Our Journey from Brokenness to Blessing: Learning to Trust God’s Sovereign Hand at Work

By Bob Freitas and Karen Freitas

God allows brokenness. We learned that God is good and gracious but we live in a broken world. This story deals with a broken home, a broken body and a broken heart. Jesus the Man of Sorrows knew the greatest suffering and loss. Out of all our trials our knowledge and love of God grew deeper. He brought healing and blessing. He never forsakes us but is in fact “near to the brokenhearted.” His grace is amazing and sufficient. We learned we had to be steadfast in our faith through it all. Faith means being faithful in all of our trials because God is in control and has a sovereign plan for each of us. Suffering here is temporary but heaven is forever glorious. There is hope, healing and blessing for the broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664202122

Bob Freitas

Bob and Karen Freitas have been married for 53 years. They served in ministry for over 50 years; Bob pastored churches in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and North Carolina. Bob had a Bible teaching radio ministry, Grace for Living for 25 years and Karen made two gospel recordings. Bob earned his B.A. from Moody Bible Institute with highest honors and M.A. Cum Laude in Bible from Trinity Evangelical Divinity Divinity School. Karen graduated from Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music. Their greatest joy in ministry was raising their only son to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

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"The Story of Bobby (Rob) Freitas and family is a fascinating faith journey. A must read if you want to see how parents, grandparents, as well as churches grow into Christlikeness while going through the death of a child.

I had the joy of knowing Bobby. He had a bold faith in Christ. What a smile! He loved life, taking the good with the bad, while holding on to Jesus. You have to read this story. You will especially get to see how the family grapples with living out what I call the take your medicine passages that call us in the most difficult times in Our lives to Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5,6

Count it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

I am sure when you finish reading the final word, you will give glory to God for He is good.

Dr. Ross Bacon, Ph.D

Former pastor of LaGrange Bible Church, LaGrange Illinois for 30 years.

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Ministers of the gospel carry the burdens of many others under their care through the years. Pastor Bob and Karen’s burdens became deep and personal with an only son, Rob having a terminal heart condition. Bob and Karen’s detailed life story of brokenness and blessing testify that God uses difficult circumstances for good. The joys of watching what the Lord can do to bring Himself glory through that son’s shortened life is testimony of God’s sovereign faithfulness. God walked beside as well as carried them in unique ways to reveal his glory.

Kenneth W. Funk, Ph.D is a Volweiler Society, organic chemist retired from Abbott Laboratories and currently a Director with Midwest Creation Fellowship and his wife Connie.

Our Journey from

Brokenness

to Blessing

Learning to Trust God’s

Sovereign Hand at Work

Bob and Karen Freitas

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Copyright © 2020 Bob and Karen Freitas.

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 author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher

make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book

and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

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.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture quotations are taken from The New

American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972,

1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®.

Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0213-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0214-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0212-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020915288

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/16/2020

To

Rob Andrew Freitas

Our beloved son,

Who had a heart for God,

Who reached out to others with the love of Jesus.

Rob graduated to glory at age 18.

Foreword

God allows brokenness. We learned that God is good and gracious

but we live in a broken world. This story deals with a broken home,

a broken body and a broken heart. Jesus the Man of Sorrows knew

the greatest suffering and loss. Out of all our trials our knowledge

and love of God grew deeper. He brought healing and blessing.

He never forsakes us but is in fact near to the brokenhearted.

His grace is amazing and sufficient. We learned we had to be

steadfast in our faith through it all. Faith means being faithful in

all of our trials because God is in control and has a sovereign plan

for each of us. Suffering here is temporary but heaven is forever

glorious. There is hope, healing and blessing for the broken.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction Struggling through Heartbreak and Burdens

Chapter 1   A Broken Family

Chapter 2   A Broken Body

Chapter 3   Mending Our Brokenness

Chapter 4   Our Little Boy Blue Has a Broken Heart

Chapter 5   Heartbreaks

Chapter 6   God Is Near

Chapter 7   Sweet Family Reunions

Chapter 8   So Blessed

Appendix A : Rob’s Poems, Writings, And Memories

Appendix B : Family Letters

Appendix C : Steps to Peace with God

Endnotes

Acknowledgements

Our special thanks to Ginger Kolbaba our editor who helped

us make our vision a reality. Ginger is an accomplished, award-

winning author, editor, speaker and Karen’s dear cousin. She

has written, contributed to and edited more than 30 books

and hundreds of magazine articles for over 20 years.

Our heartfelt thanks to Linda Love who spent so many hours

and days photo editing, arranging the collages of hundreds of

photos to make our story come alive in pictures. Her patience and

longsuffering with us was amazing, She is our treasured friend.

Our deep appreciation to Grace Frizane, Karen’s dear, faithful

and life-long friend who took the photo for our cover as we

walked into Yosemite Valley as well as others in the book. She also

wrote the Torchbearer poem about our Rob in the Appendix.

Our heartfelt appreciation to Brenda Hough our own professional,

family photographer thru the years who took the back cover

photo of Rob kneeling at the cross and numerous other photos

of our special occasions and celebrations. She is family to us

through our god daughter Courtney and grand daughter Lucy.

We love these dear folks who helped us make this book possible.

They have greatly blessed us throughout our life’s journey.

INTRODUCTION

Struggling through

Heartbreak and Burdens

October 21, 1970. Fifty years ago. A half-century seems like yesterday to us. That was the day our precious boy was born. But instead of seeing a healthy pink baby, he was blue all over. Immediately the medical staff in the room went into overdrive. Something was terribly wrong. As all parents do, we wanted a perfect child. But the longer the doctors worked on our son, the more we realized that dream was fading. Our hearts were broken and our heads were spinning as doctors scrambled to save his brain, his heart, his life.

We struggled to understand. How could God allow this? Why did it happen to us? We had faithfully served God. All we asked was to have a healthy family. Now we felt broken.

Yes, God allows brokenness. He even uses it for good and for His glory (see Romans 8:28). When we are honest, we know that we are all broken—and we live in a broken world. We broke God’s laws and God’s heart when we went our own way and chose to rebel against Him, which is called sin. Sin breaks us. King David said, I am like a broken vessel like a dead man (Psalm 31:12). And the apostle Paul reminded us we were all dead in our sins and trespasses (Ephesians 2:1). Sin and rebellion against God destroyed the peace of Eden and that curse still breaks us today. Gone is the perfect world God created that had no pain, no thorns, no sorrow, no tragedy. And now on October 21, 1970, we felt the devastating pain again of the world’s brokenness.

While this book shares our story of facing and navigating through brokenness, it is so much more. We discovered how God uses brokenness to bless us. Though the difficult journey wasn’t one we asked for, we learned (and relearned) so much about ourselves and about a faithful and good God.

If you are struggling through loss and heartbreak, know that you aren’t alone, though you may feel that way. And there is One who will walk with you through the suffering and give you strength, comfort, and peace. His name is Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrows. He knew the greatest suffering and loss when He Himself was broken on a cross.

One of the things we learned was that God was at work in our trials and burdens. The apostle James wrote that we can consider it all joy . . . when you encounter various trials, knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance and character (James 1:2-3). We learned God was more concerned about our character than our comfort. Job said, Man is born into trouble (Job 5:7, kjv). We began to understand and experience the truth of Psalm 34:18: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. The Lord never forsakes us and is even closer to us in our trials.

Amazingly we began to see the blessings in the burdens and God’s purposes in our circumstances. When God sends trials, they are not accidents but His appointments to see His sovereign grace at work in us and others.

Chapter 1

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A Broken Family

Bob:

Egidio Sotero de Freitas was twenty years old and all alone when in 1920, he crossed the Atlantic to come to America from the island of Madeira, Portugal. It took about five days on an Italian ship called the Mongolia. It was a fresh and exciting breeze of air he felt when he saw Our Lady standing tall on Liberty Island in New York harbor welcoming him and the other immigrants to their new home in the United States.

As Egidio disembarked on this chilly September day, he felt the frigid air and wrapped his arms around himself to try to keep warm. He had brought no warm clothes with him, because he came from a tropical island where the coldest temperatures only dip into the mid-fifties.

Now as he stood in the long line to pass through customs on Ellis Island, he thought back to what had brought him to this place. When he was only twelve, his father had died and his mother could not afford to raise all nine of their children, so she passed him to her rich brother Flavio to raise him. But rather than finding himself in a loving and safe new home, he was treated harshly and put to work as if he were a slave. In 1910 there was a revolution in Portugal that overthrew the monarchy, which was dominated by the Catholic church. But in the revolution’s aftermath, Egidio was sick of the corruption, violence, repression, and poverty on his beautiful island of Madeira. By the time he turned eighteen, he knew he had to leave, but where would he go? He thought of his older brother Antone who had left Portugal six months before and was now living in Taunton, Massachusetts, as a factory worker in a woolen mill. He would persuade Antone to sponsor him as a legal immigrant.

Egidio passed through customs and signed the registry. He was hard-working, frugal, and determined to succeed in the American dream. He worked in a machine shop at a railroad station and then as an orderly at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. But eventually he found himself in New York City with another of his brothers, Mario. Mario was making big money opening speakeasies, buying and reselling grocery stores in New York City, so the two of them went into business together and opened a grocery store. It prospered for a while until the mafia visited and demanded protection money. Refusing their demands, one morning Egidio and Mario arrived at the store to find it trashed and destroyed.

So Egidio got a good job as an orderly at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. During that time, life finally seemed to go well for him, and when he was twenty-seven, in 1927, he met and married Rita. They soon had two children. But more grief came to Egidio when during the height of the Depression in the 1930s, his nineteen-month-old daughter, also named Rita, got sick with a high fever that turned to pneumonia. Because he refused to pay for her to go to who he claimed was an expensive doctor, she did not survive for even a week. After his daughter’s death, Rita’s grief became too great and she sought a divorce and full custody of their other child, John. With nowhere to go and feeling heartbroken and in need of a fresh start, Egidio moved back to Massachusetts.

He found a Portuguese church in Cambridge, not far from his home, and began attending there, which gave him some comfort to relish in the familiarity of his childhood and to be able to speak in his native language. One day, Leanora Paiva, one of his coworkers, who also attended the church and was a bit of a matchmaker, invited him home for dinner and to meet her daughter, Helen. Helen was frail, having suffered scarlet fever as a teen, but was sweet and quiet. She was twenty-seven, almost considered a spinster in those days, and Leanora urged her to marry. Egidio liked Helen, and after some courting, they married in 1935.

Eventually to escape the cold New England weather, Egidio and Helen moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked in a rubber factory. His first son, Joe, was born in 1939, and I came along in 1945. But because Egidio had never experienced a healthy family life, he didn’t know how to be a good husband or father. Too often he modeled his uncle’s bad behavior and carried on with loud arguments, demands, and controls. For instance, one way he controlled us was by shutting down the electricity early every evening, which left us to listen to the radio—we had no television back then—in the darkness.

He also continued his miserly ways. Our little house was surrounded by flowers, fruit trees, a large garden he planted, and a chicken coop. My job was to feed the chickens. One day when I was five years old, I took a pan of grain to the chicken coop and began giving the grain to the chickens when our aggressive Rhode Island Red rooster pecked my eye. Being afraid that I would go blind, Dad took me to the doctor. The doctor examined my eye and put a patch over it. Like a pirate, I had to wear that patch for six weeks. But the damage was permanent. I would wear glasses the rest of my life.

To make matters worse, his concern was always about saving more and more money, to the point that his argumentative behavior and loud demands affected my mom’s already-weak heart condition. Eventually, her health took such a toll that she separated from Dad and took us with her. But after a while, they reconciled and we returned. But the arguments continued, and her doctor warned my father to go easy on her. He didn’t. She had one and then another heart attack.

One day at the end of March 1952, my brother and I heard a loud argument coming from the bedroom. Mom told Dad she was leaving him and moving my brother and me with her back to Massachusetts. But just