December 21, 2025 • 33 mins
Mick Weinholt's life has been marked by profound loss and miraculous survival. After the devastating stillbirth of his firstborn son Luke, Mick and his wife found themselves crying out to a God they knew of but had never truly known. This heartbreaking loss became the catalyst that transformed them from people with intellectual knowledge of Christianity into believers with genuine faith. Their journey through grief, including a subsequent miscarriage and the eventual blessing of three living children, reveals how tragedy can reshape not just individual lives but entire family trajectories.
Before becoming a father, Mick survived a near-fatal avalanche on a Colorado mountain at age 19. With catastrophic injuries including a skull broken in three places, a shattered jaw, and his scalp split wide open, he walked out alone, only to find a stranger named Steve waiting in the car park with no explanation for being there. Now hosting his own podcast "When You Look," Mick collects stories from ordinary people experiencing extraordinary moments, inviting listeners to decide whether these events are mere coincidences or evidence of God at work in the modern world.
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Transcript
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, I'm so delighted you've joined me for today's episode.
There are hundreds more uplifting episodes ready for you right now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
I'd love if you could share Bleeding Daylight with friends so they can be inspired as well.
While I begin speaking to today's guest about loss and grief, around halfway through our conversation turns to a remarkable and many would say miraculous survival story.
(00:52):
We also discuss what drove a couple to buy a property they didn't need and ask was it a coincidence or something more significant.
I'm so glad to have Mick Weinholt joining me today.
Mick's story is one of profound loss, unexpected faith and remarkable survival.
(01:18):
After the devastating stillbirth of his first born son Luke, Mick and his wife found themselves crying out to God in their darkest moment, a turning point that transformed not just their grief but their entire lives.
Mick had already faced another life-threatening moment alone on a Colorado mountain surviving an avalanche through what can only be described as a miracle.
(01:42):
His journey through tragedy and triumph is raw, honest and deeply moving.
Mick, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Rodney, thank you so much for having me.
Pleasure to be here.
It is hard to imagine the kind of grief that you and your wife must have experienced when what should have been one of the happiest times of your lives turned into that devastating loss of a child.
(02:05):
Can you help me understand what that was like for you?
Yeah, Rodney, the best way to describe it is that it was truly overwhelming.
And I mean that we went from what was this expectation sort of as you were just describing there of a wonderful outcome.
We were within a week of the due date for our son Luke to instantaneously basically being completely devastated and overwhelmed by the grief.
(02:36):
It was incredibly challenging.
And it must be hard to actually share that news with people.
You would have had people around you who would have been looking forward as you were to the birth of this child and wanting to celebrate with you.
And then suddenly you have a group of people around you who just don't know where to go, don't know what to say.
(02:57):
What was it like for those people around you?
Because I talk to people who find that there are those who rally around in times of devastation, but there are also those who just really don't know what to say and they can be absent.
How was that?
Yeah, it's a very interesting mix of both of those actually.
And so what we encountered was most folks did not know how to handle it.
(03:22):
We look back on that with a lot of grace because what we realized was that so few people have encountered this type of scenario in their life where you have a full-term infant still birth.
It's normal for people to encounter death in the 70s and 80s, you know what I mean?
And we can process that and societally we understand that culturally, there's sort of support behind all of that, but this is completely different from that.
(03:48):
This is right at the beginning essentially.
And so people I think really struggled with how to engage with us and their approach was essentially to not engage.
And then on the other side of it, the handful of folks that had a similar loss,
they were quite literally, I don't use this term very often, but they were almost like angels in
(04:12):
that they just became God's hand and feet in terms of being able to care for us, to have
empathy for us and the loss, and then also to know what to do, meaning how to help prepare or plan
for or even begin to sketch out what a memorial service should look like, you know what I mean?
(04:34):
It was really kind of a lot of both ends of the spectrum of, man, I don't know what to say, so I won't say anything at all.
And I've been there, I'm so sorry for your loss, let me help you and let me help you immediately.
And you've touched on something there.
Those people that have experienced something similar are suddenly arriving and they're the angels in that moment.
(04:57):
And yet this is not something that we talk about often.
And I guess that plays into it as well, that you would have felt alone because no one else around is talking.
And then suddenly when it happens to you, there are these people that say, yeah, me too.
Do you think that that adds into the pain of it all that this is something that has been somewhat swept under the carpet?
(05:19):
You know, it's a really valid question, I think.
For us, we didn't experience it that way because frankly, Rodney, we were so overwhelmed with the grief.
That was not a thought that was entering our minds at that particular time.
The fact that there were folks though that had experienced it really helped us.
(05:42):
And not in just that hands and feet type of way that we were talking about, but what it did was is it helped to normalize our loss.
And I want to be very clear here that that wasn't diminishing our loss, but it helped us to realize, hey, we are not the only ones.
So for example, we got exposed to a charity that we of course had never heard of.
(06:04):
It was called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.
And this was a group of volunteer photographers that would come into the hospital and they would take professional level photographs of the family and the baby when there was a stillbirth like what we had encountered or a very early on child loss, maybe a handful of hours or something like that when a baby dies in intensive care or something along those lines.
(06:29):
And so then flowing from all of that, we wanted to help that charity, you know what I mean?
And so just knowing that that type of thing existed really helped us to realize we were not alone in all of this.
And certainly we understood that spiritually, but it was also nice to experience that from some of the culture around us.
A common thread that I hear from people that have been through loss or some kind of tragedy who have made it through and have done reasonably well despite that sense of overwhelm is that they have started to help others.
(07:03):
And it's interesting that you mentioned you found this charity and you wanted to help them.
How important was it for you to actually say, this is what I'm going through, but I want to help others who are facing this kind of loss?
Yeah, it was a big part of it for us as things changed over time for us.
And as our family grew, meaning that God was gracious enough to bless us with living children, because the stillbirth that we're talking about for our son, Luke was our first pregnancy.
(07:32):
Some of that behavior of specifically helping folks in that way had changed, but on the whole, we continue to contribute to that particular charity.
Unfortunately, or fortunately,
depending upon how you're looking at it, we've encountered other folks in our lives that have
had stillbirths and we have been able to either help them to some degree or oftentimes actually
(07:58):
help their family members with how to engage because we then became a bit of a safe place
for them to ask their questions, knowing that we didn't represent any type of situational risk for
them.
They could just say, what about this?
And how do we handle this?
And what's the best thing that we can do for them now?
So it's been tragic to help in some ways and also wonderful in order to be able to do that too.
(08:23):
We do find that when we go through those big life moments, we start to search for the meaning behind it.
We're hardwired to say, why has this happened?
Was that the case for you and your wife?
Did you go searching for some kind of meaning behind this tragedy?
Wow.
You know, Rodney, we did, and yet on the whole, we didn't.
(08:46):
So let me try and clarify that because yeah, we absolutely asked God why, but it was without demand.
It was instead really a desire for us to kind of understand and understand him.
We didn't get a lot of direct answers to those questions, but what we got over time was very clear direction, very clear response, which was, I use the death of your son to bring you into relationship with me.
(09:25):
It was absolutely this idea of essentially help us understand, but in the end, we were just simply wanting him to comfort us in the grief and in the desperation.
And I can attribute it only to his grace, Rodney, that we were not shaking our fist at him and shouting why, why, why, why, why.
(09:50):
Instead, we would occasionally ask why, and then a lot of times follow it up with, and this is, of course, in prayer.
I want to be very clear about that.
We don't understand.
We have these questions, but he just enveloped us in peace despite the grief.
(10:10):
Were you already people of faith at this stage?
Were you calling out to a God that you knew, or was this just calling out to whoever's out there?
Yeah.
Wow, man.
What a great thing, I think, for us to explore.
Here's what I mean by that.
Absolutely, positively, we were not people of faith, but we called out to a God that we did know of.
(10:35):
And so let me round this out a little bit more.
So I grew up in a quote-unquote Christian household.
I went to Christian-based education from first grade through 12th grade and before going off to university.
And so I was very familiar with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but it was entirely an intellectual knowledge.
(11:00):
Rodney, what I also was really keen on was making sure that God's rules stayed as far away from me early in life and then later in life stayed as far away from my wife and I as possible.
Without question, we were not in relationship with Jesus Christ, God the Father or the Holy Spirit.
(11:25):
And yet we knew of him enough that when it was crystal clear that this was beyond me, there was no way I could fix this.
Because up until this point at 31 years old, I'm able to essentially more or less with grit and tenacity and hard work fix things, whether that was around the house or in the workplace.
(11:52):
It was massively humbling, completely humbling with the devastation and the loss.
God finally brought me to my physical knees and brought me to my emotional and my spiritual knees to realize this is beyond me.
So we cried out to a God that we knew of and then we got to know him.
(12:19):
Rodney, it's changed our lives.
It's changed our lives for eternity because we then confessed our sin.
We then professed him as our savior, Jesus as our savior.
It changed everything forever and then changed our family tree and their trajectories forever because our three living children grew up in a household where Jesus is present, where Jesus is worshiped and where mom and dad's behavior aligns with fruits of the spirit.
(12:56):
It's different than the household that I grew up in.
I want to touch on the fact that you do have these three beautiful children now.
And oftentimes you hear this phrase of people who have lost a child when the next one comes along.
It's almost like they talk about that child as being a replacement.
(13:16):
And yet, I'm sure in your mind, in your wife's mind, no one could ever replace Luke.
Yeah, man, you're spot on with that.
No one ever could replace Luke.
But I didn't actually realize that until God taught me that lesson.
And here's how he taught me that lesson.
I truly wanted to still fix this, okay?
(13:38):
So even though I'm now entering into this relationship and everything has changed in a spiritual sense, everything in life is now beginning to change.
And so as soon as we were green-lighted by the doctors for intimacy, we got pregnant almost immediately.
(13:59):
I was very excited about that.
My attempt was to replace Luke.
That pregnancy resulted in a very early miscarriage.
And it was through that process that the Holy Spirit began to help me see that we cannot replace him.
And my wife very wisely then suggested that we take time off to really truly heal.
(14:26):
And so we spent the next nine months or so not attempting to get pregnant and really focused on letting our grief manifest itself in a very healthy way.
Lots of that was through prayer.
Lots of that was through our now fervent engagement in church and community there.
(14:47):
Even an international program called Grief Share, which really helped us to get through a lot of the grief and get a lot of that grief out in a very healthy and spirit-led type of way.
From that point forward then, we had no interest in replacing Luke because God, as I mentioned before, had really begun to reveal this is why this has occurred.
(15:13):
And we see Luke's death essentially as the single greatest, most tangible blessing that we have received.
And then each of our subsequent children are their own wonderful individual blessings and gifts from the King.
You've mentioned that this was at a time when you didn't have faith.
(15:35):
You weren't acquainted with the God that you knew of.
And yet, I've heard from people that they look back through their lives before coming to faith and they still see the fingerprints of God.
And I know that there's a story of you and an avalanche where you weren't a person of faith.
You were still that, I've got to fix everything kind of guy.
And yet, you can look back now and see the fingerprints of God.
(15:58):
Tell me a bit about that story.
Yeah.
So, Rodney, Luke's death, delivery, all of that is when I'm 31.
But if we rewind the clock back to when I'm 19, I am six feet tall, but I'm nothing but an overgrown little boy.
I'm fueled by eco.
(16:21):
I lived in Colorado and I did a lot of active things in Colorado.
Colorado has more than 50, 14,000 foot peaks.
I had climbed or hiked many of them.
I had ice climbed and skied and bicycled and did all of these outdoor types of things.
(16:42):
And being driven by ego, I wanted to continue to increase, frankly, the coolness factor of the climbing that I was doing.
I set out on November 7th of 2000, which was a Tuesday.
I set out on that particular day to climb a 14,000 foot peak known as Gray's Peak, not by the standard route that I had previously hiked it, but by climbing up a snow gully.
(17:15):
This is a narrower chute or a narrower gully of rock that is filled with snow.
And for those listeners that can imagine a very steep snow chute at the top of a ski resort, a double black diamond or something along those lines that people would ski down, I'm attempting to climb up this.
I'm entirely by myself.
(17:36):
This is a Tuesday afternoon and I am about 200 or so vertical feet up the start of this climb, which puts me at right around 13,000 feet above sea level.
I had been climbing for some period of time, maybe 20 minutes, something along those lines to ascend those 200 or so vertical feet.
(17:59):
And because of all of the movement that I was doing climbing up this snow gully, I ultimately triggered the avalanche that swept me to the bottom.
And I very distinctly remember being face in because this is a slope that is steep enough that you would ski down, right?
So what we're saying here is that this is not vertical climbing, but this is well beyond anything that you would be simply hiking with.
(18:27):
So I'm using all fours to ascend and therefore my face is into the slope.
And I hear the very distinctive woomph sound, which I had known from all of my research and backcountry experience meant avalanche.
I looked immediately up the slope, saw the fracture line, saw the snow beginning to slide towards me and attempted to fix things by running, if you will, perpendicular to the direction of the snow sliding down.
(19:01):
And Rodney, I got one step and was swept off of my feet.
I distinctly remember saying to myself, this is going to suck for my family, especially my mom.
And then the lights went out.
I lost consciousness at that point.
How do you then come back from that?
You're alone, as you say.
So does anyone actually know that you're trying this climb?
(19:25):
How did people find you there?
Yeah.
Well, I do not know how long I was unconscious, but I regained consciousness at the actual bottom of the climb, almost where I had started.
I sat up from the position that I was in because I was sort of almost as if I was sitting on a gigantic stool, meaning my feet were in front of me and below me, and I was just laid back on my back.
(19:53):
And I sort of came to and remember checking my systems essentially, you know, just sort of this overall, wait, what just happened?
And is everything okay?
And I had this general sense of all systems are a go.
And that's exactly what you need to do.
You need to go.
(20:14):
You need to get out of here.
Okay.
So I immediately began then to go back to the trail because to get to the base of this climb was off of the trail.
And I have to now traverse back the steps that I had made through the deeper snow.
I eventually make it back to the trail and finish traveling what is right around five kilometers, right at three miles from the base of the route back to the trailhead parking lot that took most likely around an hour and 45 minutes or so that's sort of my best guess somewhere between an hour and 30 to two hours worth of travel time for me to get back to the trailhead parking lot.
(20:54):
30 seconds Rodney, before I walked into that parking lot to get to my Toyota pickup truck, a man named Steve arrived in that parking lot.
So I am otherwise completely alone except for this man named Steve.
Steve and I have had subsequent conversations and he told me he had no business being there.
(21:17):
He had no reason to be there and truly 30 seconds before I walked in, he says that's when he arrived.
Steve ultimately ends up taking me to the hospital and all of the King's men put Humpty Dumpty back together again over the course of six days in the hospital.
(21:40):
The summary of injuries to me was that I had broken my skull in three places,
my jaw was broken on both sides, my scalp was split open from just above my right eyebrow
all the way across the top of my head to right where your head begins to go down towards your
(22:02):
neck and it was fully split open as Steve described it as he helped me take my jacket off
that essentially for all intents and purposes my right ear was basically laying or resting on my
right shoulder.
That's how long the gash was and how wide the split had been in my actual scalp.
(22:26):
So the trauma that had occurred through the fall and the slide and all of that was almost exclusively to my head.
All of that also created bleeding in my brain and a whole lot of swelling of my brain.
So at the hospital they ended up doing emergency brain surgery to mechanically relieve all of that pressure.
(22:50):
I ended up losing hearing in my left ear for about a month.
It was entire hearing loss.
The doctors told me that's gone and the reason for that is that the skull had been shoved forward which was part of one of the fractures that had been shoved forward and was pinching the auditory nerve and they said yeah it's done you're never going to hear out of this ear.
(23:13):
That was really quite disturbing because I could not determine where sound was coming from.
Roughly a month or so later the hearing returned to about 70 percent so I only have diminished hearing in that particular ear but a full miracle for all of that.
My jaw was wired shut for 17 days and by God's grace three weeks after the avalanche and this accident I was back to university back to college and back in the workforce.
(23:42):
It's an amazing story and certainly people use the word miracle quite often but we can certainly see that this was.
To have Steve turn up in that car park right at that moment, to have the help that you were able to get so quickly even after that one and a half to two hours of trekking in that state and we see that and yet at this stage you're still not acknowledging God when you came to know him all those years later.
(24:12):
Did you look back and say aha I see what you were up to then God?
Yeah let's just go back to the point that you were talking about.
I think it bears repeating that I die in that parking lot if Steve does not show up
and so without question Steve was there by God's grace absolutely miraculous and I didn't have the
(24:35):
maturity to really understand that intellectually at the time I knew that it was a miracle because
again I'd had enough upbringing with God to know that he was capable of that to in a generic sense
believe in that type of thing but never any direct actual experience with it up until that point.
Once I began a relationship with God the Father man it began to reveal all kinds of things and much of that actually has been here in my 40s over the last handful of years.
(25:08):
So I've been in a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ for now 13 years.
It's been in the last handful that he has taken me back to moments like that for me to really understand through the Holy Spirit showing me hey I kept you alive there for a specific purpose not just this generic I spared your life but not only that I kept you alive for a specific purpose.
(25:39):
Oftentimes people will see things like this and because they don't want to use the M word and say it was a miracle they would rather say hey that was just a coincidence and I know that you have gathered a number of stories through your own podcast of people that have had different encounters and you leave it up to the listener to decide.
(26:00):
Is this a coincidence or could this be something more?
Tell me a bit about that podcast.
Yeah thanks so the podcast is called When You Look
it's whenyoulook.com or video base or when you look show on YouTube and other places and the
intention is to glorify God to the fullest and farthest extent and the mechanism for that
(26:23):
Rodney is ordinary people just truly ordinary people that share their first hand experience
that is extraordinary and then as you mentioned we truly serve it up as the question is what you
just heard coincidental or is that God in action?
(26:44):
Essentially we're asking exactly what you talked
about was that coincidence or was that God and we do that because I believe very firmly that
faith is a decision and so what we want to do is we want to serve up the opportunity for people
to see God when they look right hence the when you look but we don't intentionally jam it down
(27:08):
their throat we'd rather them consider it and then make the essentially the adult decision
the conscious decision of yes I see him here yes that is God.
And oftentimes we can write off one or two instances as just a coincidence but you've got so many episodes already and you
(27:30):
continue to talk to these ordinary people and hear these extraordinary stories can you perhaps
mention one or two of them and what's happening in the lives of these people that you've spoken to?
Yeah man there are so many of them but let's just start with episode one which was when I had heard
this story initially I thought to myself everybody needs to hear this and the story in short is that
(27:56):
out of nowhere a couple a family feels prompted to search for a different home than the one they
live in they had no real reason to do that they end up at a dinner party with colleagues
and at the end they're sort of about to leave and the other couple whose home they're at says
(28:18):
hey while this may seem odd we believe we're supposed to sell you our home oh but don't worry
we'll sell it to you for what we paid for it in the United States there's been significant
increase in the value of that home over the roughly nine years that this couple has lived there
(28:39):
meanwhile the couple that has felt this prompt to search for a home is thinking
this home that you're suggesting to us is so much larger than we could possibly need
this all seems very very odd well naturally they graciously leave that conversation in that evening
(29:00):
and the next morning the wife receives a phone call from a friend of hers who has absolutely
no awareness of what they were doing that prior evening and says to her girlfriend hey I had a
very odd dream last night your daughter was holding a sign in a front yard somewhere that
(29:24):
said 6052 on it and then there were all these other children that I didn't recognize in the
dream do you have any idea what this might be well as it turns out Rodney 6052 is the house number
(29:46):
of the home that was offered to them to buy and as mentioned it's massively larger
but out of obedience they felt as if God was quite truly directing them to buy that home
and three weeks after they move in to a home that will have empty bedrooms because it is
(30:07):
far larger than needed for the family that they were at that time they get a call from an adoption
agency in Colombia in South America that offers them the option to adopt a sibling group of three
children so their family goes from a family of four to a family of seven overnight and this
(30:31):
happens out of obedience supported by a dream that a friend had and Rodney the reason why
this truly blew my hair back when I first heard it was I have read of many times in the bible
where people are warned in dreams and my thinking was that's the type of thing that happens in the
(30:54):
bible and yet I knew these people and this was happening in the modern day and I thought to
myself everybody needs to hear this so all glory be to God I hope that I communicated that one
clearly but it was quite truly the modern dream equivalent of Joseph being told get up and go to
(31:18):
Egypt because Herod is after your son you know I mean it's not that different.
And the remarkable thing there is that sometimes we can feel an inkling in one way or another and yet one thing
on its own is not necessarily enough to uproot your home and move and yet there were promptings
all the way along from that initial couple thinking we need to find a home from the other
(31:42):
couple saying we want to sell you our home and then the dream is confirmation of what is already
in play and again at the end of that you're asking do you reckon this is a coincidence I think not
that's right yeah if people are wanting to find you find the podcast you've already mentioned
(32:02):
the website and I'll put that link in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can
hear more of those amazing stories they've heard your amazing story they've heard one of the ones
that they're going to hear on the podcast but there's a lot more there so Mick I just want to
say thank you so much for sharing some of your personal stories today and for being part of Bleeding Daylight.
(32:25):
Yeah Rodney really a pleasure thank you for everything that you are doing
and how you are bringing light and daylight to the darkness
it's been a real pleasure and all glory be to God for sure
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight please help us to shine more light into the
(32:45):
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, I'm so delighted you've joined me for today's episode.
There are hundreds more uplifting episodes ready for you right now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
I'd love if you could share Bleeding Daylight with friends so they can be inspired as well.
While I begin speaking to today's guest about loss and grief, around halfway through our conversation turns to a remarkable and many would say miraculous survival story.
(00:52):
We also discuss what drove a couple to buy a property they didn't need and ask was it a coincidence or something more significant.
I'm so glad to have Mick Weinholt joining me today.
Mick's story is one of profound loss, unexpected faith and remarkable survival.
(01:18):
After the devastating stillbirth of his first born son Luke, Mick and his wife found themselves crying out to God in their darkest moment, a turning point that transformed not just their grief but their entire lives.
Mick had already faced another life-threatening moment alone on a Colorado mountain surviving an avalanche through what can only be described as a miracle.
(01:42):
His journey through tragedy and triumph is raw, honest and deeply moving.
Mick, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Rodney, thank you so much for having me.
Pleasure to be here.
It is hard to imagine the kind of grief that you and your wife must have experienced when what should have been one of the happiest times of your lives turned into that devastating loss of a child.
(02:05):
Can you help me understand what that was like for you?
Yeah, Rodney, the best way to describe it is that it was truly overwhelming.
And I mean that we went from what was this expectation sort of as you were just describing there of a wonderful outcome.
We were within a week of the due date for our son Luke to instantaneously basically being completely devastated and overwhelmed by the grief.
(02:36):
It was incredibly challenging.
And it must be hard to actually share that news with people.
You would have had people around you who would have been looking forward as you were to the birth of this child and wanting to celebrate with you.
And then suddenly you have a group of people around you who just don't know where to go, don't know what to say.
(02:57):
What was it like for those people around you?
Because I talk to people who find that there are those who rally around in times of devastation, but there are also those who just really don't know what to say and they can be absent.
How was that?
Yeah, it's a very interesting mix of both of those actually.
And so what we encountered was most folks did not know how to handle it.
(03:22):
We look back on that with a lot of grace because what we realized was that so few people have encountered this type of scenario in their life where you have a full-term infant still birth.
It's normal for people to encounter death in the 70s and 80s, you know what I mean?
And we can process that and societally we understand that culturally, there's sort of support behind all of that, but this is completely different from that.
(03:48):
This is right at the beginning essentially.
And so people I think really struggled with how to engage with us and their approach was essentially to not engage.
And then on the other side of it, the handful of folks that had a similar loss,
they were quite literally, I don't use this term very often, but they were almost like angels in
(04:12):
that they just became God's hand and feet in terms of being able to care for us, to have
empathy for us and the loss, and then also to know what to do, meaning how to help prepare or plan
for or even begin to sketch out what a memorial service should look like, you know what I mean?
(04:34):
It was really kind of a lot of both ends of the spectrum of, man, I don't know what to say, so I won't say anything at all.
And I've been there, I'm so sorry for your loss, let me help you and let me help you immediately.
And you've touched on something there.
Those people that have experienced something similar are suddenly arriving and they're the angels in that moment.
(04:57):
And yet this is not something that we talk about often.
And I guess that plays into it as well, that you would have felt alone because no one else around is talking.
And then suddenly when it happens to you, there are these people that say, yeah, me too.
Do you think that that adds into the pain of it all that this is something that has been somewhat swept under the carpet?
(05:19):
You know, it's a really valid question, I think.
For us, we didn't experience it that way because frankly, Rodney, we were so overwhelmed with the grief.
That was not a thought that was entering our minds at that particular time.
The fact that there were folks though that had experienced it really helped us.
(05:42):
And not in just that hands and feet type of way that we were talking about, but what it did was is it helped to normalize our loss.
And I want to be very clear here that that wasn't diminishing our loss, but it helped us to realize, hey, we are not the only ones.
So for example, we got exposed to a charity that we of course had never heard of.
(06:04):
It was called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.
And this was a group of volunteer photographers that would come into the hospital and they would take professional level photographs of the family and the baby when there was a stillbirth like what we had encountered or a very early on child loss, maybe a handful of hours or something like that when a baby dies in intensive care or something along those lines.
(06:29):
And so then flowing from all of that, we wanted to help that charity, you know what I mean?
And so just knowing that that type of thing existed really helped us to realize we were not alone in all of this.
And certainly we understood that spiritually, but it was also nice to experience that from some of the culture around us.
A common thread that I hear from people that have been through loss or some kind of tragedy who have made it through and have done reasonably well despite that sense of overwhelm is that they have started to help others.
(07:03):
And it's interesting that you mentioned you found this charity and you wanted to help them.
How important was it for you to actually say, this is what I'm going through, but I want to help others who are facing this kind of loss?
Yeah, it was a big part of it for us as things changed over time for us.
And as our family grew, meaning that God was gracious enough to bless us with living children, because the stillbirth that we're talking about for our son, Luke was our first pregnancy.
(07:32):
Some of that behavior of specifically helping folks in that way had changed, but on the whole, we continue to contribute to that particular charity.
Unfortunately, or fortunately,
depending upon how you're looking at it, we've encountered other folks in our lives that have
had stillbirths and we have been able to either help them to some degree or oftentimes actually
(07:58):
help their family members with how to engage because we then became a bit of a safe place
for them to ask their questions, knowing that we didn't represent any type of situational risk for
them.
They could just say, what about this?
And how do we handle this?
And what's the best thing that we can do for them now?
So it's been tragic to help in some ways and also wonderful in order to be able to do that too.
(08:23):
We do find that when we go through those big life moments, we start to search for the meaning behind it.
We're hardwired to say, why has this happened?
Was that the case for you and your wife?
Did you go searching for some kind of meaning behind this tragedy?
Wow.
You know, Rodney, we did, and yet on the whole, we didn't.
(08:46):
So let me try and clarify that because yeah, we absolutely asked God why, but it was without demand.
It was instead really a desire for us to kind of understand and understand him.
We didn't get a lot of direct answers to those questions, but what we got over time was very clear direction, very clear response, which was, I use the death of your son to bring you into relationship with me.
(09:25):
It was absolutely this idea of essentially help us understand, but in the end, we were just simply wanting him to comfort us in the grief and in the desperation.
And I can attribute it only to his grace, Rodney, that we were not shaking our fist at him and shouting why, why, why, why, why.
(09:50):
Instead, we would occasionally ask why, and then a lot of times follow it up with, and this is, of course, in prayer.
I want to be very clear about that.
We don't understand.
We have these questions, but he just enveloped us in peace despite the grief.
(10:10):
Were you already people of faith at this stage?
Were you calling out to a God that you knew, or was this just calling out to whoever's out there?
Yeah.
Wow, man.
What a great thing, I think, for us to explore.
Here's what I mean by that.
Absolutely, positively, we were not people of faith, but we called out to a God that we did know of.
(10:35):
And so let me round this out a little bit more.
So I grew up in a quote-unquote Christian household.
I went to Christian-based education from first grade through 12th grade and before going off to university.
And so I was very familiar with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but it was entirely an intellectual knowledge.
(11:00):
Rodney, what I also was really keen on was making sure that God's rules stayed as far away from me early in life and then later in life stayed as far away from my wife and I as possible.
Without question, we were not in relationship with Jesus Christ, God the Father or the Holy Spirit.
(11:25):
And yet we knew of him enough that when it was crystal clear that this was beyond me, there was no way I could fix this.
Because up until this point at 31 years old, I'm able to essentially more or less with grit and tenacity and hard work fix things, whether that was around the house or in the workplace.
(11:52):
It was massively humbling, completely humbling with the devastation and the loss.
God finally brought me to my physical knees and brought me to my emotional and my spiritual knees to realize this is beyond me.
So we cried out to a God that we knew of and then we got to know him.
(12:19):
Rodney, it's changed our lives.
It's changed our lives for eternity because we then confessed our sin.
We then professed him as our savior, Jesus as our savior.
It changed everything forever and then changed our family tree and their trajectories forever because our three living children grew up in a household where Jesus is present, where Jesus is worshiped and where mom and dad's behavior aligns with fruits of the spirit.
(12:56):
It's different than the household that I grew up in.
I want to touch on the fact that you do have these three beautiful children now.
And oftentimes you hear this phrase of people who have lost a child when the next one comes along.
It's almost like they talk about that child as being a replacement.
(13:16):
And yet, I'm sure in your mind, in your wife's mind, no one could ever replace Luke.
Yeah, man, you're spot on with that.
No one ever could replace Luke.
But I didn't actually realize that until God taught me that lesson.
And here's how he taught me that lesson.
I truly wanted to still fix this, okay?
(13:38):
So even though I'm now entering into this relationship and everything has changed in a spiritual sense, everything in life is now beginning to change.
And so as soon as we were green-lighted by the doctors for intimacy, we got pregnant almost immediately.
(13:59):
I was very excited about that.
My attempt was to replace Luke.
That pregnancy resulted in a very early miscarriage.
And it was through that process that the Holy Spirit began to help me see that we cannot replace him.
And my wife very wisely then suggested that we take time off to really truly heal.
(14:26):
And so we spent the next nine months or so not attempting to get pregnant and really focused on letting our grief manifest itself in a very healthy way.
Lots of that was through prayer.
Lots of that was through our now fervent engagement in church and community there.
(14:47):
Even an international program called Grief Share, which really helped us to get through a lot of the grief and get a lot of that grief out in a very healthy and spirit-led type of way.
From that point forward then, we had no interest in replacing Luke because God, as I mentioned before, had really begun to reveal this is why this has occurred.
(15:13):
And we see Luke's death essentially as the single greatest, most tangible blessing that we have received.
And then each of our subsequent children are their own wonderful individual blessings and gifts from the King.
You've mentioned that this was at a time when you didn't have faith.
(15:35):
You weren't acquainted with the God that you knew of.
And yet, I've heard from people that they look back through their lives before coming to faith and they still see the fingerprints of God.
And I know that there's a story of you and an avalanche where you weren't a person of faith.
You were still that, I've got to fix everything kind of guy.
And yet, you can look back now and see the fingerprints of God.
(15:58):
Tell me a bit about that story.
Yeah.
So, Rodney, Luke's death, delivery, all of that is when I'm 31.
But if we rewind the clock back to when I'm 19, I am six feet tall, but I'm nothing but an overgrown little boy.
I'm fueled by eco.
(16:21):
I lived in Colorado and I did a lot of active things in Colorado.
Colorado has more than 50, 14,000 foot peaks.
I had climbed or hiked many of them.
I had ice climbed and skied and bicycled and did all of these outdoor types of things.
(16:42):
And being driven by ego, I wanted to continue to increase, frankly, the coolness factor of the climbing that I was doing.
I set out on November 7th of 2000, which was a Tuesday.
I set out on that particular day to climb a 14,000 foot peak known as Gray's Peak, not by the standard route that I had previously hiked it, but by climbing up a snow gully.
(17:15):
This is a narrower chute or a narrower gully of rock that is filled with snow.
And for those listeners that can imagine a very steep snow chute at the top of a ski resort, a double black diamond or something along those lines that people would ski down, I'm attempting to climb up this.
I'm entirely by myself.
(17:36):
This is a Tuesday afternoon and I am about 200 or so vertical feet up the start of this climb, which puts me at right around 13,000 feet above sea level.
I had been climbing for some period of time, maybe 20 minutes, something along those lines to ascend those 200 or so vertical feet.
(17:59):
And because of all of the movement that I was doing climbing up this snow gully, I ultimately triggered the avalanche that swept me to the bottom.
And I very distinctly remember being face in because this is a slope that is steep enough that you would ski down, right?
So what we're saying here is that this is not vertical climbing, but this is well beyond anything that you would be simply hiking with.
(18:27):
So I'm using all fours to ascend and therefore my face is into the slope.
And I hear the very distinctive woomph sound, which I had known from all of my research and backcountry experience meant avalanche.
I looked immediately up the slope, saw the fracture line, saw the snow beginning to slide towards me and attempted to fix things by running, if you will, perpendicular to the direction of the snow sliding down.
(19:01):
And Rodney, I got one step and was swept off of my feet.
I distinctly remember saying to myself, this is going to suck for my family, especially my mom.
And then the lights went out.
I lost consciousness at that point.
How do you then come back from that?
You're alone, as you say.
So does anyone actually know that you're trying this climb?
(19:25):
How did people find you there?
Yeah.
Well, I do not know how long I was unconscious, but I regained consciousness at the actual bottom of the climb, almost where I had started.
I sat up from the position that I was in because I was sort of almost as if I was sitting on a gigantic stool, meaning my feet were in front of me and below me, and I was just laid back on my back.
(19:53):
And I sort of came to and remember checking my systems essentially, you know, just sort of this overall, wait, what just happened?
And is everything okay?
And I had this general sense of all systems are a go.
And that's exactly what you need to do.
You need to go.
(20:14):
You need to get out of here.
Okay.
So I immediately began then to go back to the trail because to get to the base of this climb was off of the trail.
And I have to now traverse back the steps that I had made through the deeper snow.
I eventually make it back to the trail and finish traveling what is right around five kilometers, right at three miles from the base of the route back to the trailhead parking lot that took most likely around an hour and 45 minutes or so that's sort of my best guess somewhere between an hour and 30 to two hours worth of travel time for me to get back to the trailhead parking lot.
(20:54):
30 seconds Rodney, before I walked into that parking lot to get to my Toyota pickup truck, a man named Steve arrived in that parking lot.
So I am otherwise completely alone except for this man named Steve.
Steve and I have had subsequent conversations and he told me he had no business being there.
(21:17):
He had no reason to be there and truly 30 seconds before I walked in, he says that's when he arrived.
Steve ultimately ends up taking me to the hospital and all of the King's men put Humpty Dumpty back together again over the course of six days in the hospital.
(21:40):
The summary of injuries to me was that I had broken my skull in three places,
my jaw was broken on both sides, my scalp was split open from just above my right eyebrow
all the way across the top of my head to right where your head begins to go down towards your
(22:02):
neck and it was fully split open as Steve described it as he helped me take my jacket off
that essentially for all intents and purposes my right ear was basically laying or resting on my
right shoulder.
That's how long the gash was and how wide the split had been in my actual scalp.
(22:26):
So the trauma that had occurred through the fall and the slide and all of that was almost exclusively to my head.
All of that also created bleeding in my brain and a whole lot of swelling of my brain.
So at the hospital they ended up doing emergency brain surgery to mechanically relieve all of that pressure.
(22:50):
I ended up losing hearing in my left ear for about a month.
It was entire hearing loss.
The doctors told me that's gone and the reason for that is that the skull had been shoved forward which was part of one of the fractures that had been shoved forward and was pinching the auditory nerve and they said yeah it's done you're never going to hear out of this ear.
(23:13):
That was really quite disturbing because I could not determine where sound was coming from.
Roughly a month or so later the hearing returned to about 70 percent so I only have diminished hearing in that particular ear but a full miracle for all of that.
My jaw was wired shut for 17 days and by God's grace three weeks after the avalanche and this accident I was back to university back to college and back in the workforce.
(23:42):
It's an amazing story and certainly people use the word miracle quite often but we can certainly see that this was.
To have Steve turn up in that car park right at that moment, to have the help that you were able to get so quickly even after that one and a half to two hours of trekking in that state and we see that and yet at this stage you're still not acknowledging God when you came to know him all those years later.
(24:12):
Did you look back and say aha I see what you were up to then God?
Yeah let's just go back to the point that you were talking about.
I think it bears repeating that I die in that parking lot if Steve does not show up
and so without question Steve was there by God's grace absolutely miraculous and I didn't have the
(24:35):
maturity to really understand that intellectually at the time I knew that it was a miracle because
again I'd had enough upbringing with God to know that he was capable of that to in a generic sense
believe in that type of thing but never any direct actual experience with it up until that point.
Once I began a relationship with God the Father man it began to reveal all kinds of things and much of that actually has been here in my 40s over the last handful of years.
(25:08):
So I've been in a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ for now 13 years.
It's been in the last handful that he has taken me back to moments like that for me to really understand through the Holy Spirit showing me hey I kept you alive there for a specific purpose not just this generic I spared your life but not only that I kept you alive for a specific purpose.
(25:39):
Oftentimes people will see things like this and because they don't want to use the M word and say it was a miracle they would rather say hey that was just a coincidence and I know that you have gathered a number of stories through your own podcast of people that have had different encounters and you leave it up to the listener to decide.
(26:00):
Is this a coincidence or could this be something more?
Tell me a bit about that podcast.
Yeah thanks so the podcast is called When You Look
it's whenyoulook.com or video base or when you look show on YouTube and other places and the
intention is to glorify God to the fullest and farthest extent and the mechanism for that
(26:23):
Rodney is ordinary people just truly ordinary people that share their first hand experience
that is extraordinary and then as you mentioned we truly serve it up as the question is what you
just heard coincidental or is that God in action?
(26:44):
Essentially we're asking exactly what you talked
about was that coincidence or was that God and we do that because I believe very firmly that
faith is a decision and so what we want to do is we want to serve up the opportunity for people
to see God when they look right hence the when you look but we don't intentionally jam it down
(27:08):
their throat we'd rather them consider it and then make the essentially the adult decision
the conscious decision of yes I see him here yes that is God.
And oftentimes we can write off one or two instances as just a coincidence but you've got so many episodes already and you
(27:30):
continue to talk to these ordinary people and hear these extraordinary stories can you perhaps
mention one or two of them and what's happening in the lives of these people that you've spoken to?
Yeah man there are so many of them but let's just start with episode one which was when I had heard
this story initially I thought to myself everybody needs to hear this and the story in short is that
(27:56):
out of nowhere a couple a family feels prompted to search for a different home than the one they
live in they had no real reason to do that they end up at a dinner party with colleagues
and at the end they're sort of about to leave and the other couple whose home they're at says
(28:18):
hey while this may seem odd we believe we're supposed to sell you our home oh but don't worry
we'll sell it to you for what we paid for it in the United States there's been significant
increase in the value of that home over the roughly nine years that this couple has lived there
(28:39):
meanwhile the couple that has felt this prompt to search for a home is thinking
this home that you're suggesting to us is so much larger than we could possibly need
this all seems very very odd well naturally they graciously leave that conversation in that evening
(29:00):
and the next morning the wife receives a phone call from a friend of hers who has absolutely
no awareness of what they were doing that prior evening and says to her girlfriend hey I had a
very odd dream last night your daughter was holding a sign in a front yard somewhere that
(29:24):
said 6052 on it and then there were all these other children that I didn't recognize in the
dream do you have any idea what this might be well as it turns out Rodney 6052 is the house number
(29:46):
of the home that was offered to them to buy and as mentioned it's massively larger
but out of obedience they felt as if God was quite truly directing them to buy that home
and three weeks after they move in to a home that will have empty bedrooms because it is
(30:07):
far larger than needed for the family that they were at that time they get a call from an adoption
agency in Colombia in South America that offers them the option to adopt a sibling group of three
children so their family goes from a family of four to a family of seven overnight and this
(30:31):
happens out of obedience supported by a dream that a friend had and Rodney the reason why
this truly blew my hair back when I first heard it was I have read of many times in the bible
where people are warned in dreams and my thinking was that's the type of thing that happens in the
(30:54):
bible and yet I knew these people and this was happening in the modern day and I thought to
myself everybody needs to hear this so all glory be to God I hope that I communicated that one
clearly but it was quite truly the modern dream equivalent of Joseph being told get up and go to
(31:18):
Egypt because Herod is after your son you know I mean it's not that different.
And the remarkable thing there is that sometimes we can feel an inkling in one way or another and yet one thing
on its own is not necessarily enough to uproot your home and move and yet there were promptings
all the way along from that initial couple thinking we need to find a home from the other
(31:42):
couple saying we want to sell you our home and then the dream is confirmation of what is already
in play and again at the end of that you're asking do you reckon this is a coincidence I think not
that's right yeah if people are wanting to find you find the podcast you've already mentioned
(32:02):
the website and I'll put that link in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can
hear more of those amazing stories they've heard your amazing story they've heard one of the ones
that they're going to hear on the podcast but there's a lot more there so Mick I just want to
say thank you so much for sharing some of your personal stories today and for being part of Bleeding Daylight.
(32:25):
Yeah Rodney really a pleasure thank you for everything that you are doing
and how you are bringing light and daylight to the darkness
it's been a real pleasure and all glory be to God for sure
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight please help us to shine more light into the
(32:45):
darkness by sharing this episode with others for further details and more episodes please
visit bleedingdaylight.net
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