Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast where we're all about sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and on today's episode, we are starting a multi-part series on suffering and loss and grief. I could add a whole bunch of other buzzwords like sovereignty and goodness and trials and many other aspects, but overall at the core, the idea of suffering and loss, it's something that is inherently human. We all go through it. And my guest is a dear brother and a friend in the Lord and a fellow Canadian. I am biased towards him. I don't want to take a lot of runway here at the front end. I just want to let you know I think this series will be life-changing. It will be a comfort to you, and it'll be edifying for those of you who either are going through something or will, which is all of us, or you want to know how to walk with people and get answers to some of life's biggest questions about loss and trials and suffering. I'm gonna add them in right now. Tim Chalice, thank you, brother, so much for being on the For the Gospel podcast.
SPEAKER_00You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, the reason I wanted to have you on is because the Chalice family has gone through something and done it in a way that I know you don't want to be put on a pedestal, but you've done it in a way that is God honoring, that is very authentic, and uh I'm just gonna say downright clear, even though you talk about the fog of loss and the darkness, you did something that I don't think many people do or maybe have the opportunity to do, but you took your whole blog platform, you took your whole ministry, and you basically allowed people to go on that journey with you, with Eileen, with your daughters, with your family. And I want you to to jump in, but first I do want to highlight um you wrote a book out of all this, so right off the top, if people kind of know who you are, or they say, Oh, I've been wanting to get that book, or I meant to, it's called Seasons of Sorrow. It's right here. And this is the book that takes people into a lot more than what we'll even be able to get to in this podcast. But your son, Nick, at 20 years old, went to be home with the Lord as a believer, and yet the journey has been uh weighty and clear. I'd love for you to kind of open us up and tell us a little bit about your life, your ministry, where you are in the motherland, which is Canada, and uh where you guys serve, and then let's get into your story and Nick's story as well.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, so I am a writer, blogger, author by trade, live just outside Toronto, Canada, a little suburb called Oakville, a great place to live. Uh, we've been here for over 20 years, and around 20 years now, I guess. Uh, been married to Aileen for 25. The Lord blessed us with three children, Nick, whom you've mentioned, and then Abigail, who is currently 21 years old and is married to Nathan, and then Michaela, who's 17 years old. Both of them are at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, studying biblical counseling. Uh, I worship and serve at Grace Fellowship Church, where I'm one of the pastors slash elders. I've been doing that for maybe 12 or 13 years now, and truly a joy to worship in a congregation uh that loves the Lord and seeks to honor him week by week.
SPEAKER_01It's awesome. Well, I'm grateful for your ministry. I know over the years we've gotten to interact, and if people haven't, I would encourage people to go uh to Chalice, C-H-A-L-L-I-E-S dot com. And you have blogs, you have videos, a ton. It's a massive library. How many years have you been doing chalice.com?
SPEAKER_00I think it's been it's been 20 years of daily. It's been about 22 in total, I think, since I registered the name and started writing.
SPEAKER_01Incredible. Yeah, you are a good example, I think, for a lot of us in ministry of a faithful pastor just answering a boatload of questions and walking people through things. If uh someone right here was listening or watching and you think I want to know things theologically or go on a journey, I would go to chalice.com and kind of click. It's like every topic under the sun. Uh but uh for now and for our purposes with this series, I'd love for you to to start out by talking about your son Nick and his love for the Lord from a young age, his conversion and the closeness of your family, and kind of take us into team chalice.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. So Aileen and I got married in 1998, a very long time ago, and we're married for not too long when we thought we're poor as anything, we can't go anywhere, do anything fun, so why don't we just start a family? And uh just kind of made that decision. Like, yeah, this sounds fun, let's add kids. And so uh very quickly the Lord granted us Nick as our firstborn and to be the only son, firstborn child, and uh followed, of course, a couple years later by Abby, and a couple years beyond that by Michaela. Uh Nick was uh a great kid, just one of those kids who's sinful, obviously, but um in his own way, just loved his parents, inclined toward obedience, whether through fear or whether through something else, I don't know, but um just a good and easy kid to raise and a very thoughtful child. And when he was, you know, in his low teens, high tens, high tweens, low teens, we'll say, um, he was he started to really think about the gospel and think about his own spiritual state. And he wanted to be very certain he wasn't just following mom and dad. He wanted to be certain, even at a young age, that if he was going to follow the Lord, that was because he truly believed the gospel. And so he lay in bed one night and it just occurred to him that I am saved and God does love me and I will live for him, and uh really was transformed from that point on. And uh as he grew, started to talk to some of the elders in the church and say, just asking them, Do you think maybe I could be called to ministry? Would you see that that is a possibility for me? And that was affirmed by the pastors. They saw him as a godly young man who was interested in pursuing godly character and serving God's people, and so he went off to Southern Seminary slash boys college, voice for his undergrad and seminary for his graduate studies or his MDI studies, and uh he was studying there still in his third year of a five-year program when uh the Lord took him to himself.
SPEAKER_01Wow. I mean, could you take us into uh to that part of Nick's life and yours and your family's? You're you're getting into that phase of life where you're getting excited. Your son is on the pathway to ministry, a godly young man, uh in a godly relationship, and all of that, and you as parents are watching all that unfold, and you can retell this however uh edifying or however comfortable and whatever level you want to take us into it. I know you've done such a great job in your book and online. Uh, but share with us kind of the timeline of events from November 2020 through the first 30 days, and we'll talk about the days after, but kind of take us into uh November 2020 and and even the the months leading up to that semester.
SPEAKER_00Well, November 2020, people may recall, uh, was in the middle of a pandemic, and we lived in a different country than Nick went to school, and so there were two sets of rules, and you may recall that all the borders between the countries pretty well shut through the pandemic. So it was a very tricky time, and even uh Abby had just gone down as well in August to start her freshman year, and when I took them down, I had to go across into the States and quarantine with them for two weeks. We had to isolate in a little uh apartment, and after two weeks we emerged. I dropped them off at school, then I came home, I then had to quarantine on this side of the border for two weeks. So I don't need to go into it, but you you remember that context. And this was before this was early days, before there were vaccines, before people had any real hope. We still didn't know what was going on. So it was a difficult context. And then um November 3rd, uh, which some would remember as the day there was a presidential election in the States, um I was at home with Aileen. I was just uh looking forward to the kids returning, actually. American Thanksgiving was coming up, that's when Voice closes down for the year and the kids come home, and uh Nick was going to bring his fiance back. We were gonna get some time together as a family. So I just found myself doing some household chores, doing some painting and stuff, and uh suddenly this text message came in to Aileen, and it was Abby's new boyfriend who um texted Aileen to say, I don't know if you heard, but Nick was playing a game and he collapsed and had a seizure, and that's all I know, but I thought you would want to know. And um uh the the feeling of helplessness, um, knowing so at that time you could not drive over the borders. The U.S. had closed the land borders to Canadians, and so we didn't really know what to do. Most planes weren't flying, etc. So we just thought, okay, we'll we'll wait and get some more information. And uh more text messages came in from him and from others, eventually from Abby, just saying ambulance had been called, and we got the word CPR texted through and other things, and um that led through the evening until eventually we got a phone call from the hospital, and it was the uh the doctor at the ER who had said, Um, I'm sorry, we did everything we could, but we couldn't save his life. And so here we were in Canada holding a paintbrush and uh just completely unable to really know what to do. This is nothing we had ever considered before, except in our you know, darkest nightmares that one of our children could not only die, but die in a different country, and when we were unable to get to him, and with his sister there. His sister and his friends had been with them, they were just playing a game together, playing a game of kickball or something like that at a park beside the school, and he had just simply collapsed. And so his sister had been there, she had seen it, she had seen them trying to do CPR on him, his friends, his fiance, everyone was there, his whole circle. Yeah, and uh yeah, so we were we were stuck in Canada. Um, thankfully, we did find a way that we could fly from Canada to the US for whatever reason, you couldn't drive across the border, you could fly over the border. And so we managed to find a flight out, and uh by early the next morning we're reunited as a family in Louisville, and then just sort of emerging into this time of of grief.
SPEAKER_01What are I mean, I I I have so many thoughts running through my head because I in your book you you talk about that whole journey, and that's why I said earlier, I'm so grateful you did that, because we we get a uh a front row seat, not as a spectator ooing and awing, but truly like with you looking and thinking and your your flight and the stuff you wrote and the way you were processing it all. And one of the things I think is so edifying about the way you've been transparent is there are so many things that people, let's say we uh don't always understand about grieving parents and about families. What are some of the things that uh you now understand having uh having well I I wouldn't even say having gone through, because in talking to parents who they have a child go to heaven, they they've told me before, uh it's not something like you you go through and you're over it. It's not something you just you're like, oh we we're done that. It's like losing a limb. It's not there, but you feel like it is, and then it's never gonna grow back per se. You kind of just learn to live without it, but it's never the same. And in going through what you went through, what are some of the things that we can understand to be better servants, better supporters? What was it like? Were there feelings of frustration as you're I mean, with the with the borders? I mean, I remember watching all this stuff and feeling for you the heartache of it all. Can can you take us into some of those understandings?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so our experience is not authoritative, but I think it is typical. We've interacted with a good number of parents who have gone through very similar circumstances, and I think some of the common factors is the way a loss like this, and perhaps especially when it's sudden, you don't have time to prepare, um, is really incapacitating. And so you lose the ability to function in normal ways. And um we yeah, we we found that we needed to rely on friends. I even I was I found myself making weird decisions or pondering weird options. So I had to turn to a friend, my closest friend, and say, I'm gonna need you to make decisions on my behalf for a while, and I'm not gonna make any big decisions without bouncing it off the use of funeral arrangements, or you know, there was a body that had to be transported from the United States to Canada, which is always difficult during COVID, especially difficult. And so decisions like that, I just wasn't in my right mind, and so I needed to hand those over. Um, I learned very quickly to distrust myself, and I think that was wise. Um I talk in the book about the fog that kind of sweeps over you, some would call a brain fog or something. And again, I think it's you're you're so focused on just getting through each moment, your emotions are just so out of lack that uh you you do lose your normal capacity to function. Um and so yeah, we had to rely on other people and be willing to rely on them. And uh one of the joys we found was that Christians were so willing and eager to step up. So uh one of our friends and his wife, they found a way across the border as well. And that meant they would have to quarantine. By then the U.S. didn't make you quarantine anymore. But that meant when they returned to Canada, they had to spend two weeks in their basement without leaving. That's the kind of love people showed us, and even the community at Boyce and Southern and Third Avenue Baptist Church, where Nick was a member, were so, so kind. They just went all out in loving us, caring for us, providing for our needs, and so on. So we were so well cared for in that time, and we really took that as God's love for us. You know, God tells us he loves us, and we know that in many ways, but one of the ways we know it is when his people, acting on his behalf, express God's love, the love that he's placed within them. And so it was a huge, huge blessing to see uh God loving us through his people.
SPEAKER_01So helpful. And that I mean, that answers, I think, one of the questions I would have, which is what uh role did your church and your close friends play? I want to ask you a question that I recall you explaining and helping people understand. When you guys were in your initial period of mourning, you go back to Canada, you on uh page 12 of your book, you talk about the heavy darkness. Would you say that some of and not this would not diminish at all what anyone would go through in normal cultural circumstances? But we were during COVID and all of that with the extra laws. Was there a weightiness and a heaviness to staying in your house? Didn't you have to quarantine and just stay alone? Like no one's hugging you. The brothers aren't I mean, maybe people are sneaking over, but people it it was pretty tough. You're not being hugged on, loved on, held, your your friends, your peers. What was it like mourning almost alone with your family, but longing for others?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It wasn't almost alone, it was alone in the sense that by while we live in a very tight, we live in tiny little townhouses, there's about 20 neighbors who face us. Uh, we weren't willing to sneak people into the house or to violate the rules. Um, because in this area, that would have been, I think people would have taken great offense to that, um, some knowing what we had been through, most knowing what we were going through, but still in uh in this area, people were really expected to follow those those laws. So yeah, for two weeks we were on our own once we returned. And there's a sense in which that was okay because we are alone type people, you know, and we it gave us room and space to to process it on our own. Uh and people were able to, you know, bring food by and leave it on the doorstep, or um, some church members, their kids came by with little signs and stood on the sidewalk and stuff. And, you know, I mean, people did what they could. And there was, of course, Zoom and everything else. So people were still involved. But yeah, we're we're on our own. Uh, and we did really miss that. We missed that sense of community. And I think what we missed most of all is our church was meeting in person at that time, as I as I recall. Um, and what we missed was the community grieving together. So we could easily think that this was our loss. It took some time until a couple weeks later, when we gathered with our church again, we realized, oh, it's all of our loss. Because Nick wasn't just ours, he was the church's. He he had been a member of that church, and he he was a son of the church. And in some ways, I think many people thought he might be part of the future of the church. Uh, we're not exactly overflowing with young men in the church who want to be pastors, and yet here was one who who was eager to be and was getting the training. And so um I think we missed that. It took some time for us to see that, and when we did, it was so comforting in its own way to know that our grief was was shared. We weren't we weren't mourning alone.
SPEAKER_01Amazing, so helpful. I I want to ask you about uh something that you wrote on page 45 of your book. You say, perhaps the reality is that I fear God in a new way and that some kind of innocence has been shattered. I remember reading that and it was raw and very clear, and then you go on to say, before Nick's death, I understood God had power, but now I know that he now I know that he has power. And then you go on with a few more sentences, and then you say, Before life was easy because God's sovereignty always seemed inclined toward the things that I wanted anyway. But now life is hard because I see that God's sovereignty may also be inclined toward the things that I dread, the things I would never wish for. Can you unpack that further and just commentate on what the Lord was teaching you and that new reality?
SPEAKER_00So Seasons of Sorrow was a book I wrote in real time. There's a sense in which it's an immature reflection on grief, and that it it unfolded literally day by day and month by month. The entire book was written within that first year. Um many books on grief, their their strength is that they're written 10 or 20 years later as you look back on it and you've given a lot more time to ponder it than to your loss and to put together a theology of grief. I think the strength of seasons of sorrow is that it's written in the moment. And so um it reflects some of that urgency and some of that deep grief that in time does fade a little bit. And you know, as well, when we look back on something like COVID now, we see a thing. Uh what we forget was it was months of change, changed information, changed regulation, changed things. And our grief is the same. It's hard to, as we look back, it feels tighter and easier in a sense to figure out than it really was. And so I wrote that as an article I put out on my website and initially, and was surprised at the the reaction from people who said, yes, me too. And what I was reflecting on there is that we are called to fear God, and it's good to fear God. Um the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, we're told. Um and so that kind of fear is a right apprehension of who God is and who we are in relation to God. And so we rightly fear him. We have that right assessment. But after a loss, I think many people are afraid of God in a different sense, in that um, he has now exercised his power in a way that has hurt us, in a way that has brought us something that we would not have chosen, something we did not want. Um I don't mean hurt us ultimately, I just mean hurt our feelings or wounded us in some way. Um and so I think we now see God as powerful in a different way. And as I said in that chapter, my life had been so easy, easy enough that I would talk to Eileen sometimes and say, I think we need to be prepared for troubles to come because our lives have been so easy. I read church history, I read good books, and I see people suffering, people sorrowing, and we just haven't experienced much of that. So I think we need to prepare ourselves, um, not in a kind of fatalistic way, but this just seems to be the common experience of people. And then this came, and then we we saw God exercise his strength, exercise his power in a different way. And for a time we were afraid of God, sort of looking over our shoulder, wondering what else he might do, how else he might display his power in a way that ultimately we were willing to accept was God's good and perfect will, but that doesn't make it a whole lot less painful in the moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In our next episode, I want to uh I want to dig into that a lot. I have some big questions for you as far as you know what what does God Allow? What does he do to us? What should someone right now who's listening and they're thinking, man, my life has actually gone really well? Am I am I am I due? Like am I gonna get it? Or like if everything's going good uh for me, then God will do something to someone in my family to sort of be. I want you to unpack that theologically and pastorally. Um but and here and now, I I want to ask you about the brevity of life, and that's kind of attached to some of what we've already been talking about and what where we'll go. But you uh have a chapter, it's titled How Long Is the Dash? I don't I don't want to compete with which chapters were better, they they were very impactful. I'm not a big crier, even though I'm a passionate guy, but uh there were there were moments where I I for sure I wouldn't even doubt saying that I I cried. How long is the dash was a weighty one, filled with emotions and thoughts for me about the brevity of life, because you you give this picture, you're talking about his his gravestone and everything, and you say to people, you just look, and the dash is just a tiny little line start, finish all that. You kind of take it further. Could you talk a little bit about the brevity of life and about the dash and how you've reflected on that even now?
SPEAKER_00So at the end of our lives, you and I too will eventually be buried somewhere in all likelihood, and we'll have a little date that represents 1970 something for me, 19 something something for you, to whatever date we die, there'll be a little dash between those two numbers, and there's a sense in which that dash will just stand in for your lifetime. That'll be the representation that from that date to that date you walked this earth and you loved and were loved, and it just seems such a like such a sad thing that your life should be encapsulated in a in a dash. And one day at the cemetery, I just sort of looking around and seeing this little girl buried right near neck who lived just to be about 10 years old, and then just down the row, somebody who lived to be 80 years old, and sort of had the thought, and in the sweep of eternity, what's the difference? It's a very, very minor difference. And and from there I got to thinking, well, what if the dash on your gravestone was proportional to the amount of time you left? So that 10-year-old would have just a tiny little dash, and Nick would have twice as long as that, and an 80-year-old would have eight times longer than that, that 10-year-old, and so on. And from there I just got to thinking, well, what if that dash represented not just the time we're on earth, but the time we're with the Lord as well? And then those dashes would extend not just across a stone, but they would extend across the city, across the nation, around the world, these dashes that just go on and on and on. I think that was a helpful way for me to just um ponder the fact that life truly is eternal when we're with the Lord. Our lives do not end at the grave. Something ends, but something begins and then something carries over through all of eternity. And just that that thought of these little dashes expanding out to fill, to fill the earth was really comforting to me to help me understand. No, Nick is his life is over on this earth, but he's not over. He lives on, and when the new heavens and the new earth come, when when God sees fit to to bring this thing to an end and start the next thing, then uh he will live again and uh he'll have a body again, he'll be joined together, body and soul, and live forever on this new heaven, new earth.
SPEAKER_01It's such a helpful thing. Yeah, that chapter is the the ultimate reflection in a lot of ways for people to think about what you call our own little while. That's that's what it is when we're here. Can you take us into uh the life of a parent and the process of a family when it was time to clean out his room? And I want to ask you the question why did you wait the amount of time you did? Not that it's wrong or right or that your experience, your conviction or your decision has to be everybody's command, but you have some people who uh very rarely or never change the room of a loved one who passes, and then you have sort of the memorialized, of course, if you go see like ligonier, I think sproll's office is still the same way it was, and there's that aspect. And then some people do it right away, and neither seems right or wrong, it seems very personal. And I love how in the end you you gave the room a name. I want you to talk about that and talk about her, and explain to us the process that you guys went through so people can be encouraged and also understand the grief process for our friends.
SPEAKER_00You touch on something important there, which is okay, there are certain things we must do and must not do in grief. So we must not mourn as those who have no hope. We must not curse God or uh act as if God Himself has done wrong. Um, we must continue to be joyful even in our sorrow. So there's biblical commands that do pertain to us in our grief. And I think it's important to understand when you're grieving, you're not exempted from God's commands. There's still a responsibility upon you, even in your worst day, in your hardest moments. Of course, God forgives if you do sin, but there's still a responsibility on you to live as a Christian. Um so there are there is absolute right and wrong, but then there's a lot that will vary based on people, circumstances, personality, culture, all sorts of things. And this is where you get into things like cleaning out a room at some point, um, or you know, getting into a room again at some point, you're gonna have to do something with that room. Um, I've known people who within days go in and they bag everything up, and that's part of their coping mechanism, just get it out of sight and clear it away. And perhaps especially if that room was shared with somebody else, and then those reminders are just too present and too poignant for the other person. Um I've heard of a good number of people who just sell their house and move away. They can't bring themselves to go back, and especially if the the loved one died in the house, and it just seems for some people it's it's too much. For us, we waited a few months before we could go back into Nick's room and clean it out. And I think I could have been a little bit faster, but for Aileen, that was her pacing when she felt able to cope with it. And part of the strangeness of it is to go into somebody else's space and to have to make decisions about somebody else's possessions. Who am I to look at somebody else's things and say, keep it, throw it out? Important, not important, significant, insignificant. It just felt like such a violation. I would never do that to your house. Why would I do it to my son's room? Um and then there's just a sense of finality to it as well. And so uh several times Nick had gone to school and returned. He had gone to study and come back. And so the room had been empty for a time, but then he had come back to it. And in cleaning it up and changing it around, it was our our way of just admitting that he would never come back. It wasn't going to be his room anymore. Those things didn't belong to him anymore. Um we we don't take anything with us to heaven, we leave it all behind, and it becomes somebody else's. And so there was just that sense of uh finality to it. This is this is the end. And so it took us some time, but um one of the ways we coped was to take everything out and just completely change it around, got rid of all the furniture, got rid of all the possessions, and started afresh. And as we did that, we realized that we now had a room for Abby and we had a room for Michaela, but we didn't have a room for Rin, who is Nick's fiance. And so as we reset the room, we thought, well, let's make it a I mean a guest room as well, but let's make it a feminine room, let's make it suitable for Rin, and we'll call it Rin's room. Uh so when she comes, she wants to spend time with us, she always has a place to stay. And um, one of the the great joys uh that's come from all this is Rin really has become part of our family and um I mean visits us and vacations with us, and we were glad to just fold her into her family, and she was glad to be folded in, and it's been a tremendous blessing to us all, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you guys have navigated that so well and modeled something I think that's beautiful, and often left in a uh a relegated corner, maybe, of of Christian grief and Christian relationships and different circles. You wrote about this and it was so eye-opening. What about her and that sort of now but not yet? Like when you're engaged, it's it can seem like people overlook uh her grief or her title or her situation, because it's like well, you were you were literally almost you know his wife, and but you weren't, and so it it can sometimes feel very minimized, I think, for people who are engaged, where in their heart they've already covenanted. It's it is the now but not yet. Can you uh kind of share wisdom and insight on that, and for you guys at least personally, how that process has been an encouragement to her or maybe even to others?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so there is no great category for what Rin experienced. Uh, she was more than a girlfriend and less than a wife, and so she didn't have any of the rights or responsibilities of a wife. She couldn't make those decisions for Nick. And in the end, we decided that he would be buried here with our family close to our home rather than there, which might have been closer to her. But that seemed appropriate in the fact that they had not yet truly covenanted with one another, and um, even that she would have a future, and he wouldn't. And of course, our hope for her is that she'll find somebody else, and uh, as the Lord provides, and that she'll be able to be happily married, and just the dream she had with Nick would be able to be fulfilled with somebody else, and that's absolutely good and wonderful if the Lord provides that. So um, but what we did want to do was uh be there for her. We had come to love her and come to accept her as a daughter, daughter-in-law, and um and as part of our love for Nick, we we can't love him in the way we did, but we can love him by loving the person he loved. And so, similar to you know, somebody who loses a child but has grandchildren, I think you love those grandchildren all the more because they're in a sense the most tangible expression of that person you lost. And so we love Rin for who she is, but we love her as well for what she represents. That she she was the love of Nick's life, and uh they they were close to being married, and that was certainly their dream and their plan.
SPEAKER_01It's insightful, and I think it it gives a category to something I've never uh really thought much about, or perhaps gives a roadmap for a category that most of us don't think about.
SPEAKER_00Uh a couple more questions for I've had a number of people Yeah I'm just gonna cut you off here. I've known a number of people, or I've had a number who have reached out to me and said, I'm in the same situation. So it is a more common category than we think, but again, we just don't really hear about it. So I've had a few fiancés reach out and say, Could you put me in touch with Rin so I can hear from her? Because again, I'm I'm sort of between these categories, and not all of them are embraced by the family that's experienced the loss. Some it's easier for them to remove that person again as that sort of tangible evidence of their child. And so I think some people respond differently, which is to sort of push them away just out of self-preservation.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Now, what an unexpected ministry for her to have and to be able to speak wisdom uh into that so well. The the next question I have is sort of I guess personal and insightful, or hoping to get insight from you, you'll you'll be the one who's insightful. But I've got a beloved friend, he's a man becoming an elder at our church, and he has a son who went to be with the Lord at a at a younger age. And uh we speak about Stephen, that's his name, uh almost every couple of times we're together. And uh Ron is my brother's name, he's always beaming when he talks about him. And as as you talk about your children, can you help us gain insight into uh what you write about a little bit in your chapter? You you wonder what to do with the question, how many children do you have? Uh how much do you talk about them? Do you even a question for you? Do you wish when people are sort of avoiding it or not asking, is it a joy for you? Isn't it a joy for you to talk about Nick and talk about his life? And um, you know, do you tell people you have three or two or you're two on earth and one in heaven? I mean, how do you process and communicate all of that? I know how Ron does, and it's an encouragement, but I also think you know, your insight is so helpful here.
SPEAKER_00So that's a question you get asked surprising surprisingly often in life, and you don't really think about it, I think, as long as you just have an answer that's easy and joyful. How many children do you have? Uh when you're asked it after losing a child, it does become more complicated. And I think most people end up doing what we do, which is the answer depending on the circumstance. And so I was at the bank a while back, and he was sort of the guy was sort of making casual conversation and asked how many children I had, and I said three, and then he pressed in a little bit harder, and then he just got so flustered when eventually I had to say, well, my son passed away, and he just got embarrassed and flustered, and I realized sometimes it's easier just to say two, and that's good enough for the circumstances and you know, very businessy type situations or something. But more often than not, I'll say, I have three children, and um I'll say that to honor Nick. I'll say that because it's true, and I'll say that because sometimes it leads to significant conversations. Some people hear it, and you know, if it does lead there, they'll ask, Well, uh, tell me about your children, and then you have to say that one of them passed away. And uh, for some people, they again they cringe, they can't deal with it, but for other people, and it opens up some interesting conversations, some opportunities to give a book away or something. Um, my wife has a whole little ministry of giving away seasons of sorrow to other grieving moms at the cemetery. She goes there often, and if she sees a mom alone, she'll go up and chat with them and give them a book, and everyone's been willing to accept it and willing to read it. So uh yeah, I think we we generally answer in that way. And I think what most people don't understand about losing a child is your love for your child continues to grow even though they're gone, and maybe because they're gone. And I'd I've tried to do this before, it hasn't worked, but I'm gonna try it again. There's a certain kind of love a parent has for their weakest child. So there's a kind of love a parent has for his child who's disabled. He has love for all of his children, but there's that special heart of tenderness to the weakest of his children. Um he looks out for that child in a different way. Really, the whole family does, in a sense. And by dying, your child has become the weakest of your children. And so I think your heart goes out to that child in a different way, in a way that just keeps your love growing all the more. And, you know, especially when we're Christians and we can look forward to being reunited with our children, then there's all the more reason to have that love continue to grow, to continue to appreciate that person for their strengths, to know that there's nothing not to appreciate about them anymore, because all their weaknesses have been taken away, and just to to long for the day when you'll be reunited, get to see them again.
SPEAKER_01Amen. That's so helpful and incredibly insightful. Do you uh will you let me ask you a couple more real quick?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but first I want to say one more thing, which is I I should have said this before. Keep talking to parents whose children have passed away, keep talking to them about that child. Uh, we you know, a few weeks after we got out of quarantine, got back to church, etc., we stood in front of the church. Aileen and I did, just at the end of one of our services, and we thanked everybody for their love and care and concern, but also said, not only are we giving you permission to keep talking about Nick, but we're asking you to. You have memories that are precious. You have memories of him, you have photos of him, you have uh have you've had experiences with him, and we want to hear about those. Um, you won't make us sad because we're sad already. Uh you'll just be uh really, you'll be encouraging us and helping us because we want the memory to stay alive. Uh every parent's fear, I think, is that their child disappears from memory, and then it's almost like their life didn't matter, like it didn't count. We know better, but on an emotional level, we can feel that. And so I think it's important to, if you have memories to share with a parent, talk to them, tell them. They might cry, but that's okay. You haven't made them sad, they're sad already, and they'll be glad to have heard those those stories, whether they're deep and wonderful, or they're just trite and silly. They're both just a joy for parents to hear.
SPEAKER_01People do not always know what to do, and I think the great fear is that we uh would make you cry, and now we feel as though we've wounded you or caused you some sorrow when you know your wisdom says the opposite. What a tremendously helpful thing. Can you uh talk about what you call in your book the Ministry of Sorrow?
SPEAKER_00I did a lot of reading in the early days, and a lot of that reading was of authors who had lived, died, ministered in a time where child loss was far more prevalent than it is today, when basically every family who had more than uh one or two children could expect they would they would lose some of them. Um and so there was a lot of writing in that era about the loss of children from a pastoral perspective and a parental family perspective. And one of the messages I found repeated again and again was something along the lines of the people communicating to the parents, I'm very sorry, and that's extremely sad, but don't let that take you out of the race. You need to press on in life. You can't just give yourself over to the sorrow in such a way that you become essentially resigned to the Lord's purposes or useless to the Lord's purposes. God has purpose for you in life. Nobody but you can fulfill the duty God's given you, nobody but you can steward the gifts he's given to you. And so despite that sorrow, you need to press on, press on to the finish line. And then the secondary messaging was not only despite your sorrow, but because of your sorrow and through your sorrow. So if we really believe that God is sovereign, we believe that in some way he's connected to this loss. In some way, this loss was God's will. And it's not given to you to crush you, to remove you from what God has called you to. Your task in this life is to love God and serve his people. You know, love your neighbor as yourself, love the Lord your God. This is what you're called to do. And God has now equipped you to do that in a special way. He's given you this deep sorrow so with the comfort with which you've been comforted, you can comfort other people. And so the ministry of sorrow is essentially that accepting God's sovereignty, accepting God's purpose in it, and now turning that outward in love for God and service to his people.
SPEAKER_01What a divine thing, but what a tension, I think, for people to say, okay, so as a Christian, this is just life then. I just I live in the middle of this tension, to which you would say Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I I want to make a clear distinction that I don't uh uh we've had to distinguish between why God did it and how God is using it. So we can't say that God took Nick so that somebody else might come to faith, or God took Nick so that I could write a book, or God took Nick so that Alien and I could be better equipped to minister to other parents who have lost the children. That is massive oversimplification, and God doesn't give us the right, or he doesn't call us to interpret his providence in that way. But what we can do is look for evidences of how God is using it. We can let the secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed, which is how God is using it, the effects it it's had on other people, the effects it's had on us, what it's prepared and equipped us for, that we can see, that we can rejoice over, that we can embrace, but we just have to hold those two things separately. We don't know why God did it. We don't know his purposes, we know who God is, so we know those purposes are good, but I'm not gonna say, oh, I know why God did it. He did it so that I could do this. That's that's making something like Romans 8.28 way too trite, way too simplistic.
SPEAKER_01Well said, and probably liberating for who knows how many people who get into this uh we get you know, maybe come into contact with the doctrines of grace, or we begin to understand sovereignty, or we read a book and all of a sudden it's like, well, everything we start thinking we know, and everything's got just a quick uh firing off of some theological truth, and it's just a one-liner, and it sounds really simple and clean and smart, but in the end, I think what you just said puts us back in our place to say, Well, hold on, you can know a lot about sovereignty and you can know a lot about what God's doing and everything. Great theology, but we are mere men and always will be. There are the secret things that belong to God. Man, that's good, Tim. Okay, last question. And this is uh one I'm I'm kind of excited for. Can you talk about the kind of impact that Nick had? I know you shared a little bit about the way he was at the beginning of the journey to ministry and how people were encouraged, but talk about some of the stories that have flowed in from fellow classmates, obviously the church that you're a part of. And now even as I would assume, it's just a guess, but that hundreds of thousands, I don't know, maybe millions of readers and viewers and people picking up your book, they're reading these things, and there's uh an unexpected ministry of encouragement, of healing, ministry of sorrow for hearts. Tell us some of the stories of impact to finish out this episode.
SPEAKER_00I think most of what we've heard has been the impact on young people, and all young people live with this conceit you did, I did, that we're essentially immortal, or that people don't die until they're in their 80s or 90s. They we all believe and assume we get to live a long life, we get to experience all that life brings, and then we get to, at the end, grow old and die. Um, Nick's death confronted a lot of people with the fact that even if that's the normal course of affairs, that's not the given state of affairs, we can't assume it. And I think that's where a lot of people had to say, no, I need to understand that I could die tomorrow. There was nothing, nothing in Nick's death that was, you can say that was an unusual circumstance. God just took his life, God just stopped his heart and took him. And that confronted a lot of people to think, am I ready? Uh, what if that had been me? Would I have gone to heaven or would I have been uncertain? Who knows? Uh so uh we've heard a good number of stories of people who um through that have had to essentially just examine their own faith, and and a number of them have realized they weren't saved. They were assuming they were coasting along. And then for others, it sobered them up. Even if they were already saved, they realized that life really is short and our mission may be much shorter than we think it is the time that God gives us. And so there's no point dilly-dallying and waiting around. We need to get on with the business of life instead of assuming we'll have decades to figure it out. So I think those have been the ones that have encouraged us the most. And beyond that, what I've seen it do in the lives of Aileen and my girls has been just tremendously encouraging. So my girls were young, 17 and 14 or something when they lost their brother. Um, both had very different experiences. Michaela being home with us and having to live with a couple of parents who were just traumatized and basket cases for a time, and Abby, who had witnessed it all and really needed some therapy and um just help to work that through, some real trauma that she experienced, different experiences, but both of them emerged with their faith strengthened rather than diminished, and loving the Lord rather than turning on him. And it's always baffled me that two people can experience the same thing, and one runs right to Jesus and the other runs right away. Um, but both my girls ran to him, and then Aileen as well. Um, she when we met and married, she was just a brand new Christian. I shared the gospel with her, she came to faith uh through through me, through my family, and uh her faith hadn't been tested that much, even though she'd been a Christian for 20 years. It it had been quite easy, and it was a joy to see her thrive. As somebody who's prone to worry and um prone, just one of her temptations is to fret and worry, and especially about she sometimes jokes now, her two big fears in life is that she'd experience a pandemic and that she'd experience the death of a child. The third is tornadoes. She hasn't had a tornado yet, but she had the death of a child during a pandemic, and yet that didn't drive her off or cause her to revoke her faith. In fact, it caused her to just dive even deeper into those truths she believed and to lean even more on the Lord. So if there's been any encouragement that surpasses all the others, it's just seeing my wife and daughters not only survive it, but really strengthen their faith through it.
SPEAKER_01Oh, brother, that is beyond encouraging. And as we wrap up this episode, I just want to say thank you. We're gonna talk in the next episode about God's goodness, God's sovereignty, how in the world all that plays in. And then in the third episode of the series, you're gonna talk about growing close to the Lord and how in the world it's possible that those so I don't I don't want to spoil that, even though right now all I want to do is ask you more about what you just started talking about. But Tim, thank you so much for doing this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my pleasure.
SPEAKER_01For those of you who are watching this, I'm gonna hold up a copy of Seasons of Sorrow. This is what it looks like. Real clean, real great, modern, sharp looking. Uh, it's easy, it's accessible. I have read through it, it's phenomenal. If you're listening to this on Apple or Spotify, the book is by Tim Chalice. It's called Seasons of Sorrow, subtitle The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God. I'm not just saying this. I think every single Christian should read it for two reasons. Number one, uh, you're going to go through this or you have, and you need to be equipped and prepared. But number two, someone you know and someone you love in the body of Christ is going to, and you need to be equipped and prepared. Uh, jump in with us in the next episode as we talk further about God's sovereignty, about God's goodness, and more. Thanks as always for uh listening, for watching, for supporting. If you're brand new to For the Gospel, be sure to subscribe on our YouTube channel. You can watch all of the episodes along with a lot of our free teaching that's there. Or if you have social media, be sure to follow us there. If you want information about the ministry or to check out our team or articles, you can go to for thegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with Tim with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.