**NOTE: There is a little mic bleed for the first 2 minutes but it resolves after that!**
When Jennifer's son Ian kissed the statue of Christ and whispered "Abba," it was a moment that transcended words and spoke directly to the soul. This episode features Jennifer's powerful testimony of her nonverbal autistic son's deep spiritual connection to Jesus Christ, an experience that has illuminated the path for her family through the most challenging of times. We're taken on a journey that begins with the revelation of Ian's autism and unfolds into a tapestry of faith, resilience, and divine encounters. Through Jennifer's eyes, we witness how the unseen threads of Christ's love weave strength into our lives, even as we face the unthinkable.
Jennifer's story does not shy away from the raw edges of life's trials as she bears witness to the extraordinary strength her family received from Christ through various, unexpected ways and is a testament to the profound ways in which Jesus Christ's influence can profoundly shape our personal stories.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook: More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story Instagram: mtc.rememberingjesuschrist
**NOTE: There is a little mic bleed for the first 2 minutes but it resolves after that!**
When Jennifer's son Ian kissed the statue of Christ and whispered "Abba," it was a moment that transcended words and spoke directly to the soul. This episode features Jennifer's powerful testimony of her nonverbal autistic son's deep spiritual connection to Jesus Christ, an experience that has illuminated the path for her family through the most challenging of times. We're taken on a journey that begins with the revelation of Ian's autism and unfolds into a tapestry of faith, resilience, and divine encounters. Through Jennifer's eyes, we witness how the unseen threads of Christ's love weave strength into our lives, even as we face the unthinkable.
Jennifer's story does not shy away from the raw edges of life's trials as she bears witness to the extraordinary strength her family received from Christ through various, unexpected ways and is a testament to the profound ways in which Jesus Christ's influence can profoundly shape our personal stories.
Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)
Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook: More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story Instagram: mtc.rememberingjesuschrist
Hello everyone and welcome to. More Than Coincidence, Remembering Jesus Christ in your Story. As the author and finisher of our faith, our Savior writes personal experiences into each of our lives which can later strengthen, empower and bring us peace upon reflection. This podcast is dedicated to sharing these anchoring memories from everyone's unique stories in order to collectively remember and testify of the reality of Jesus Christ and His presence in our lives. I'm your host, Lily, and I'm very excited to share these experiences together. So today on the podcast, we have Jennifer. Jennifer, thanks for coming. So, Jennifer, do you mind just introducing yourself just a little bit for everybody?
Jennifer:
Yeah, I'm Jennifer Brickerstaff. I've been a member my entire life and I've had some spiritual experiences since I got married and had a nonverbal autistic child, and I wanted to share that, since he did pass away in June.
Lily:
Awesome. Well, I'm really grateful that you reached out to me, so just go on ahead and tell us your story.
Jennifer:
So in order for you to understand Ian's story, you have to understand some of the things that happened with. Ian was little. So when he was two and a half, we went to the Christmas lights at the Salt Lake Temple and we wanted to go see the Christists because we wanted our kids to know Christ and have a relationship with Christ, and so we walked up the ramp up to the Christists. My youngest daughter was a year old and Ian was about two and a half or 15 months apart, and so we walked up to the Christists and Ian was holding Daddy's hand let's go to Daddy's hand and he walks up to Christ and he puts his arms up, and so Daddy goes and lifts him up and he bows his head down and kissed the feet of Christ, exactly where the nail print was, and he said Abba, abba.
Jennifer:
That was the first time that we realized that Ian had a relationship with his savior, jesus Christ, because nobody taught him that Abba Abba meant my father, my father. Wow. The crazy thing is that a year later he would be the child that would be nonverbal, that would lose his voice completely. And to read that out Wow, that's powerful yeah.
Jennifer:
And then fast forward to when we actually found out, like when they actually did all the testing and told us that he was autistic. We are pulled into this room that's like not even bigger than a 10 by 10 room. There's a principal, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, there's teachers and everybody, and you can even. The air in the room was so thick you couldn't even hear a pit. You could probably hear a pin drop on the floor, that's how thick it was. You knew that they had some serious stuff to say, right, and so they. The principal looks at us and he says I just want to let you know that your son is autistic and he may never speak again. And when you hear those words come out of someone's mouth, you just go.
Jennifer:
All of your dreams that you had for your children Go out the window, because his dreams are no longer your dreams, because you know he won't go into mission, he won't get married, he won't have children and his life is completely different. He won't play football, he won't play any sports, he can't get that. And so we go outside and we sit in the car and then we sit there for a minute and then we turn on the radio and this song I'm a rascal, I say they've only been out for two months. I was on the radio and it's called I won't let go and at the time we thought it was for Ian. It was because we were supposed to fight Ian's fight and we were supposed to cry with him.
Jennifer:
But then, years later, I was, I was praying and I got a revelation that that scripture or that song was not for Ian, that that song was for us, and I remember that Christ would be there, win and he would cry with us, he would fight with us, he would fight or fight with us. He would always be there. But we just needed to accept that. But instead we went the opposite way and we tried to do it alone. But when we did things with Christ as a head, things were easier. Life was easier for us than the times when we turned away from Christ, if that makes sense.
Lily:
Right.
Lily:
Well, I'm just looking at the lyrics right now. Do you want me to read some of them? Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. So the song is I Won't Let Go by Rascal Flats, and it says it's like a storm that cuts a path. It breaks your will. It feels like that you think you're lost, but you're not lost on your own. You are not alone. I will stand by you. I will help you through. When you've done all you can do. If you can't cope, I will dry your eyes. I will fight your fight. I will hold you tight and I won't let go. It hurts my heart to see you cry.
Lily:
I know it's dark, this part of life, oh, it finds us all and we're too small to stop the rain, oh. But when it rains, I will stand by you. I will help you through. When you've done all you can do and you can't cope, I will dry your eyes. I will fight your fight. I will hold you tight and I won't let you fall. Oh, wow, this next part is incredible. Don't be afraid to fall. I'm right here to catch you. I won't let you down. I won't get you down. You're going to make it. Yeah, I know you can make it, because I will stand by you. I will help you through when you've done all you can do and you can't cope. I will dry your eyes. I will fight your fight. I will hold you tight and I won't let go. Oh, I'm going to hold you and I won't let go. I won't let you go. No, I won't Wow.
Jennifer:
And so just thinking that that song was for us and not for a son made complete sense to me, because we were the ones that were going to have to go through this Correct. But we didn't know how much pain we were going to have to go through. But when our son made a difference, he didn't even have to speak a word to anybody. There was a teacher that reached out to me and he said he said, you know, I was having a really, really bad day in your son. His arms around me, was all saying a word and gave me a hug, give me the biggest hug I've ever had. He said it totally turned my day around and it changed my perspective and it made me have a really good day after that. That's beautiful. And he was always like that. And, yeah, he didn't like fighting, he didn't like contention, he didn't like arguing, but that's because he was supposed to be. You know, most people don't like that stuff. He absolutely hated it. Yeah, oh, and last December, when Ian fell sick, we had no idea what was going on underneath the surface, we had no idea that his autism was directly related to it. And so interesting, yeah, so he felt sick and um, and that day, literally he, his spirit, visited his father and said dad, I need your help. And my father and my husband walked in the room and he was on the floor, he tried to move on his lips and he was going to call an ambulance. Oh, he wasn't going to call an ambulance, he was going to see if his mom could come and get Ian. He comes and wakes me up and I run downstairs and I roll him over and his lips are still blue, but he is kind of alert and I tried to get him up and I couldn't get him up and the spirit said you need to call an ambulance, you need to do it now. And so that's the first thing I did. I said. I said you're not taking them anywhere, we're calling 911. We're doing it now, yeah. So we called 911 and they came in and they were like well, we got his blood sugar up, so, um, if you can get him to the doctor, we're going to leave him. And then one of the EMTs said we are not leaving this kid, you are taking him. He said, because we don't know what is wrong, correct. And so they took him and he ended up on an ECMO machine and he got a blessing. The crazy thing was the blessing said that he would come home. And I held to that blessing and I said he's going to come home, he's coming home, he's not going to die in the hospital, he's coming home. And everybody said I was crazy, everybody said I was nuts, they're like. Nothing says that he's coming home. Everything leads to that he's going to die.
Jennifer:
The doctor is every every week he's not going to make it to the next week. Well, that first night they said he wasn't going to make it 24 hours. He made it 24 hours. He made it into two weeks, he made it into three weeks and then and then he finally went to rehab and then he had another relapse when he was rehab. But we saw, we saw four healings at the hospital. We saw him completely healed four times.
Jennifer:
Wow, which I don't think that there was. That that was a mistake at all. And and so finally they were going to do a genetics test and my dad had muscular muscular dystrophy and so his parents had you need to tell him, you need to tell the doctor that your dad had muscular dystrophy. You need to do it now. Oh yeah, the spirit literally told me you need to do it and you need to do it now. And I was going to wait because it was scary. It was a scary thing to even think about that, you know, right, right, and so I said okay.
Jennifer:
So I told the doctor and I said I just want you to know, my dad had muscular dystrophy and he expedite he in that statement, expedited the genetics test and when it came back he had ex-linked dilated cardiomyopathy, which only affects your heart, which was directly related to the muscular dystrophy gene, which also was the reason why he stopped speaking. He was in heart failure from the time. It was three. Oh, and nobody caught it. Wow, and it was as heartless, as heartless. He could oxygen from the brain to preserve itself. So it was taking oxygen from the brain that speaks. So this was the first time that we realized that Ian knew everything that was going on around him. Right, I could not communicate it to anyone. I couldn't tell anybody what was going on.
Lily:
Right right.
Jennifer:
And then he had another disorder. So when he went in he had another disorder called HLH. Nobody knew about and that is not on either side of the family, so nobody would have ever caught that because nobody has on either side of the family. And that was genetic as well.
Lily:
That was found in the testing.
Jennifer:
Yeah, that was found in the testing too. And he and so, when, when he felt sick, they they couldn't figure out what was going on. So apparently his heart was at 50% function and this other disorder came in and destroyed the rest of his heart. Oh my gosh. So he would have lived to be 25. And not 60. Right. And so all this stuff happened. And then, before he and then before he was supposed to come home, we went there and he was like all swollen, having the rashes again, and his whole body was swollen and he was red as can be. And they said you need to go get your kids, because I don't think he's going to make it through the night. And we went and got our kids, like they said, and we came back and all the redness was gone. He was instantly healed, thank you. There was no swelling, no redness, no, nothing. When they came back, then the doctors told us that they didn't think he was going to make it through the weekend. Well, he did make it through the weekend. What happened after that was he came home. They said, oh, he's not going to make it through the weekend. He came home and he made it three months.
Jennifer:
Well, the crazy thing is, my husband was at work he worked for Circle K at the time, which is a convenience store, and Make a Wish Foundation comes in Just out of the blue, doesn't have any clue who they are. They're like hey, your boss told us that you have a son, the son hospice, and we would like to offer you a wish. My husband's like well, I don't know how to do that. We need you to go on our website, we need you to put in the information to make a wish. We believe your son needs to have this wish. So that's what I did. I did exactly that. My husband was like he needs to meet with the prophet. That's the first thing. Because I was like you know what? The prophet can heal him, the apostles can heal him. That was all I was thinking about was oh, he can get a blessing and get healed. That was it.
Jennifer:
Well, they checked all of his medical stuff and all the doctors cleared him in Arizona, but the prophet took cold because the prophet's like I'm told to travel, I'm not going to go to Arizona and you don't have to come here. So we ended up not going to Utah. But Elder Gong said I will go to Arizona, I'm already there. On the 19th of May I will meet with them with this family. We met with Elder Gong and he shared some scriptures with us. I did give you the questions that I asked and then the scriptures that were associated with those questions. I didn't realize until just recently, when I went back and read them again, that he knew my son was going to pass away and that he could have reached out his hand and saved him. But it wasn't in the plan. You know how hard it is to accept that that's not in the plan. Right, we already saw it feel four times, but the last time it wasn't supposed to be healed.
Lily:
Does that make sense? It does, and I think it's so interesting interviewing all of these people because, as so, my background is that I have two brothers with disabilities as well. Both of them have Down syndrome, but one of them has always had a lot of issues. He has been in some very similar situations as your son, where he was having some health problems and then he'd take a big dip and everyone was like, okay, well, this is it, we don't know, and then he miraculously get better. You know, I feel like everything you're saying is is the exact same as how my mom felt and how me and my siblings feel, and my dad.
Lily:
Where we want the healing to right, we want to just say we know that the priesthood is real, we know that the priesthood can do that, but it's, it's thy. Will not mine be done? Exactly, and that is the hardest part to accept, because it's well, do I? Is it a lack of faith that I can't have my brother healed, or is it the? Does it show the amount of faith that I can say, okay, I'm ready to let him go and I want him to be done? And, as I've thought a lot about this and about my brothers in general. I truly believe, like what you said, how we are privileged to have these people in our lives, because my brothers have the most special, sweet spirits that I have not found that anywhere else. My brother Ahan, the one who has very, is very ill. His room I walk into his room, jennifer, and it feels like the celestial room in the temple.
Jennifer:
That's how it is. That's how he's felt we can just feel that spirit.
Lily:
You can feel it and it's tangible and like everything that you say, like I feel so privileged that I have Ahan and Steph go in my lives because they've taught me more about faith, with the trials that they go through, than I've. I feel like in some ways, I've ever had to learn.
Jennifer:
Yeah, there were a couple times that, right about a month before I passed that, I went in his room and I saw him praying. He was folding his arms and he was praying and I was like he really does have a relationship with Heavenly Father, he really does speak with angels, Right. And this was like about a month before he passed. And then about three days before he passed he kept on saying mommy, I'm going to let him, I couldn't say you can go ahead. And then the day before he passed, daddy was there and he looked at daddy and he said I want to go. And my husband said where does he want to go? And I said where do you think he wants to go? And I looked up and I said he wants to go to heaven and he knows where he wants to go.
Jennifer:
Yep, I was in 24 hours after that time and he asked because he realized that mommy knew where he wanted to go, but I couldn't say you can go. So then I sent make a wish and I said can you send this to Elder Gong? Yeah, they sent that. He passed Elder Gong and Elder Gong sent us a condolences. He said I was impressed by the courage, determination and faith of his family in trying circumstances and that Ian will be fully restored in the resurrection thanks to the atoning sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's about what he said. And then he said he would have come to the funeral, but he was on assignment and he never came down. He was going to do a pheasant spirit.
Lily:
That's really special, yeah, and.
Jennifer:
I was so grateful that we had that experience with Elder Gong. And then I just want to close with one thing like two weeks before so Ian's birthday was in September I gave Sister Gong a necklace to thank her and then Necklace had Ian's thumbprint and his birthstone on it. Maka wish to not know his birth date in September, but two weeks before his birthday we get. I come home from work and there's a package and I open up the package and there's a little white box in there and there's a crystal in it. But there was the field that taught me was the card. The card says some people leave such a bright light on the world that when they are gone the lights don't even exist. And it was a crystal that you hang from your window and it makes rainbows all over your room. So we hung it in our window and stuff and it literally put rainbows all over our room every day that the sun shown through it.
Lily:
So how do you feel like then? You know this whole experience. How do you feel like it has anchored you to Jesus Christ.
Jennifer:
It has made us realize that Jesus Christ is. He is in control and he knows what, what we need when we need it, and he will always be there. We just have to, we just have to reach out to him and just have to let him in through trying times. But he knows what he's doing. You know, he's still and we said children die all the time at the hospital and it's so heart wrenching Just when you have a child that passes because you go why, why did this happen to me?
Jennifer:
Why, why did I have to go through this? But then I look through all those times and I go you know, those are the times that I was strengthened. The time that I had in the trial may have been hard, but I was able to be closer to Jesus Christ because of that trial and and kind of have that kind of relationship with him through that. Because those times you want to reach to him, you want to say, hey, I need your help, I can't do it by myself. Please help me, please strengthen me, and he will always strengthen you, no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter the circumstances, no matter if you're mourning and crying every day for your son and what your son to be there.
Jennifer:
Christ is always there and he understands. It's like my husband told me once. He said he said Heavenly Father understands because Heavenly Father also sacrificed his only begotten son and so that we could come back to him. So he understands more than anybody else when it's like to lose a son Because he wants his son suffering pain and and obviously rise back the third day. But he saw that he saw his son go through all of us and so he and Jesus Christ understand what we are going through and and they could strengthen us because they do understand.
Lily:
Wow, that's so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing Ian's story and do you would you mind leaving us with a testimony and Sure.
Jennifer:
So I do have a really strong testimony of miracles and testimony of Jesus Christ that Jesus Christ gave his life to us so that we could live with him again, so that we could be resurrected and use our families, and I'm so grateful for that knowledge that I can be with my son again.
Jennifer:
It may not be now, it may not be tomorrow, but I know that is something that is going to happen and I will see him again and I will be able to be whole as a whole, as my family will be together forever. And I'm so grateful for the love of Jesus Christ that he allows us to be anchored to him. And I'm so grateful for this church because I think, without the priesthood, I don't know how I would have survived those days without seeing those miracles or seeing the priesthood in action. But I believe that the priesthood is real and that God brought it here for our benefit, to help us and strengthen us, and I'm so grateful for everything that he has done for me and my family. And I say these things in Jesus Christ's statement.
Lily:
Thank you, Jennifer, for sharing your story with us. It was incredibly powerful. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks again for tuning into More Than Coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your story. Please follow us on social media or share us with a friend. If you have an experience you'd like to share, feel free to reach out to morethancoincidencerememberhim at gmailcom. I can't wait to hear all of the amazing memories you all have of our Savior. See you next time.
