September 21, 2025 • 31 mins
In this deeply moving episode, J. Harrington shares her journey from devastating loss to powerful purpose. As a military spouse, J. faced the unimaginable when the Holy Spirit warned her she wouldn't keep her unborn son during Hurricane Florence. Through raw honesty, she describes her hospital experience, the reality of spiritual warfare, and her season of "rage praying" while staying close to God despite her anger.
J.'s story reveals how our greatest pain can become our most powerful ministry. Her loss transformed her into the person God needed her to be, ultimately leading her to writing "Swords Up," a Bible study that helps others understand spiritual warfare and use God's armour as both protection and weapon. Her transparent account of grief, faith, and divine purpose offers hope to anyone walking through their own dark seasons, showing that even in our anger and confusion, God's love remains constant, and His plans unfold for our good and His glory.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thank you so much for listening to Bleeding Daylight today.
You can explore more inspiring episodes at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
As you listen, please consider who else needs to hear today's episode, then share it by word of mouth or social media.
We all face struggles in life, but today's guest has faced heartbreaking loss.
She tells of how her faith proved to be a true anchor during the storm, and how she is now helping others turn tragedy into triumph.
(01:03):
Today I'll introduce you to someone truly special.
J. Harrington, author of the powerful Bible study Swords Up.
J.'s story is one of incredible faith forged through unimaginable loss.
Following incredible tragedy, she experienced God's presence in such a profound way that it changed the entire trajectory of her spiritual journey.
(01:25):
Even in her anger and grief, she knew God had a purpose.
She just had to stay close to Him until it was revealed.
What followed was a beautiful transformation as God softened her heart and drew her deeper into His word, eventually leading her to write a Bible study that helps others navigate their own spiritual battles.
(01:45):
Her story reminds us that sometimes our greatest pain becomes the birthplace of our most powerful purpose.
J., welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much for having me.
I want to find out more about the loss that became a catalyst for so much.
But first, help me get a picture of life before that time.
What did life look like for you?
(02:06):
I am a military spouse.
So my husband and I were actually here in Camp Lejeune, where we are now.
We had a four-year-old at that time, and we were kind of in the midst of what they call a workup.
So my husband was getting ready to deploy.
We were trying to figure out, did we want a second child?
The answer for me was always yes.
I had always dreamed of having two kids.
(02:29):
He was one of the last males in his family, so I thought, what a great gift that I could give him to have a son.
I was going to school.
I was finishing my master's certificate in project management.
I had my toddler that I was taking care of, and I was also volunteering full-time, which was another 40 hours on top of my schoolwork and on top of being a mom, because why not?
(02:51):
Because that's how we do it in the Marine Corps.
It was pretty hectic, but it was very full.
A busy life, but certainly very fulfilling with everything that was going on.
Take me through the steps of what happened next.
You're saying that you were looking to have another child and hopefully a son.
When did you hear the news that you were pregnant, and that was a possibility?
(03:14):
I was very excited, and I had prayed specifically for a son, because we know you have a 50-50 chance.
Just because we wanted to have a boy doesn't mean we're going to have one.
I prayed so, so much, and then we got the news, and then we found out that it was a boy.
To say that everybody was ecstatic was an understatement.
My husband was excited.
(03:35):
My father-in-law, I heard him laugh with joy.
We were just really excited and did all the things that we do—prep the four-year-old for the new baby and buy all the things and get the room ready.
It was a really great time.
Tell me about your first pregnancy with your daughter.
Did that go smoothly?
Was that what you would say a normal pregnancy?
(03:58):
My pregnancy with my daughter, it was really easy actually.
We were overseas stationed in Russia.
He was working his Marine duty job, and then I was working as an office manager.
I was able to get pregnant.
I would even run two to three miles a day with my pregnancy, and I was working out with weights.
I was like superwoman but pregnant.
(04:20):
Yeah, no issues there, but the difference with my son was night and day.
It was not easy.
There was a lot of unexplained bleeding.
I spent lots of time in the hospital.
It just wasn't completely normal.
What were the first indications for you that this was not going to be a normal pregnancy?
(04:41):
What were the first things that triggered you to say, oh, this isn't quite like it was before?
Definitely the bleeding, and it wasn't just the bleeding.
It was unexplained.
They couldn't figure out what the problem was, and he was smaller.
I was at 25 weeks in the last checkup that I recall, and he was smaller in size even though he had all the vital signs that he should have.
(05:05):
He was hitting all his breathing movements that they do while they're in utero.
That was happening, and his heartbeat was strong, so that was good.
All the indicators were good, but that unexplained bleeding, and there were three instances where they kept me for over a 24-hour period just to observe me, and there was no real explanation.
(05:25):
I think looking at it in hindsight, I would say that the stress that I was living under was just too much for him.
For anybody who's been pregnant, they know that stress is really bad for women who are caring.
Take me through the rest of the pregnancy.
What happened from that point?
I was in a very tough situation because as military families were far away from other family members, we had moved from Virginia where we had raised our daughter.
(05:54):
We didn't have any friends.
Our family wasn't nearby, and so it was just me and my toddler, my schoolwork, and then the volunteer work, and my husband was gone, so there was no real support for me.
I was in a Bible study group then with some of my friends.
I said, pray for me.
Pray that my son can survive me, survive me being a mom because I don't have any help.
(06:19):
Everybody was working.
Everybody had their own kids, and so there wasn't any way for anybody to help, and so I said, please pray that the preschool on base get some room for my daughter so at least she has somewhere to go.
Give me some wiggle room, some relaxed room.
It just didn't happen.
As time progressed, the hospital kept me under close observation.
(06:39):
They did stress tests on me, so they were monitoring me pretty closely, but what happened was hurricane Florence.
It stayed off the North Carolina coast for about a week, so we in Lejeune, we're like 20 minutes from the beach, if that.
The hurricane stayed on the coast and just battered the coast with rain.
(06:59):
We lost power for two weeks.
The lines went down.
The roads were closed.
We were pretty much isolated on base.
While the hospital was literally walking distance from our house, the appointments got canceled, so if you weren't bleeding, if you weren't dying, if you weren't having a heart attack, you were not coming in.
There were no indications that there was something wrong, like I didn't have a fever.
(07:22):
I wasn't throwing up.
I didn't have any outward symptoms.
We were preparing for this storm to come, and I was in the shower, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me, get used to the idea that you don't get to keep your baby.
In that moment, I'm really hoping, I'm just making this up.
I'm really hoping that it's the hormones.
I'm just hysterical.
(07:43):
It'll be all right.
Hopefully it works, and I was just pleading, begging God, please let this be like just some crazy mistake.
We lost power, and when you lose power, there's leaks in the roof, so I am on my feet all day, trying to keep everything dry, trying to keep my toddler fed and entertained, because it sounded like roaring lions outside of our window.
(08:03):
That's how much the rain and the wind was coming, and so trying to keep her calm and entertained, keeping everything dry, plus trying to feed all of us, keeping everything comfortable, right?
After the storm passed, I was like, you know, I haven't felt my baby move, and with Ariel, my oldest, she would be asleep all the time, because I was always on the move.
(08:26):
Like I said, I was running a lot, and so she would always fall asleep, so I was like, well, maybe, maybe this is it, too.
Maybe he's just asleep, because I've been on my feet for the last two weeks.
By the time that I made it to the hospital, she didn't find a heartbeat.
She didn't know what to do with herself.
I felt so bad, and she was like, how are you okay?
It was hard for me to explain, you know, oh, the Holy Spirit told me that I was going to lose my child.
(08:51):
That wasn't an easy thing to do, but when she told me that there was no heartbeat, I wasn't surprised, so that was kind of the beginning of everything, was that moment.
That's a tough thing to experience, obviously, but then there is the time after that, when you have to just continue.
How do you continue to put one foot after the other, even with that confirmation from the Holy Spirit, you don't get to keep this child?
(09:19):
That's knowledge, but that doesn't help you emotionally deal with that loss, so where did things go from there?
Right after that, like I mentioned, the lines were down, so we couldn't get a hold of my husband.
I was in the hospital with my toddler, getting this news, and I had my friends scrambling and trying to get a hold of my husband.
They told me that I had to deliver the baby.
(09:41):
I did not react well to that.
I was like, okay, well, just get it out of me, like just do it, and they were like, no, you have to do it naturally.
So, if you're not a woman, then you have to get medically induced, and they give you medicine, and there are other kinds of methods to help you with that.
I was a volunteer for the parents and the spouses of that unit at that time, and the parents were very loving, and they were like, what do we do for you today, like anything, like just tell us, tell us what to do, and because we were so cut off by everything, and I said, just pray for me.
(10:14):
Pray that this baby passes and that it's not traumatic.
I don't want to be scarred for life, essentially.
They surrounded me with prayer, and it was really amazing.
It was like the presence of God was in that room with me, and I had taken my Bible and my phone.
That's all I remember bringing to the hospital with me.
The verse 1 Peter 3 15, that's where I opened up my Bible.
(10:34):
I had never seen that verse before, and it says, sanctify the Lord your God and be ready to tell anybody who asks for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, and so I hung on to that, and I prayed, and I knew that if anybody knew what it was like to lose a child, the Lord knew what it was like.
He knew my thing, and when I was there, I felt like He was enveloping me in a hug.
(10:58):
It was very peaceful, and even the nurses and the chaplain that came in, they were astonished.
They were like, why are you so calm, and when the chaplain came, I was able to tell him that the Lord had warned me that I was going to lose my child.
So they were like, oh, okay, and then I was able to minister to the nurses and even to the cleaning lady, and there was lots of tears, but I was very much at peace.
(11:20):
The baby passed while I was asleep, so I was very peaceful, not traumatic at all.
My husband and I got to hold him and bless him and, you know, kind of send him on his way.
When you have that kind of experience, sometimes you have high blood pressure, which is preeclampsia, and that gives you a high risk of stroke.
They said, okay, J., we have to keep you for 24 hours just to make sure that you're okay before we send you home.
(11:46):
So I sent my husband home, and I said, go be with our oldest.
Give her some kind of semblance of normalcy, like take her to the park or something, and he left me in the hospital.
It was just me and the Lord, and I felt very comfortable.
I was looking out the window as I was praying, and there was a patch of forest across the street from the hospital, and I felt a very dark presence there, and my heart just started to hammer out of my chest.
(12:12):
I felt like I was going to fight this thing, and I felt like I wanted to run out of the hospital room.
It was wild.
It was this very odd tension of the Holy Spirit and God's presence in that room, and then that evil force that was right in front of me, and I was like, oh my gosh, this warfare that everybody's talking about, it's real.
It's real, and it's right here in front of me, and that's where that ended.
(12:35):
My journey back to God took a little bit longer after that, but that's where Swords Up starts.
It was in that moment.
I want to explore Swords Up because it's an amazing Bible study, but before we go there, I know that you're obviously feeling deep emotion at the loss of your son.
Your husband would be feeling that as well, but how do you then explain that to a four-year-old who has been expecting to have a baby brother?
(13:02):
How do you go through that journey with your daughter?
That was so hard.
Statistically speaking, the death of a child is very hard on a marriage, and the likelihood of your marriage surviving is not good, and so I told my husband that we had to go through counseling, and so we went through counseling with somebody from his unit, which is great.
Our daughter, she's very wise for her age, so we were able to explain to her that her baby brother was with Jesus and that she would not be seeing him.
(13:31):
That took a long time for her to get over, and it was very hard because as a four-year-old, she's bringing it up, so it was like picking at a scab over and over and over again, and there was a certain time we were like, okay, when you talk about your brother, it makes our heart hurt, so can you please stop?
Once we told her that it made
(13:52):
us really sad that she did that, that that wasn't something that we talked about all the time,
and so every once in a while, we'll bring it up naturally in conversation, but we were very lucky
in that she grasped the severity of what was happening because my mom had a belly, and then
she didn't, and then she saw the aftermath, right, all the medical stuff, and she visited me in the
and I'm sure my husband had discussions with her that I wasn't privy to, but it was difficult.
(14:18):
Knowing that God was involved at every step along the way can bring comfort, but we still have to deal with the things that are before us, and I know that for a time, you were holding on to the knowledge that God was good, even though you didn't feel it.
Can you tell me a little about that?
Sure.
When I was in the hospital room, God's presence was almost palpable.
(14:45):
I could almost reach out and touch it and feel it.
It did make sense to me that not only would He warn me, but He would comfort me if it wasn't for a reason.
Once I left the hospital room, all the feelings were raw.
I don't know if it was because there was some kind of medication they were giving me.
(15:07):
I don't think there was, but when I left the hospital room, it was rough.
I felt like I had been through a war zone and rightfully so, but I knew what I had experienced in that room, and I knew that this was for a reason.
I didn't know what the reason was.
I didn't have to like it, but I knew that if I wanted to see it come to fruition, I had to stay close to God.
(15:30):
Just because something is the right thing to do, doesn't mean that you have to like it.
As a marine spouse, I am used to not being told everything that I want to know when I want to know it.
I just know that it's going to be okay, and it'll all work out, and it usually does.
This was one of those instances.
I knew that God was good, and I knew that He had a plan, but right in that moment after that hospital stay, I was mad at Him.
(15:59):
I was mad at Him, and I was going to let Him know it, but I was going to keep showing up because I wanted to see what this all meant.
I just kept showing up.
One day at a time, I raged prayed.
So, I prayed in my rage.
I cried because I felt that He had taken my son from me.
I was like, this is your fault.
(16:21):
The fact that I am heartbroken, the fact that my family isn't complete.
This is your fault.
You did this to me.
I don't know why you did it to me, but I want to find out, and so here I am.
I may not like you right now, but I love you, so here I am.
I would go to church, and I couldn't sing.
When I prayed, it was short, clipped prayers.
(16:43):
I would pray for other people, but I felt like I wasn't talking to God because I was mad at Him.
If that makes sense.
Please watch over my family, but I'm still mad at you type thing.
Eventually over time, it was a softening, kind of like a melting of metal that you can forge into something else.
That's exactly what it felt like.
It felt like I was being reborn into somebody who was more loving, more graceful, a better mom, wife, a better overall human being.
(17:12):
Eventually, I was able to sing again, and I was able to thank God for the difference that I felt in myself.
I knew and I understood that had I not lost my son, I wouldn't become that person.
It was that person that God needed me to be for Him to use me.
(17:32):
That's when I realized that was the purpose of my son's life was to change me, to change me into who God needed me to be.
We tend to recoil from that kind of idea of being angry with God, and we feel we don't have permission to do that.
Yet we look back through scriptures, especially in the Psalms, and we see people who say to God, Hey, look, everything's a mess.
(17:55):
You've abandoned me.
You watch their journey through the Psalm, and they come to the realization, no, God is actually good.
He was there all along.
Was that your experience of going through, Lord, I've got to tell you, this is how I'm feeling, and then waiting for Him to come in with that healing for you?
(18:16):
Yeah.
Being a mom, you're used to your kids having a tantrum.
You're lovingly just watching them have a tantrum.
My daughter could be yelling at me, or, well, she tries to yell at me.
She could be fussing at me for something that she doesn't like, and she's like, I'm not your daughter anymore.
She'll flip her hair, and she'll look the other way, but she's throwing a tantrum.
But I still love her, and I'm still there to watch her have her feelings.
(18:38):
It was very similar to that.
I felt when I was telling God how mean He was, and how much I didn't like Him at the moment, I felt His loving presence there, but it was a silent assent.
Okay, go ahead and say everything you've got to say.
I'm here for it.
But it was like a very steady, just a presence there the whole time.
(19:01):
You mentioned that starting point for Swords Up.
Maybe you can press into that a little bit more, and tell me more about the reasoning behind writing for others going through difficult times.
I'll just say right off the bat, Swords Up, the Bible study was not my idea.
It was a total God idea.
I'd never wanted to write a Bible study.
(19:23):
It had never been a goal for me at all.
But back in 2021, I had had my rainbow baby, so the Lord redeemed my son for me, and I gave me this wonderful COVID little spitfire, and so she's just the laugh of our house.
We had her, and then my husband was supposed to come back to North Carolina, and he was supposed to leave right away.
(19:47):
I was leading women's ministry then, and I said, Lord, how do I serve you with two small children and my husband constantly gone?
And so the Lord says, you are going to write.
And there was confirmation.
There was various confirmations that this is what I was supposed to do.
So I said, okay, that makes sense to me.
(20:07):
I had been doing social media for years, and I had always thought about content writing, but never actually pursued it.
So I was like, perfect.
Content writing was right up my alley.
I can totally do that.
I'm in.
We are in the process of cross-country from California to North Carolina, and I embark on a six-month blog writing course.
(20:29):
I know I don't have six months.
I have three.
So I have to do it in three months because my husband's about to leave, and I have the two kids and the dog and a new house.
I do it all, and then I can't get hired.
Okay, Lord.
I was like, you told me this is what I needed to do.
I did the thing.
Why can I not get hired?
But I knew that there was a plan, like I said.
So I said, okay, let me just stay in my word because when God says move, I'm going to jump.
(20:54):
I'm going to go, and I'm going to go hard.
So I'm in my Bible.
I'm making my way to the New Testament, and I go to Ephesians.
I've been in church since I was nine.
I know this is one of my favorite passages.
I go, Lord, we do not fight against the flesh and blood, but against powers.
And I was like, I wonder what that actually means in the original Greek.
(21:14):
So I pull out my blue letter by lap.
I look at powers, and the first couple of definitions are what you would expect.
But down towards the bottom, it also says exosia, the power of choice.
Isn't that interesting?
We as humans fight our will, our decisions all the time.
(21:36):
We overeat.
We overshop.
We overspend.
We talk to the people that we shouldn't talk to.
We use recreational drugs when we don't want to, or when we shouldn't.
We do all of these things, and we're constantly fighting ourselves and beating ourselves up for the things that we do that we know we shouldn't do.
And so I call my mom, and I say, hey, did you know that was there?
(21:57):
Did you know about exosia?
No.
That's fantastic.
She's been a Christian like her whole life, and she's like, you know, that would be a cool Bible study.
And my heart just jumps out of my chest like it does when the Holy Spirit is talking to me.
And I was like, no, no, I don't want to write a Bible study.
No.
I just thought this was a big joke.
(22:19):
And I was like, I don't use Bible studies.
Like, I stopped using them a while ago.
It's just me and the Holy Spirit going through Scripture.
So I pray about it, and I tell my boss to pray about it, or the man who becomes my boss.
I say, you know, I think the Lord wants me to write this thing.
And I tell my friends, hey, can you pray for me?
Can you pray for discernment that I'm not making stuff up?
And so everybody starts praying for me.
(22:40):
And then one morning, I sit down with a pen and a paper, my Bible, and I tell the Holy Spirit, fine, you want me to write this Bible study so bad, you're going to have to tell me what to do because I'm not writing it on my own.
I refuse.
I don't want to.
And I just sat there, and in 15 minutes, he gave me the whole outline for an eight-week Bible study.
(23:02):
And I was dumbfounded.
And I heard the Holy Spirit laugh at me.
And it was like five o'clock in the morning, and the Holy Spirit is laughing at me for daring him.
So that's where Swords Up came up.
It was the work of the Holy Spirit telling me what to do, telling me where to look, what to write, when to write.
I have to give him the credit for it.
Even back then, who was in your mind as to those people who would benefit the most from the study that you're writing?
(23:28):
I was writing to someone like me.
I was writing to a mom who was getting up really early in the morning just to get her Bible study, or like my friend Paige, who was locking herself in her bathroom just to get her Bible study in.
I was writing to women like us who were in the midst of a really busy life, but really wanted to dig into the Word and discover the mysteries that were in it, just the power and the knowledge that's in it.
(24:02):
Also to have something practical to hang on to.
Because I feel like a lot of times we read the Bible and we understand it, yes, but practically we don't know how to put it into action.
As I was writing it, I knew that I wanted it to be something that I would want to do myself and that I could do myself with the busy life that I had with kids and work and all that.
(24:31):
It's not a theological level course that is going to keep people tied up in knots, but by the same token, it's not just a read a verse, here's a short paragraph about it, and go on from there.
It is actually designed to take people deeper into the Word, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
I mentioned the Blue Letter Bible app before.
(24:53):
I used the Greek and original Hebrew as I am writing this, trying to explain the original context of the armor of God, what Paul was trying to tell us by it, and then the other pieces within the Bible that tie to different pieces of armor.
(25:15):
Not just that, but looking at it from a different perspective.
The original manuscript of it was 10,000 words and it ended up being 50,000.
Whenever my publisher, Carol Tesloff, she said, you have this wrong.
The only offensive weapon is the sword.
(25:36):
And I felt in my spirit, no, that is wrong.
So, Carol, you're the reason why swords up is the way it is.
My whole idea was, no, our armor can be used as a weapon against Satan.
And what does that look like?
And can I back it up?
There are ways that our spiritual armor can be used effectively as an offensive weapon too, other than our sword.
(26:00):
So, it is meant to take you deeper.
There's a whole lot of Bible in there.
What I want people to get is that I want you to take your time.
If you only have 30 minutes, do your 30 minutes and then come back to it.
Don't rush through it.
It's supposed to be a journey that takes you to different parts of the Bible.
So, you see how everything ties in together.
(26:21):
What has been the response from people that have taken that journey through swords up?
What has been their feedback to you?
The original manuscript was launched in two different groups.
So, one was in my home and then the other one was in a different Bible study in the West Coast.
We were doing it simultaneously a week apart.
(26:41):
At first, it was like, it's too much.
It's too much, too much, too quickly.
You got to break it up.
And so, we ended up breaking it up from one chapter per week to 40 days.
It was too dense.
But now that it is on a 40-day format, the response has been really positive.
(27:01):
A friend of mine was in another group that piloted the study and she was saying the conversations were great.
Something that she said that I had not expected was it was a great comfort to us knowing that others were struggling too.
These are women who are being vulnerable with each other, with the discussion questions, and finding out that they're not alone, which is huge.
(27:27):
Biblical community is important and we don't take that seriously enough nowadays.
We're very isolated because of social media and because of remote work.
But the Bible tells us, do not fail to meet as it is the custom for some.
This is a spiritual war and it's a lot easier to fight the enemy as a group than to do it alone.
(27:49):
It's interesting that people are now discovering, oh, someone else has been through some difficult seasons just as I'm going through.
And we tend to, in the Western world at least, hide away those struggles that we have.
And yet, the Scripture calls us to, as you say, meet together, to be able to embolden one another, to strengthen one another, to comfort one another.
(28:14):
Do you think that's a big piece that we so often miss in the Western world, in Western Christianity?
Yeah, absolutely.
We're so fixated on independence and doing things on our own.
Individualism is huge, but we were created in community by a triune God who was in community with himself to have community with other people.
(28:39):
And that was because iron sharpens iron.
We're so concerned about doing it on our own and focusing a lot on church hurt and people hurt, like, oh, so-and-so hurt me, so therefore I'm closed off to everybody.
But the Bible calls us to be together and to do life together.
And I think that that's something that's sorely missing in a lot of communities, and it leaves us vulnerable.
(29:05):
Obviously, your book is going to be helpful for someone who's been through a similar journey to yours of losing a child, but that's not the only struggle that we face in life.
Who are the other people that you think are going to benefit from reading through and taking part in the Bible study?
The loss of my son is just one part.
(29:25):
I don't know if you want to think it's all-encompassing, because that's a really heavy topic.
I think that anybody who is struggling with sin or struggling with things like anxiety, depression, things that they can't seem to shake on their own, even certain addictions, I would say.
Anybody who has ever experienced any type of spiritual warfare and can't seem to get a leg up or has ever been curious about the armor of God but never really known how to put it on.
(29:56):
All those people have something to gain from this Bible study, if not just to understand that the Word of God is a formidable weapon, and if you are not in it constantly, then you're truly missing out.
J., I have links to the Bible study in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net, so that people can find you easily, find that book, and get the help that they need through the Scripture.
(30:26):
But I just want to say thank you for sharing your story, for being so open, for being so transparent through that, but also for writing this Bible study, Swords Up, so that others can benefit.
And I want to say thank you so much for spending time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
(30:49):
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thank you so much for listening to Bleeding Daylight today.
You can explore more inspiring episodes at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:30):
As you listen, please consider who else needs to hear today's episode, then share it by word of mouth or social media.
We all face struggles in life, but today's guest has faced heartbreaking loss.
She tells of how her faith proved to be a true anchor during the storm, and how she is now helping others turn tragedy into triumph.
(01:03):
Today I'll introduce you to someone truly special.
J. Harrington, author of the powerful Bible study Swords Up.
J.'s story is one of incredible faith forged through unimaginable loss.
Following incredible tragedy, she experienced God's presence in such a profound way that it changed the entire trajectory of her spiritual journey.
(01:25):
Even in her anger and grief, she knew God had a purpose.
She just had to stay close to Him until it was revealed.
What followed was a beautiful transformation as God softened her heart and drew her deeper into His word, eventually leading her to write a Bible study that helps others navigate their own spiritual battles.
(01:45):
Her story reminds us that sometimes our greatest pain becomes the birthplace of our most powerful purpose.
J., welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much for having me.
I want to find out more about the loss that became a catalyst for so much.
But first, help me get a picture of life before that time.
What did life look like for you?
(02:06):
I am a military spouse.
So my husband and I were actually here in Camp Lejeune, where we are now.
We had a four-year-old at that time, and we were kind of in the midst of what they call a workup.
So my husband was getting ready to deploy.
We were trying to figure out, did we want a second child?
The answer for me was always yes.
I had always dreamed of having two kids.
(02:29):
He was one of the last males in his family, so I thought, what a great gift that I could give him to have a son.
I was going to school.
I was finishing my master's certificate in project management.
I had my toddler that I was taking care of, and I was also volunteering full-time, which was another 40 hours on top of my schoolwork and on top of being a mom, because why not?
(02:51):
Because that's how we do it in the Marine Corps.
It was pretty hectic, but it was very full.
A busy life, but certainly very fulfilling with everything that was going on.
Take me through the steps of what happened next.
You're saying that you were looking to have another child and hopefully a son.
When did you hear the news that you were pregnant, and that was a possibility?
(03:14):
I was very excited, and I had prayed specifically for a son, because we know you have a 50-50 chance.
Just because we wanted to have a boy doesn't mean we're going to have one.
I prayed so, so much, and then we got the news, and then we found out that it was a boy.
To say that everybody was ecstatic was an understatement.
My husband was excited.
(03:35):
My father-in-law, I heard him laugh with joy.
We were just really excited and did all the things that we do—prep the four-year-old for the new baby and buy all the things and get the room ready.
It was a really great time.
Tell me about your first pregnancy with your daughter.
Did that go smoothly?
Was that what you would say a normal pregnancy?
(03:58):
My pregnancy with my daughter, it was really easy actually.
We were overseas stationed in Russia.
He was working his Marine duty job, and then I was working as an office manager.
I was able to get pregnant.
I would even run two to three miles a day with my pregnancy, and I was working out with weights.
I was like superwoman but pregnant.
(04:20):
Yeah, no issues there, but the difference with my son was night and day.
It was not easy.
There was a lot of unexplained bleeding.
I spent lots of time in the hospital.
It just wasn't completely normal.
What were the first indications for you that this was not going to be a normal pregnancy?
(04:41):
What were the first things that triggered you to say, oh, this isn't quite like it was before?
Definitely the bleeding, and it wasn't just the bleeding.
It was unexplained.
They couldn't figure out what the problem was, and he was smaller.
I was at 25 weeks in the last checkup that I recall, and he was smaller in size even though he had all the vital signs that he should have.
(05:05):
He was hitting all his breathing movements that they do while they're in utero.
That was happening, and his heartbeat was strong, so that was good.
All the indicators were good, but that unexplained bleeding, and there were three instances where they kept me for over a 24-hour period just to observe me, and there was no real explanation.
(05:25):
I think looking at it in hindsight, I would say that the stress that I was living under was just too much for him.
For anybody who's been pregnant, they know that stress is really bad for women who are caring.
Take me through the rest of the pregnancy.
What happened from that point?
I was in a very tough situation because as military families were far away from other family members, we had moved from Virginia where we had raised our daughter.
(05:54):
We didn't have any friends.
Our family wasn't nearby, and so it was just me and my toddler, my schoolwork, and then the volunteer work, and my husband was gone, so there was no real support for me.
I was in a Bible study group then with some of my friends.
I said, pray for me.
Pray that my son can survive me, survive me being a mom because I don't have any help.
(06:19):
Everybody was working.
Everybody had their own kids, and so there wasn't any way for anybody to help, and so I said, please pray that the preschool on base get some room for my daughter so at least she has somewhere to go.
Give me some wiggle room, some relaxed room.
It just didn't happen.
As time progressed, the hospital kept me under close observation.
(06:39):
They did stress tests on me, so they were monitoring me pretty closely, but what happened was hurricane Florence.
It stayed off the North Carolina coast for about a week, so we in Lejeune, we're like 20 minutes from the beach, if that.
The hurricane stayed on the coast and just battered the coast with rain.
(06:59):
We lost power for two weeks.
The lines went down.
The roads were closed.
We were pretty much isolated on base.
While the hospital was literally walking distance from our house, the appointments got canceled, so if you weren't bleeding, if you weren't dying, if you weren't having a heart attack, you were not coming in.
There were no indications that there was something wrong, like I didn't have a fever.
(07:22):
I wasn't throwing up.
I didn't have any outward symptoms.
We were preparing for this storm to come, and I was in the shower, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me, get used to the idea that you don't get to keep your baby.
In that moment, I'm really hoping, I'm just making this up.
I'm really hoping that it's the hormones.
I'm just hysterical.
(07:43):
It'll be all right.
Hopefully it works, and I was just pleading, begging God, please let this be like just some crazy mistake.
We lost power, and when you lose power, there's leaks in the roof, so I am on my feet all day, trying to keep everything dry, trying to keep my toddler fed and entertained, because it sounded like roaring lions outside of our window.
(08:03):
That's how much the rain and the wind was coming, and so trying to keep her calm and entertained, keeping everything dry, plus trying to feed all of us, keeping everything comfortable, right?
After the storm passed, I was like, you know, I haven't felt my baby move, and with Ariel, my oldest, she would be asleep all the time, because I was always on the move.
(08:26):
Like I said, I was running a lot, and so she would always fall asleep, so I was like, well, maybe, maybe this is it, too.
Maybe he's just asleep, because I've been on my feet for the last two weeks.
By the time that I made it to the hospital, she didn't find a heartbeat.
She didn't know what to do with herself.
I felt so bad, and she was like, how are you okay?
It was hard for me to explain, you know, oh, the Holy Spirit told me that I was going to lose my child.
(08:51):
That wasn't an easy thing to do, but when she told me that there was no heartbeat, I wasn't surprised, so that was kind of the beginning of everything, was that moment.
That's a tough thing to experience, obviously, but then there is the time after that, when you have to just continue.
How do you continue to put one foot after the other, even with that confirmation from the Holy Spirit, you don't get to keep this child?
(09:19):
That's knowledge, but that doesn't help you emotionally deal with that loss, so where did things go from there?
Right after that, like I mentioned, the lines were down, so we couldn't get a hold of my husband.
I was in the hospital with my toddler, getting this news, and I had my friends scrambling and trying to get a hold of my husband.
They told me that I had to deliver the baby.
(09:41):
I did not react well to that.
I was like, okay, well, just get it out of me, like just do it, and they were like, no, you have to do it naturally.
So, if you're not a woman, then you have to get medically induced, and they give you medicine, and there are other kinds of methods to help you with that.
I was a volunteer for the parents and the spouses of that unit at that time, and the parents were very loving, and they were like, what do we do for you today, like anything, like just tell us, tell us what to do, and because we were so cut off by everything, and I said, just pray for me.
(10:14):
Pray that this baby passes and that it's not traumatic.
I don't want to be scarred for life, essentially.
They surrounded me with prayer, and it was really amazing.
It was like the presence of God was in that room with me, and I had taken my Bible and my phone.
That's all I remember bringing to the hospital with me.
The verse 1 Peter 3 15, that's where I opened up my Bible.
(10:34):
I had never seen that verse before, and it says, sanctify the Lord your God and be ready to tell anybody who asks for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, and so I hung on to that, and I prayed, and I knew that if anybody knew what it was like to lose a child, the Lord knew what it was like.
He knew my thing, and when I was there, I felt like He was enveloping me in a hug.
(10:58):
It was very peaceful, and even the nurses and the chaplain that came in, they were astonished.
They were like, why are you so calm, and when the chaplain came, I was able to tell him that the Lord had warned me that I was going to lose my child.
So they were like, oh, okay, and then I was able to minister to the nurses and even to the cleaning lady, and there was lots of tears, but I was very much at peace.
(11:20):
The baby passed while I was asleep, so I was very peaceful, not traumatic at all.
My husband and I got to hold him and bless him and, you know, kind of send him on his way.
When you have that kind of experience, sometimes you have high blood pressure, which is preeclampsia, and that gives you a high risk of stroke.
They said, okay, J., we have to keep you for 24 hours just to make sure that you're okay before we send you home.
(11:46):
So I sent my husband home, and I said, go be with our oldest.
Give her some kind of semblance of normalcy, like take her to the park or something, and he left me in the hospital.
It was just me and the Lord, and I felt very comfortable.
I was looking out the window as I was praying, and there was a patch of forest across the street from the hospital, and I felt a very dark presence there, and my heart just started to hammer out of my chest.
(12:12):
I felt like I was going to fight this thing, and I felt like I wanted to run out of the hospital room.
It was wild.
It was this very odd tension of the Holy Spirit and God's presence in that room, and then that evil force that was right in front of me, and I was like, oh my gosh, this warfare that everybody's talking about, it's real.
It's real, and it's right here in front of me, and that's where that ended.
(12:35):
My journey back to God took a little bit longer after that, but that's where Swords Up starts.
It was in that moment.
I want to explore Swords Up because it's an amazing Bible study, but before we go there, I know that you're obviously feeling deep emotion at the loss of your son.
Your husband would be feeling that as well, but how do you then explain that to a four-year-old who has been expecting to have a baby brother?
(13:02):
How do you go through that journey with your daughter?
That was so hard.
Statistically speaking, the death of a child is very hard on a marriage, and the likelihood of your marriage surviving is not good, and so I told my husband that we had to go through counseling, and so we went through counseling with somebody from his unit, which is great.
Our daughter, she's very wise for her age, so we were able to explain to her that her baby brother was with Jesus and that she would not be seeing him.
(13:31):
That took a long time for her to get over, and it was very hard because as a four-year-old, she's bringing it up, so it was like picking at a scab over and over and over again, and there was a certain time we were like, okay, when you talk about your brother, it makes our heart hurt, so can you please stop?
Once we told her that it made
(13:52):
us really sad that she did that, that that wasn't something that we talked about all the time,
and so every once in a while, we'll bring it up naturally in conversation, but we were very lucky
in that she grasped the severity of what was happening because my mom had a belly, and then
she didn't, and then she saw the aftermath, right, all the medical stuff, and she visited me in the
and I'm sure my husband had discussions with her that I wasn't privy to, but it was difficult.
(14:18):
Knowing that God was involved at every step along the way can bring comfort, but we still have to deal with the things that are before us, and I know that for a time, you were holding on to the knowledge that God was good, even though you didn't feel it.
Can you tell me a little about that?
Sure.
When I was in the hospital room, God's presence was almost palpable.
(14:45):
I could almost reach out and touch it and feel it.
It did make sense to me that not only would He warn me, but He would comfort me if it wasn't for a reason.
Once I left the hospital room, all the feelings were raw.
I don't know if it was because there was some kind of medication they were giving me.
(15:07):
I don't think there was, but when I left the hospital room, it was rough.
I felt like I had been through a war zone and rightfully so, but I knew what I had experienced in that room, and I knew that this was for a reason.
I didn't know what the reason was.
I didn't have to like it, but I knew that if I wanted to see it come to fruition, I had to stay close to God.
(15:30):
Just because something is the right thing to do, doesn't mean that you have to like it.
As a marine spouse, I am used to not being told everything that I want to know when I want to know it.
I just know that it's going to be okay, and it'll all work out, and it usually does.
This was one of those instances.
I knew that God was good, and I knew that He had a plan, but right in that moment after that hospital stay, I was mad at Him.
(15:59):
I was mad at Him, and I was going to let Him know it, but I was going to keep showing up because I wanted to see what this all meant.
I just kept showing up.
One day at a time, I raged prayed.
So, I prayed in my rage.
I cried because I felt that He had taken my son from me.
I was like, this is your fault.
(16:21):
The fact that I am heartbroken, the fact that my family isn't complete.
This is your fault.
You did this to me.
I don't know why you did it to me, but I want to find out, and so here I am.
I may not like you right now, but I love you, so here I am.
I would go to church, and I couldn't sing.
When I prayed, it was short, clipped prayers.
(16:43):
I would pray for other people, but I felt like I wasn't talking to God because I was mad at Him.
If that makes sense.
Please watch over my family, but I'm still mad at you type thing.
Eventually over time, it was a softening, kind of like a melting of metal that you can forge into something else.
That's exactly what it felt like.
It felt like I was being reborn into somebody who was more loving, more graceful, a better mom, wife, a better overall human being.
(17:12):
Eventually, I was able to sing again, and I was able to thank God for the difference that I felt in myself.
I knew and I understood that had I not lost my son, I wouldn't become that person.
It was that person that God needed me to be for Him to use me.
(17:32):
That's when I realized that was the purpose of my son's life was to change me, to change me into who God needed me to be.
We tend to recoil from that kind of idea of being angry with God, and we feel we don't have permission to do that.
Yet we look back through scriptures, especially in the Psalms, and we see people who say to God, Hey, look, everything's a mess.
(17:55):
You've abandoned me.
You watch their journey through the Psalm, and they come to the realization, no, God is actually good.
He was there all along.
Was that your experience of going through, Lord, I've got to tell you, this is how I'm feeling, and then waiting for Him to come in with that healing for you?
(18:16):
Yeah.
Being a mom, you're used to your kids having a tantrum.
You're lovingly just watching them have a tantrum.
My daughter could be yelling at me, or, well, she tries to yell at me.
She could be fussing at me for something that she doesn't like, and she's like, I'm not your daughter anymore.
She'll flip her hair, and she'll look the other way, but she's throwing a tantrum.
But I still love her, and I'm still there to watch her have her feelings.
(18:38):
It was very similar to that.
I felt when I was telling God how mean He was, and how much I didn't like Him at the moment, I felt His loving presence there, but it was a silent assent.
Okay, go ahead and say everything you've got to say.
I'm here for it.
But it was like a very steady, just a presence there the whole time.
(19:01):
You mentioned that starting point for Swords Up.
Maybe you can press into that a little bit more, and tell me more about the reasoning behind writing for others going through difficult times.
I'll just say right off the bat, Swords Up, the Bible study was not my idea.
It was a total God idea.
I'd never wanted to write a Bible study.
(19:23):
It had never been a goal for me at all.
But back in 2021, I had had my rainbow baby, so the Lord redeemed my son for me, and I gave me this wonderful COVID little spitfire, and so she's just the laugh of our house.
We had her, and then my husband was supposed to come back to North Carolina, and he was supposed to leave right away.
(19:47):
I was leading women's ministry then, and I said, Lord, how do I serve you with two small children and my husband constantly gone?
And so the Lord says, you are going to write.
And there was confirmation.
There was various confirmations that this is what I was supposed to do.
So I said, okay, that makes sense to me.
(20:07):
I had been doing social media for years, and I had always thought about content writing, but never actually pursued it.
So I was like, perfect.
Content writing was right up my alley.
I can totally do that.
I'm in.
We are in the process of cross-country from California to North Carolina, and I embark on a six-month blog writing course.
(20:29):
I know I don't have six months.
I have three.
So I have to do it in three months because my husband's about to leave, and I have the two kids and the dog and a new house.
I do it all, and then I can't get hired.
Okay, Lord.
I was like, you told me this is what I needed to do.
I did the thing.
Why can I not get hired?
But I knew that there was a plan, like I said.
So I said, okay, let me just stay in my word because when God says move, I'm going to jump.
(20:54):
I'm going to go, and I'm going to go hard.
So I'm in my Bible.
I'm making my way to the New Testament, and I go to Ephesians.
I've been in church since I was nine.
I know this is one of my favorite passages.
I go, Lord, we do not fight against the flesh and blood, but against powers.
And I was like, I wonder what that actually means in the original Greek.
(21:14):
So I pull out my blue letter by lap.
I look at powers, and the first couple of definitions are what you would expect.
But down towards the bottom, it also says exosia, the power of choice.
Isn't that interesting?
We as humans fight our will, our decisions all the time.
(21:36):
We overeat.
We overshop.
We overspend.
We talk to the people that we shouldn't talk to.
We use recreational drugs when we don't want to, or when we shouldn't.
We do all of these things, and we're constantly fighting ourselves and beating ourselves up for the things that we do that we know we shouldn't do.
And so I call my mom, and I say, hey, did you know that was there?
(21:57):
Did you know about exosia?
No.
That's fantastic.
She's been a Christian like her whole life, and she's like, you know, that would be a cool Bible study.
And my heart just jumps out of my chest like it does when the Holy Spirit is talking to me.
And I was like, no, no, I don't want to write a Bible study.
No.
I just thought this was a big joke.
(22:19):
And I was like, I don't use Bible studies.
Like, I stopped using them a while ago.
It's just me and the Holy Spirit going through Scripture.
So I pray about it, and I tell my boss to pray about it, or the man who becomes my boss.
I say, you know, I think the Lord wants me to write this thing.
And I tell my friends, hey, can you pray for me?
Can you pray for discernment that I'm not making stuff up?
And so everybody starts praying for me.
(22:40):
And then one morning, I sit down with a pen and a paper, my Bible, and I tell the Holy Spirit, fine, you want me to write this Bible study so bad, you're going to have to tell me what to do because I'm not writing it on my own.
I refuse.
I don't want to.
And I just sat there, and in 15 minutes, he gave me the whole outline for an eight-week Bible study.
(23:02):
And I was dumbfounded.
And I heard the Holy Spirit laugh at me.
And it was like five o'clock in the morning, and the Holy Spirit is laughing at me for daring him.
So that's where Swords Up came up.
It was the work of the Holy Spirit telling me what to do, telling me where to look, what to write, when to write.
I have to give him the credit for it.
Even back then, who was in your mind as to those people who would benefit the most from the study that you're writing?
(23:28):
I was writing to someone like me.
I was writing to a mom who was getting up really early in the morning just to get her Bible study, or like my friend Paige, who was locking herself in her bathroom just to get her Bible study in.
I was writing to women like us who were in the midst of a really busy life, but really wanted to dig into the Word and discover the mysteries that were in it, just the power and the knowledge that's in it.
(24:02):
Also to have something practical to hang on to.
Because I feel like a lot of times we read the Bible and we understand it, yes, but practically we don't know how to put it into action.
As I was writing it, I knew that I wanted it to be something that I would want to do myself and that I could do myself with the busy life that I had with kids and work and all that.
(24:31):
It's not a theological level course that is going to keep people tied up in knots, but by the same token, it's not just a read a verse, here's a short paragraph about it, and go on from there.
It is actually designed to take people deeper into the Word, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
I mentioned the Blue Letter Bible app before.
(24:53):
I used the Greek and original Hebrew as I am writing this, trying to explain the original context of the armor of God, what Paul was trying to tell us by it, and then the other pieces within the Bible that tie to different pieces of armor.
(25:15):
Not just that, but looking at it from a different perspective.
The original manuscript of it was 10,000 words and it ended up being 50,000.
Whenever my publisher, Carol Tesloff, she said, you have this wrong.
The only offensive weapon is the sword.
(25:36):
And I felt in my spirit, no, that is wrong.
So, Carol, you're the reason why swords up is the way it is.
My whole idea was, no, our armor can be used as a weapon against Satan.
And what does that look like?
And can I back it up?
There are ways that our spiritual armor can be used effectively as an offensive weapon too, other than our sword.
(26:00):
So, it is meant to take you deeper.
There's a whole lot of Bible in there.
What I want people to get is that I want you to take your time.
If you only have 30 minutes, do your 30 minutes and then come back to it.
Don't rush through it.
It's supposed to be a journey that takes you to different parts of the Bible.
So, you see how everything ties in together.
(26:21):
What has been the response from people that have taken that journey through swords up?
What has been their feedback to you?
The original manuscript was launched in two different groups.
So, one was in my home and then the other one was in a different Bible study in the West Coast.
We were doing it simultaneously a week apart.
(26:41):
At first, it was like, it's too much.
It's too much, too much, too quickly.
You got to break it up.
And so, we ended up breaking it up from one chapter per week to 40 days.
It was too dense.
But now that it is on a 40-day format, the response has been really positive.
(27:01):
A friend of mine was in another group that piloted the study and she was saying the conversations were great.
Something that she said that I had not expected was it was a great comfort to us knowing that others were struggling too.
These are women who are being vulnerable with each other, with the discussion questions, and finding out that they're not alone, which is huge.
(27:27):
Biblical community is important and we don't take that seriously enough nowadays.
We're very isolated because of social media and because of remote work.
But the Bible tells us, do not fail to meet as it is the custom for some.
This is a spiritual war and it's a lot easier to fight the enemy as a group than to do it alone.
(27:49):
It's interesting that people are now discovering, oh, someone else has been through some difficult seasons just as I'm going through.
And we tend to, in the Western world at least, hide away those struggles that we have.
And yet, the Scripture calls us to, as you say, meet together, to be able to embolden one another, to strengthen one another, to comfort one another.
(28:14):
Do you think that's a big piece that we so often miss in the Western world, in Western Christianity?
Yeah, absolutely.
We're so fixated on independence and doing things on our own.
Individualism is huge, but we were created in community by a triune God who was in community with himself to have community with other people.
(28:39):
And that was because iron sharpens iron.
We're so concerned about doing it on our own and focusing a lot on church hurt and people hurt, like, oh, so-and-so hurt me, so therefore I'm closed off to everybody.
But the Bible calls us to be together and to do life together.
And I think that that's something that's sorely missing in a lot of communities, and it leaves us vulnerable.
(29:05):
Obviously, your book is going to be helpful for someone who's been through a similar journey to yours of losing a child, but that's not the only struggle that we face in life.
Who are the other people that you think are going to benefit from reading through and taking part in the Bible study?
The loss of my son is just one part.
(29:25):
I don't know if you want to think it's all-encompassing, because that's a really heavy topic.
I think that anybody who is struggling with sin or struggling with things like anxiety, depression, things that they can't seem to shake on their own, even certain addictions, I would say.
Anybody who has ever experienced any type of spiritual warfare and can't seem to get a leg up or has ever been curious about the armor of God but never really known how to put it on.
(29:56):
All those people have something to gain from this Bible study, if not just to understand that the Word of God is a formidable weapon, and if you are not in it constantly, then you're truly missing out.
J., I have links to the Bible study in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net, so that people can find you easily, find that book, and get the help that they need through the Scripture.
(30:26):
But I just want to say thank you for sharing your story, for being so open, for being so transparent through that, but also for writing this Bible study, Swords Up, so that others can benefit.
And I want to say thank you so much for spending time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
(30:49):
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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