Laura: Hi, Bindi and welcome to unsung stories. Thanks so much for joining us. 

 

Bindi: Thank you for having me. 

My name is Bindi. Been living on the central coast for all 23 years. Now. I'm married to Raj Rogers, a fireman. We were childhood sweethearts met when we were 15. Yeah, we actually met earlier in primary school, but anyway, I didn't know 

 

Laura: that's so beautiful.

 

Bindi: I've told my children never to a date when you're young, don't make my mistakes, none. And I love my Raj. Yeah, we have four beautiful children three young adults now. We have twin girls Beck and Sarah they're 21. So I've been doing this for 21 years. Then we have Tom who's 19, and then we have Sam who is just turned 12. 

 

Laura: Wow. So that our listeners can know, Tom was my favorite baby. When I was young, walking around church, getting to give him cuddles so beautiful for you to share him with me. 

 

Bindi: I was thankful right now that 

 

Laura: I'm on the other end. I'm going. Where's the 10 year old girls wanting to carry my babies around clay and 

 

Bindi: I had twins. That was, I was running around chasing them. So it was, I didn't have to worry about where's time. Here's your little life. Yeah, he 

 

Laura: was a real beautiful baby and blessing to me. So thank you. So you've been a mum for 21 years now, and I'm sure there's so many things that you could chat about and share your wisdom on. If you were to think back over that time, what headliner would you give? 

 

Bindi: Alright, can suffering. That's a hard one to land. Yeah. Yeah. In this in times of suffering, God has shown me that he is completing the good work that he began in me. 

 

Laura: That's beautiful. Would you mind unpacking this for us? So maybe if you could give us an overview of your motherhood. 

 

Bindi: I could talk in great depths each of 

 

Laura: these moments in time, maybe pack 21 years until a few minutes.

 

Bindi: That'd be great. Okay. So it started out my motherhood journey, 21, 22 years ago. I was diagnosed with. Fertility problems. So we went through a really hard time. There had ectopic pregnancy miscarriages. So yeah, it was a hard start losing a few babies. Then we had twins It was hard. And to add to twins, I had Pandy postnatal depression, so not just depression, but also the distress side of things. Had a husband that worked shifts being a fireman. So I was alone a lot with. And have very high expectations of myself. And so really things fell apart. Then when I finished breastfeeding, the girls, I fell pregnant with Tom quite quickly not expected. So we had three kids and So we piece we had it was just crazy.

Yeah. And then went Thomas to, very suddenly my brother died and this was a pretty foundational time in my walk with God. I was very hard. And then. Things potted along rubbed. I could never be on the same page, whether when it was time for us to have another one, if we did.

And so when Tom was seven, we found out that I was pregnant again. The day that I found out I was pregnant was the day that my husband shared some really big addictions that he had throughout our marriage. It was a bit of a crisis working through all that heartache. And it was a really hard pregnancy, but in that time, God really showed me how to forgive to be able to forgive as I had been forgiven.

And so we spent some time. Obviously reconciling our marriage. And there was a lot of grief that was involved in that time. After working through all that, we had a reprieve. So we decided we go on a family holiday family trip around Australia. It was absolutely amazing. Sam was two, Tom was nine and the girls were 11.

And this was absolutely. Truly wonderful healing time for our family felt like life was looking up. The hard stuff was done. We'd learned our lessons and we could just keep smooth sailing. And then we, I was involved in a car accident, I was out on a date actually with Raj riding our bikes and I was hit by a car.

 It was pretty messed up. And I ended up in a wheelchair. Oh, it was very traumatic for our whole family. And this was . Another foundational moment in my walk with God and and just sorting through all. My identity of who I am as a woman, as a wife, as a mom and just was sidelined.

 So it was a very difficult time. As we've come through that one of our daughters. Who was a teenager by this stage, she wasn't coping from the accident and change. She actually, she suffered always from major anxiety. But we discovered that she was self-harming. And so she had period of time where she was studying distance education.

She wasn't capable of being at school or interacting with others. That was a really hard time and then just keeps going. A short while later one of our kids disclosed that they'd been abused from another child. And this obviously was really painful and it led to a loss in our community, which we loved.

But we had to leave to protect him. And due to that, I think there, there was just a big response in our family. The trauma that, that was involved. And during this change our other daughter now disclose that she wasn't coping either. And over the course of her treatment and really over the last six years we've been unraveling her mental health issues.

So she's. She's got treatment resistant, major depression, but with that comes suicide attempts. She's been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She has OCD. She has autism ADHD many times that she's been hospitalized. And we're still. Muddling our way through it. And so my life now is very much her carer looking after her and supporting her in in how to yeah.

Help her with her day to day living. During all this time, I'm juggling all the other family members. And during the. Juggling of all that. We've received lots of other diagnosises with my other kids. So a few of them have actually been diagnosed with ADHD and I'm medicated for that.

 A couple of them have actually got PTSD from various reasons. Yeah. It's 

 

Laura: oh, that's a little big. And so much to process. And my gut reaction is just, are you okay? That's so much mummy heartache one after the 

 

Bindi: other. Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. I'm okay. With lots of. Lots of support, lots of love and one very great big God who holds me and has sustained me all of this year.

 

Laura: To go back a little bit, you were mentioning that your walk with God was had a foundational moment when your brother passed away and could you flesh that out a little bit more for us? 

 

Bindi: Yeah, so I was 28 and he was 36 and he died from a massive heart attack. There was no warning. There was no yeah, no, no opportunity to, how do you process something like that? 

 

Laura: Not to mention, you've got lots of young kids at this time. 

 

Bindi: Yeah. So I felt quite quite ripped off actually, because I just come out of that fog of, and blur of postnatal, depression, little Keens able to sleep a bit better. And I never got to know. In an adult relationship. There was this time that I remember sitting in the car park at church before going in and thinking. Why am I doing this? Why am I bothering? I had this moment in my life of God, why didn't you take me on the Christian?

I would have been with you in heaven. But you took my brother. There was this really challenging time in, in my faith of Yeah. Had I shared the gospel enough with him. Had I given him Jesus, see, in my faith and given him an opportunity to be able to choose, to follow God or not yeah it, it was such a hard time. And at the time, actually our church was preaching on Philippians and it's all on predestination and it was just all so heavy to deal with as I was processing through all this grief and hello, such a big topic. I actually remember one of the, one of the ministers actually rang me one day after he had preached to say Are you okay in all of this?

He knew I'd lost my brother. He knew like it was such a big turning point for me because through all of that God shared with me Philippians, one verse four to six, and it says, God says being confident of this. That, Hey God, who began a good work in you or carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

And I think in that moment, I, it was such a concert to me to know that God is the one that was completing the good work that he had begun in may. Yeah. 

 

Laura: Sounds like he had this big crack happen and just caused you to really evaluate and choose. Is this worth it? Can I trust God or do I choose to trust him?

And who knows what? Who knows what that will bring with it? How did making that choice help you get through the years to come?

 

Bindi: It was the foundation for me surviving all this suffering. I knew that suffering was part of. Loss. And that God was working through all of this suffering to bring about good in me and shaping me to be more like Jesus.

So I didn't necessarily like the suffering of course. But there is a pace in trusting God's promises in those depths of hard stuff. Yeah. 

 

Laura: So you've gone through this really heartbreaking few years where you've really had to wrestle and trusting God. And you mentioned learn how to forgive and you've gone around Australia on this big, beautiful and healing trip. 

 

Bindi: You come back and get hit by a car. 

 

Laura: Can you flesh out this time and what was happening for you and what did God teach you about yourself in it? You mentioned you really wrestled with your identity yeah. Kenisha, how you were find through 

 

Bindi: it. Yeah. It felt like I was sidelined in my wife continued on despite me not really being part of it. I became quite depressed. I actually wondered why God didn't take me in the accident. Things were great. Leading up to the accident. I was in a really good place.

 I felt in my walk with God. And so I knew. It was just so hard. It was so hard that I felt that being with him instead of being here on this earth was far better.

 It was this opening that peer back the layers of what I thought my identity was, who I was. And I think that identity comes from all the years of being a mom and you become so. Ah, fixated and focused on this is my God given purpose and role in my life is to raise my children to know and love God.

I thought, because I wasn't physically able to give to my family, to my church, family, to my friends, that somehow took away my purpose and my meaning for life. Does that make sense? Yeah. 

 

Laura: Yeah, it does. I think we all do that a bit. We have this idea of who we need to be, what we need to look like, how we need to serve to be pleasing to God.

Yeah, it sounds like you were wrestling with when you couldn't fulfill those IDs. You really had to correct me if I'm wrong, but really had to think through what God wanted for you and how he identified you 

 

Bindi: Because I'd realized that I'd built up this idea. I was needed to be a caring and loving and serving person to be pleasing to God, but that actually was stripped away from me and I got to say that my real identity is that I'm his daughter.

And we rely on. So much on ourselves and we think that we have to be everything to everyone and don't, we especially feel that as mums but I learned that nature my on God and not on myself, I feel like we need to have that perfect formula. To how to live and how to give the best and be the best.

But we actually don't know what's around the corner. We don't know what's going to happen, but we do know that we can only rely on God and we can only trusting him. 

 

Laura: It feels a little bit wrong to say, but it sounds like that accident was a gift. Like you learnt some really big and beautiful truths through it and look at how much God molded you through that.

Though, in saying that it sounds like the knock on effect has really influenced your family and brought on a whole other lot of grief potentially bigger heartache than rustling through identity. You've briefly mentioned your kid's mental health stuff that you've been parenting through the last, number of years I'm sure there's plenty that you could share, but I'm pretty conscious that their story isn't necessarily our story to share.

So I want to ask how are you surviving all of this? Because even what you've briefly touched on it, it really just sounds Too 

 

Bindi: much. Yeah. And and I'm conscious that lots of mums that are listening to this who are at the beginning of their journey. I'm aware that I don't want to freak people out either, so I just want it to reflect.

The only reason that I can survive. All of this is God is his strength, his comfort, security pace. And it really does transcend all understanding. It's only through his strength that I've been able to forgive people with some really big. And it's only through his pace that I've been able to cope watching both my daughters suffer through each day.

And it's only through his comfort that I've been able to get through treatment after treatment that isn't seeing the progress that we'd all like to see. It's made us, it's made me cling to God. But really seeing that it's here, that's holding onto me. It doesn't make sense, but I do keep coming back to Philippians to that verse that spoke to me back when I was really wrestling with some big stuff in my faith.

And. Saying that God is the one that's completing the good work in me. He began it. He's completing it. And I'm just clinging on.

 

Laura: Yeah that's really encouraging like that you acknowledged that most of us are still at the beginning of our parenting journey, because even those of us who are 10 years in it's still the start of parenting.

And, not all of us might've suffered in these monumental ways though. By now lots of us have probably had a taste. What wisdom or knowledge or encouragement would you want to share with us to carry us through the next decades as we face the trials that will come with mothering through the different life stages?

 

Bindi: Yeah. And I've really thought about this. This life is not always easy, but God didn't promise that it would be when dark days come and we wait patiently on human. We continue to seek answers to those hard questions. That's his constant presence. Always wrapped tightly around us.

Never letting go, no matter the darkness that we face, he will always remind us that there is always hope in the end. . And just reflecting on that verse in Romans 12, verse 12, be joyful in hope patient in affliction and faithful in prayer. So without suffering, we wouldn't be longing for heaven.

Our pain points to a time where we'll be made, right. Again, we'll be made right in his presence. And in the meantime, I know that God loves and God cares for me. And he is working for. Oh, 

 

Laura: that is so beautiful.  Would you mind praying for the mums who are listening, I'm thinking of yes. Similar road or about to face that road and they don't realize it. 

 

Bindi: Thank you that you drawn to us in our times of loneliness or suffering that load God, you wrapping your arms around us, that you are. Sheltering us from the storms of this life, father, God, I pray for all of the mamas that are struggling and we all have days that we struggle. Lord God, I just pray that you will be preparing each of our hearts to put our trust in you.

To put our hope in you knowing Lord God that you feel our pain and our hurts and our troubles. That's why you sent Christ that you can bring us to you. Save us, love us and and draw us meeting.

Thank you father, that we are not alone in the hot stuff, and that we know that you are with us always. Amen.

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