God Didn’t Stop My Kids From Dying: How Fathers Can Prepare for the Unthinkable | James Moffitt

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In this episode of The Gentle Year, I sit down with James Moffitt, a husband, father, and man of Christian faith who has buried two children. One after a long battle with childhood cancer. One after weeks in the ICU as an adult.

This is not a conversation about easy answers, silver linings, or moving on.

It is an honest, unguarded conversation about what fathers are never prepared for. The moment life splits into before and after. The anger, bargaining, guilt, and silence that follow. The pressure men feel to stay strong while carrying unbearable loss. And the tension between faith and unanswered questions that many grieving fathers are afraid to say out loud.

James shares what grief taught him about masculinity, fatherhood, and emotional intelligence, why so many men self-medicate instead of asking for help, and how unprocessed grief quietly reshapes identity, marriage, and family life. He speaks candidly about trusting God without understanding, about faith that survives without certainty, and about the responsibility fathers carry to model honesty rather than perfection.

This episode is for fathers who are grieving, families living in the long aftermath of loss, and anyone who has wrestled with what belief looks like when God didn’t stop it.

If you have ever wondered whether faith can hold grief without collapsing, this conversation is for you.

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Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to The Gentle Year. If this is your first time with us today, you're in for a treat. We're here with James Moffitt today, and he has an incredible story. So James, before- we talk about podcasts and parenting and your faith, I want to honor your personal experiences. And I know that you're a father who has buried two children. And that my grandmother also buried her own daughter when her daughter was 18 years old. And so, even though I had me personally, I've not experienced that myself. I've been near that type of grief before. And I can say that it's a weight that it's like no other that some people carry. And so I just want to thank you first for being willing to be here on this podcast and speak from that place.

So for you, just to kind of dive into this subject, so that the listeners have some context. What, for you, feels most important for people to understand about your story before they start understanding grief. Hey, Nikki. Thanks for having me on the show today. And it's a good question. I think I think we all. have the human experience. You know, we're all humans and we all have our own stories and we all come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, educational backgrounds, we live in different parts of the world. And while those things make us unique, we're still human and we still love our families. We love other people. We have friends and colleagues. Those around us that we have a lot of value in and that are ingrained in our lives.

And, you know, people come in and out of our lives. In a season. Or four-eye season, I should say. Yeah, most definitely. Can you tell us a little bit about what happened in your family and what went on with your two children? Because the story. It's so tragic. I mean, you talk on your sub-stack, you talk about, you know, watching your child breathe in their last breath, you know, those types of things. Can you share a little bit with us about what occurred at those times? Well, I'll have to go back to... two thousand. Right around 2000, back when the world was supposed to end, I was a system administrator, network administrator for a law firm in Hilton Head Island. And, uh, Jessica Ann, who was my daughter, she passed away August 5th, 2001.

Had she made it to September the 11th, she would have been 11 years old. And so when September 11th rolls around, it has a dual meaning for us. And anyway... Sometime in 2000, she had an accident on her bicycle. And we were renting a house in Bluffton, South Carolina, which is just outside of Hilton Head, because I couldn't afford to live on Hilton Head Island, because it's kind of a touristy area. And anyway, I wasn't there, but my wife was there. We were homeschooling our kids. And she had an accident on her bicycle, and she broke her glasses. So we, you know, went through the process of ordering her some new glasses, took her to the eye doctor. and all that, and she started exhibiting symptoms of having some neurological damage.

I had spent a little bit of time as an EMT and drove an ambulance in my younger years still. And so I recognized some of those. She was having blinding headaches. She couldn't keep her balance and all those things. And so, one night, we took her to the emergency room. On Hilton Head Island. And they took a CAT scan of her head, and she had kind of like a baseball-sized tumor. And some of it was wrapped around her brain stem. Kind of fast-forward the story along a little bit. They sent us to MUSC Children's Hospital in Charleston, put her on an ambulance. We went home, grabbed some stuff, and got the other kids in the back of the car and followed the ambulance all the way to...

Charleston and they did did a cat scan. Came out and told us, hey, you know she does have a a mass, uh, in, in her head and we're going to do an emergency surgery. So they did the emergency surgery and, after, I don't know, three or four hours came back out and the surgeon said, 'If she lasts, uh, 12 months, you'll be lucky.' And, uh, uh, she had, uh, two different types of cancers. Uh, I can't even, I can't even pronounce the name of the cancers, something blastoma. And anyway, uh, so yeah, we went through a, we went, she lasted 14 months. And so we went through 14 months of. chemotherapy, radiation, all of that. Uh. She, um... She lasted 14 months.

And at the end of, at one point, I don't know, I don't know what month mark it was, but, you know, I would say eight or nine months. You know, they brought us into a conference room and basically said, 'There's nothing else we can do.' I mean, they said the... There's one last option that we could try. There's no guarantee that she would survive that. It can make her even sicker. It was a bone marrow transplant, and they were going to have to quarantine her in her own room. We would not be able to go into that room because they would want to make sure that they wouldn't want to keep any contagions. You know any kind of uh contaminants out of the room?

It was a sterile room and uh, so we went and talked to Jessica in a room and said, 'Hey, you know, here are the options This is a last-ditch effort. And but this is your life, your body. You tell us what you want to do. And she was like, 'I just want to go home.' She says, 'I'm tired of the hospital.' And, you know, she was fully aware of what was going on, what was wrong with her, what her expectations for her longevity. And she says, 'I just want to go home.' And we said, 'Okay.' So that's what we did. We packed her up, took her home. Hospice came in and they... Brought a hospital bed in. She had oxygen. And she was no longer taking chemotherapy or radiation.

And she was on steroids. So that made kind of puffed up. She had a little fat little face, you know, because of steroids. And, uh... Anyway, yeah, so she passed away August 5, 2001, at 2 o'clock in the morning. Well, my grandmother, when she lost her sister, her sister said the same thing as your daughter. I just want to go home. But she was already home. And when she said, 'I just want to go home,' she was referring to an afterlife or being with her Heavenly Father again. Your daughter meant it in a more literal sense. I just want to go home. Was she, this is kind of a tough question to ask, but was she ready to leave her body? Was she ready to die? At that point.

I think Jessica handled her illness way better than any of us did. And I think she was more aware of... She was more aware of what was happening. She knew she was going to die. And I think she knew that before we did. And, of course, we were clinging on to hope. You know, bargaining with God. Being angry at God. You know, walking down Maple Ridge Drive with a beer in one hand and screaming at him with the other in a thunderstorm. I did that on several occasions. I think all my neighbors thought I was a crazy guy at the end. End of the street and uh, I did a podcast episode on Father's Refuge about the crazy guy at the end of the street and I kind of went into all the details of that and uh, so yeah, we went through, you know, all of the all five or six stages of grief.

Um, multiple times or at least I know I did and uh, but yeah, Jessica. She knew what was happening. She knew what was going on. And she, she, uh, did her best to, uh, she was a good little trooper. You know, she wasn't, she didn't. She wasn't a crybaby or woe is me or she didn't spend any time crying about it or, you know, she just accepted it. And we can we can all only hope that. That we have that kind of groundedness and tenacity. Uh, that she had. Yeah, most definitely. After everything you've been through, do you still trust God? Well, I would say that. I would say that. That experience shook the foundation of our faith. And for the longest time, I was angry with God.

You know, why are you taking my little girl? And, you know, as I was making those trips up and down Maple Ridge Drive in a thunderstorm, it wasn't always a thunderstorm. But, you know, I didn't really care about getting wet or whatever. And I did a lot of bargaining. I told God, I said, you know, of the two of us, take me. I'm the worm. I'm the one that deserves to die, you know, the bargaining stage. You know, let her live. She has a full life ahead of her. You asked me if I still trust God. I would say I still have faith in God. I would still say he's the author and finisher of our faith. And I would say that, I would say that, like most people, I have a lot of questions.

Right? I don't understand. I don't understand. Like most people, how many people do we talk to in our lives as Christians that go, if there's a loving God in heaven, then why does he allow incest and rape? And mass casualty events and you know, active shooters and earthquakes and and all of these things that we experience here on planet Earth, right? And they're like, why does God allow that? Why doesn't he control that? And, you know, my answer to that is, is that he's he's omnipotent and he's a creator and he's not— I don't think he's blind to what what we experience down. And I think in some aspects, maybe his creation has brought some of that upon themselves. Not everything. You know, I don't think we brought...

tsunamis or earthquakes or buildings collapsing or any of that— I don't think we directly caused all of that, but, but, um, Did I answer your question? Yes, I still trust him. No, most definitely. I think it's a very interesting distinction. I hadn't heard it put that way, that you said something to the effect of, 'I still have faith in God.' Like I said, do you still trust God? And you said, do you still have faith? And so can you talk to us a little bit more about what that means? Because you didn't directly use the word trust. Well, you know, I think as I grow older, I just turned 64, so I'm in the last chapter of my life. You know, I don't think I'm going to live to 120.

So I would like to hope and think that. Maybe I have another 20 years left in me. Nobody knows when the hourglass, the sand's going to run out of the hourglass and it's going to be over. Nobody None of us are, none of us are. Guaranteed a tomorrow we're not promised a tomorrow you know God God says for us to experience every day you know we we do the best we can with what we have and and live each day to our fullest hopefully and uh we go to bed and we pray and we ask God for another day but There's no guarantee. You know, when you walk out your front door and get in your car to go to Walmart to buy groceries, you have no idea what's going to happen between leaving your driveway and coming back home or if you're even going to come back home.

So I think that as we live each day, whether consciously or unconsciously, maybe through the power of the Holy Spirit, we're putting trust in God that we have another day, you know, that our families are going to have another day. A calamity is not going to befall us. You know, we're not going to get a phone call at two o'clock in the morning that you're. your child's in the emergency room or a loved one has passed away unexpectedly, or, you know, any of that. Uh, so... I think, as I get closer to my final days, I think I I spend some time in introspection. and thinking about questions that I'm going to have for him, you know, and do it. You know, do I understand? Do I understand my faith fully?

Do I understand or... or trust what I believe. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you hear these stories about how people have, you know, they die and they go to heaven and they meet Jesus and they see the streets of gold. And they see heaven, and they see how wonderful it is, and they come back, and they wind up on NBC Nightly News or CNN or one of these shows or whatever. And they assure us that, you know, heaven is real. And, and I have not experienced that. Right. So, so I would say that. I can't say that I have a hundred percent. 100% trust. or faith, that that's real. Right? Because I haven't experienced it. I haven't seen that. As humans, we like to be able to put our hands around things.

I know this bottle is real because I can put my hands around it, and I can feel it, and I can taste it. You know and and Much of our faith... It's spiritual in nature. Much of our faith is embodied in the power of the Holy Spirit that lives within us. And I think we... I think we have moments in time where our faith and trust is at 100%. Right? And I think I think that that. That at different points and times in our life that we make that connection with God and we recognize and go, 'Wow, you know, we'll have an epiphany. Or a prayer will come true or something will happen in our lives that, while it may not have happened in the way or the timing that we would have liked, we see God in it.' We have that epiphany and we go, okay, yeah, this is real.

God is real. But when things in your lives happen that you have no control over, like Jessica passing away, you know, at the age of 10. My son passing away at the age of 38. And, and, and things that are swirling around around us, right? Some of those things. I think if people are honest with themselves, some of those things make us, give us a pause. It causes us to pause and take, and kind of inspect. Uh-hh... the tenets of our faith. Does that make sense? It does. It does. Now, For someone who has gone through something similar to what you have gone through, and they're a person of faith like you are, when... Let me give it some context. This question, some context.

I watched a video recently of a young individual, he's probably in his 20s or so, and he's from Venezuela. And obviously, we know a lot about what has been going on over there for several decades now. And in his video, it's an absolute tearjerker. And you couldn't watch it without tearing up a little bit. And anyway, at the end of his video, he said something similar to what you said. I still have faith, but I don't understand why. And then he also said at the end of the video, he said, 'que Dios me perdone,' which means 'I hope God.' Forgives me because he had experienced such a traumatic event in his life, or many traumatic events potentially. And he felt— he felt guilty for.

You know, losing his faith a little bit and for questioning God, and for, you know, asking these questions and not having the type of faith that I suppose he wanted. Because he ended his statement, you know, I don't know if I have full trust in God, but I hope God forgives me for essentially not having that trust right now because of what I've gone through. So, you know, what would you recommend for people who are coping with grief, but also you know, I guess the right word— this might not be the right word— but they're coping with grief while also kind of judging themselves, you know, because for people of faith, when they go through something, they sometimes feel guilty for not having the amount of faith that they thought that they had.

I think that... Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I think that God is much bigger than we are. And I think that, I think that. God. Jehovah. I think that... He created us, and I think I would like to believe that he can handle our emotions, that he can handle our being real with him— with our feelings. He knows our thoughts before we even think them, right? And that statement alone kind of blows me away, right? Because they're like, ooh, you know, people think think, well, oh man, I blew it today and I sinned or I did X, Y, and Z and I need to wait until I can get in a quiet place and pray to God and ask him to forgive me of that sin. God already saw that.

Sin God already knew you thought about it, he already knew that you were predisposed in your nature to do that thing, whatever that was, you know, and I think God God expects us as much as it be within us to to Repent of that sin. and to ask him for the power to walk away from that sin because what is repentance? Repentance is turning 360 degrees away from that thing that we did and ask God to forgive us for that sin, right? And God does forgive us for that sin. He forgives us more than we forgive ourselves. And yeah, if you're walking through a... situation where you're dealing with grief, you have a sick child, you have a sick spouse, you have a sick...

parent, whatever the relationship is or how close that person is to your life, we're all going to go. Well, what if I'd have done this, that, or another? In the back of your mind, you're constantly judging yourself and going, 'Oh, I feel so guilty.' Maybe if we had not made that trip. You know, maybe you went on a vacation and maybe somebody got injured or, you know, anything, any number of things goes racing through your brain and you. Like you said, some people blame themselves, and they take responsibility for something they have no responsibility over. We were not responsible for Jessica having a brain tumor, no more than I am for the terrorists flying a jet airliner into the World Trade Center. Right? I'm not responsible for that either.

And I think that, as humans, as parents, as loved ones, as family members, I think we take on more responsibility than we're supposed to. It's okay to grieve. It's okay to love a loved one. It's okay to... Wonder or wish or pray or ask God to step in and miraculously heal your loved one here on planet Earth so that you can experience life with them, right? But I can't, you know, one of the things that I came... to realization of, and I think Katie did too, is that Jessica didn't belong to us. Our children don't belong to us. We act like they belong to us, but they don't. They belong to God. breathed the breath of life into them and used our marriage union to create that life.

We don't own her. We don't own our existing children. I don't own my wife. She belongs to God. I belong to God. You belong to God. So I think that I think part of grace is that we have to... We have to exercise some of that grace for ourselves. we have to, come to the realization that. We have more questions than we have answers. And I, you know, I always say this in the New Testament, Paul talks about our faith like looking through rose-colored glasses. Right. We, we cannot. We cannot. experience the full holiness of God because it would kill us. We don't have the capability to view. and fully experience the holiness of God, because he is a holy, righteous God. And we don't have...

the capability or the capacity to experience that. Uh, but. So as we experience life and as we experience the growth in our faith, like when we read the Bible, and I mean, I've read the Bible through and through, probably six or seven times in my life. And every time I read the Bible, every time I read the scripture, I don't care what the scripture is. I don't care what the book is. It's like God is peeling back layers of an onion, and he opens our eyes as we are able to... to have the capacity to understand that thing at that moment in time. I don't know if that makes sense. But I think that as we're going through... experiences in our life, as we're experiencing grief, I think that God...

allows us to understand what we have the capacity at that time to understand. Yeah, I think. Mm-hmm. I think we beat ourselves up. Sometimes because we. Well, I've been a Christian for 50 years or 40 years or 30 years or whatever. And you place that responsibility upon yourself and go, 'Well, if I was a better Christian... then I should fully be able to understand this and just have blind faith.' And I think that's hogwash. I don't, you know, if you think that, stop thinking that because... God is God of the universe, and we're his creation. And, and... You know, sanctification is a, sometimes, it's always a lifetime experience. You have sanctification. You have justification. There's all kinds of things I could talk. teach on.

But as soon as we become babes in Christ, process of sanctification as Christ forgives of our sin and fills us with the Holy Spirit and teaches us the spiritual lessons that we need to learn to become more and more like Christ. It's a process. And I think that no matter, and I don't mean to preach or teach here, but... I think no matter where we're at in that process, we have to give ourselves some grace. to make some mistakes. Because I know that God doesn't, he doesn't condemn us. When we sin and fall short of the glory of God, Right? What does the Bible say? It says your sins are as far as east is from the west. And he says, 'I forgive you.' And so we have to leave that garbage at the cross and move on.

And so, if you're a grieving parent and you're angry with God, God can handle that. Now, should you blaspheme God? Absolutely not. We have a responsibility in our relationship to God as to who we are and who He is, right? But God is... He's not going to shrink from your tears. He's fully aware of what our capacity to withstand pain, anger, frustration, anxiety, and all of those human emotions is, because He made us, right? And so... I probably just went all the way around. Mount Kilimanjaro trying to answer your question. No, sometimes it takes that, you know, and we're processing at the same time while we're speaking. So I appreciate what you said. I mean, there was a lot of good points there. You said that.

God is bigger than our emotions and that he can carry them for us. And I think that's very true. Even if those emotions are big, like anger or guilt or self-guilt or doubt, or grief, you know, all of that, he can carry all of that. And those emotions are heavy. They are pretty dense. And sometimes they can feel like the weight of the world is really on our shoulders. But you did, you know, allude to a really good point that there's growth in going through those emotions and that eventually, you know, our eyes are going to be opened. You also made another good point that we don't own our children. And that is biblical, that they're an inheritance from God. So I appreciate that as well.

But what that really leads me to is the idea of... death being transformative. So as an example of this, I thought it was a good metaphor. So the Bible obviously talks about how when you die, you know, the spirit of that person goes back to God who gave it. In the first place and that was something that you alluded to just a moment ago about how you know we belong to God, so we go back to God when we die in a sense and as a metaphor for that. Sometimes, you know, I know that knowledge of going back to God. That knowledge can feel like, how? How does that exactly work? And I came across a really interesting metaphor one time. It was about water.

And how, if you consider water the source, no matter what form that water takes, whether it's ice, it doesn't matter. If it's ice, it's still water. Still water. It's still part of God. And when that ice melts, it goes back to the original form of what it was, which was water. And even if that water turns to steam instead of ice, it doesn't matter. It's still water. And when that steam goes back or it stops being steam, it doesn't— that steam doesn't. It turns into something else, that steam just goes back to its original form, which was water to begin with. So I think that— that's a really interesting metaphor that kind of just helps us to understand that we're not walking through life with blind faith.

It may feel like sometimes we're walking with a blindfold on. At times, but that's where the faith comes in, and the glory of God, of course, and the reward for our faith will be revealed in due time. So I think that what you said really aligns with all of that, and I appreciate that very much. But I do have a question for you in terms of 9-11. I think you had said, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you had said that your daughter died just basically like a week or two before 9-11 happened. Is that right? Yep. Okay. And you said that 9-11. August the 5th. She died on August 5th and September the 11th. She would have been 11 years old. Yeah. Had she made it to that time.

Yeah. And then you said that those experiences had kind of dual meanings for you. What did that mean? Well, I mean, you know, she would have been 11 years old on September the 11th. And of course, that's that September 11th is when the World Trade Center went down and the 3000 people died in New York City. And so. While the rest of the world is... mourning that loss. You know, we are in turn mourning the fact that our daughter didn't make it to her 11th birthday. Right. That's kind of the dual meaning. Yeah. You know? You mentioned before that you that you felt that people thought you were the crazy guy down the street. When you were going through your grief and you were just, you know, beside yourself and totally inconsolable.

9 11 happened shortly after that and obviously the world or the country was beside themselves with grief. What was your reaction at that time when those two when those two events basically collided? Wow. Yeah. You can't really put it into words. I mean, we all— you know, my landlord called me that morning and said, 'Are you watching TV?' and I'm like, 'No, I'm not watching TV.' Well, you might want to turn on your TV. Why just turn on your TV? Well, okay fine. So I went and turned on the TV. The first World Trade Center crumbled to the ground shortly after I did that. And then we watched the second plane go into the other World Trade Center building. And so I think all of us were in shock.

Alarmed and in disbelief. You know? How can that happen in America? You know, it was like. We. I think, as Americans, we feel kind of as almost as if we are— unstoppable and un... and, you know, all of those. nouns or adjectives or whatever. We were in disbelief that this could even be happening. Yeah, that's very true. That's an interesting word, impenetrable. It's definitely, I can definitely relate to that feeling as a country. You know, I definitely feel that our country did feel that like, oh, nothing like that could ever happen here. Nobody ever thought about anything like that. Did you ever think that way as a father too? Oh, of course. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I think that. I think that I think the norm.

The normal part of life is, you know, you and your wife and your kids walk through life and we're doing our things and we fully expect that to be our norm. And then every day we expect to have another day of that, right? When an event comes along to... dispel that belief, you know, that's why we go through, that's why we experience grief, because there's a lot of frustration and fear and anxiety and all of that. So, so yeah, as a. Well, I would say that I think teenagers feel... sort of, uh, as if nothing could happen to them. You know, they... Teenagers. Uh, have more. They're they have an adventurous spirit and they they feel like they can you know fly off of a mountain they can just fly nothing's gonna happen you know they they don't They don't think that...

What's the word I'm looking for? Invincible. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, they feel kind of invincible. And I don't say that as a father that I ever felt invincible in the context of family life. Because family life is challenging all unto itself. There are lots and lots of challenges with marital relationships and marriage and relationships of fathers with their teenagers and all of that. complicated. Uh... ordeal. Yeah. Most definitely. You know, there's a— there's an image of a father that a lot of people subscribe to that the father is supposed to be strong, brave, and courageous, and protective, and all these different things. When you went through your own grief, what was a truth or something that you experienced that you think most men or most fathers rarely ever talk about because you have these different organizations.

You have a podcast, obviously, you're sharing your story. And I'm sure that there are fathers out there that relate with what you're saying and what you're going through or what you have gone through. So what is the truth about fatherhood and grief that most people just don't talk about? They don't say it out loud. Well, I would say that fathers... Or... Oh. Much like mothers, we have a we have a a special type of connection and love for our children. I think mothers are more nurturing. And mothers tend to help children develop their emotional and mental health. I think fathers fathers are more geared towards preparing young people for life. And I think that, you know, I'm a child of the 70s. I graduated high school in May of 1980.

And so the 60s and 70s, men didn't cry. You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. And you were basically told that. You can become whoever you want to become, but it's all— it's all going to, it's all you, baby. It's going to be all you. You know, and, and. Uh... My, you know. When you're a father, you take all the... the attributes of the person who raised you as a father. And. My father was horrible. He, he, he, my, my sister and I were. We were adopted from an orphanage in Aschaffenburg, Germany. And I am very, very thankful that they pulled us out of that orphanage, brought us back to America. We became American citizens. I'm very patriotic.

And I'm very thankful for Teksting av Nicolai Winther the things that they provided for us that we would have never gotten if we'd have stayed in that orphanage. Mainly, we always had a decent place to live. We had running water. We had sewer. We had... You know, we had all the... Acumens of of civilization and living, right? We didn't have to share clothes with other kids. We had plenty of food to eat. We're brand new. School closed at the beginning of every year. We had all of those physical needs met. And I'm very thankful for that. However... My dad and my mother. My dad was an alcoholic. He was in the military for 26 years as a drill instructor, which I think totally screwed him up.

And, and he, neither one of them knew how to demonstrate love towards their children. Their love for us was performance-based. In other words, if you do the things that you're told to do and you perform in the fashion that you're told to perform them, then we'll love you. It was very conditional. Right. And so when I became a father. Parents, you know, when you have a child, when you have a baby, when they, when they. Pat you on the head and send you out the door. I give you that baby. You know, it's all wrapped up and cooing and all that experience, you know. They don't give you a manual. They don't give you a manual and say, 'Okay, well, here's.' Here's Jessica's manual.

If you need to know anything you need to know about that baby, it's in that book. You know, a lot of parents, you know, parent by the seat of their pants. And unless you're aware and unless you have some emotional intelligence. Uh... you're going to parent your children the same way your parents parented you because it's so ingrained in us. Right? And so I had to overcome a lot of that. And I had to. And I'm going backwards a little bit to answer your question because I need for people to understand that. It's normal. For you to parent your children. and respond to your children in the way that you were parented. So what does that mean? That means that if we're not careful, we're going to... Carry forward.

Some generational curses. That we need to break, that we're responsible for breaking. Right. And so one of the things that I did is... uh. There was a child psychologist, a Christian child psychologist. And of course, I'm going to forget his name just as sure as I'm sitting here. Let's just say he was a prominent. Oh. Child psychologist, and I started listening to a lot of his teachings. Not only about Christianity in general, but also about how Christianity plays a role in parenting. And so one of the ways that I broke that generational curse was to learn. Or to start the process of learning. How a father is supposed to demonstrate love to his children. It was in my head. But it wasn't necessarily in my heart because it was so deeply ingrained.

Did I respond to my children? Did I blow my cool when they would do stupid things sometimes? Yes, because that's how I was programmed. That's the way I was raised. And so there was a lot of times I had to swallow my pride, go back to the child later on. After the dust settled and went, okay, so I probably didn't respond to that situation in the manner in which I should have, and I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry I blew my cool. I'm sorry, my temper got the best of me. You know, and so I had to kind of backtrack and do some repair there. You know. And, uh... So... How does that work into... to a father? And... uh, how he? What was the original question?

I think I'm so in my emotions right now. I'm listening to you talk. Honestly, God, I don't remember. What was the original question? I think it was about 9/ 11 and the duality of the experience and then men kind of feeling like. They... are impenetrable, so to speak, that they have to be heroic and courageous and all of that. And you started by answering this question by talking about how mothers and fathers—fathers— are similar in their grief when they go through something like that. And then you had also mentioned that fathers sometimes feel like they have to pick themselves up. Or men in particular, they feel like they have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. And you also had a not great father and were adopted and those kinds of things.

And you were kind of alluding also towards the end there, you were also alluding to the fact that parenthood sometimes activates these generational curses or things. Have been passed down to us from our parents, like we may think—oh, I'll never be like my dad or I'll never be like my mom. Right. But then, as soon as we have a child, all of a sudden, these things that were, uh, that seemed dormant within us are now, now, fully activated. Right. Yeah, so, and I think your question was somewhere along the lines of, how, what kind of expectation, maybe, fathers, uh, yeah, it was basically like, what are some truths that fathers feel like they have that about grief, but they don't ever talk about, they don't, they don't say out loud—maybe because they feel like they can't say it out loud, because they have to be a man, you know, so to speak.

Yeah, I think society in and of itself has placed a macho man, gun smoke, you know, sort of mentality. We're supposed to be tough. We're not supposed to show emotion. We're not supposed to show weakness. And when you're walking through grief, there's so many emotions that are just boiling up from the surface. That, you know, and... Unless you were in a family that helped to develop emotional intelligence, how would you know how to handle that? You wouldn't. Right. I don't think you know when Jessica passed away. Uh, I very quickly learned that there was no support system out there in the medical community for fathers that were dealing with grief. My wife and I went to a cancer support group at MUSC like once a week or so, and it was a room full of...

parents that had children in the cancer ward. You know, and we. We had all of that in common, and we shared. Our experience is... surrounding all of that. Once Jessica passed away, we didn't, we didn't go to that support group anymore because number one, I don't. We didn't fit in that support group because we didn't have anything in common. And number two, I don't think the parents would have wanted us there. Oh, so you lost your daughter, huh? Oh boy. We don't even want to think about that eventuality. We're still clinging to hope. Right. And so. So, yeah, I think. I think... It's tough for men to share their emotions. It's tough for them to be real. It's tough. You know, men don't cry.

You know, that lie has been permeated and affixed to men. You know, for generations, you know, and it's, it's. It's so far from reality. Obviously, we don't want to be walking around at work blubbering like blithering idiots all day because we're upset. You know, there's a time and place for that. Uh, But yeah, men are... Maybe even today, not really expected to understand how to. to have the emotional intelligence to understand. These are the emotions that I'm feeling. And they have to, like, you know, at our church, we have a life group. And, and there's a life group that the pastor leads where there's just nothing but men in there. Some men are single, some are married. And we talk about married life. You know, we talk about struggles that we're walking through.

Because of married life with our spouses or because of our spouses or you know, because of the children or whatever you know, and so it's. It's a safe place for us to talk about. Our life and what we're experiencing in that life, right? And women have the same thing. You know, they have their support groups. And today, in 2026, I would say from 2000 on, I think that there were... Or was, or is. Uh-hh... there is more support for you know, families, for fathers, for mothers, for family members, for children. You know, my pastor, he never even suggested that we go see a family counselor or a family therapist. People didn't go to family therapists. They just kind of dealt with the pain on their own. Or within their own families.

We self-medicated with food, with sex, with alcohol, with drugs. Football with you know, whatever porn, you know. All of those things that we use to self-medicate, which obviously is the worst possible thing that you could ever do. But in the moment. It makes us feel better, or we think it makes us feel better, when in fact it's just causing more problems. Thank you. Yeah, isn't that the truth? The key takeaway of the insight that I'm taking away from what you're saying is that for a lot of men. There's not. They haven't developed the emotional language. To be able to share and talk about like what they're going through. And sometimes it may take. You know, having these safe spaces. It may take going to therapy.

It may, it may take a variety of different things to help, particularly men, to develop that emotional language. Because, as you said, you know, at that time when your daughter was, you know, when she passed away, there wasn't really any support for fathers that were going through that type of grief. That type of grief. You guys dealt with it in a variety of ways. You tried to numb the pain, tried to self-medicate the pain, tried to deal with it and cope with it in any way. Way that you could. And I think that part of that has to do with the fact that there just was no emotional language to be able to share and talk about what you, what you were going through, because if you can't talk, and you can't share, and you can't have a conversation, then it's only human nature.

You will resort to other things. And sometimes it can lead to suicide. It can lead to... severe, severe depression. I'm sure you've seen those things as well. So where do men go when they're going through grief? What do you recommend that they do? And I do recognize that there's not always a one-size-fits-all solution to this, but if you had to recommend a first step, what would you say? Uh... At very least, call 2-1-1. That's United Way. And it's an organization that is nationwide here in America. And companies and organizations donate money and funds to 2-1-1 for support for people in the communities that they live in. And so you call 2-1-1, you say. You've got suicidal thoughts. Angry, if you're upset, you're depressed. And again.

You know, are men going to do that? Probably not. But but, you know, my my. My message to men is you can't do it on your own. Don't think that you're going to be able to wrestle this 800-pound gorilla on your own because you're not going to be able to do it because you haven't been equipped to do that. You haven't been taught how to do that. So you need help. Right? You know, it's like, like. You know, when your car has a flat tire. Or something beyond a flat tire. Let's just say the transmission falls out of the thing or just quits working. Well, unless you're a mechanic and you know how to put that thing up on a lift and pull the transmission out and fix it, or put a new one in.

It's beyond the scope of your knowledge and your ability to fix it. Right. That's kind of like that—800-pound gorilla sitting in your chest, beating on you. And you don't know how to coax it out. You're not strong enough to beat it up or remove it. She needs help. You need to, you know, it's like when we get sick, what do we need? We need to go to the doctor. Why do we need to go to the doctor? Because the doctor is aware of what ails us, and they study. For a lot of years, how to fix different ailments and how to provide different treatments and modalities of treatments and pharmaceuticals. And, oh, God, that's just a huge story right there, all its own. Anyway, I'm not going down that path.

Another day. Yes, another day. But, uh, so... So men need to recognize that it's okay to ask for help. You know, call 2-1-1, find out what, what, Therapy is available out in the community. There's a church. If you live in the south, there's a church on every corner. Go to church, talk to a pastor, talk to, call the church office during the day and say, 'Hey, this is what I'm dealing with.' You know, angry, I'm depressed. You know, suicidal. Whatever, you know, I'm an alcoholic because I don't know how to deal with the pain. I need help. You know? And so, so... The message to men is that, A, you need to recognize there's an 800-pound gorilla. That's causing you a lot of pain.

You've got to want to get rid of that pain. You've got to realize that's not normal. And that you need help. And so reach out, talk to your wife. Talk to your father. Talk to your grandfather. Talk to anybody. Talk to somebody about what's going on so that you can get help. So A, you've got to recognize there's a problem. And this is like any problem in life. It doesn't have to be grief. It can be anything else. Recognize you have the problem, identify it, and then figure out how you can fix it. And it's going to take you. Yes, you are going to be responsible for walking through doors and turning doorknobs and going through the doors that are open for you. But, but.

But you need to get the help that you need to solve the problem. And alcohol and drugs and pornography and fooling around on your wife and all of these things that the world... provides to help self-medicate. And to dull the pain. Temporarily. You know, you go to the bar and you get drunk, you go home. You wake up, you've got a hangover. Guess what? That problem is still there. pound gorilla is asleep, and one at some point he's going to wake up and start pounding on you again. So, yeah, you've got to recognize that there is some pain. And that you need to get help. For that pain. Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. And I think the metaphor that you offered is great too about the fact that, you know, if you have a car problem and you don't know how to fix cars, you go to a mechanic to...

get help. And that doesn't make you weak. And it's okay to seek help. I think that's just a great metaphor. Or if you're physically sick, you go to a doctor. It's logical too. To need help and to want help and to go seek out. It doesn't make you less of a man to be able to do that. And I do think it is important, you know, for. for guys in particular to to ask of a God for help. Ask God for help. Say, I'm feeling this way. Help me. Help me understand what's going on. Help me to seek the proper help and help me to accept it when it does come and help me to see it when it comes because a lot of men are not going to do this on their own.

I know for me, I'm such a Like, I'm not a guy, but I'm emotionally, I guess you could say I'm very masculine in that way. I will not, I will rarely seek help. Rarely, rarely. Pride gets in the way. Just a lot of things get in the way. It's a thing. It's a thing that I have. And I understand how guys feel in that regard because I go through it myself. But you made a really great point. You said you're ultimately responsible for walking through the doors that are opened to you. And that's a really powerful point. There. So as we kind of wrap up this, this podcast for today, I'd like to, I know you had another daughter who passed away and we didn't get a chance to talk about her today, but maybe we will go through.

That story on another episode of The Gentle Year. So I do have two more questions for you. And the first question is, how did the loss of your two daughters shape or reshape your identity as a father? Well, I lost a daughter and then I lost a son. Oh, a son. Thank you for that correction. No, that's fine, Jeremy. He was 38. And what was the question again? How did? This loss of losing your daughter and your son reshape your identity as a father. And do you have any living children? Yes, I have two other children. Okay. One's an attorney that lives downtown Charleston, and my daughter. I think he's 28. Something like that. My daughter. I think he's 28, maybe. I think he's 28. He's middle 20s, upper 20s.

I'm real proud of him. His name's Justin. And then my daughter, Christina, she's, I think, 32, 33, and she lives downtown, and she's struggling, but she's, you know. She's doing all right. She's getting better. She's trying to find her way in life. As we all are. Sure, yeah. So how did it shape my identity? Is that what you said? Yeah. As a dad, I'm sure there was a before and after, right? Especially, you know, if you think of 9-11, there's before 9-11 and then there's after 9-11. There's the life that was before. and the life after. And so your identity as a father before all this happened was probably one thing. And I would imagine now that it's a little bit different and it maybe looks differently to you.

Yeah, I would say it's kind of like driving a Sherman tank in the desert. And... Initially, you got plenty of gas in the tank. You got your missiles. You know, you got your navigator and the guy that's driving the tank, and you got your radar, and the treads are on both sides of the tank, and you're not having any problems. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, something hits you. You know, and you're, you're, uh, You may be. Still functional. But now you've got scars. Now one of your treads is blown half off, and maybe... Maybe the tank's not at 100%. Right. So, I would say that. And I think this applies to all of us.

You know, we start out relatively unscathed, you know, and we're at 100%, and then life happens, you know, and we take... We take hits, and we sustain some damage, and we have some scars. So I would say that. That, as a father, Oh. I would say that I am more prepared. To withstand damage than I was before. Mm-hmm. I'm more in tune with the fact that life can take you down a notch, you know. I may not be the same man that I was when I was 25 or 30 years old, but in some ways, I would say that because of my experiences, because of some of the damage that I took and sustained, that I... I am more... Willing?

To go to the source, you know, to go to God and ask him for help. And I would say that I am. I'm not looking for any more pain. I'm not looking to take any more hits in life. But I would say that I'm more emotionally intelligent. I am more prepared to know what to do when something comes along, right? Because I've experienced it. I guess you'd say I'm... I've... as some in some ways I'm kind of battle tested. Yeah, right. That's a great way of putting it for sure. And like battle tested that that's, yeah, I think that's, that's going to resonate with a lot of people. The other thing that you mentioned earlier is just taking it one day at a time.

You know, maybe when we were younger, we felt that, you know, like you said, we were invincible. We were untouchable. And we were just going to. jump off cliffs and do all kinds of things and and be okay and and now we realize that. Not even the next moment is is given to us. And we just, you know, have to be grateful sometimes that we that we do have the time that we do have. And we were grateful for the time that we've had also. And then just be. you know, grateful that or just pray for the pray for one more day, one more day, because that's all that any of us really have anyway. And sometimes not even that.

So the last and final question that I have for you, this is a question that I always ask all the guests that come on the Gentle Gear. And it's a simple question— you can interpret it any way that you want to. And here goes. So the question is, what do you believe is the most important education that a child could ever receive? The most important education a child could receive is that? which parents can give it. There's all kinds of different types of education. You know, a lot of times when you say education, a lot of people, you know, my wife's a teacher. She's a special ed teacher. And so, when somebody says the word education, my mind immediately goes towards scholastics, you know. classroom training. And. teacher-student interactions and stuff like that.

But I think the most important education a child can have is what it gets at home. And what kind of education does a child get at home? A child hopefully is learning right from wrong, good from bad, being taught what morality is, being taught what faith in God, you know, the difference between... Somebody that's godly versus ungodly. You know, the world, when we turn on the TV and watch some of the stuff that's on TV, you know, parents are like a rudder on a ship, and we are, we are ordained by God to to turn that rudder and move that child through life as much as possible in the direction that they need to go. Yeah, most definitely. And so, fathers... are responsible for, for. Teaching.

Sound Biblical Principles to our children. And why is it important to not lie? Why is it important to learn to tell the truth? You know, why is it important to have faith in God versus having faith in the things of the world? You know, and differentiating between the things of the world and the things of God. Right. And, and more importantly, and above all, the most important thing is parents should model godly living in front of that child. Don't be like my parents, who said, 'Don't do as I do,' or 'Don't do as I... Yeah, don't do as I do. Or don't do as I do, do as I say. Do as I say, right— like my wife and I. We didn't sit around.

When I got off work, I didn't have a beer in one hand and a remote in the other; I didn't sit around and smoke a db, you know. I didn't smoke pot. We didn't do drugs. We worked. We went to school to further our education. We modeled. Good things in front of our children as much as it was within us, right? And that kind of goes back to how were parented. A lot of times we parent the way we were parented. And if there was garbage in the parenting, then you're going to bring that garbage forward, right? And so that's why it's important that... that fathers learn how to demonstrate love. Towards their children. Learn how to love your kids. Learn how to hug your kids. Learn how to cry with your kids.

Learn how to be firm. Learn how to have the correct type of authority in your household. It's not an overbearing dictatorial. Dictatorial. Dictatorial. How do you say that? Dictatorial, I think, but I'm not sure. I got corrected the other day. Don't be a dictator in your house. Right? The only dictator in your house is God, not you. Right? He's the one that sets down the rules. But, yeah, love your kids. Hug your kids. Demonstrate love towards your kids. Man, allow your kids to be kids. Your love is not conditional. You can't just love your kids when they do what you say that they need to do. They're going to make mistakes. They're going to learn. They're going to, they're going to have to. You know, Don't run into the wall, Johnny, because it's going to hurt your nose.

You give them instructions. Don't touch the stove because it's going to burn your hand. Sometimes kids are just going to have to learn on their own. They're going to test the limits of their world around them. And you know what? That's okay. That's what emergency rooms are for and doctors. You know, sometimes you're going to have to take little Johnny to the emergency room and have them x-ray his leg because he went down a hill a little bit too fast on his tricycle and wound up in a heap at the bottom. told him not to do it. You said, 'Little Johnny, don't do that. You're going to get hurt.' And he's thinking, 'Yeah, right, I'm invincible.' And down the hill he goes, you know, head over heels.

Right, so I guess what I'm saying is that kids are going to be kids. Let them be kids. Let them make mistakes. It's not the end of the world. You know the most important thing is that— not not that—your kids are perfect. Not that they follow everything that you say to the letter of the law. But that when they do blow it and they do make mistakes or they get hurt. Dad is the one that's going to be there for them. Right. That's what I didn't have. But dads, you need to be there for your kids when they make mistakes or they get hurt. They don't need to hear judgment and condemnation from you. They need for you to be the support system that they need. And that will go a long way.

For that child. to learn how to grow up into a well-balanced, mature individual. Yeah. Thank you so much, James Moffitt, for being here today. We so appreciate your time. And for all the listeners, thank you for... being able to listen to this podcast with us today. We appreciate your time as well. And James, is there anything that you would like to share before we go? How, you know, in terms of how people can connect with you, your website, your social media accounts, or anything in particular that you want to share or promote? Well, I've got ABCs of Parenting Adult Children. And you can go to my website at parentingadultchildren. org. It's got all my episodes. And you can send me text messages. You can leave me email.

You can engage with me about episodes there. FathersRefuge. org is the other website for Fathers Refuge podcast. You can find our parenting support, private parenting support Facebook group at facebook. com/slash/groups/slash/tough-love-parents. Wonderful. You can click on email links on all the above to get a hold of me. That is awesome, James. Well, we are so grateful to have you. And I want to extend an official invitation for you to come back on the show anytime, anything you ever want to share or talk about. You're more than welcome to come back on The Gentle Year. And we thank you for you coming on the show today. Thank you. Well, thanks for having me.