This Help & Hope conversation is part of our mini-series, Go Ask Your Mother. In this series, we are asking the kinds of questions many younger women wish they could ask a mother, an older woman, or a trusted friend who has walked a little farther down the road.

Today we will talk with Lauri Hogle about chronic illness, motherhood, marriage, work, identity, worship, and the hard grace of learning to receive help. We will also talk about how Lauri is now walking with her married daughters as they grieve the loss of children through miscarriage and stillbirth and experience their own chronic illnesses.

Lauri is an author, musician, wife, mother, and grandmother whose life has been marked by both deep suffering and steady faith. Years ago, as a young mother of three little girls, Lauri began experiencing frightening and mysterious symptoms. Pain, weakness, headaches, vision loss, numbness, and exhaustion changed almost every part of her daily life. There were days when she could not hold her children, play the piano, cook meals, or do the ordinary tasks most mothers simply push through.

Lauri’s story is not a simple story of sickness followed by an easy answer. Though God did provide important medical help, her journey with chronic illness has continued through many years and many crises. Yet through it all, the Lord has strengthened her faith, deepened her worship, and taught her what it means to belong to Christ when life is fragile and the body is weak.

For every young woman who is trying to care for children while her own body is failing, for every wife or mother who wonders if she is still useful when she cannot do what she once did, and for every woman who needs to know that Jesus sees her in the hidden places of suffering, Lauri’s story will offer help and hope.