Kristen Jenson: How God and Angels Helped Me When I Couldn't Go On
Kristen Jenson’s life changed one day when her 18 month old son almost died. As a full-time caregiver of a child with a disability, she leaned on God and angels to help her survive and then she was able bless others.
Discussion Points
Kristen enjoys baking. It is one of her creative outlets which brings her joy. She and her husband eat a mostly plant-based diet.
The near-drowning of her son, and his comatose state afterwards.
How to deal with feeling overwhelmed, and the idea that you just have to get through that day—don’t take on the whole future.
The brick wall analogy.
“Lord give me enough to get through this one day.”
The angels who came into her life to help her.
Be thankful. It could always be worse.
God doesn’t always give us what we want, but He does give us what we need.
How her prayers changed.
How God prepared her for her son’s death.
The prompting to help God protect young minds from pornography, and starting the company Protect Young Minds.
How writing her book “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures” was a group effort.
What physical exhaustion and burnout felt like.
The importance of finding joyful hobbies or recreation.
Jesus will help us through every step of the way—even you may not feel like He’s there.
Caregiver Tips
Get help! You can’t do it alone.
Find something you enjoy doing to keep you sane.
Walk or exercise with friends.
Work on projects or goals.
Find time to get respite or get a break. “You can handle anything if you get a break!”
ProtectYoungMinds.Org
Kristen is now the driving force for helping parents protect their children from pornography.
Has many FREE resources to each parents how to protect their children, and keep them up to date with the latest threats and give them tools to combat pornography.
Parenting advice on how to help raise their kids to be emotionally resilient.
They have a new video based curriculum available. https://www.protectyoungminds.org/
My Favorite Takeaway
“God doesn’t give you the whole picture, but He does give you hope—hope to carry on.” --Kristen Jenson
When Kristen said this, it totally resonated with me. I often wish I could see the whole picture that God sees, but often He blesses me with peace. Feeling peace fills me with hope that God is aware of me and my situation and will help me carry on. It is a beautiful pattern.
#tamarakanderson #storiesofhopeinhardtimes #podcast #hope #God #hardtimes #caregiver #specialneeds #disability #pornography #help #angels #gethelp #cargivertips
Transcript
You can access the transcript of today's episode here:
Kristen 0:03
You can handle anything if you get some breaks. So, like I said, if you know somebody that's in a caregiver situation day in day out, you don't have to take over their job. But if you can help them, just a little bit, it's amazing! First of all, it's very encouraging to know that people care enough to help, but it's also, like, just getting a little break is enormous because then you can come back and you can feel like you can tackle it again.
Tamara Anderson 0:40
Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.
My guest today grew up in Cheyenne, Boston, and spent many summers with her dad and sisters in Indiana and Long Island, New York. She earned a BA in English literature and an MA in organizational communication from BYU and also served a mission to Portugal. Before leaving BYU, she met and then married her husband John and had three wonderful children. After they lost their 10 year-old son to complications from a near drowning accident when he was 18 months old, Kristen began homeschooling her daughters for a few years. After her youngest was launched, she began writing to help parents tackle the taboo topic of pornography. Her “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures,” read out loud books are both Amazon number one bestsellers and she is the founder of the protectyoungminds.org website. I'm pleased to present Kristen Jensen. Kristen, are you ready to share your story of hope?
Kristen 2:12
Yes, Tamara, I would love to. Thank you for having me on.
Tamara Anderson 2:15
Oh, I'm so happy to have you here. Now, we always like to start with a little bit of an icebreaker, and one of the interesting things about you is that you have switched to mostly a vegetarian diet. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Kristen 2:29
I was always interested in health. I think, after I had my first child, I'd actually i gained a lot of weight. It wasn't so much the weight as, like, the energy. I had no energy. My husband would come home from work and have to take over. I was just completely exhausted, so I made a few improvements. I started walking, just learned a lot about the value of eating a mostly plant-based diet. This was back in the day when it wasn't… I think it's become a lot more popular. Also, there's a lot more science to back it up. My husband had cancer. He still kind of lives with it but it's in remission and it's usually in the background of our lives. It's been maybe 10 or 12 years since he started treatment. But I felt very strongly during his treatment that if we would do our best to live according to those principles where we ate mostly plants then we would be sustained and that he could withstand the treatments. I never got any promise of a cure. Some people have these great stories about that. My mother once said, “Isn't that boring?” and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, no! There's so many great different ways you can use vegetables and grains.” So we have been doing that for, I don't know. It's been a long time.
Tamara Anderson 4:25
At least 10 years, right?
Kristen 4:28
Yeah. We are not strict. If you invite us over for dinner and you've got pot roast, we're gonna enjoy your pot roast, and I feel like that has been a good a good way for us to go. But I don’t tell anyone else what to do with their diet! Everyone gets to decide that. Everyone gets to figure that out
Tamara Anderson 4:56
That's cool. So what you're saying is, even though you live a mostly vegetarian lifestyle, that you eat very well and you have some really tasty food.
Kristen 5:08
Yes, I do, because I like to throw things together in the kitchen that I've never tried before. That is a fun part of what I do to kind of balance out the dark things I have to deal with, with talking about pornography and all those kinds of things. So, yeah, have a hobby.
Tamara Anderson 5:30
No, I agree. I have that same hobby. It makes me happy to go into my kitchen and to make something, or bake something, or try a new recipe. It is a great creative outlet. Some people love it and some people don't. So, basically, one of your points is no matter what your stressful life looks like, find hobbies that give you a creative release, right?
Kristen 5:55
Absolutely. Absolutely, Tamara, and it's very healing in many ways. Creativity is something that is a gift that we can all develop.
Tamara Anderson 6:10
Absolutely. So we're gonna dive into your life a little bit today. Why don't you start off telling me about your wonderful son?
Kristen 6:21
My son was born, just a beautiful child. Blonde hair, big blue eyes, big smile, just so happy. We used to call him Mr. Guy Smiley, just had a big personality, just one of those people that the personality didn't fit his little body. He was a joy. I will say at about five months, when he was still just an infant, I had this premonition that kept coming to me. It went something like, “He's too good for this world,” and i would question that. In fact, I would kind of argue against it, like, “Well there are a lot of really good people in this world and we need them.” I would just kind of try to put it out of my mind.
When he was 18 months old, we had a tub, just like those plastic, bushel size tubs that we kept in our yard that was kind of like for their little sandbox toys and their toys. We had a sandbox and we had a swing set and all the things that you have when you have young children because I had an older daughter. One day, we went out there, right around this time of year. We were in California. It was a drought year, but that tub had accumulated a few inches of water. Maybe three inches of water over the course of the few months. We were outside, my daughter was napping, my husband was down planting some trees on a slope that we had in our backyard. He asked me to go get something. Lauren was playing in the yard and I saw him go over to that tub and I thought he was gonna pull out a toy. I didn't think anything of it. In fact, a feeling of joy came over me and I was so grateful to be that little boy's mother and just his spirit. So I just went inside to hunt for whatever my husband needed. Came back out, gave it to him, and then, from where I was up on the deck, I couldn't quite see where that tub was. It was kind of obscured by a retaining wall. But I noticed that I couldn't see him and so I went looking. We eventually thought maybe he had gotten up and was wandering outside up front of our yard, maybe in our cul de sac. I ran up there and we finally found him, he had fallen into this tub.
You know little children, he's like 18 months old, they're so top heavy. You think they could just pull themselves out, but what I found out since is that children can actually drown in toilets. They get disoriented, they suck in the water. They're exploring, they may fall, and their heads are so much heavier so their center of balance is here rather than in their middle. It's hard for us adults to kind of imagine but kids can fall into things and buckets and really they can drown. So that is basically what happened to my son. As he fell into this bucket, he couldn't get himself extricated and he couldn't breathe. They call it a near drowning because he didn't end up dying from it. We called 911. I felt devastated because this was on my watch. I’m glad it wasn't my husband watching him, I'm glad it was on my watch because then I only had myself to forgive. At the time, I don't know that I was as forgiving a person. I wondered if I would have forgiven my husband. So I was glad it was on my watch, in a sense.
But as I waited for the ambulance, my neighbor actually came over. He was a police officer, he was doing CPR. As I waited for the ambulance, I remember this feeling came over me of, “You are not to blame yourself for this. This was an accident. You're not to blame yourself.” And just feeling free of that blame, which was a gift. That was a beautiful gift. I remember, afterwards, trying to make myself feel guilty about it. Because, of course, I mean, I was responsible. I was his mother. I've heard so many stories of people that they say, “I caught my son or my daughter in danger and I was able to rescue them and it was a prompting from the spirit.” I felt bad about that, like, what was wrong with me that I couldn't feel the spirit? But i actually did feel the spirit that day, several times, so I feel like I was open to the spirit. I know that if the spirit had wanted to warn me, I could have been warned. Because I had felt some other things that day, I knew that I had been open to the spirit.
So anyway, long story short, he was transferred to the hospital. They came and told me that I should consider organ donation because they just didn't know. Basically they went in and they were trying to resuscitate his heart. Now, this is a little, 18 month old, cherubic little boy and they were trying. What I heard from the medical personnel is that he wasn't responding. They weren't getting him. So the call time, this is what they do. They say, “Okay, we've got a call time,” meaning they're going to work on this person for 15 minutes or half an hour, whatever it is, and then they all agree that they can stop. They can stop trying to resuscitate that person. So it's a procedure that allows them, once they’ve pretty much given up, to just say, “Okay, we're gonna try this much longer.” Apparently as soon as they called time, his heart came back. Well, I just think he was off having a great time then was like, “Oh I better get back.”
So that was the initial accident. They transferred him to Oakland Children's Hospital to their pediatric intensive care unit. At the same time, I was pregnant with my third. It was pretty tough there. He was in the hospital for a little less than six weeks. When he came home, he was still what they would consider in a coma. In the movies, there's a person and they’re in a coma, and then all of a sudden they open their eyes, and they're fully engaged. Most coma patients don't come out of a coma that quickly. It's a process where your brain reorganizes. They told us some bad news there. They said that when you have like a global anoxia, where you aren’t breathing for a while, if you're in a cold, cold, cold, icy stream, that actually is great, because it shuts down your metabolism. If you're going to have a near drowning accident, in a very cold stream is the best, if you could choose. But that wasn’t really the case with him
They took a blood sample, and then they measured the pH of the blood. Now, when you haven't been breathing, it's going to change. Everybody on the planet is between like a 7.35 and a 7.45 pH. Your blood is in a very, very narrow range. It has to be. So he was 6.80, which means his blood was very acidic. They did not give him any kind of hope. They basically said, “He will be in a vegetative state his whole life.” That's it? Wow. That's what the research says, we hate to tell you this. I was full of faith. We prayed over him, and we just felt like he was going to live a normal life. What happened was we normalized around his life, it became normal for us. He did become more awake, actually. So he was not in a vegetative state. But he was very impaired. He couldn't talk. He couldn't move a whole lot. But he could vocalize. He could recognize people, he could listen to music and really respond that way. But it took a year as he just, little by little by little, his mind, his brain kind of reorganized.
Tamara Anderson 18:15
I can't even imagine experiencing that. So I guess my question to you is, how were you doing through all of this? With your being pregnant, and then having a baby, and also, now, having almost a second baby to care for because he was bed bound? How were you doing with all of that?
Kristen 18:40
Not good. I was full of faith, though. I knew that God would bless us. I felt very sure. I was reading my scriptures every day. I felt that was my lifeline. In particular, the Book of Mormon. It was something that I gained a lot of inspiration from. I know others will gain inspiration from the Bible, from other books of scripture. This was my particularly helpful practice every day. I made a goal to finish the Book of Mormon by the time my baby came. I did that by reading like, it was like six pages a day or something like that. So I think if you're in a time of difficulty, if you can have a goal like that, where you can establish a habit of daily, personal inspiration, connection with God, no matter how you do that, I think that was critical for me. Just having to coordinate the care of my daughter with going to the hospital and all of that. It was pretty intense. Then my son started having seizures. That was another really difficult thing. He just had a lot of, you know, his temperature wasn't controlled very well. Even when he came home, he didn't blink very often, we had to put eye drops in his eyes. Yes, there was just so much around the clock care, but he didn't have a trach. He could breathe, but yet, we had to suction him because he couldn't swallow very well.
Tamara 21:02
How were you able to feed him, then?
Kristen 21:04
Through a feeding tube. They gave him a feeding tube. Thankfully, I had some friends back then that were willing to give us a little time. It's hard to find. We were able to have somebody come in and help me, especially as I went on with my pregnancy, because then I had problems with my pregnancy. I was like bleeding and threatening to lose this child, too
There were other things, too, that I just started to feel like, “Okay, Lord, I can't handle one more thing.” As it got close to me having my child, my third, which is my little girl, I started to feel truly overwhelmed. How was I going to be able to take care of a newborn and this very medically fragile child who required round the clock care? Until you've experienced it, it’s just a whole other level of exhaustion. Because a healthy newborn is exhausting in and of itself. But having a child in that kind of medical condition and then thinking of a newborn coming along. I remember feeling absolutely overwhelmed. The thought came to me, “Kristen, just keep on keepin’ on.” That was a slogan that I remember hearing when I was a kid, “Just keep on keepin’ on.” I thought, “Okay, the Spirit, I believe, speaks to us in language that we understand. That is unique to each one of us.” I had many other spiritual experiences that just let me know that God was aware of me.
I kind of had a vision of an analogy. I've shared this with other people who are going through tough times. Maybe this was just for me, and maybe it won't work for others, but I'll share it now. You just have to get through every day. That's all, because when you're in a trial and a difficult situation, if you take on the entire future, That's too much. That's too much for any of us. That's why I think Jesus said, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil there of.” “Sufficient unto the day is the evil there of.” You only need to deal with today's problems today. Just get through this one day. So I had this idea. When I woke up in the morning, I built a brick wall in my mind at the end of the day. So I was to walk up to that brick wall. So throughout the day, I'm getting towards that brick wall, that is the end of the day. It's a tall brick wall. I am not to try to climb it and look over it. I am not to do that. Just get up to that brick wall and go to bed and get a little sleep. I wasn't getting much sleep. Then in the morning, I wake up, I'd be on the other side of that brick wall, and there'd be a new brick wall. So just build that brick wall at the end of the day. Don't try to take anything more than one day at a time. Because there are some times in your life where that is all you can do. Just get through one day. If you could just have that expectation, “Lord, give me enough to get through this one day,” I think that's powerful. I think that is just all we can do. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I’ll just deal with today's problems. Don't worry about how you're going to get through the rest of it because you don't know what blessings are coming, what things will come into your life to help you. We actually were able to hire someone, Angelia, and she came and helped us for a couple of years. I don't know what I would have done without her.
Tamara Anderson 26:32
She was your angel.
Kristen 26:35
She was. My angel is funny because her name. We always thought her name was Angelia. It wasn’t until years later I found out that we were mispronouncing it. It was Argelia. Well, we like the name Angelia a better, because that’s what you were to us, you were an angel.
So my little daughter was born. Thankfully, she did not need to be in an ICU. Not to be graphic, but I wake up in a pool of blood and have to be rushed to the hospital and have to call somebody in the middle of the night to come over and watch my son and my other daughter. There was a couple in our ward that would do that. They were a young couple that didn't have children anymore. They would just, I could call them at one in the morning and they'd come over. I know, like angels around us. There were many other people that came and helped them. So you have to focus on the good things, the blessings. The other thing I would do, Tamara, is… So this is a long time ago, this was in the 1990s. There was this war over in Bosnia and Sarajevo and it was terrible. This is a place that they just had in the Olympics, the Winter Olympics a few years prior. Now they were in the middle of a horrible war, and snipers killing people. It's just terrible. They were they were firing on hospitals. I remember thinking, at the time, at least I'm not in Bosnia. I am in a hospital that is a like a world renowned hospital. Oakland Children's Hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am in this place, there's nobody shelling us, people are helping us. So I just started to realize it could be worse. It could always be worse. Sometimes you take the opposite tack because you want to look at the blessings. But you also go, “You know what, this could be worse. I could not have this help or this help or this support.” I want to be grateful for everything I have. That also is a big thing. If you look at the opposite side, it can always be worse. So just be grateful. Count the blessings you do have and hang on to them.
Tamara Anderson 29:44
Oh, yeah. No, that sounds like such a powerful tactic. I'm so thankful you've given us these little tidbits, these clues of reading your scriptures, connecting with God, taking each day one day at a time, being grateful. That is huge. Those are huge, important steps to take. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to have Kristen give us some tips that she would share with caregivers so that they can keep going. Stay tuned.
Hi, this is Tamara K. Anderson, and I want to share something special with you. When our son, Nathan, was diagnosed with autism, I felt like the life we had expected for him was ripped away and with it, my own heart shattered as well. It's very common for families to feel anger, pain, confusion, and anxiety when a child is diagnosed. This is where my book, “Normal for Me,” comes into play. It shares my story of learning to replace my pain with acceptance, peace, joy, and hope. “Normal for Me” has helped change many lives, and I'd like to give this book to as many families as possible. We put together something I think is really special. My friends and listeners can order copies of my book at a significantly discounted price, and we will send them to families who have just had a child diagnosed with autism or another special needs diagnosis. We will put your name inside the cover so they will know someone out there loves them and wants to help. I will also sign each copy. You can order as little as one or as many as hundreds to be shared with others. So go to my website, tamarakanderson.com and visit the store section for more information and to place your order. You can bless the lives of many families by sending them hope, love, and peace. Check it out today at tamarakanderson.com and help me spread hope to the world.
And we're back. I've been talking to Kristen Jensen about taking care of her son for years and years and years on end as a 24 hour a day caregiver. Kristen, what I'd love to ask you now is would you mind sharing with us some tips that you would share specifically for caregivers, because you've talked about how the first tip is to get help, to not try to do something so daunting on your own, but what other tips would you share with caregivers?
Kristen 32:25
This is going to be different with everybody. But I feel like in order to maintain your sanity, you have to find something that you enjoy doing, that can get you away from the hard thing. I noticed that as our son stabilized at home and we got a little bit more like okay, after about a year, he actually started smiling. I would see him smile in his dreams. He had been such a smiley kid. Then he started smiling and we started figuring out ways that we can make him smile. As far as like caregiver stuff, I started walking with a friend. That was really helpful in the early mornings so that I had time to just refresh, exercise. I'm telling you, that saved me for many years. I'm not a big like, gym rat or anything. It just was something that does help you clear your mind. Those endorphins do help you feel more positive about life.
Tamara Anderson 33:59
And probably getting the sunshine, getting out too. just getting that d3 vitamin, right?
Kristen 34:05
Yes. The other thing I did, I remember we started some projects. I decided we needed to build this wall outside that kind of enclosed our front yard a little bit. We had quite a deep front yard. I did these projects. Part of me felt a little guilty, like I should be studying. Of course, back then we didn't have the advantage of the internet. But I could find books at the library. I did order some books on traumatic brain injury and just trying to figure out what things might help my son. At that point, I was thinking, “Oh he's gonna recover is gonna get better. We're gonna get this done.” What I learned is that God doesn't give you the whole picture. He gives you hope. Hope to carry on. Sometimes we misinterpret that as, “Oh we're going to get what we want,” and what the Lord is saying is, “I'm going to give you what you need because I have a bigger plan.” My son never did recover fully. He recovered a little bit and then he passed away when he was 10 from a grand mal seizure. Throughout that whole time, I was his main caregiver. As I said, he couldn't get skilled nursing care because he didn't have a trach. So I didn't have anyone coming in relieving me at night. But we had some amazing experiences.
For example, my husband and I would be up with him during the night but he would kind of stretch out and he couldn't then breathe very well. He had to be positioned correctly or whatever. So we would often have to get up with him in the night. There was a time when one morning I said, “Oh man, last night was really hard. I was up with him four times.” My husband said, “I was up with him four times.” We literally had been up with him every hour, one of us, and I really truly felt like we had an angel. We had an angel that was assigned to us and the angel would wake me up, and then the angel would wake my husband up, then the angel would wake me up, and then, okay your turn. I also felt very strongly that my son was here on earth for a reason. He had a mission. Eventually, my prayers stopped being that he would have a full recovery but that he would be able to do everything he needed to do to fulfill his mission and life here on earth. So that was also a comfort. I felt like his days were numbered in the sense that all of our days are numbered, that he would be here until it was time for him to go home, and that was going to be up to the Lord and we would just do our best. I felt very strongly, “You're going to do your best take care of him and when he goes you're not going to feel guilty about this.” I don't know if you're this way, Tamara, but I find that a lot of mothers, we are very it's very prone to guilt. If we can blame ourselves for anything, it's all our responsibility, it's all our fault, I must not have been a good mother, blah, blah, blah. I kind of learned that we all do our best. Then he passed away from a grand mal seizure. I think they call them generalized seizures now.
The interesting thing there was that I could see that he was declining. There were some issues and I'd seen other children have long, drawn out, painful deaths. I honestly didn't want to see him suffer that long so in the end, I mean, the grand mal seizure was like a gift. He was getting heavy and I had to lift him in and out of a wheelchair. I would go to the YMCA, which was like my second home in the morning. I would go every morning. I guess I was a gym rat at that point. I would do the whole…
Tamara Anderson 39:23
Working with your arms.
Kristen 39:25
I lifted. I was lifting 100 pounds. I would swim and I would get exercise so that I could deal with all the stress of taking care of that child. So i went out that morning. I woke my husband up, “I'm going,” you know, and I left. He was doing fine, I rearranged him, everything was fine, totally good. I came back, I talked to my husband for a few minutes, he was still in bed, and I said, “Lauren's quiet.” I went in and he had literally flipped over to the other side and he was gone. He was gone. What was interesting is a few months earlier I got this crazy idea to take a Red Cross lifeguard course. I had to really prepare for it. I had to like be able to swim 10 laps doing the crawl which is no mean feat, actually, if you try it and you're out of shape. I had to work up. So I did that whole course, and in this course I learned CPR. You would think I would have known this since I'd seen CPR being done on him. Originally, I had like a traumatic, I didn't want to…
Tamara Anderson 41:08
You didn't learn it
Kristen 41:10
I didn’t want to learn it, but I made myself learn it for this course. So when I went in and I saw him and I could tell he was gone, but I didn't know how long he had been. I thought, “I'm going to do CPR,” so we pulled him out of this bed, put him on the hard surface, and I was doing CPR until the medics came and they took over and determined that he had been gone too long. It was a lost cause. There was nothing they could do. But, Tamara, had I not known CPR, had I not been able to do it, I would have always wondered. That was a tender mercy, to be able to just do that on my son. For him, it didn't work, but it worked for me because I did everything possible. I also knew that it would be important for my husband not to hear him struggling. I mean obviously if he was to hear that happen, he would have been up and got him, because we had been doing this for years. So I knew that this is just what God has kind of been warning me about. I always had this thought that it would be in the morning and that I would find him. The Lord kind of prepared me, actually, in so many ways.
There was a woman that had a daughter that was in the class. She had a really long, slow, protracted death. I thought, “I should just call her up.” One day, I'm sitting at the computer, and honestly I'd had this prompting several times, and finally I just heard the most frustrated voice in my head that said, “Will you just call her?” This was a week before my son died. So we met, and she talked about how they did the gravestone, and we talked about this and that. I don't know, there were just so many things that prepared me for this that helped me get through it. So I know the Lord, even in our extreme situations, I know the Lord is there. He's in the details. He helps us. He brings people to help us. He arranges things. Whoever was my guardian angel was kind of ticked off at me at the point. Like, “Hey! This is important!”
So when he did pass away that morning, I just knew that this was his time to go, and that he had completed his mission, and that I'd become a different person, a more empathetic person. I learned so much about myself, and I learned through my extremities, I learned to rely on the Lord and not get bitter about my trials.
Tamara Anderson 45:07
So now you are full force involved in your amazing website, protectyoungminds.org. Tell me how your experience with your son, you feel, helped prepare you to embark on this new adventure.
Kristen 45:24
So I did feel very prompted to begin this through a tragic experience of another family whose son got into porn, and then porn was a part of his molesting his younger brothers and sisters. When she called me and told me about this, I started looking for resources. I woke up after the talk with her with this very strong prompting, and a question in my mind, “Who will help me protect the young children?” And I'm like, “Who am I? I'm actually not a therapist. I am not an elementary teacher. I'm not a child psychologist. Who am I, Lord, to do this?”
Tamara Anderson 46:22
So I have a theory. As you were telling that story, it sounds like your experience with your son helped you learn to listen to God when He's speaking to you. So it helped you recognize it when God was casting you a new mission and saying, “Yeah, you might not be anybody. But I know you can do this. And I know you will do that.” I think you'd proved trustworthy to God. He knew He could hand you this new assignment, and that you would do something about it.
Kristen 47:00
Well, I guess, I think you're probably right about that, Tamara. I never feel quite up to this new thing. But I'm dogged and I persevere. I keep doing it day by day. I've had quite a few trials as a result of this journey. I do know that the Lord is there, that He is in the details, and that you can call upon Him for answers and for blessings, even though Protected Minds is pretty faith neutral, it's secular. My book, “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures,” we have it in German, we've got it in Chinese.
Tamara Anderson 47:52
That's amazing. So you have the book now translated into how many languages?
Kristen 47:58
That's Arabic right there.
Tamara Anderson 48:00
Wow.
Kristen 48:02
When I started to write the book, I had people say, “Well, you need to bring God into this.” I prayed about it. I actually felt the answer, “Nope. This needs to go to all my children, even those that don't believe in me.” So I really felt to make this faith neutral, secular kind of a thing. That's what protecting minds is. So I want to get back to your original question. What is it about, I don't know, tenacity? I also learned that I can't do things alone, I have to have people helping me. You have to have a team. I feel the best way is to just try to gather support. I had so much help doing my books. Aas I continue to write others, I have so much help. It could not have come from just this brain. I need other people. So being able to ask for help, that may be one of them, too. I just realized that right now, Tamara. I just had an aha moment. Because I learned early on with my son, Lauren, I had to have help. I wish I would have had more help, actually. I did have and I had to have help. I couldn't do it alone. I could not do it alone. All along, the Lord would kind of identify people that would step up just to babysit, just so that we could go out on a date. That’s a huge thing to coordinate with a medically fragile child.
So everybody that's listening to this, if you know somebody with a medically fragile child, or a child that needs constant care, if you can find it in your heart to give those parents a break, once every three months even, I mean, that is golden. It's such a treasure. In fact, I got to the point after nine years of doing this, where I was so spent, so tired, that I would honestly lie there at night, and I would hear him, my angel would wake me up, I would hear him struggling to breathe, my child, and I could not move. I'm sure people could judge me for that. But honestly, that's called burnout. That is called lead exhaustion, complete burnout. I would wake my husband, I'd say, “I can't get up. I can't go one more time.” We had planned this trip to Hawaii. It was like a once in a lifetime thing. The only way we could do it was we had these wonderful friends who came and lived in our house and took care of our son while we were gone. I will never, ever forget this, and I love them to this day. When you're in desperate need, and somebody comes and helps you, even if it's just a little bit… Because they had to overcome their fears. We all have to overcome that uncomfortable place. They came in watch my son for 10 days. We went to Hawaii, and my husband came back from that, to this day, he wears Hawaiian shirts almost every day. He loves listening to Hawaiian slack key guitar. That experience for us was so wonderful. I came back from that able to handle things again. You can handle anything, if you get a break. That's true, you can handle anything if you get some breaks. So like I said, if you know somebody that's in a caregiver situation, day in and day out, you don't have to take over their job. But if you can help them just a little bit, It's amazing! First of all, it's very encouraging to know that people care enough to help. But just getting a little break is enormous, because then you can come back and you can feel like you can tackle it again.
But the month before we left, my husband got up every single night. Every single time. He just said, “You rest.” He had a full time job to go to the next day. So I don't know where he got, I'm sure God just helped him. But I was spent. I couldn't do it for a month. He did that for me. So that's true love.
Tamara Anderson 53:48
Yes, it is. Oh my goodness. Now Kristen, this is this has been such an amazing experience. I just feel so blessed that you've been able to share so many bits of wisdom. I love this last one that you've shared about getting a break, and giving yourself that ability to take breaks, and how much we need each other, especially at times like that.
So people are going to want to connect with you because of your amazing story here. Would you mind telling us how they can find you and where they can find you on social media or, your website, and please tell us about Protect Young Minds?
Kristen 54:28
Oh, sure. Yes, so you can always connect with me. A lot of people come to my author page, which is sorely neglected on Facebook. Protect Young Minds, we built this to help parents on this journey of digital parenting, which is an enormous challenge, an enormous challenge. With all of the pressures, all of the ways kids can get into problems, we try to keep parents up to date with the latest threats, but also the latest tools and parenting advice. We find that raising children who are resilient, emotionally resilient, actually really helps with all kinds of risks. So we are doing a lot with that. We just came up with a wonderful curriculum that is video based. It's got videos and teacher scripts and workbooks. All of that can be accessed through our website, protectyoungminds.org. We're just trying to help parents have every tool because it's daunting, it is daunting. You've got people who are highly skilled, well paid, working against you, trying to get your kids pulled into some of these things that are not going to be healthy for them and healthy for their minds. So, yeah, come visit us at Protect Young Minds, we've got so much to offer, and most of it is free. We just want to help, I just want to help with this problem.
I'll tell you, Tamara, one more thing. When I first found out about the problems with pornography, and how it was breaking up marriages, and how it was addicting people, and all these things. I was like, “That is horrific.” I honestly told the Lord, “I can't help you with that problem. Maybe I could build an orphanage in Mexico someday or something. Like, maybe I could do the that. But I cannot help you with that problem.” If you tell the Lord that you can't do something, He might take it on as a personal challenge. Probably shouldn't do that. I haven't done that since. But when He did inspire me, He gave me the heart. He gave me the desire to do this work. I still have to employ the same things that I did with my son, because it's heavy. We don't even share, on Protect Young Minds, all of the ugliness. We try to keep it at a level that isn't going to overwhelm people, because when people are overwhelmed, they get frozen. So we try to give people bit by bit. Obviously, if you want to know more information, there are many ways to do it. But we still have to deal with a lot of this darkness.
So what I do now is I find creative outlets. Like after this interview, we're going to go buy some e-bikes so that we can get out, when the weather gets a little better here, and get some exercise together. We've got some plans this summer to do some fun trails. You just have to make sure you have some joy in your life, and recreation that will sustain you as much as you can. Now if you're in the thick of it, sometimes you just can build the wall and get through that day, right? Yes. But, maybe to get to a more longer term, somewhat stabilized situation, I think that doing things for yourself, finding that recreation is really important. No matter what it is, you could burn out, you can burn out on these situations, and you have to figure out ways to refresh yourself.
Tamara Anderson 59:12
I found that to be true in my own life. Very, very, very true. Oh, man, Kristen, this has been so fun and so fantastic. I've related to your story in so many ways because of my sons on the autism spectrum, especially feeling so overwhelmed and exhausted. I totally have felt your pain as you told that story. But I feel such hope with all the tips that you've given here. I've seen them be true in my own life. I know as people apply them in their lives that they will find the same help, and strength, and relief, both through God and through the angels He sends. So thank you for sharing your story of hope.
Kristen 59:55
I'm grateful for Heavenly Father. I'm grateful for Jesus Christ. I know that none of us are perfect. He will help us and He really will be there every step of the way. You don't always feel it. You don't always feel like He's right there but I do believe that they're there, and that they're concerned about us. They are outside of time so they can spend all the time they need just focusing on you, and knowing what's right, and setting things up, bringing people into your life, setting up blessings. So if you have something you're praying for, just keep going and know that the answer to that prayer is coming. It's coming and it may not be exactly what you imagined but it will be the perfect thing for you.
Tamara Anderson 1:00:50
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, subscribe so you can get your weekly dose of powerful stories of hope. I know there are many of you out there who are going through a hard time, and I hope you found useful things that you can apply to your own life in today's podcast. If you'd like to access the show notes of today's show, please visit my website, storiesofhopepodcast.com. There, you will find a summary of today's show, the transcript, and one of my favorite takeaways. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this episode with them. Maybe there was a story shared, or quote, or a scripture verse that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this podcast. May God bless you, especially if you are struggling, with hope to carry on and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help you bear the burden. And above all else, remember God loves you.