Barren not Broken

Jesse and Cindy Mizell have been married for 15 years. They have four children with them and three babies in heaven. Their story includes two early miscarriages, a full-term stillbirth at 39 weeks, and the kind of grief that either destroys a marriage or forges it into something unbreakable. Theirs became the latter.   In this episode of the Barren Not Broken podcast, Jesse and Cindy sit down with Jason and BonnieRuth Rolf and hold nothing back. Jesse talks about being so angry after their second miscarriage that he hid his Bible and changed his radio presets to avoid God entirely. Cindy shares what it was like to learn there was no heartbeat at 39 weeks and then deliver their daughter Candice at home. Together, they walk through how community, worship, and one desperate promise in a parking lot kept their marriage alive.   If you have lost a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth, or if you love someone who has, this episode will remind you that you are not alone, your grief is valid, and your marriage can thrive and not just survive this.

James and Teri Craft, Founders of Marriage Health, will tell you that the biggest mistake of their early marriage wasn't the loss. It was stepping over the loss instead of through it together. It started with a doctor casually and un-empathetically delivering devastating news causing a grief that neither of them knew how to hold. They tried to outrun it; through ministry, through busyness, through looking like everything was okay on the outside. What they couldn't see was that they were becoming strangers to each other in the process. In this episode, they talk about what the slow fade actually feels like from the inside, what finally brought everything to a breaking point, and how two people with nothing left decided to start choosing each other one day at a time and not give up. James and Teri are not speaking from a textbook. They are speaking from the fire they walked through and came out of together. The Crafts are the Founders of Marriage Health, an organization that exists to offer growth, recovery, and healing opportunities to individuals and couples around the globe. They both coach, counsel, write, and speak about the hope found in walking with Christ and others through honest transformational journeys. They help marriages through conflict, communication, and crisis. Through God-centered and trauma-informed help, there is a path forward. You can check out their ministry and resources available at https://www.marriagehealth.org/home