How To Deal With The Pain of Loss and Walk In the Comfort of God this Christmas

0:00 Read more stories on spirit-led living when you subscribe to Charisma Magazine. Go to MyCharismaShop.com and enter in the promo code CPN to receive 10% off the price of the subscription. This is John Matarazzo for Charisma News and as we are getting closer to Christmas, it is a wonderful time of year, but also for a lot of people, it is a time where we're remembering the ones that aren't with us anymore. I know myself, my grandfather passed away on December 23rd, a couple days before Christmas, and that was a very difficult Christmas for my family, but we dealt with it and we grew closer together in that process.

0:50 And in this conversation today, I'm going to be joined by Tim Challis. He's an author and blogger and pastor speaker and he's got a great YouTube channel with great teachings and just the wisdom that he has to share, but he shared his life really through a difficult season in this book, Seasons of Sorrow, the Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God. And so Tim, it's great to have you here on the Charisma News podcast. Well, thank you for having me. So Tim, as I just opened our podcast here, talking about my own experience with losing a loved one around the holidays and we're coming up on that, it's often difficult to even just bring up the subject of loss, but you've written the book that chronicles what happened after the loss of your son.

1:40 Can you tell us about that story and what happened to your son and what happened in your family? Yeah, and Nick was a seminary student. He was attending seminary at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. And in November of 2020, he just very suddenly collapsed and he was playing a game with a bunch of students there. They were just off campus and unfortunately, nobody was able to resuscitate him. So he passed away November 3rd, 2020. And that entered us, entered my family, myself personally into this season of deep loss, the season of sorrow and not really knowing what to do other than to write.

2:23 That's how I process everything in life. Think about things, how I come to terms with things. I chose to just write my way through that season of sorrow and that's eventually what led to this book. Yeah. So obviously, you weren't at the school with him when this happened. Tell us about how you found out and what was going on for you in that moment. Yeah, we live in Canada. So we are quite some distance away and on the other side of an international border. And if you rewind to early or sorry, to late 2020, you would remember there was a pandemic going on and one that did unfavorable things to the border between our two countries. And so it was actually a very difficult time to travel, all sorts of health requirements and really weren't even allowed to drive over the border.

3:08 It was a strange, strange time. So yeah, we started receiving actually, I think the first thing we got was a text message from somebody just saying that Nick had collapsed and then phone calls began. And over time, they became more and more alarming until we did eventually get the phone call from a doctor who had said Nick had been brought to the ER and he tried to assure me they had done everything they could, but there was nothing to be done that Nick had passed away. Again, it was a very difficult evening, very difficult night. But Lord was very present with us and very kind to us. And he really proved himself true to his every promise, even in our deepest sorrow or deepest grief.

3:50 Yeah. So you and your wife was, you know, you received this message is was Nick your oldest child? Yeah, he was our oldest. We have a daughter who was just beneath him in age and she was at school. She was actually present when he collapsed, when he died. And then one younger daughter who was at home with us. Oh, wow. So your your daughter actually saw him collapse. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, she witnessed the entire thing. So that must be that must have been a very traumatic thing for her as well. Yeah, yeah, it was very traumatic for her and ex fiance had just recently become engaged. She was present. And then most of his closest friends were there as well because he was he was at seminary is also a Bible college doing the things concurrently.

4:33 And so the students who lived with him in his dorm were there with him as well. It was a collection of his closest people. And so it was a very traumatic event for that whole group of friends. And they continue to process it to this day. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Just out of curiosity, did the doctors explain what happened or why this happened? Yeah, they the best they could come up with was that it was it just happens that sometimes hearts can slip into dysrhythmias. So patterns that are unsustainable and the heart just can't keep going. And so it goes into cardiac arrest. And that's the closest they could come up with at the time. And we've had genetic testing, et cetera, since then.

5:15 That's the only thing they can conclude. But we'll never really have firm answers. This is a presumed diagnosis, but not one they can ever prove. Yeah. So you process by writing, and that's something that I try to do. I'm not as good at journaling as I've gone through different seasons of that in my life. But journaling and writing and blogging is something that that's just how you process. Tell me about what you what you started writing and what are some of those things that you started processing and how did God help you through this process? The very first thing I wrote was really just a message to be posted on my website. I've been blogging there for years, for decades, and a lot of people read that.

5:57 And so that was the first thing I had to do was just get the news out, I felt. And so I wrote something that would go up the next morning, just explaining very briefly what had happened and just pleading with people to pray for us, really believing in the power of prayer and the necessity of prayer in our times of loss. But then as the days went on, I had to write an obituary, of course, I had to write a funeral speech, of course. And then also, just for the sake of my own soul, I had to just wrestle through what had happened and what it meant and through some theological issues related to God's character, related to God's sovereignty. Was God really sovereign in this? Is God really good in this?

6:37 I had to wrestle through just some of my own thoughts and even just sort of coming to terms with my relationship to God when he did something or he was involved in something that was so difficult and so hard and took something I loved so much. And so I never turned on God or never turned away from God, but I certainly had to, in a sense, reevaluate my relationship with God to say, are all those things that I've always thought true of God when the times were good, are they true of God now that this great difficulty has come upon me? Wow. And so how did you come to know that those things are still true? Because I've gone through times where that seems to be the case, and I'm just like, I don't know if I can trust this.

7:22 How did you come to the conclusion that, yes, you could still trust God? I mean, really, it came down to us having to determine that either nothing we've ever believed is true, and we've been living a lie or following a lie all these years, or we had to determine that everything we believed is true and that we're continuing to follow the truth. And we chose just to believe that God is true, that everything we believed that was true of God before is true of Him now. In our times of sorrow, our times of loss, it's so important that we anchor ourselves to something. Everything's turbulent. We're being thrown and tossed by the winds and the waves, and we need to anchor ourselves to something. And we chose to anchor ourselves to the sovereignty of God, by which we just mean that God is King in this world and that nothing can happen in this world that God doesn't permit, that God doesn't decree or permit.

8:15 And so this hadn't happened apart from His knowledge. This wasn't something God had turned aside for a moment, and this happened. And oh, no, He wished He could fix it, but He couldn't at this point. No, we determined that God allowed this. This was part of God's will for Nick and part of His will for our family, but then also this truth that God is good and that God is inclined toward us as a father, is inclined toward His children. And that gave us great confidence that God hadn't done anything evil. He hadn't done anything bad. He hadn't done anything that really was aimed to hurt or harm us or hurt or harm Nick. Somehow, even this great hardship was a display of God's goodness. He hadn't stopped being good in this. And so by just latching ourselves to God's sovereignty and God's goodness, we were prepared then to endure this by faith.

9:01 Yeah, and I know one of the chapters in your book, you focus in on the passage where the guy comes to Jesus and he says, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. I can see you would be asking that a lot during that time. How did God help your unbelief? Yeah, I love that story. And here's a man who truly does honor the Lord, truly does have faith, and yet he acknowledges that his faith is not as full, as strong as he would want it to be. And I'm sure in our griefs, there's times when all of us come to a similar realization that we do believe, but we want our faith to be stronger.

9:42 And we found that some days, trusting in God and trusting in His purposes and even continuing to find joy, even joys that go along alongside of our sorrows. Some day that was very easy and came very naturally. Other days we had to just choose to believe. And so in those days we'd say, I'm choosing to believe right now that Nick is alive and well in the presence of the Lord. I'm choosing to believe right now that God is good and that His goodness has never stopped being displayed. I'm choosing to believe right now that God is inclined toward me. His heart is inclined toward me, so He hasn't turned away from me. And so I think what we're doing in those times is not trusting our feelings, but subjecting our feelings to facts.

10:27 We're saying, I know my feelings can sway, they can come, they can go, they can be true, they can be false, but I know that what's true is completely fixed and certain. And I can then affirm those truths and demand that my feelings be subjected to those truths. We found that we needed to do that day by day. So I know with sorrow and with the stress of having to deal with this great sorrow, how did, let's talk about anxiety and the stress that comes with that, because it would be just easier to be overwhelmed. I know I go through times where I get overwhelmed with things and I have to remind myself of who God is and just like what we've been talking about, but I know anxiety is something that it affects a lot of people right now.

11:14 I think it's true of any of us when we go through something traumatic that we tend to feel that something else traumatic could happen. We sort of lose our confidence that the world is just generally okay. We go through hardships, but still just generally we can trust that we will go to bed and wake up in the morning or our kids will go to bed and wake up in the morning. But when we go through a time of trauma, that's upset a little bit and we start to look over our shoulders a little bit or get that sense that we're being stalked or something, just that other bad things are going to happen. And so anxiety really can creep up on us and we can start to live with this sense of impending doom.

11:55 I think partly that just needs to pass time to may not heal all wounds, but it really does bring soothing to our sorrows and some time needs to pass. But also we just have to ground ourselves again in the character of God. Who is this God and is he inclined for us? And if he calls us to go through difficult things, is that in some way displaying his glory? Well, of course it is. And so being very willing just to subject ourselves to God, to submit ourselves to him, to understand that when we come to God, we come to him all the way and we're willing to be used by him, even in ways that are very sorrowful, that are very hard. We're saying your purposes are greater than mine and I'm choosing them to permit you, not that God needs our permission, but permit you to use me in whatever way brings you most glory, whether that's through health or through illness, whether that's through times of great joy or times of great sorrow.

12:49 Yeah. You've broken your book down into actually the different seasons of the year and, you know, the seasons of sorrow, but seasons of the year as in winter, spring, summer, fall. In those actual physical seasons, how has your grief changed or how did you deal with sorrow in each of those different seasons? Yeah, I was a relative newcomer to grief when we entered into this season of sorrow. You know, my father died about a year prior, but you expect your parents to die. And so it's maybe a different, it can be a very difficult loss, no doubt. But you know, my dad was the kind who was always joking about his death and really looking forward to heaven.

13:31 So you know, when Nick died, it was a whole different magnitude of grief and something I really did need to, needed a lot of time to process. And I broke the book down into seasons, partly to give it just some flow to show that there is progress in our grief. And in those early days, grief is completely overwhelming. It takes over our bodies, takes over our souls, takes over our minds. It takes over our time. It's just everything. But as time goes on, we do begin to realize we're processing it, we're moving through the worst of it. And we're emerging into what you might consider a new normal. You'll never go back to the way you were. You'll never be completely the same person you were on the far side of your grief.

14:14 But you will discover a new kind of normal and you will emerge into the light again. And you'll find that even though your sorrow never goes away, there really are joys again. You really do experience joys again and joys that just kind of nestle side by side with those sorrows. They don't cancel one another out and become one thing. But you are happy and you are sad all throughout life. So that's wonderful that you're able to say that the joy does come back, that there's somewhat of a restoration of your own emotions, I guess. And even though the situation hasn't changed and won't change, but you're still able to move forward and to have the life that God has called you to live.

14:59 And I think a lot of times people get stuck in this position of, woe is me, I can't get out of this position, this thing happened to me, and there's no way out. And so I'm just going to let myself be a victim and stay here. I know that this has had to affect your ministry and the way that you're able to help other people. So could you just talk about the ministry of sorrow that God's called you to? Yeah, when we're going through a time of grief, I think we often feel like this is the end, or how can I ever go on in love and service toward others now? But if we really acknowledge God's sovereignty behind this, and we really acknowledge that somehow God's plan for me involved this sorrow, somehow God's plan for my family involved this sorrow, then we can accept that from God as something meaningful and something precious.

15:52 We can accept it from Him. And there's lots of people who are ill or whose bodies are not functioning the way they once did, and they too accept these things from God and say, okay, now I'm going to use this as an opportunity to minister to others. And when we talk about ministry, we shouldn't speak first about public ministries. People have a public-facing side and speak in front of great crowds of people. We're talking primarily in your own neighborhood and really in your own church, reaching out to people there. If we really believe that the church is a body, that it's made up of all these different parts, then we believe that God is fitting the parts together just perfectly. And when there are people who are going through sorrow, what they most need is other people who have endured sorrow.

16:36 We can come alongside them and minister to them. And we could speak of several families who had endured the same loss, who reached out to us and offered us comfort that only they could really bring because they had passed through the same dark valley. And so if we accept our sorrows as being precious to God, as being meaningful, then we can turn them right back and we can say, okay, God has given me this or God has equipped me for this. I'm now going to bring glory to Him by ministering to others. I'm going to take this sorrow and turn it outward then in love for God and service to other people. And that brings such meaning and such hope and such purpose. Yeah. And we know that Jesus was acquainted with sorrow.

17:19 The Bible tells us that in Isaiah 53 verse 3 that He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. Even with whatever you're going through right now, Jesus has that experience. He knows what that feels like. You are not alone. And the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is our great Comforter as well. And so, Tim, as our time is wrapping up here, I would like you to be able to minister directly to those that are listening and that are part of the audience right now so that they can maybe experience some of that right now of what God has brought you through.

18:01 I know the Christmas season is approaching and many people will realize there is one stalking less by the fire or fewer gifts than there used to be or one empty chair at the table. And these are difficult, difficult times. We have to acknowledge that we're Christians, not Stoics. God doesn't call us to pretend that these things don't hurt. He doesn't tell us not to weep. Jesus himself, He stood by the tomb of His friend who had died and He wept. Jesus was fully human. He truly was a man who was acquainted with sorrows, the sorrow of pain, the sorrow of loss. And so in our deep sorrows, we should always be looking to Him. And, you know, I said before that often we have trouble finding meaning in our sorrows.

18:45 But if we look at the cross, we see there this horrifying event which God had predestined, God had planned would take place, as the Apostles said later, God's hand and God's plan had said that this would happen. We can look at that event and see it was so, so horrible. And yet look at the wonderful good that God brought from it. And if God can bring the greatest good from the greatest sorrow, the greatest horror, which is the cross, our salvation coming from the death of Jesus Christ, then surely God can bring good and bring meaning and bring purpose from our losses as well. And so I encourage people, even as we look to the manger, even as we look at a baby Jesus through Christmas, I also encourage you to look to the cross, to look there to Jesus Christ suffering, Jesus Christ dying, of course, Jesus Christ rising from the dead, bringing us salvation, bringing us hope, and then bringing us the great promise of an eternity, a future where all of our tears will be dried, all of our sorrows will be soothed, and we'll be together forever in His presence.

19:50 Amen. And would you pray for our listeners right now? Yeah, I'd love to. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you are so good and so kind. We thank you that you are true to your every promise, and we rely on your promises in our times of sorrow, our times of illness, our times where we're so uncertain about what's happening or why. We do pray, Lord, that you bring comfort to those in this season who are suffering. We pray that you would be present with them through your spirit. We pray that you would be present with them through the word. We pray that you would be present with them through your people, that your people would speak the truths they need to hear in that moment. We pray that you would bring them comfort.

20:30 We pray that ultimately you would help them to look forward to the day to come when all our tears will be dried, when all our sorrows will be left in the past, when we'll be in your presence, comforted, rejoicing, worshiping forever and ever, world without end. We look forward to that day, and we pray again, Christ, come quickly. In His name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, Tim, thank you so much for just sharing about how God's brought you through your own seasons of sorrow. But I want to invite you to let people know how they can reach out to you, how they can connect with your blog, your website, how they can get their own copy of Seasons of Sorrow. Sure. Yeah, I blog every day at chalice.com, that's challies.com.

21:14 You can follow me there on Facebook, other social media channels. And I would encourage you to get the book either for your own purposes or maybe to give to someone who's going through a difficult season. It's available at Amazon, at Christian Book. Wherever good books are sold, you should be able to find a copy there. That's good. And you've got a YouTube channel as well with other things. So how do people find that? Yeah, if you go to any social media channel and just look for chalice, you should find me. It's usually youtube.com slash chalice or something like that. And one thing that there's a song I wrote with City of Light, co-wrote with the band City of Light that goes along with the book and those who are going through a difficult time may be comforted to listen to that song as well.

21:57 It's called In the Valley. In the Valley. And we'll make sure that we put a link to that in the podcast description as well. But Tim, I just want to thank you so much for sharing from your experience, for sharing from your personal experience. This isn't just something that you've thought about, but you've gone through and God has brought you through it and your family through it. And now you're helping other people just by being open and vulnerable. And so I just want to thank you again for that. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. This has been John Matarazzo for the Charisma News Podcast. God bless you.