what. Does it hurt me? Yeah. Does it hurt you? Does your heart hurt more?”
Yes, Lord. “Okay. Don’t do that. Lean not on your own understanding. Will you sacrifice your understanding and trust me now, acknowledge me in all your ways? Acknowledge me in your rage. Acknowledge me that you hate my plan. I’m big enough to take it. Throw it at me.
And then I will keep your path straight. You don’t have to try and keep yourself on the straight and narrow. You’re not going to be able to do it. When you acknowledge me and now you’re not running from me, you’re running to me. Good. Just throw it at me darling. I couldn’t take it. I’ll keep your past straight.”
Then it’s not that behavior trying to say all the right things to people or hiding your grief. It’s just like, I’m a big freaking mess. I had a terrible cussing problem. I had all this rage. I wanted to tell people to go pound sand. And I’m just real with Him. Like, “Hey, it’s not pretty. Do you want to see?” But that’s how real I was with people. I’m as good as you can be when you lose your kid.
Gina:
This is the reality of what Jesus came for, the behavior modification, work based, performance driven pharmaceutical religion — leads to death of spirit. It’s a facade. I think we’re dealing with it in the evangelical church of the last few years.
There’s this grand exodus from quote unquote Christianity because of that. Because the counterfeit doesn’t meet you in the deepest, darkest, ugliest, most horrific of places. But Jesus, God the Father, the Holy Spirit will meet you there.
The counterfeit has the appearance of a foundation, but any weight on it and it just crumbles and it’s really just quick sand underneath. I love that you say “It is well with my soul” because that’s the person who wrote that song. He wrote that after his wife and children had died and he was on a ship on the way to America, and that’s when he pinned that verse.
Julianna:
There is this place kind of in our faith where the rubber has to meet the road. And it’s like, if Jesus is who He says He is, and if I truly believe who He says He is, then that means Brendan’s great, and I’ll see him again.
I believe Mary grieved the loss of her son. She also had the joy of knowing He saved the world. So I can grieve the loss of Brendan. I can, I don’t have to put on my good Christian mask, “Oh, God has a plan. Yeah. It’s okay. Brendan’s in a better place.” It’s like, “No, I want my kid. I want him here, but God’s asked me to trust Him, and I’m choosing to trust Him. I’m choosing to believe He’s good, but I’m not going to be phony about it and act like this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It is. God knows it. He’s experienced it.
It’s a temporal thing. That’s why I think his Word encourages us not to focus on the things that are temporal. Because if I focus on my loss, it’s gonna destroy me. But if I focus on the eternal truth, the unseen things, that every once in a while when we’re at worship, He’ll pull back the curtain of heaven and show Brendan worshiping with Him. Yeah. Jesus is good. I have to find joy in this suffering.
Gina:
Well, thank you for being real and for sharing with so much transparency your journey. Because I think there’s someone who’s going to listen that this is going to give them permission to not be okay, and to know that there is safety for them not to be okay, and that Jesus can take all of it and meet them in the middle of it.
It may even give someone eyes to see the scales fall, and for them to actually see God’s care through the storm, and through the process, and through the ugly. Those moments where He’s been present and faithful and actually carrying and holding and providing.
Check out the rest of this conversation: God’s Redeeming Love & Partnering with Love
Check out the Dwell Meditations
