Be Patient With One Another: His Story

Patience
How my wife has shown me great patience during this deep loss

Pause: The loss of our little girl caused our lives to pause and stop at a moment in time, a moment that will never be forgotten. I’m reminded of a margin in a book or a comma between words; it’s there for a reason. Watching my hurting bride, Kelly, at this deepest pause God put in our path was the hardest sorrow my heart has felt.

Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!”
Psalm 116:4

Acceptance: At the beginning of this trial, what my wife and I experienced was more of a shared, mutual state of shock. From the emergency C-section to hearing our daughter’s faint cry to the news that she would not survive…we had to have patience toward God. In the beginning, we had no option. Our daughter’s condition was not fixable. We had to accept God’s will. We both had a deep peace from the Lord, knowing His sovereignty and His love for us.

You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high; I cannot attain it.
Psalm 139:5-6

Time: Time is where the sting of death hurts most. As time goes on, this is where patience must persevere. We began to learn how each of us coped with situations in different ways. I didn’t care to go to events that brought up our loss. Tears often flowed from my eyes at concerts or family events, seeing pictures or hearing sounds of infants. My wife needed to attend these events that honored our baby’s life, but I didn’t want anything to do with them. Less than two years after Beatrice died, the hospital where she spent her final hours invited our family to an annual picnic honoring heart patients, both living and gone. The event at the zoo didn’t sound too exciting to me. There were many children there who had survived, but my little girl had not. I didn’t feel like participating. Kelly asked me to go, so I went. My beautiful wife let me mope around all day. And then I finally found a bench perfect for me while my wife and kids went all over the zoo for hours, and there I stayed until the final event where my daughter’s name was read aloud. There were a lot of tears for all of us that day.

Independence: I became the strong one for my wife to lean on. As a man, I was internalizing my grief. I went down paths I never expected. I would find myself oftentimes crying by myself, or finding ways to cover up the pain. Some of the avenues for coping were not healthy ones, as I later learned. Never having experienced anything of this magnitude before, I know I made many mistakes on this path where my wife showed great patience in loving me despite my weakness. I was encouraged to know my wife cried out for help for me as she watched me follow a hurtful path. We received an email in response to Kelly crying out for help on my behalf.  A counselor from the grief recovery program we attended together soon after we lost Beatrice had really ministered to the both of us.  Again he helped us.  He mentioned that the path I was going through was not uncommon for men and he suggested that I attend the Grief Share course a second time, this time by myself in a group with just men. What a blessing to my soul! It was an answer to prayer and really helped with my grieving heart. This time I could share my hurts and pains with these other men attending, and we could help each other and would hold each other accountable. Thank you, Kelly, for reaching out on my behalf. I really didn’t understand what was going on and how as a man I was grieving independently, which was not good for me.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not lean on your own understanding.”
Proverbs3:5b

End of the road: This was where the Lord had me. Kelly knew it and saw it in me. We had been married for over 20 years and had a sweet blessed marriage, but I was running from the pain! The grief hurt so bad I didn’t even realize where I was in my life. All I wanted to do was run away from anything that caused that deep grief to return. Kelly is so faithful like Hannah who prayed for a son at the temple.  She would often pray for me in her quiet time when I couldn’t even pray. She knew I was at a very dangerous crossroad in dealing with our loss.

“She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.”
1 Samuel 1:10b

Needs:  The needs that I had were different than Kelly’s. I needed time to pass quickly; she needed to remember
monthly dates like Beatrice’s birth on the 18th and her passing on the 20th. I came to realize by watching Kelly that what she needed might also help me. Wow, what an awakening! I also learned from grief counseling to turn into grief in a healthy way, not by hiding or getting into things to numb the pain, but by sharing and crying with my wife.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
2Galatians 6:2

Crying out:  I had to learn to cry out with my beautiful wife to God, knowing we may never have the answers we are searching for. Why? How did it happen? Why to us? Why to our family? Why Beatrice? Why to our last child? Could we have done something to stop it from happening? When we learned her little heart wasn’t made for this earthly world, our hearts were broken, and they still are.  We keep crying out to our heavenly Father for His continued mercy, grace and peace.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28

Encouragement: What Kelly and I needed and shared from the very beginning, from the moment we knew something wasn’t right, was to encourage each other to trust God. We had no other choice! We had no answers to our broken hearts. But we know the One who does, the only One who can help us in our time of need. God has been good to us even during this loss. I can say God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!

“The Lord is good to all,
    and His mercy is over all that He has made.”
Psalm 145:9

Kelly, my wife, is a dear, sweet blessing that God has given me to love and cherish forever. I hate that we had to go through this together, but there is no one else I could have gone through this with. I think that a lot of the hurt I’ve had has been seeing her hurting.

Thank you, my love, for your sweet patience!

Peter is husband to Kelly and daddy to 8 on earth and 3 in heaven. He has been blessed, by God’s grace, with 20 years in business in Garland, TX, and enjoys basketball and hockey games, cooking for others, and watching his kids grow.

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