Emily Hutchinson, a cookbook author, a TV cookie competition judge, part of the Great American Family Channel, has a mini-series on an app called the Great American Community, but more importantly she has a really incredible and powerful story. After losing her infant daughter, she and her husband fell into drinking to cope with the agony of losing a child.
She shares how Psalm 121:1-2 is a daily constant in her life and always goes back to that scripture, “because no matter what, my help comes from the Lord. Our help comes from God. All we have to do is pray.”
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.Psalm 121:1-2
Listen below for the full story of how Emily was Brought Back to Life.
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Special thanks to our sponsor Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, who have been serving the homeless population and helping the lost become found for over 90 years. Our vision is to see every homeless neighbor — beloved, redeemed, restored. Find out more about them at ugm.org.
Transcription:
Purposely. Your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Emily Hutchinson: My husband and I and my whole family had lost her. My mom lost a granddaughter, my sister lost a niece, and they were about to lose me too.
Narrator: We’ve all experienced it. You run into a friend from the past, but there’s something different. They are changed. Maybe there is a calm where there once was a storm. Maybe there is gentleness, instead of harshness. There’s a new passion, a new life… What changed? Welcome to Brought Back To Life, A podcast where we explore stories of ordinary transformation.
Producer Luke: Hey, this is Luke, the producer here. Brought Back To Life is all about showing the power of God’s love. How we all can be redeemed through it, and that’s why we’ve partnered with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Stay tuned to the end to hear about what they’re doing in our community to be His hands and feet.
Emily Hutchinson: My name is Emily Hutchinson, and I am a cookbook author. I am a TV cookie competition judge, and I work with Great American Family Channel. And I have a mini-series on an app called the Great American Community, where I share all sorts of tips and tricks and delicious recipes to bake your life easier, and I have a really incredible, powerful story that I’m gonna share. But first I wanna talk about scripture that has been with me the whole time. Psalm 121:1-2; I lift my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of Heaven and Earth.
And so, we’re gonna put that in our back pocket while I share my story. So, I’m gonna take you back to when I was a little girl, about five years old, I learned to bake with my grandma in the kitchen. And we were baking things like breads and pies, not just like box mix. So, she taught me everything and she was such an incredible teacher. And I baked so much over the years that my family would be like, what’s Emily bringing for Thanksgiving? Or what’s Emily bringing for Christmas? It was just a gift that God had given me that my grandma really helped nurture. And so, I, I kept baking over the years. And then when I was 12 years old, my grandma died from cancer, and that was really hard for me.
And baking took a temporary back burner. I still loved it and it was still in my heart, and I knew, that it was a gift from God, but I just… I wasn’t doing it like every, every weekend, it was just more like on a holiday thing. And so, I grew into adulthood, and I had two children in a relationship that didn’t end up working out.
I had met my now husband, Mike, and we decided to solidify our family and have a child of our own. So, we got pregnant and had this beautiful baby. Her name was Jenny, and she was born on Halloween. And she was just the most easy. Perfect baby. You just, she was just wonderful, and so we all loved on her so much.
She was the missing piece that, that just really made us a family. So, on January 15th, 2009, so she was two and a half months old on that day, and my daughter and I went into her room to wake her up, and I knew right away something was wrong. And I scooped her up. I, she wasn’t breathing. And I started screaming for Mike. And he immediately shot out of the room. I cleared everything off of the dining room table and I laid her down and I started doing CPR because they teach you that when you have a child. So, it’s really helpful in so many situations.
And so, I knew what I was doing. And your instincts just take over. And my husband and I were switching off. He had called 911 and I could hear my other two children crying and I would look over and I was like, go back to your room. They disappeared for a minute. My daughter was five and my son was three at the time, but they were just crying and they, what’s going on?
What’s wrong with Jenny? And so, in those moments of doing CPR, I can really vividly remember bargaining with God, and I say this because I would’ve considered myself a Christian then. Like we went to church, Bible camp in the summer, and church on the holidays. So, I would’ve considered myself a Christian. I knew who God was. I knew about Jesus, and so I was asking him, please God, don’t let her die. I will do anything that you want me to do. I will follow you for the rest of my life if you don’t let her die. And the next breath I breathed into her when I was pushing air out, I heard her breathe and I was like, oh my gosh.
Thank you, Lord. And I looked up at my husband and he just looked at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen and so much despair. And I was like, why is he looking at me like that? And it had dawned on me that I was pushing out my own air. It wasn’t her breathing, and it was the despair sunk in and I was like, my daughter is dead. And the paramedics came in, grabbed her, they said she’s still warm. Took her outside to work on her and despite their efforts, we had, we lost our daughter that day. And she was two and a half months old. And I will never forget seeing my grandpa at my funeral, and he, at Jenny’s funeral, and he was, he had, 20 years earlier buried his wife. And he, it was, he said it was the hardest thing that he has ever seen, certainly for me as well.
And my family, my husband and I and my whole family had lost her. My mom lost a granddaughter. My sister lost a niece, and they were about to lose me too. And with the pain of losing Jenny, I wanted my child back so bad. I did. I was in a, not thinking in the right frame of mind and I was like, I need to get pregnant right away.
And so, we ended up getting pregnant and having a beautiful son, a year and 10 days exactly after Jenny died. And his name is Mikey, and he is just an incredible human and a light for the world. And he’s just so wonderful. And with all, with all these wonderful things happening to me I still had a hole in my heart, and I still was broken. And it was like I was living, but I wasn’t alive, and I was just floating through life.
I masked the pain. I shouldn’t say I did mask the pain with alcohol. I did. And my husband was drinking. And we were struggling. We were in the pit of despair every parent’s worst nightmare. You think as a parent, whether the worst thing that can happen is losing a child, and that’s, that’s what I was in that. And so, friends of ours noticed how bad we were struggling and invited us to church. That day, we went to the Grove Church, I wanna say it was about nine years ago. But we had listened to Pastor Nick talk that day, and I don’t even remember what he spoke about, but I just remember the Holy Spirit.
And the reason why I remember this is because I’ve had chills before, but I have never felt the chills and the lifted-up feeling from the Lord. Like I felt like my arms were spread out, like across, and like he had just put his hands underneath my armpits and lifted me up. And from that day on, we just, we didn’t drink. It was like, God just removed that from our lives. And it was like, people still will say, I cannot believe that because it’s a miracle. And we just we started giving back to the community and we started doing, just… there our church does a thing, it’s called iHeart every summer.
And they paint schools, and they do all sorts of things to make the communities a better place, especially for kids. And You know that, we were like, wow we are feeling a purpose for our pain. And so, you don’t realize how much serving really helps you. And so, it heals in a way that was just so incredible. And it was like a fire had ignited, and my soul and I got back into the kitchen. And I started baking again. And I started making buttercream, frosted cookie tutorials before anyone was really doing the videos to teach you on social media. And so, they started going viral and people wanted to learn from me, and they wanted my recipes and so I started to grow this incredible platform. And I was like, God, there, there’s gotta be something else. You, I know you have something bigger for me. I want to share about you. I wanna talk about my story, I wanna talk about Jenny. And so, I actually started a blog. And so, I got to share my story on my blog. I had so many people reach out to me that were struggling, in similar situations, and in different situations and saying, you know what?
I’m going through this right now. You got through this. I know I can get through this. And that was so incredible. And I loved being able to help people. But I still felt like there was something more. And so, I prayed about it. And I was like, God, lead me. What do you want me to do? And about a week later, I an email about this huge woman’s blogger conference, and they wanted me to come and share my story, and I was like, okay. I’m actually terrified to do that because I had never talked in front of a group of women. I hadn’t done TV yet or anything like that, and so, I was so scared. I said no. So, even though God was like, here’s an open door, Emily. I want you to walk this way. I was like, you know what, God, I’m gonna go this way because that way terrifies me and this way’s easier.
And so, that haunted me. And I prayed, I said, Lord, I’m sorry. I know that gift was from you. And if you give me something, I will not let you down. I will do it. And so, I, and this, I’m not even kidding. It was a week later and sometimes you think, oh, oh, a week, and a week. I, but those are the things that really only can be explained by God.
And so, I knew it was coming from God. And I got an email, I was standing in Safeway with my husband at the deli aisle, and I opened up my emails for whatever reason, and it was the Hallmark channel, and they were like, We saw your work, we would love to have you come on the show. And so that was Hallmark’s Home and Family Show. And when I got there, they actually, I told ’em about my story and they were like, that is amazing. Will you please share that? And so, I got to share my story on national television. And that was the, that was what God was saying. He was like, Emily, you have gone through this so you can encourage people, and I’m putting you here so you can encourage people on a huge scale.
So, when I’m thinking about like this huge scale of people I’m influencing and encouraging, that’s really great, right? But then I think about the people that are most important to me; my, my kids, my family, my mom, my sisters. I have saved my family. My mom has become a devout Christian because she has seen the transformation in my life, and she’s seen the change that God has done. My sisters are very steadfast in their faith because they have, they saw, they were like, Emily, we knew you before you were a Christian. We’ve known you your whole life since you were little, right? My older sister was born before me, so she has known me my entire life, and she said something has changed and I want that.
And now as I look at my older sister, I see this beautiful, incredible transformation and change in her, as a Christian and as a Jesus follower. And so, it’s so incredible to know that your testimony can help so many people, but it can help the people that are most important to you and the closest to you.
And so, that, for me has been the ultimate, what would I say, goal as a Christian to save my family. And I talk about all these things like all these great things are happening to me, and wonderful things are happening to me. But I have struggled. I have been told a lot, no a lot, in the industry I’m in. I’m on tv and I, and people have been like, oh, you’re not, you’re just not the right fit.
And I, I have never taken that and said, okay, I’m not good enough. I have said, you know what? The Lord has put this on my heart, so I am going to help people believe in me. And so, I just kept going, and incredible things have happened. Like I said, I’ve written a couple books and I’ve traveled all over the country teaching people like Candace Nelson, the founder of Sprinkles, and Lance Bass from NSYNC. Like I have taught so many people. Rachel Ray, how to do cookies and how to bake. And so, God has done some really incredible things in my life.
And also, I, there was, when I was talking earlier about how I felt the Holy Spirit. There was a point since I, since that day in church when I was feeling the Holy Spirit, I have felt it every day since except for a small period in my faith. And I reached out to my aunt because she is a Christian. She is the one woman in my life, my whole entire life, that loved the Lord and that had been praying for me my whole life. And so, prayers do matter. And I said, Aunt Celia, I, I can’t feel the Holy Spirit right now. It’s really weird. This hasn’t happened to me. And she said, honey, read your Bible. And I was like, Okay. It’s so simple, but so crucial, and so important. And she said, start with John. I always go back to John whenever I’m struggling with my faith. And so, I, reading my Bible.
But there are struggles, so many struggles in life, as a Christian. And even if you’re on the outside, you think, oh, they have it perfect and they have it all together. They don’t, it’s because we have help from God. And so that, going back to that scripture, the Psalms 121, my help comes from the Lord. Anytime I have doubted myself, anytime the enemy has tried to get into my head and say, you are not good enough. Or, when I’m helping my kids, when they’re struggling with things, I always go back to that scripture because no matter what, My help comes from the Lord. Our help comes from God. Alls we have to do is pray. We have that direct line and connection to Jesus Christ. And he died for that. He died so we could be saved, and so we could have a relationship with him. And so, it’s such an incredible, powerful thing. This just came on my heart just now, but I, my husband had just lost his mom. She was not a Believer, or a Jesus follower in her life. And when we went there and she was on her deathbed and he was praying for her, and she accepted the Lord as her savior. It got me, that’s so beautiful and incredible, but it got me thinking, I was like, her whole life, she could have been blessed by God if she just opened her heart.
And so, I don’t know why I felt like I needed to share that, but if you know someone, or if you are feeling far from God, read your Bible. Pray. God, your soul is worth saving and God wants to help you. Now remember, our help comes from the Lord. And it has got me thinking about how cookies and faith have a simple recipe. For cookies, you follow what ingredients that you need. And in your faith, we’ve got the Bible and we’ve got praying. And so, it’s just that simple.
Producer Luke: Emily, thank you for sharing your story; sharing your struggle, your heartache, your hurt. You’ve shown each and every one of us that even when there’s a death in the family, we can be Brought Back To Life.
Now, here’s a message from Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission.
Narrator: Helping The Lost Become found, with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission doesn’t just provide food and shelter. They offer a path out of homelessness, giving men and women a safe place to recover from addiction, and start on the path toward a new life.
SUGM Testimonial: I was running with gangs, drinking every day, and I could have ended up dead many times. When I was 33, I got arrested on a weapons charge and was facing a prison sentence, and that’s when God turned my life around. My sister invited me to a church service and the pastor’s sermon blew me away. I rushed to the altar crying, and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. While I was incarcerated, I earned a theology degree. Today, I am the man that God destined me to be. I have a Doctorate of Religious Education and I’m helping change lives. I’m the director of the Men’s Recovery Program at the mission.
Narrator: Even when it seems impossible to see, hope can be found. Local men and women in our area desperately need a fresh start, and that’s what they find at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. From learning, to trust again to that first hot meal, to a recovery program, and then job training. The mission’s recovery programs offer counseling, case management, chemical dependency classes, and so much more. To hear this story again and hear other stories, visit kcisradio.com/ugm.
To hear more, volunteer, or donate, visit ugm.org
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