Episode Transcript
All right, special episode today, and this is impactful stuff.
Speaker 2In fact, I.
Speaker 1Broke down a little bit on here, but a tough subject.
And part of it is this, when you go through extreme loss, you will hear people that are searching and reaching and stabbing, sometimes out of anger, and so you'll hear things like you're profiting on your son's death.
Are we let's unpack it?
Well, this is a special conversation.
Been wanting to have this for a long time.
Speaker 2Amber.
Speaker 1My wife is here with the ant man and we're discussing a brand new book that came out today, The Girl on the Bathroom Floor.
And you have been working on this book, Babe, When do you think you first started.
Speaker 3This closet of two years ago?
Speaker 1Two years People have compared it to like an album making an album, and I'm like, no, it actually takes a lot longer.
The process of a book is much longer and tedious than an album.
Two years ago you wrote the first part of it is.
Speaker 3That that was my first contact.
Kyle, your editor put me in contact with my acquisition's editor, Lisa Joe over at w and we kind of began the process of talking about the book and maybe starting it.
Speaker 1What was the first thing you wrote for it.
Speaker 3Oh, it's a good question, because she wanted me to chapter dump and just write a like open up ten Microsoft Waard documents and start writing things.
Probably the pool, probably what happened when I first heard those words river and pool.
I think I started with that story.
Speaker 1So this has been something I've pushed you for doing for a while, because you know, I felt like your story is unique enough from separate from like a river, that it would actually compliment like a river or stand on its own.
And so then I read it several months ago when you finished the first draft, and I was like confirmed on I mean, a lot of it was new to me.
I lived through this book, but a lot of it was new to me.
Like I didn't know I was on tour.
I didn't know that that happened.
I didn't know the doughnut, the donut shop thing.
I didn't know all that.
A lot of the special times you had with RIV, I didn't know.
So we lost our son in twenty nineteen, and I wrote a book called Like a River, a memoir for it, and then you wrote now this the Girl in the Bathroom Floor.
Can you tell me about the title.
Speaker 3Yeah, it came from you.
I had wrestled with a bunch of different titles and topics, and everything that I had said, you said was too boring.
It sounded like a Bible study.
You're like, no, that's not it, No, that's not Give me an example from Grief to Glory.
Yeah, it was one of them, and you were like, no, it sounds too much like a Bible study.
And that's something that if somebody is not wanting to go into Glory or the Lord, they're just going to walk right past that book and not pick it up.
Yeah, it's like you want the title to grab somebody.
You want it to be exactly where you were.
You want it to be raw and real.
And you were the girl on the bathroom floor.
And when we heard it, we were like whoa.
And everyone that has heard it since then was just like, Wow, that's the perfect title.
That's where so many women and men go to grieve or to lament, or to hide.
Speaker 2You have not read it at man, obviously you haven't.
Speaker 4No, So I read like a river, and then after I would read chapters, I would tell my wife Ashley about what I just read and she's now doing, and then she ultimately she read it after I was finished.
And now we're doing the opposite.
She's reading this one and telling me about what she read, and then I'll read it after she's finished.
Speaker 2What does she said?
What is Ashley said?
If she said any of the details yet?
Speaker 4Yes?
Some, Yeah, she's she shared some and she what's interesting is the very first thing she said to me was what you said to me?
And that was this book is very conversational.
Yeah, it's written very conversationd like, because she'll bounce from from the pool to a Bible study or a pool to going out to eat or something.
It's just back and forth.
But it's like a conversation would be, but much more structured.
You can follow along, you don't get lost.
And that's one thing that Granger said.
I said, how is it?
And he said, uh, it's very it's very conversational and it's I I didn't tell her about that, and she got the same synopsis from it.
Yeah, but she's a lot of things that I mean, we're close that we still didn't know, you know, yeah, And I think that that's the same.
I mean I didn't know of course, And it was like that with with like a River as well, and it's it's interesting what a book like this can do, not just for you personally, I assume amber, but also for those that you you interact with, you know, daily, weekly, monthly, you know in your life, of what how it will draw those in and help put pieces together that that we don't often see about each other.
Speaker 3Yeah.
I think when the editor told me to write the book, and I've said this other places, she said, I want you to be the u ees to you that you can be.
I think when people think about writing a book, and I even thought, this is like I need to be more academic, I need to sound better, and she said, I just want you to be yourself.
People already know your story, they already know your voice through a rise.
Don't change how you're talking to people.
And so that's kind of the feedback that I've gotten.
I think you said, it's like you're just like I'm getting text messages from you and you're just talking to me.
And so I'm thankful that that's what it feels like for people, is that I'm right there with you in the room.
Speaker 1So this is as we speak today.
This is literally released day as we record this, and I've been kind of prepping you like, hey, you know last even last night, were like, hey, just in one more hour, the audiobook will be live at ten or eleven pm Central Time.
The audiobook was live last night, and I just you're like, yeah, yeah, my work is done.
But I was prepping you because people will hear your story this week and they will look at you differently, they'll think of you differently.
And I mean the book is could I read some of it?
Speaker 2I mean it starts in chapter one.
Speaker 3Buckle up.
Speaker 1It's like a buckle up type thing, like chapter one.
This is the first this is the first few lines.
I sifted through clots of deep red blood, searching for anything that would resemble the baby I was miscarrying.
Speaker 2For hours.
Speaker 1I had lain sweating on the towel covered cement floor of our bug infested barn in the August heat of Texas, who had been living in an RV while our home was being built, and we had no plumbing in the fifth wheel, so my only place to go was the one barn bathroom that we all shared.
The only position I can get comfortable in was on my hands and knees, curled in a ball.
The pain was more intense than anything i'd ever felt, and I had transitioned from crying to praying to oddly sleeping in between muscle contractions.
That's the first few sentences.
Speaker 3Well, and that came because I think I was going to start at the pool.
And when I talked to you and Esther at that lunch that day, you said you should start with the miscarriage.
Yeah, because I was completely in a different spot spiritually, and so that was a good place to start and then go into the story and then come back to the miscarriage in the middle.
But yeah, they said, a lot of the people at the publishing company said when they first read that first sentence, it was like, WHOA, you're not expecting Yeah, that graphic.
Speaker 2I wasn't.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you're right, I was involved in that idea of like you should start with the miscarriage.
But this is an example of like, during this time I was keeping the kids away from you.
The kids knew you were pregnant, and we didn't tell them about the miscarriage.
We just didn't want to break their heart.
And so but London was so intuitive, at what eight years old or so, She's like, Mommy, everything okay, and You're like, I'm just really tired.
Speaker 3Yeah, not feeling good.
Speaker 2Not feeling good.
Speaker 1Literally you'd been there in there for hours in the bathroom.
Oh man, But there are other things and and where where we when I was just talking about oh, I was recording The Smiths and I I was telling you probably my favorite part of the.
Speaker 2Book is that it was in the Idol.
It is in the Idol.
Speaker 1Yeah, I turned right to it on the Smiths.
Speaker 2And now I'm not going to turn to it on the podcast here.
Speaker 1It is so this part is crazy, And so people that would want that would be looking for this book.
I mean, anyone could read this book.
It's certainly relevant to anyone that walks on planet Earth.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's not just about child loss.
It's a lot of different griefs and just basically like how your life doesn't go like you thought it was going to go.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1Like you if you think you're a candidate for someone who their life may not go as you think it should go.
If that's you, if you're a candidate for that, then this book would be good for you.
But similar to what I told people with like a River, because sometimes people are like I don't want to read it.
I already know what happened.
I don't want to relive that.
It's like, no, no, no, no, there's hope.
I'm not going to leave you without hope.
In fact, ant Man and I say that all the time on this podcast when we talk about Mark of the Beast or End the Times, We're like, we don't want to ever leave you on this podcast without hope.
And that's what this book does.
But there's a turning point in here, and it's a chapter called the Idol.
And this might be shocking to some people, but I remember you talking about this, but I but when I read the book it then it really hit me.
Speaker 2And then when I held.
Speaker 1Actually this hard copy I read a few weeks ago on an airplane on one leg to South Gards, North Carolina.
I read half of it.
On the back from South Carolina, Austin, I read the second half, I was just like, couldn't stop.
I was even in the terminal walking to the terminal holding it.
But there's a section in here that says you wrote one of the most shattering realizations in my grief was about to unfold.
And once again it happened on my bathroom floor as I sat there crying utterly consumed by sorrow.
And this is page one point sixteen.
There is a lot of hard stuff that happens in a hundred pages.
Like you are seeking the Lord.
You're crying, You're grieving.
The miscarriage happens, loss of riv happens.
There's just pain.
So here we are, they say.
As I sat there crying, utterly consumed by sorrow, the Lord interrupted my pain with three words that changed everything.
They weren't audible, but I felt every word crushing my spirit like a carefully a careful heart surgeon, cutting through the fog of my despair with piercing clarity.
Speaker 2Enough seek Me.
Speaker 1These weren't my own thoughts, and as crazy as it may sound, they carried a weight that I can't fully explain.
In that moment, God revealed an uncomfortable truth.
I had made River an idol in my life.
My pain, my longing for him, my constant thoughts of him.
They had begun to eclipse the one who is the source of all comfort and peace.
Gently, but firmly, the Lord was calling me to lift my eyes from my sadness and refocus them on him.
Enough seek Me.
It was a conviction, a call, and a challenge all at once.
God was calling me to get up to a rise off the bathroom floor, both physically and spiritually.
I felt in that moment that everyone is suffering something.
I felt that I felt the spirit saying to me, enough, seek me, give me the glory that belongs to.
Speaker 4Me alone, like whoa yeah.
Speaker 1And when you know, when I read that, and when I read certain things like this, I often think that sounds like my God.
Speaker 4How did it feel to have that clarity, have that moment?
Speaker 3It was the most powerful moment in my healing journey.
Was and you know, and you hear, you can hear that and think, well, that sounds mean?
Why would God?
You know, you're crying over your son, who wouldn't cry?
But it wasn't mean.
It was firm and loving.
And I told Greendeer it was like a father like lifting his daughter's face, like enough, look at me.
And I realized that I had been seeking the gift I had been seeking.
I long to be with Rivers so much.
I was so sad, But I was not looking to the Lord.
I mean I was in a sense, but not really.
I hadn't read my Bible.
I was reading devotions.
I was getting little pieces, but I wasn't looking to my savior.
I was stuck in my sadness and in my sorrow.
And that was the moment that the Lord called me to arise.
That's kind at the beginning of how Arise with the Amberg got started, And it was the beginning of us really looking to the scriptures and seeking who God truly was.
Who is this God that is telling me enough?
Look at me?
Speaker 4Well, it's something I think that you learn as a as a parent.
Is that, like you said, it was like a father lifting up his daughter's face.
Is that only as a parent can you go You can only see what you're currently in.
Yes, and I can see everything.
So I'm gonna let you do this for a minute so you can feel it and then it's over.
It's done.
It's enough.
Speaker 3Yeah.
And it's encouraging and challenging.
And you know GRANGERD does that with our kids.
Yeah, it's like it's a push.
It's like you can do this.
Speaker 4The encouragement.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think there was something you said that's really important because it wasn't that you weren't seeking him at all.
And so I don't want people to hear this and go I am thinking God, I am.
Speaker 2And it's not that you weren't.
It's that you weren't.
You were seeking him to comfort you for River.
Speaker 3I wasn't seeking him for who he was and not.
Speaker 1For who he was.
That's there's a big difference.
And you know, God allows us to seek him for comfort for other things to a point, because that's how it begins.
You know a lot of that, that's kindergarten theology.
It starts there but to but eventually he says, stop, it's time to graduate kindergarten.
Look to me.
And yeah, So you and I talked about on the on the Smiths and we talked about the you know, the misconceptions of the narcissistic God.
Yeah, you know in this instance, like seek me, I want to be more important than River.
Speaker 2It's not, it's not the point of this.
It was.
Speaker 1Seek the gift, giver over the gift, and the joy that you have will then eclipse the grief to hold you.
So that's a selfless desire of the Lord to want you to seek him.
It was from my good, it was for your good.
Yeah, because he doesn't need anything.
He doesn't he doesn't need you to seek him to make him feel better about himself.
He needs you to seek him so that it's so that you could finally be healed because.
Speaker 2Of who he is.
Speaker 1That that is a that's a massive understanding that you had to go through.
And when I read that, I mean not like I said, I remember you talking about it.
When I read it, I was like, whoa man I've I've also and I know ant man has two felt moments where the Lord's like, Okay, yep, enough, yep.
Speaker 3I mean he does it in scripture, he does it all right, let's go.
Speaker 1So, you know, when I started this podcast, it seemed like I had a lot to figure out on my own, you know, the scripts, the setups, the filming, the schedule, the logos, everything was overwhelming, and I just wanted to.
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So the next part that I brought.
Speaker 2Up before is.
Speaker 4I love it.
Speaker 1Is that the Recipient.
Yeah, that's another It's a chapter called the Recipient.
And I shouldn't like have my own copy of this so I could like mark it up.
I actually think I did mark up one of them.
Speaker 2But this part is.
Speaker 1Was crushing to me.
This is one of these parts.
One of the things I didn't know you We donated rivers organs, specifically two kidneys, right, and.
Speaker 2I was so out of this process.
Speaker 1It was your idea to donate, you know, by God's grace, and it was your idea to move forward with all the things, including you wrote letters to the two recipients.
You found out that you found out and you said you were shocked to see that the kidneys of River went to a forty nine year old woman and a fifty three year old man.
Speaker 3I thought for sure they would have gone to children because it was so tiny.
Speaker 1So once again here's us trying to decide what God's going to do to my box.
Oh it'll be a kid, you know that.
And and we'll return to that family, the child, the little boy that they thought they were going to lose.
Well, that's not what happened.
So you get that, You get the notice that if this is a forty nine year old woman gets one and a fifty year old man, fifty three year old then gets the other.
He wrote them letters telling them all about river right, and the whole story.
His beautiful red hair, you say, his deep brown eyes, the way that his face would light up when he saw a dinosaur or a tractor, How he loved being outside and digging in the dirt.
Speaker 2He was so full of joy in life.
Speaker 1You told him about the difficult decision we made and how we prayed over it, and I told him that we had been praying for them, and that our hope was that they were be joyful and healthy and thriving.
And then you left the door open, and that let them know that you'd love to meet him one day and then nothing.
Speaker 3Think it was four months.
Speaker 1For four months, you received one card in the mail.
It was the recipient of Rivers Right Kidney and the card read, my name is Elda.
I'm forty nine years old, married, have one son.
Since I was fourteen, I have suffered a painful illness called polypsychic psychicistic palsystic kidney disease.
Thanks to you, I have a second chance at life.
Words can'tnot describe how thankful I am, my family and I will be forever in your debt.
I'm so grateful for the new life you and your family have given me.
I wish you and your family along and prosperous life.
Sincerely, Elda.
Speaker 3It's like that's it, I know, and it was.
It fit into a greeting card, and I think I wanted in my selfishness, I wanted like pages of gratitude.
But then you know, I had to be reminded that was probably really hard for her to write once she was Spanish speaking too.
How do you ever say thank you for that?
For you know, she knew we lost our son, and I think I was just expecting something that you can't expect in that moment, so I write in the book, don't have expectations and understand what they're going through too.
That's got to be really hard for them, And I'm so grateful.
She even responded, so.
Speaker 1Yeah, but you said your tears came, your emotions hit sadness, maybe even a little selfish sadness.
You didn't know what you were expecting.
But somehow you wanted more from her.
You wanted more from that letter.
You craved a deeper connection, something that would ease the ache in your heart.
But you sat there and you realized that it must have taken a lot for Elder to write it.
So then you met.
This is the part I didn't know.
So as I read these words, like you know, these are these are just new.
It was a new story to me.
Once again, I knew that you did it, but I didn't know the details.
I'll try to read it again.
Oh I I did on the Smiths, but you say page two to one.
We finally met on November eleventh, twenty twenty two.
I chose a local coffee shop and we found a quiet table in the back.
Maverick, who was just over a year at the time, came with me and Elder brought her sister to help translate because she mostly spoke Spanish.
She was absolutely precious, standing just over four feet tall, with short, highlighted brown hair and warm brown eyes behind her glasses.
She wore a lovely floral paisley top with black pants and a cozy black sweater.
As we sipped our drinks, she shared her story that she had been on dialysis for three long years before receiving River's kidney, tethered to a machine for eight to ten hours every single day.
Wow, three years, You're right for Rivers.
Entire lifetime, she had been fighting this battle, hooked to a machine, waiting, praying, hoping, longing for healing.
It's interesting you think back to enough seek me.
It struck me how we didn't always see what the Lord is doing.
We don't always see what the Lord is doing.
How often she must have wondered, do you see me?
Speaker 3Lord?
Speaker 1Why are you allowing me to suffer like this?
And yet in his kindness I can almost hear him whispering, Hold on, child, I'm preparing something for you.
I'm raising up a little boy, and man, you want to read this very I'm raising up a little boy who will help heal you just hold on and then and then the part that gets me is the next part.
The part that really gets me is the next part.
You say, I have a picture of her, so he's here on the smith for some reason.
You say, I have a picture for holding Maverick that day, And it makes me emotional every time I look at it, because this is the closest Maverick has ever been to a piece of his big brother, Eldon Maverick.
Two blessings that came out of the breaking of my heart, two lives I will cherish forever.
That's beautiful.
Your words are so beautiful and so powerful for people to see.
The circle of sovereignty is God.
We don't often see.
I would say it might even be rare that we would see a breaking of a heart, the Lord breaking a heart and then redeeming it, for that's visibly seen by us.
Sometimes he does it for reasons that we don't know, and other times he lets he lets you see a little bit of it.
I mean, there's a what does Piper say, There's ten thousand things God is doing at all.
Speaker 3Times in your life, and you're aware of about three of them.
Speaker 2You're aware of about three of them, and.
Speaker 3There's another's Yeah, there's a Scottish pastor, Samuel Rutherford, and he says, God is I'm probably I'm paraphrasing.
God is too skilled and wise as a physician to hurt you for nothing.
He can use your very wounds to heal you.
And like you said, oftentimes we don't we won't see all of the intertwining lives that that and all the things that God is doing.
But it's just a realization it's not about me, it's not about my suffering.
It's not just about me and River like now she gets to have life and that she's just one of the blessings from the breaking.
So many other domino effects have happened from the loss of our son, and we know it's not River that did it.
It's not us in anything that we have done.
It's all in what God is doing.
So it really just took a shift in my perspective of not looking at the earthly things, the things that are passing away, and really turning my eyes to the eternal.
And that took work and it was hard.
Yeah, But when you can see that there's freedom in that, and there's peace in that, and there's hope in that and there's joy in that.
Speaker 2Yeah, you said blessing in the breaking.
I've heard you say that before.
It's that's good.
Speaker 1That's another one of the titles I would have rejected, though, because the girl in the bathroom floor is better.
Speaker 3Well, I think about Jesus.
I mean, the greatest blessing of our lives came in the breaking of his body or us.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's the pinnacle.
The pinnacle of suffering is in the and the beauty from suffering is is that?
You know we were talking yesterday.
I think well, I think it was yesterday about the Book of Acts and the story of Paul.
I'll go there right now.
I think it's Acts nine.
But the story of Saul to Paul, it's he is converted by the Lord from a persecutor of the church, a murderer of the church, a murderer of Christians.
And then he's radically on the road to Damascus transformed.
And he is blinded by the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, and he hears a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
And he says, who are you?
Speaker 4Lord?
Speaker 1And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.
Okay, So other men fell to the ground.
They didn't know.
Everyone's trying to figure out what's going on.
He goes to Damascus in obedience to what Jesus said, and then verse ten.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Anonius.
The Lord said to him in a vision.
Anonius, he said, here, I am Lord.
And he said to him, rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.
For behold, he is praying, and he is seen a vision of a man named Anonius.
And lay his and come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.
But Anonius, he knows, he knows about this guy.
He knows about this ceasis.
Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.
Speaker 2And here he has.
Speaker 1Authority from the chief priest to bind all who call in your name.
But here it is, but the Lord said to him, go, for he has a chosen instrument of mine to carry out my name before the gentiles and the kings of the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for this sake of my name.
From the moment Saul Paul was converted and called into the ministry of taking the message of the Gospel to the Gentiles.
He was also called into suffering for the aim of Christ.
Do we think we would be any different as Christians, that we would somehow make it through, make it through a life of no suffering.
Speaker 3Not if we're to be like Jesus.
No, he suffered, we are to suffer with him.
It's a blessing to be called suffer with him.
Yeah, it's hard to come to the realization too.
Speaker 1So does that just mean that you are persecuted as a Christian and maybe even martyred or killed or mocked or does that mean other things too?
Speaker 3I think that's one of the ways, But I think it includes all types of suffering.
Yeah, that's fallen world.
We wouldn't have a need of a savior if none of us have, if none of us suffered, we wouldn't have a need for the Lord, if none of us went through hard seasons of pain.
It's for our sanctification so we can become more like Christ, his glory can be revealed to us.
Speaker 1So part of putting out a book like this is also you coming into the awareness that you're going to stir up the ant bed, and you're going to stir up the roaches are going to start coming out.
It's easy ches more than a yes, sorry, I actually corrected it when I thought like, no, not amen, when it.
Speaker 2Would be easy.
Speaker 1Speaking of persecution, it's easy just to go I'm going to just hide forever.
It's as long as I'm just hiding and not talking and not saying anything, I'm a not going to offend anybody and be no one is going to find a fault in what I'm doing, and so it's much.
Speaker 2Easier just to disappear.
Speaker 1The opposite of that is saying I'm going to write a book and go on some talk shows and a bunch of podcasts and talk about the book about my son dying in my backyard on my watch.
So have you felt that heavier this round or maybe you've expected it, or what do you think?
Speaker 3I think I have expected it, because it seems to be ever every time we go on socials and talk about River or your book or anything that we're doing, an anniversary or something people come out of the would work again, and it gets all stirred back up again, and people start saying very harsh, negative things.
And that wasn't my goal in writing this book was I'm going to go into the world and go on all these talk shows.
My goal in writing this book was I read so many books when I was grieving that helped me, that gave me hope, that gave me light.
I wanted our book, this book to be one of those things that would help somebody.
I craved stories of other people who had gone through suffering and they were still standing and not only standing, but praising God through it.
And I wanted to be one of those tiny stories that hopefully could be a light for someone else.
But when you do that, you have people that come out and say really awful things about what you're doing.
Speaker 4Do you feel it stronger it being this being your book or did you feel it stronger with the first I think it was both.
Speaker 3It's been the same for both that we are profiting off of our son's death and how despicable of a human we are to make money on our son dying.
Yeah, no amount of money it is worth obviously the life of our child, like you and I would give anything to have our son back, you know.
But now with new eyes and with these blessings, and you know we have Maverick and all that, we could never go back.
Just with our faith in Christ, we could never go back.
But no amount of money is worth that.
And people said that about the children's book that we wrote, and I'm not making anything on that.
That's for the that's the donations to the River Kelly Fund.
We're not making money.
It's not it's to help someone else for the glory of God.
It is to point people to Christ, because that is where our only hope is found.
That is where our only light is found.
That's the only reason we're still standing today is that we have saving faith in Christ, and He has led us through and carried us through our darkest times.
And we want to do that for somebody else.
But I can't be mad at those people because they just don't know.
They're just lost and they're they're far from the Lord.
And I've come to realize I can't let my feelings get hurt about that anymore.
I have to pray for them.
Yeah, the Bible says pray for those who persecute.
You pray for your enemies, and I pray that the Lord would open their eyes, and I pray that they never have to go through anything like this, but if they do, I pray that they're led to the Lord.
Speaker 1This is such a tool for you because you'll be able to tell people from now on for the rest of your life on Earth.
When someone comes to you and says they're suffering or they have something going on forever, you could say, will you read Girl on the Bathroom Floor and that's my backstory, and then we could talk.
And I've done that countless times with Like a River, and I have on Apple you could go to books the books app, and you could gift a audiobook.
So I've done this so many times.
I said, what's your email?
Like somebody's like talking to me.
I said, what's your email?
They tell me their email.
I go to Apple Books, I'll buy Like a River audio, gift it on their email and I'll say, hey, check your inbox, I send you something.
All you do is press play.
So then I talked to the publisher HarperCollins recently when I was with Amber, and I was like, yeah, you know, because we're talking about how so many people love audiobooks.
Speaker 2I was like, yeah, I've bought Like a River so many times.
Speaker 1Or they said Like a River sells really well on audio, and I said it might because of me, because I buy it all the time.
And they said, you know, we can give you a code.
I was like, oh, man, oh that sounds great.
There is a limited amount.
I can't just give out infinite amounts of code, but there's that they've maybe twenty five or so will give me to give.
Speaker 2Away, like, which is helpful, awesome.
Speaker 1What any other negative comments besides you're making money on the death of your child.
Speaker 3I mean, I see just stuff about how how awful of parents that we are, that it's our fault, everything's our fault.
We murdered our son, we drowned our son, that our other children should be taken away, that we should be in jail, just all the same stuff.
Speaker 1When when I saw and I'm kind of like you, like, I'm so used to it.
It's been so many years now, it's been we're almost seven years in of hearing those kind of things still makes.
Speaker 3My mom so angry.
Tell her not to respond, do not engage.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, what I realized every once in a while if you dig into one of those people.
And I don't recommend doing that, but I do remember a specific guy who was like calling me a murderer, awful parent.
I should be locked up in jail.
Should they should take my kids away?
You know that I was probably drunk, you know, crazy, He was like going off, and I when I went to d m him and try to just come in with kindness and come to find out, after I pulled back some layers, his wife had just died of cancer, and and I think he his reaction was, my wife was an incredible woman and she did this and that, Like she worked at a daycare and everyone in town was, you know, needed her and relied on her.
And now she's gone and her memory's gone.
And now your son gets gets on the news and he did nothing and you did nothing.
Why why doesn't my wife's story?
Like that was the source of the anger, was why doesn't my wife wasn't her story told worldwide?
What is this idiot celebrity guy get his son that was just a freak accident because he's negligent?
What is that what Fox News talks about?
And I was like, I'm so sorry, man, I didn't know your wife, but she sounds like an amazing woman.
Speaker 2I'm so sorry, and it's like ended it there.
Speaker 3Yeah, I've done that a few times.
I don't engage often, but when I do, it's the same thing.
They just want to be heard.
They want their story to be heard.
And when you when I did come at them with kindness and love, it disarmed them and they eventually would end up apologizing.
Speaker 1Yeah, they came back and they say, I'm so sorry about River.
I was out of line with the things I said.
Speaker 3It just comes from a place of hurt.
Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 4Now.
What a blessing that the interaction that you had with that woman that because that's interactions that we talk about potentially having one day on the other side of Cory.
Yeah, And I wonder sometimes when things like that happen, if if God isn't just going Yeah, I think she might need it now and pull it out of eternity and put it in to now.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Do you have a favorite part of the book.
I've named my few parts.
Speaker 3Favorite part that's difficult, obviously.
I think I would have to say the Offense.
The chapter called the Offense because it's when like I've met you where you are, and I've told you all my story.
But then I get to the part where, okay, kind of like that moment that the Lord did for me, like enough, and I tell you really hard truths that you need to know.
And I feel like I needed to know these, and so as your sister in Christ, if you're reading this book, I need to tell you what the Bible says, you need to look to the Lord.
And so it was a chapter that might offend some people, but it's truth that I came to know and trust and believe, and I feel like it would help them.
So that's where I want them to be.
I want to meet them where they are, but I don't want them to stay stuck.
I want them to get up off the floor and move forward.
I think I really loved writing the offense.
Not that I wanted to offend you, but it might it might.
Thanks for being on, Thanks for having me, Thanks for giving me the book title and encouraging.
Speaker 2You don't have to tell people that it's.
Speaker 3I don't have to.
I want to.
I'm so thankful.
Speaker 1Yeah, Growling about Them Floor available right now anywhere books are sold.
Follow Amber Emily Smith on all socials and I'm excited to see what the Lord is going to do with your story that he wrote.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Amen, see you guys.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for hanging out with me on this episode of the granger Smith Podcast.
I appreciate you being here.
If you're listing right now, go ahead and rate today's podcast.
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And if you've got a question you want answered right here on the show, just email me podcast at grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 2I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks again for being here.
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4Ye
