Can God Be Just? Surviving My Baby’s Death

What's the Story
Written By Matt Edmundson
 

Guest: Katherine Gantlett

Katherine is a writer and C-Me facilitator. She studied theology at WTC (Westminster Theological Centre) and lives in rural Oxfordshire with her son and husband. She has a background in biomedical science with a PhD from the University of Oxford in HIV research.

Her book, Walking through winter, explores the journey through seasons of grief, informed by her own her journey of losing five children in miscarriage and one daughter at birth. She is also currently training to be a spiritual director.

Here’s a summary of this week’s story:

Can God Be Just? Surviving My Baby’s Death

In the quiet recesses of unspoken grief, there lies a piercing question that many who have walked through the shadow of profound loss find themselves silently screaming: "Can God truly be just?" It is a raw, unguarded inquiry that stems from the deepest wells of pain and disillusionment—especially when that pain involves losing a child, the most unnatural of losses.

Katherine Gantlett, a theologian, mother, and author who has navigated the harrowing journey of losing her baby daughter Libby, bravely shares her story with us. Her experience is not just a narrative of loss but also a challenging exploration of faith, justice, and the seeming silence of God in our darkest hours.

Challenge of a Stillbirth

"Justice in Pain." The phrase might seem almost paradoxical. How can there be any semblance of justice in the pain of a mother who has experienced stillbirth? Katherine's story, as raw as it is revelatory, invites us into the intimacy of her grief and the resilience of her faith. She does not offer trite answers or easy resolutions. Instead, she presents her life—an emblem of vulnerability and strength, questioning yet trusting.

Navigating through the stillness of the aftermath, where the echoes of a baby's laughter that were anticipated now linger as haunting silences, Katherine's journey challenges the very notion of divine justice. She speaks candidly about the stark realities of her faith being tested beyond the limits she ever expected.

Key Learnings for Surviving Loss

Surviving loss, especially of such magnitude, is not linear. It's punctuated with questions, anger, a desperate search for meaning, and even the temptation to retreat inwardly. However, Katherine emphasises that survival is tethered profoundly to one's community and faith, however shaken.

  • Community as Refuge: In the depth of her loss, community was the sanctuary Katherine leaned on. It was in the raw exchanges with those who dared to tread beside her in her pain, and in the honest grappling with their shared uncertainties, that she found fragments of peace. Community does not erase the pain, but it can become the crucible where the pain is shared and thus made slightly more bearable.

  • Faith as a Journey: Faith, as Katherine articulates, is not about the absence of doubt or despair but the persistence through them. It's about wrestling with the big questions—Is God just? Does He care?—and still choosing to trust, not in what we can see, but in what we hope for. Her faith journey through grief is not depicted as a triumphant march but as a laborious trek through rugged terrains of doubt and restoration.

  • Embracing Lament as Worship: Perhaps one of the most profound aspects of her journey is the reclamation of lament as an act of worship. Lament is raw, it's real, and it's honest—it's a spiritual discipline that permits us to remain in conversation with God, even in disagreement or dissatisfaction. Katherine teaches us that lament is not a betrayal of faith but an affirmation of it—a belief that God is big enough to handle our sorrow and our rage.

Conclusion

Katherine Gantlett's story is a gripping reminder that sometimes, the most profound theological insights come from the places of deepest pain. Her book, Walking Through Winter, explores these themes further, serving as a beacon for those navigating their seasons of grief.

In "Can God Be Just? Surviving My Baby’s Death," we are invited not only to witness a story of pain and resilience but also to reflect on our perspectives of divine justice, human suffering, and the complex interplay between the two. Katherine doesn’t provide all the answers—perhaps because there aren’t any clear ones. But she offers her life, her pain, her hope, and her unyielded faith as a testament to the possibility that even in the gravest injustices, there can be a path forward through faith and community. This is not just her story; it's an invitation to all who suffer to find a voice, to seek community, and to dare to question, even as we continue to believe.

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  • Sadaf Beynon: [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome to What's the Story. We're an inquisitive bunch of hosts from the What's the Story team on a mission to uncover stories about faith and courage from everyday people. In doing that, we get the privilege of chatting with amazing guests and have the opportunity to delve into their faith journey, the hurdles they've overcome, and the life lessons they have learned along the way.

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    Crowd Church provides a digital sanctuary, a safe space to explore the Christian faith where you can engage in meaningful conversations, rather than just simply spectating. So whether you're new to the Christian faith or in search of a new church family, visit crowd. church. And if you have any questions at all, just [00:01:00] drop them an email, hello at crowd.

    church. They would love to connect with you. And now, let's meet your host and our special guest for today.

    Anna Kettle: Hi there and welcome to this week's What's The Story Podcast. Today I'm joined by a guest, Katherine Gantlett. Now Katherine is a writer and a C-Me facilitator. She studied theology at Westminster Theological Centre and now lives in rural Oxford. Oxfordshire with her son and her husband. She has a background in biomedical science and a PhD from Oxford University in HIV research.

    She has a book called Walking Through Winter in which she shares her personal story involving the loss of five babies through miscarriage and also her daughter Libby who died in labour at full term. She's also currently training to be a spiritual director and probably lots more besides. So I'll introduce her at this point.

    Katherine, welcome to our podcast. It's so lovely to have you on here today. Hi, Anna. It's a real

    Katherine Gantlett: privilege

    Anna Kettle: to be with you all. [00:02:00] Brilliant. So I suppose just obviously I've met you before. We've come across each other a few times in the Christian world now particularly in the infertility and loss kind of community.

    But for those that are listening in and maybe haven't, I've met you before, don't know who you are, can you tell us just a little bit more about yourself, about work, home life, how does life look for you right now? Yeah,

    Katherine Gantlett: As you said, I live in rural Oxfordshire, so my husband's an organic dairy farmer, so we we live out in the countryside, Charlie, our son, is eight, and when I'm not busy at home with all of that, My work basically revolves around my passion for personal and spiritual formation.

    Both for me and for anyone that I work with. So that can look like spiritual direction. It can also, in the work setting, see me and helping people understand themselves better and therefore other people, but essentially [00:03:00] my time is consumed with the question of what does it look like to live a fully human life in every season of life?

    Anna Kettle: It's a big but important question, isn't it? I'm sure we'll unpackage it more as we go. And you also, you have that whole sort of science background and you did some interesting stuff in COVID as well, didn't you, around the vaccine. Can you just tell us a little bit about that?

    Katherine Gantlett: So I did, so I used to work for the Oxford Vaccine Group, who created the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, so I wasn't actually working with them during COVID I left the group about a decade ago, but a lot of my good friends still work in the group, and so it was really I was so proud of them all, and to see, so Andrew Pollard was my boss, so to see him knighted was was a really proud thing for me, actually, it's going to be.

    Yeah.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah. It's amazing, an amazing team, aren't they? It's

    Katherine Gantlett: really amazing

    Anna Kettle: team. Yeah. And amazing to have that [00:04:00] history and be like a small part of it in some way, because it all, years of research have all built into that, haven't they? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Let's dig into a little bit more into your story.

    I guess we should start at the beginning of your faith journey. So can you tell us a bit about the start, like your early years? How did your sort of faith journey begin? Did you grow up in a Christian home? How, what were those formative moments?

    Katherine Gantlett: Yeah, so I grew up in a Christian home, my parents, so I was born in Kenya but we moved to this country when I was four, but my parents had both been through boarding school in this country, so I think, we're well schooled.

    in the Christian faith. But I remember both of them coming to a more living faith. I'm the oldest of three. And yeah, I grew up going to church. For most of my sort of childhood, a Baptist church, but faith became a real thing for me. My first sort of encounter with Jesus [00:05:00] was at a holiday camp, so a Script Union holiday camp, and just in worship, just having a really visceral sense of the spirit and what Jesus had done for me.

    I guess I was 15, 16 at that point, and so I grew up going to youth groups, all that kind of stuff. But I guess. It really, the decision, the rubber hit the road when I went to university. It's okay, what am I going to do? My parents aren't saying, we're going to Sunday, we're going to church on Sunday morning.

    And I actually had three or four years of drifting in and out of church. And actually some really disastrous God is so gracious and he always places the right people alongside us at the right time. And so I studied in Cambridge and then moved to London. And when I moved to London, I did go to a home group.[00:06:00]

    And as part of that home group, I met the most wonderful lady who's still one of my good friends now. He had walked a similar journey, was now married, and was able to help me actually commit for six months, no relationships, no boyfriends, let's just try to clean the slate. And that's it. That was a really profound time for me I started going back to church, but I'd find myself just in tears every Sunday and in that time, I'd started my PhD at Imperial, and then my supervisor, who actually lived in Oxford, got a job in Oxford, so he moved the lab to Oxford, and I had helped, because of my formative experience in Scripture Union Council, so As a young adult, I'd gone back as a leader, and one of my friends lived in Oxford, so I was like, great.

    She was able to introduce me to church, and within six weeks of moving to Oxford [00:07:00] she was like, the church I'm at is having a summer ball, why don't you come along, it'd be a great way to meet people, and that summer ball was six months to the day that I'd committed time to God, and that, long story short, was the evening that I met my husband, John.

    Oh wow. Yeah. So yeah, God all through it and I will, I'm sure I'll pack this as we get into our story of baby loss, God is present in all of it and so good.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah, I love that. I think it's it's really encouraging and I'm sure it's probably encouraging to any parents who perhaps have kids in that stage of growing up in church and finding their own feet in their face.

    It's reassuring to know that God doesn't lose us in the middle of that, but there's, he's there, he's right there and he's working all the time. And yeah, I have a similar story in that I grew up in the church and I know God was there at every formative stage and even in those searching [00:08:00] moments, it's really reassuring, isn't it?

    And I think it's reassuring for us as parents now to know that as well, like God has his hands right on

    Katherine Gantlett: you. Yeah and I've had, really powerful moments with our son Charlie of just going, okay, Lord, I release him to you because, I talk about the lioness in me as a mother isn't I, but reflecting back on my own story and seeing God there and present when I wouldn't have been, I think we often talk about pursuing God and, running after Jesus and all the rest of it, but the truth is that he is It's always there and it's not God who wanders, it's us.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah, that's really profound. So true. That's your early years and how you met your husband and stuff and then, life twists and turns as it does. And then at some point. Baby loss and pregnancy loss [00:09:00] becomes a part of your story so can you tell us a little bit more about that?

    Because we always unpack a kind of key challenge on the, on this podcast that someone faces in their faith or, in their life because we don't want to give that picture that you find God and everything's perfect. We know that's not true but yeah, can you tell us a bit more about that story?

    What happened? How did it begin? How did it unfold? Yeah,

    Katherine Gantlett: so John and I got married in 2006, and we had a few years where we're just like, no, we're just going to enjoy being married. And then 2009, we decided with a very healthy dose of naivety that we were ready to start a family. So we got on what turned out to be, the monthly roller coaster.

    And after a year, I, we conceived but very sadly that first pregnancy ended in a misc, miscarriage at 11 weeks.[00:10:00] And. I took that, we both took that really hard and like a lot of people who go through some form of infertility we were surrounded by people having babies, family members, church, it was, it seemingly was everywhere.

    Yeah, but we're like the statistics are one in four, one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. We'll go again. But after a year, we still hadn't conceived again. So we went through all the fertility workup and. They discovered that there was a, an issue with me but the doctors were very reassuring and said, no, it doesn't mean you can't conceive or carry a baby to term.

    We kept going and conceived our daughter, Libby, in 2011. I carried her to full term but very sadly on the 3rd of July, 2012 Libby was stillborn. So that [00:11:00] was, I describe it like a bomb going off in our lives, it just shattered everything. And initially I was like, I can't do this again.

    I just can't. But. Faith is a gift, isn't it? And God gives us faith for different things, and that's the only way I can explain my determination that we kept going. I was like, no, we're not done. And so we kept going, and I had I had another three miscarriages after Libby. And two failed cycles of IVF, and we eventually conceived our son Charlie, which is a whole other faith story and he was born healthy and well.

    Anna Kettle: He's 8 now, same age as my son, so that's how I got to that conclusion so fast, 2015. What a miracle [00:12:00] that like, after all that heartbreak and loss and difficulty conceiving, that then, you managed to have Charlie.

    Katherine Gantlett: And I say to people, I don't use that word lightly, he is a miracle baby and but once he was born, I was like, that's it, I'm done.

    I could no more grow another baby than I could grow another limb.

    But yeah, it was, but even his conception, obviously all the loss raises lots of spiritual questions, but his conception does too. It's why now, why us? It's, a lot of it is mystery,

    Anna Kettle: isn't it? Yeah, so much of faith isn't it, in the end? Yeah. But how, because obviously, you summarised your story beautifully there and so much like heartbreak and loss wrapped up in it though, prior to having Charlie and, how does someone overcome that amount of pain?

    How does [00:13:00] someone survive that amount of loss? Like, how did you get through it? What were the things that helped?

    Katherine Gantlett: I think I'd always say But you don't overcome it, but you learn to live with it. So people talk about when you lose someone close in a traumatic way, it's like losing a limb. It's like walking for me, walking around without my arm, but it's just not visible to other people.

    So there are times where I've learned, to live without that limb and life is good. And then there are other times where I'm really aware that I'm missing that, I'm missing Libby and the other children and also now for Charlie, walking him through that, is complex. But I think for me, so I wrote my book, Walking Through Winter and I use the metaphor of winter, because.

    [00:14:00] The temptation is to hunker down and hibernate, and just go that's it, I'm going to put my head down and hope for spring, or try and force spring myself. And what I learned was that Rather than enduring winter you have to get out into it. So Parker Palmer is a Quaker writer who I love, and he talks, he lives in the upper Midwest where the winters are extreme, and he talks about how the winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.

    And I think that's the key message that I learned through our, so our winter season lasted seven years. If you don't face the fears and all the emotion and spiritual confusion it tends to drive your life, but in an unhealthy way. [00:15:00] Yeah, I learned to embrace it, to get out into it, with God and.

    The other key I learned is not to do it on my own, so obviously that first and foremost is with God, so we can talk about that in terms of how you process that with God but also the importance of community, so you know, we're not meant to do life on our own, and one of my Things that I talk about quite a lot is what it means to be made in the image of God.

    And we're in danger, I think, sometimes in the church of taking the radical individualistic culture we live in that says you can define identity purely based on your own reference points. But we are made in the image of a relational God. And God is community, therefore, when we image him best, it's in community.

    So for me, I was very, again, God had [00:16:00] gone before I was studying theology as we walked through everything. So I had a really safe community to go and ask all the big questions that loss like that brings. And that was so key. Cause I know lots of people who go through loss it won't be necessarily what we went through.

    And that, I was really passionate when I wrote my book that anyone walking through loss could read it. It's just that our story was baby loss. But I meet so many people who have left church or walked away from God. Because of the loneliness and isolation.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah that's that's so true. And I think you're right. Although not everyone has necessarily experienced pregnancy loss or baby loss, everyone does experience loss sooner or later. It's part of. life in this fallen world, isn't it? We all, we will all [00:17:00] grieve. And so I think, I've read your book, Walking Through Winter, and it is really beautiful.

    And I think what's really helpful about it is written in that way. It's written, yes, it's about It's not just about your specific journey, but it's also about how you weather grief and the storms that come in life, which we all experience and I think those two keys that you mentioned there around not doing it on your own, because grief can be so isolating and also that whole area of Learning to be honest and real with God, and you touched on lament there, didn't you?

    I wonder if you can just, for anyone who's listening and maybe doesn't quite know what that involves or how that looks in practice, I just wonder if you can unpack that part a little bit more what is lament? How do you do it? Where do you begin?

    Katherine Gantlett: Lament, one of my favourite theologian is, lament is worship in a minor key.

    I love that. Yeah,

    Anna Kettle: it's good, isn't it? But

    Katherine Gantlett: the key is that it's. Sadaf Beynon. It's still communicating with [00:18:00] God, but it's being honest, so I think we too easily label emotions good or bad, so fear and anger and disappointment, they're bad emotions, and joy contentment and peace, those are good emotions, and I think we can be in danger of spiritualizing.

    That, if we're feeling anger, or resentment, or pain, or whatever it is we need to try and reframe that to find joy but Lament says that before you can turn towards praise and joy, you need to have got out. Those feelings that are neither good nor bad and, but you do it before God. So if you look at the Bible, the Psalms, for example, different people have different estimates of how many of the Psalms are lament, but a [00:19:00] conservative estimate is 50% some would say.

    Have element of lament in them and what is a pattern. The psalmist complaining, so being really honest about what the problem is David in some of his psalms says, basically, I'm going to die if you don't sort this out. An appeal to God and his character. So I think we can make the mistake of thinking that lament isn't.

    Faithful, because we're complaining about a situation and we're, expressing how hard it is, but when you look at the Bible, the most faithful people lamented. So you've got David, who's called a man after God's heart. You've got Jeremiah, who wrote Lamentations. You've got Job, obviously, most famously but actually Jesus laments from the cross.

    He quotes a laments psalm from the cross. [00:20:00] Actually it's one of the most faithful things we can do in the face of disorientation to go, do you know God, I know who you are, I know that you're good, I know that you're loving, but my life, there's such dissonance. Between that and my lived experience, so where are you?

    So appealing to his character and then stimulating him to action. So saying, because of your character, I need you. To work on my behalf and obviously in the Old Testament and for us now, that comes from covenant relationship. So it's like marriage. So if you think about marriages, a marriage that's in danger is one where the couple have stopped communicating.

    As long as they're still communicating they're in a relationship and the covenant allows each partner to hold the other to account. And it's the same in [00:21:00] our covenant relationship with God because he has promised to be in relationship with us. It means that we can call on him and say, come on.

    And also one of our prayers when we were going through it all was, we've got all these people watching us who are not Christians that wouldn't say they had a faith and they're looking at us going these guys are Christian people and they're going through all of this. So it's come on, God, we need you to act, to show who you are to other people, to stimulate.

    All of the lament Psalms, with the exception of maybe one or two, end with an expression of trust in God, that if you think about Lamentations, the famous verse that we pull out about God's mercies anew every morning say, Lamentations, So you've got a complaint, an appeal to God's character, stimulation to action, and then an expression of trust.[00:22:00]

    So you can use the psalms to pray with, but when I run retreats and workshops on lament I encourage people to write their own laments using that cast mnemonic.

    Anna Kettle: That's such a helpful way of remembering it, cast, just those four sections. It's like a really practical thing you can do and like you say, you can do it verbally, you can write it down.

    It's just, I think that's you know, something that everyone should have a go at doing. It's just, it's a really practical tool, I think. And yeah, you're so right. It's like almost a kind of long forgotten sort of side of faith, isn't it? It's so there in the Bible and yet we don't often do that very well in our kind of modern evangelical charismatic kind of Western churches.

    We've lost some of that art because we sometimes lean quite heavily into the sort of. positive side of praise and worship, don't we? And we forget that's there as well, but of course it's there in life. [00:23:00] So it does leave this kind of reality gap sometimes for people who are grieving and are struggling.

    So I think that is so useful.

    Katherine Gantlett: It's not just for people who are struggling or going through loss, lament is a really powerful way of standing in solidarity with those who are going through loss, but also in global situations. So When I've run workshops, I've had people write really powerful laments about world situations.

    It's an art that we need to regain, particularly in the charismatic evangelical church. And a community, yes, you can do it on your own, but there's something really powerful again, about community and doing it in community. So I would love to see more worship led from lament and actually there is.

    There's [00:24:00] some more worship music now that helps with that, see. If people are interested, the Porter's Gate have a whole album called Lament Songs, and their latest one, Sanctuary Songs, is about helping people face the reality of life with faith.

    Anna Kettle: Fab, that's really good, and all of these references that we're thinking about.

    discussing and the books and stuff throughout the discussion just to say we'll add them to the show notes at the end so people can find those links and stuff if you are interested in digging deeper on anything we talk about in this session actually. Now I know we could go on and on and we could talk on and on about lament because it's such a fascinating area but I suppose just bring it back to your story a little bit.

    How do you feel that whole, journey you went through over six or seven years of loss has shaped or changed your faith? You've touched on some of that there, you talked about, the things you learn [00:25:00] and you write about in your book, but how do you, feel it shaped you personally and your walk with God, your faith journey?

    I know it's not a story you would have chosen, but, Yeah, how has it shaped your life?

    Katherine Gantlett: So I remember saying to John, my husband, not long after Libby died, that I don't mind if people say John and Katherine were never the same after this, but it ultimately has to have a positive. Partly because as Libby's mum, I don't want her associating just with sadness.

    And I was reminded today out on a walk of the term Bright Sorrow, so what that means is that Joy coming from really hard, really sad times. And so everything we went through has had a totally transformative effect on who I [00:26:00] am, who John is. But I think because we chose to do it with God. That transformation has been life giving and I don't say that lightly, but in a heartbeat I would trade what we went through to have our daughter and other children with us.

    But I know that I am a more compassionate person I have the privilege now of, Walking alongside others who are walking through really hard times and bearing witness to their stories and it has shaped what I do work wise one of, there are lots of big questions that come out of Seasons of Loss obviously, It does God exist, first off, and if he does, what's he like?

    But then, very related to that, who am I? And so everything I do work wise now [00:27:00] is about helping people go deeper into who are they? And actually the intertwined question of who is God.

    So yeah, it's shaped me as a person in really profound ways. It continues to be hard and there are times where I feel like I'm back in the raw grief again. But from a faith point of view, it's grown a passion for emotional agility, so emotional health. So what we talked about with lament and. And also a greater comfort with mystery, that I'm an academic at heart.

    I love questions. I love digging. I'm curious. But actually, [00:28:00] when we're suffering, we often go to the Bible for answers. So we go to Job and we go explain why I'm suffering. But actually Job doesn't do that, the Bible doesn't do that what the Bible does, I mean it's wisdom literature, so it shows us how in those seasons to live well so you know I still have an awful lot of questions, but I have experienced God in the middle of it and I think that's the one thing that I want people to take away is if you try and look for spring or you hunker down, you miss Meeting God in the middle of, or the messy middle, the pain. And some of my most profound encounters with God have been in the times of greatest pain.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah that's really interesting to hear. It's so profound. 'cause everything in our [00:29:00] natural human instinct says run away from pain, doesn't it? Yeah. And yet you are saying like. God's right there. And of course that figures because the Bible talks about He's the God of all comfort. So of course, He's there in the pain and that's those encounter moments.

    And but yeah it's not something that comes natural. And it's something that, as you say, you wouldn't choose as your story, but you've so clearly learned that in your life. And it's really inspiring to hear about. And, it's clear that you formed a deeper faith and, Almost reshaped your life around this experience and that's really inspiring that something devastating doesn't have to devastate your entire life.

    Yeah, I think that's probably really encouraging for anyone who's going through something right now that's similar or maybe quite different, that the devastating thing doesn't have to cause just devastation. And That's I don't know, I find that really inspiring wherever I see a story like that and yours is definitely one of [00:30:00] them.

    And that's why I loved reading your book as well. And I wonder, could you tell us tell us a little bit more about it? I know you touched on it, but where do people get it? How can they get a copy? What can they expect in it?

    Katherine Gantlett: In terms of what you can expect, I read a lot and so I read a lot of books after we lost Libby and I was like, I'm going to write the book that I don't think is there.

    So it's a mix of personal reflection, deeper theological unpacking of some of the big questions about God, our identity and meaning and purpose. And then. Practical application, okay I find myself in winter, how do I embrace the season? Jesus, when he talks about, taking up your cross I love how Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message, he has Jesus saying: don't run from suffering, embrace it. So it's what we were talking to say, I use [00:31:00] the Danish practice of hygge, which, so the Danes have some of the longest winters, but they often rank really high in global happiness scales, and part of the reason is around hygge, so I unpacked some practical habits like community, for example gratitude, which sounds really hard when you're in the middle of something really tough and also the importance of refuge in the middle of winter, so I'm all for getting out there in the elements, the lament side of things, but we do also need So yeah, it's a mix of personal story, theological reflection and practical application for anyone going through any form of loss.

    Yeah. And you can get it in anywhere that you would get your books. So Eden, Waterstones, Amazon, my [00:32:00] website, which we can link to. Yeah. So yeah. And there's paper and a Kindle version.

    Anna Kettle: Brilliant. So definitely a resource well worth checking out. I highly recommend it myself. So yeah, really useful on that subject.

    So tell us, Katherine then. In sort of reflection on some of what we've been talking about today and your journey thus far, what's one key lesson or learning point that you've, I know it's really hard to ask anyone to distill it down to one thing because I'm sure there's so many, but if you could sum it up in one sentence.

    One phrase or sentence or perhaps one idea, what is that key thing that you feel like God's taught you or that you've learned through your journey?

    Katherine Gantlett: I had to think about this quite hard, but going back to image of God and how we image God. I think the key thing I've learned is that God is a God of vulnerability and, [00:33:00] the incarnation is God at his most vulnerable, coming as, we've just celebrated Christmas, so God became a baby and, was fully reliant on his parents.

    And we want a God who's in control, a God who's powerful, victorious, all of that. And obviously, in the risen Jesus we have the promise of them. That's where our hope is anchored. But for a lot of people we live most of our lives in the middle. And so knowing that God is a God of vulnerability who walks alongside us, what I've learned is the power of being vulnerable myself.

    And the most vulnerable thing I can do is open up my story to others and say this is me. This is me. This is how God has worked in my story. And the power of [00:34:00] that is that, it takes courage to do that, but you then, there's an invitation for others to open their home, essentially of their lives and share in an authentic, vulnerable way their lived experience.

    So I think the vulnerability of God is something that. I've learned powerfully.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah, that's such an interesting way of looking at it and yeah quite humbling really, isn't it? That God made himself vulnerable and therefore sets the mold almost for us to do the same or to be able to do the same.

    We're we're so grateful that you have made yourself vulnerable and been open to sharing your story and glad that you've podcast as well. I, I'm personally grateful because. We have similarities in our stories but tell us before you go just tell us a little bit more about what you're up to right now, what you're working on, what your [00:35:00] hopes for 2024, have you got anything else in the pipeline, what's coming up?

    Katherine Gantlett: So as you mentioned at the beginning, I'm training as a spiritual director, accompanier, so I'm leading retreats based out of Walking Through Winter, I'd love to do more of that, and I was a contributor to a book called Praying Through Infertility, which is a 90 day devotional book, 36 different contributors, so a range of voices, because obviously infertility that is published on the 15th of February in this country, so people will pre order that they can go wherever they get books for that but, yeah, I'm just continuing to accompany people through what I write, workshops and retreats.

    Anna Kettle: Sounds brilliant loads coming up then, and is the book, has it been pulled together by? Sheridan Voisey, yeah, [00:36:00] who's a great author on this subject as well if anyone's interested in anything more around childlessness and infertility, but yeah, again, we'll share that in the show nights because it's a great resource that's about to be launched.

    Finally, just tell us, people have enjoyed listening to you today, have enjoyed hearing a bit about what you do, about what you teach about, how do people connect with you? How do they find out more, your website, social handles, tell us where we can find you.

    Katherine Gantlett: My website is katherinegantlett.org.uk and I'm on Twitter as @KGantlett and Facebook as katherine.gantlett the advantage of having an unusual name.

    Anna Kettle: Yeah. You don't need to be like 2004 or anything like that. Yeah. Perfect. If you find Katharine Gantlett, you've found me. It's probably you. Brilliant. We will, again, we'll add those all to the show notes so that people can find you easily.

    [00:37:00] And yeah, please do connect with Katharine if you're interested in this subject, if you want to connect with her more, if you want to learn more about her retreats or her book or anything else that she's doing on this subject, because it really is brilliant. That's probably all we've got time for today, where the clock is ticking on.

    But Katherine, thank you so much for joining us today on What's The Story. It's been so generous of you to share a bit of your story with us today. So thank you for being here. Oh, it's

    Katherine Gantlett: been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Anna.

    Anna Kettle: And thank you also for being here, listeners. We wouldn't be anything without you.

    So we will catch you very soon on What's The Story.

    Sadaf Beynon: And just like that, we've reached the end of another fascinating conversation. Remember to check out Crowd Online Church at www. crowd. church. Don't forget to subscribe to What's the Story on your favourite podcast app. We've got a treasure trove of inspiring stories coming your way and we'd hate for you to miss any of them.

    What's the Story is a production of Crowd Online Church. Our [00:38:00] fantastic team, including Anna Kettle, Matt Edmundson, Tanya Hutsuliak, and myself, Sadaf Beynon, work behind the scenes to bring these stories to life. Our theme song is a creative work of Josh Edmundson. If you're interested in the transcript or show notes, head over to our website, whatsthistorypodcast.

    com. And while you're there, sign up for our free newsletter to get all the goodness delivered straight to your inbox. That's all from us this week. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode. Bye for now.

 
 

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