Purple Room: Where Hope Confronts Loss

By J. Pruett Wood

In every life, there comes a time when nothing, including God, seems to make sense. There are times when we figuratively find ourselves hanging from a fifteen thousand-foot cliff by one slender rope, completely out of options. We call out to God for rescue, and His answer is to cut the rope. Or worse yet, God Himself may appear to cut the rope for us. What do we do and where do we turn when the life we had imagined disintegrates before our eyes? Who do we blame? Is the comfortable, happy life that we have come to expect a lie? Confronting his youngest daughters diagnosis of pediatric bone cancer, as well as his own struggle with cancer left John Wood questioning a seemingly invisible God. Encounter the journey and discover where Wood eventually landed following his sojourn in the valley of the shadow of death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781449764326

J. Pruett Wood

John Wood graduated from Harding University with an undergraduate degree in business management and later earned a master’s degree in educational administration. He spent eighteen years in the high-stress world of retail buying and store management. In February of 1994, returning home from a business trip, the small commuter plane that he boarded along with twenty-one other passengers went down in a sugar cane field in New Roads Parrish, Louisiana. The experience jolted him into understanding that the life he had worked to create was slowly unraveling. Following a dramatic change in careers and a new sense of fulfillment, his life was once again humming along at full speed, when on one heart-wrenching day in December of 1999, he felt it explode.

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Copyright © 2012, 2014 by J. Pruett Wood.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6432-6 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6433-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6434-0 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915171

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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WestBow Press rev. date: 07/28/14

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1:     Winnowing

Chapter 2:     Shock

Chapter 3:     Illness Journal

Chapter 4:     Freefall

Chapter 5:     God’s First Response

Chapter 6:     Down The Rabbit Hole

Chapter 7:     Another Conversation

Chapter 8:     A Welcome Respite

Chapter 9:     Where Is God?

Chapter 10:   The Freight Train

Chapter 11:   The Long Climb Up

Chapter 12:   Sliding Back Down

Chapter 13:   Darkness Descends

Chapter 14:   You’re Not Coming Home

Chapter 15:   Timing Is Everything

Chapter 16:   Let The Healing Begin

Chapter 17:   A Life Of Daring Adventure

Chapter 18:   Dreams

Chapter 19:   Final Thoughts

The Story Continues

Epilogue

Letters To Kelsey

Suzanne’s Diary

To Suzanne,

my solid ground in the quicksand of life.

To my three wonderful children,

John, Katie, and Kelsey.

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Introduction

A few years ago, Apple Computer did a Super Bowl commercial. Over the course of the commercial, several famous people were seen. All of them had one thing in common. They were incredibly different and incredibly unconventional in their thinking and their actions. They were at times viewed as crackpots, silly dreamers, and just plain weird. But they also had something else in common. They all brought enlightenment to the world at large. They all effectively changed the world, not because they were like the rest of the world, but conversely, because they were different.

Are you a believer? If so, are you different? If not, why not? As believers we are called to be the Macs in a world of compliant and complacent PC’s. We are called to be square pegs in a world of round holes. This is never truer than when we are forced to confront death and loss, whether it is contemplating our own death or the loss of a loved one.

Recovering from loss and the inevitable grief that follows is an incredibly difficult process. We were made to love others, and when we lose someone we love, it just simply hurts. At times, the hurt feels as if it is beyond our capacity to endure. Some days everywhere we turn we see and hear our loved one. They continue to speak to us through the objects, the feelings, the places, and the times that we shared with them. So what do we do? Where do we turn? Is there a way out of the abyss of hurt and pain that comes with catastrophic loss? Does God truly care, and if so, why does he allow life and loss to brutalize us this way?

This book is a story. It is the story of relationships, love, and loss. It is the story of one little girl and her family, but it can be spoken, represented, and retold for countless other children and their families. There are parts of this story that are pretty ugly. Life just flat sucks sometimes. In fact, depending upon your definition of Gehenna; in reality a continually burning garbage dump; life here on earth, may at times lead you to believe that you are already there. Sometimes even those who have not yet experienced a birthday are subjected to lives of loss and pain.

Why?

God only knows.

This is a story about loss. It is a story about pain. It is a story about the virtual shrapnel that rips us apart following a direct hit from one of the grenades of life. Sometimes it’s an explosion of massive proportions. Sometimes it’s little firecrackers that blow off pieces of our hearts over a period of time until one day we wake up and realize that we have a hole that has been slowly increasing in size for months or maybe even years.

There are also parts of this story that are wonderful and healing. Life at times can be beautiful. In fact, depending upon your definition of heaven, life here on this planet can seem like pure, unadulterated heaven. Come to think of it, if you have experienced a life free from wonderful, joyful encounters and you are into your fifties or sixties, you are an aberration.

This is a story about healing. It is a story about joy. It is a story about the sunlight from heaven that warms us and calms us and brings us to a place of pure peace for which there is no explanation. Sometimes there are tiny raindrops of joy that fall almost imperceptibly, slowly refreshing and restoring our hearts. If you long to experience this peace, if you long to experience this joy…stick around.

There are answers to the dichotomy between the seasons of heaven and the seasons of hell.

Stay tuned…

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Prologue

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

Paul, I Corinthians 4:2 (NIV)

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be,

must tell the story. That is his duty."

Elie Wiesel

I believe that the events in the life of my wife Suzanne and I, inclusive of our daughter’s death, are a trust given to us by God. The following words are a feeble attempt to prove faithful to that God-given trust. It is far beyond not easy to recall and document events that occurred during a period of life that was filled with hurt, loss, tremendous pain, and fractured faith. Something that remains crystal clear is that God never once promised otherwise. One reason that God has given us this trust, I believe, is to somehow convey that the hurt, the pain, and the loss are not the end of the story; they are the beginning. You can trust us on this. If it weren’t so, we would have given up long ago.

Oh, and another thing…

I was unsure about how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate - I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it - and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it…

Paul, I Corinthians 2:2-4 (The Message)

Consider me, if you will, as a fellow traveler who has come to and passed the fork in the road. You remember, don’t you, the solitary road that branches into two, requiring us to make a life altering choice, requiring us to choose which road to travel with minimal information about each?

I have, at times, entertained some substantial questions about the road that I have chosen. I have even been inclined to abandon the one I’m on and to laboriously cut a trail to the other one. That was then, when fear, regret, and doubt were the fuel that powered my often mechanically unsound, spiritual vehicle and before the fire that consumed the life that I had so carefully constructed.

To whom do you turn, where do you go, and how do you cope when tragedy and loss make a train wreck of your life? This is not a five-step plan for recovery. It is not a formula. It is one family’s story. The answers begin with the hot and caustic pain that flows from the cauldron of loss and continue as caustic becomes cooler and slowly begins to lose its sting.

I can assure you that regardless of what you have lost and the state of your spiritual and emotional life, there is beauty to be found in your pain. The story that follows is for those who have experienced loss—loss of any kind. During the course of our lives, we will all experience loss of some sort whether it is a job, a spouse, a marriage, a child, or any other number of things that can disappear in the blink of an eye. In my case, it has been a job, very nearly a marriage, and most profoundly the loss of a precious child. The repercussions were enormous. I came dangerously close to personally destroying a marriage and accepting a lifetime of grief. By the grace of God, and my wife’s great love and patience, my marriage survived; and though the grief has never completely vanished, it has become a more manageable piece of my new life without my daughter Kelsey.

We will discuss the journey back to joy. Even though things will never be the same again. I am sure that this is the most difficult factor in loss to accept. We want our old lives back. We want things to be the same as they were before, but they can’t be. However, we can begin creating a new life beginning right here, right now, regardless of our point of reference. We will cry, we will laugh, and most of all we will work together to find meaning and healing in the losses that we have experienced.

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WINNOWING

I think the devil didn’t know the kind of little girl he was messing with! God wants other people to learn from what happens to our family.

Kelsey Wood, December 1999

"Mom, can I paint my new room purple? It’s my favorite color and it just