Comfort After Losing a Child

I’m thankful for the HOPE of eternal life given through Jesus Christ, and that I have a place in the family of my God FOREVER.

My name is John Marsh and this is a small portion of my story. I became a christian at the ripe old age of 12 years old. I was raised in a church from the time I can remember, by a family that loved the Lord and I am so thankful for that. Sounds pretty familiar and average doesn't it. Well the rest of the story is a life that has been filled with the watchful eye of a Heavenly Father caring for his child. I must tell this story, as painful as it is, mainly because He has asked me to. In 2007, I started having flash backs of a horrible event, (which I will tell you about later), that happened 38 years ago. The strange thing about these flash backs were that they were coming more frequent than normal and they were much more detailed than they usually are. I know now why this started happening. The Lord wants me to relate those events on here to possibly be a tool to reach others and/or maybe to help answer some question my friends and family may have. I can't talk to people face to face about this because of the pain, but maybe they can read this and understand why my life has changed and I am not the same person I once was. For three weeks the flash backs kept getting worse. God finally got across to me, the world doesn't want to know about you, it wants to know about Me. TELL YOUR STORY. So here I am at 3:00 AM unable to sleep writing this down And praying to God “please help me to put this down.” In 1978 I graduated from Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, ready to help and cure all the sick animals in the world. I was married to a beautiful loving woman, Janice, who was pregnant with our first child and I had a step-daughter that was 12 years old. While I was doing a residency in College Station for a year, our son, John, was born September of that year. The 2 biggest dreams for my life had come true. To be married to a beautiful loving lady and to have a boy of my own to raise. I had the world by the tail. After about a year, events happened in a way so I ended up back in my home town starting a practice. About 6 or 7 months later some things happened that I know now was God's way of preparing me for a coming event. Since I was back in my home town, it was easy for me, a shy person, to get back in my home church and we had started attending regularly as a family for the first time in our married life. The church was in a planning stage to build a new church and was purchasing a piece of property for that purpose. There was a plat map set up in the front of the church that was divided into sections that were equal to about $150. As the church donations came in the sections were marked off to show how far along we were in paying for the land. Every Sunday I would walk in and be convicted to donate to the church for the property. At this time, The clinic was not making enough money to maintain our family and I was having to borrow money every month to pay our bills, so we didn't give, but the conviction remained. One day I was called out to a friends farm to X-ray a race horse. During the process, the horse kicked over my Xray machine and broke it. I talked to my insurance agent, Glen, and we filed a claim to get it fixed. I sent the machine off and had it fixed $900. After I got the machine back, Glen came in and told me that the machine was not covered, because it was not in the clinic when it was broken. He filed another claim stating that it was a portable machine. He got another letter saying the machine was not covered. Two days later I got a letter from the insurance company telling me the machine was not covered. We had to borrow some more money to cover the cost. I went to church Sunday . There was the map. I was still under conviction. I asked God, “HOW?” A week later, Glen walks into my office and throws an envelope down on my desk and I looked up at his face and it was white as a sheet. I opened the letter and there was a check written out to me for $900. Glen said "I don't know how this happened, every time I talked to the company they told me they were not going to pay. This is the most strange part, you have a $150 deductible and they didn't take that out". I immediately pulled out my check book and wrote a check to First Baptist Church Sweeny for building fund $150. To this day, each month when I sit down to pay my bills, the first check is always to my Lord's church. God taught me through that, He is always there. I didn't know how much I would need Him until 5 years later. I must say this, I am not telling you this story for your pity. It is not about me. It is about Him. Please look at your life and see where God has worked or wants to work. In 1982, God blessed us with another child, Blair, A beautiful little girl. She was not planned on our part, but God knew how much Janice and I would need her. He is using her in a mighty way in the church today. She is the youth minister and music director in a church plant. It started out as a beautiful Labor day in 1985. I had some hay to move. I had started for the door to put my boots on and there was my shadow, as always wanting to go, a perfect little 6 year boy that was going to help his dad move hay, jump off a cliff, walk into a fire, it didn't matter he just wanted to be with me and the feeling was very mutual. As we walked out the door, his mother said the same thing she did every time we left "be careful". She was one of many people I failed that day. I did many stupid things in my life, because I thought I was immune from bad things. Bad things only happen to other people not me. We got on the tractor in the hay field, open cab tractor, John riding next to me, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID... I don't know how long we were in the field, but all of a sudden the tractor hit an ant hill, John fell off and the tractor rolled over his stomach. Every thing was kind of a blur after that. I can remember getting to him and looking down into his little very white face and seeing this puzzled look I picked him up and ran to the truck. My friend who was in the field with us came running. We got in the truck, my friend driving, I was holding my son in my arms while he was dying. He looked up at me and said " Daddy it hurts". This is the first time I said to myself "PLEASE WAKEUP". You see this had to be a very bad nightmare. It could not be happening to me. I tried to comfort him as I held him. I felt the life going out of him in the 10 minutes it took us to get to our small community hospital. He was asleep by the time we got to the hospital. Janice got to the hospital a few minutes later. If not for my love for her, I don't think I could have faced her. She had every right in the world to hate me, but she didn't. We sat next to one another outside the surgery room, alone, holding each other as they worked on John. PLEASE WAKEUP, PLEASE WAKEUP, PLEASE WAKEUP... They came out a few minutes later and told us he was gone. Over the next few days, friends came by and we needed them. They loved us, but I have never seen such a large group of people who were completely lost in looking for a solution to a very large problem. They wanted to help, but no one could. The one person present who helped the most was this little 3 year old girl named Blair, who God had placed in our midst. She didn't fully understand what was going on, but as I held her in my arms she truly was God's comforting hand touching my face as I held her next to me.

As the days passed, I realized Janice and I had become members of a not so large club of parents who have buried a child and I was a member of an even more exclusive club of a parent who had been directly responsible for the death of his only son. These are hard thing to live with in this old world. During that season, we had a wonderful pastor at our church and he was faithful to tell us what the Bible says. We learned from his teaching that this world will kick you, deal you misery, try to separate you from your Creator. We know that our God has over come this world. I know that no matter what happens He will always be with me. In the last 38 years, I have found myself sitting on the side of the road unable to drive, collapsed in the bottom of the shower unable to stand, bending over my desk unable to see appointments in my clinic, and every time without fail, My Savior comes to me with the beautiful faces of my wife or daughters or the words of a christian friend. God's blessings are all around us…we just have to look. This is for those who haven't found out yet, but will someday, we live in a fallen world and life is going to take a bad turn on you one day. If you only have the things of this world to try and comfort yourself with, you are in big trouble. I would like to leave you with 2 scriptures that explain the reasons for this testimony and hopefully give you the hope and peace of a Loving Father. Romans 8:28 -We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose John 16:33 - These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In this world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have over come the world. Praise His name in the good and the tough times.