2018 part 3: And then came the flood…

Posted on by jactucke

*This is part three of my 2018 series. If you haven’t read parts one and two, I have linked them for your enjoyment. Go read those, then come on back to this one…it’ll still be here for you.*

Man, it’s great to see you again! I’m glad you made it back for another round. This one might not be as rough as the first two in this series, but it was just another obstacle in the series of hurdles that was 2018.

So, you last left me at the end of our miscarriage/wife’s hemorrhage. I dropped the hint in there that we decided to sell our house in the middle of the slash up there. Well, as they were shoving the sign in front and we’re walking the eventual buyers in, we were rushing to the hospital.

But good news! Those folks bought our place and we got the long paperwork started on another place. Everyone was just like, “Praise the Lord! Y’all need some sort of good news in the middle of all this mess!” Yeah…we really did.

We had to rent the old house from the new buyers for a month while we closed on our new one. Not a big deal at all. The new house was worth the wait. It was nearly double the square footage of our last and we had the room that we needed to grow as a family.

Signing day came and we couldn’t be more excited. We did our thing at the title company and the place was ours. There were a few errands to run before we got to walk into our new place, so our excitement got put on hold.

Well, a hour at the mechanic turned into three. We were stranded in the Hub and couldn’t get to our new place. So, we sent a friend over to the new place to be our body in the house for the city to turn on the water. No biggie. Except, the next call was the biggie.

Our friend called us and she had bad news. She said there was water in our living room. Not just a little bit either. Standing water in the living room, entry hall, guest room, kids room, front bathroom, and the kitchen. It was just freaking everywhere. So much of it was just ruined. The vinyl plank and hardwood was wrecked. This was literally the afternoon of the first day in the new house. Talk about major face palm.

Somewhere in all the hustle and bustle of getting the house situated, a hot water heater had been shifted and a rubber hose cracked. Somehow, the water was turned on before the city did, it wasn’t turned off and the leaky hose went undetected because no one was there to hear it. Hence, the ensuing flood.

To make a long story short, it took roughly a month or so to get things situated in the new place. Between insurance talks, the flood remediation, the demolition of the old flooring, and the installation of the new…I just wanted to throw my hands up and give it all up. But God…

That guy…He just amazes me. He meets you exactly where you are and puts people in your path who are going to lift you up and support you throughout whatever mess the devil tries to throw on you. I thank Him everyday for those folks who came right up beside us to help share the load.

Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Those friends, those people who are put into your life are indispensable. God gives us those people to sharpen us (Proverbs 27:17), to strengthen us (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12), and to build each other up (1 Thess. 5:11).

Just when you think you’ve been backed into a corner and you have no fight left in you, He sends someone to help hold your arms up like Hur and Aaron did for Moses, Exodus 17:12-14. The Israelites were losing the battle when Moses dropped his arms, but when they were up, they were straight gettin it! So, Moses’ friends, Aaron and Hur, came along side him to hold his arms up with him.

That’s how important having folks beside you is. God made it so that we don’t have to go it alone. That’s why it’s important to get plugged into a church, to get you connected with like-minded people who will be right there doing “life” with you.

This installment was pretty light compared to the previous ones, but the weight of the three instances together was just rough. It was enough to make anyone wanna just crawl up in a hole.

However, as the late, great Billy Mayes said, “But wait, there’s more!” If you have been keeping up with the months, we’re only in June at this point. More heartache was on it’s way. And you’ll hear about it next week. Y’all stay safe out there folks.

2018-part 2 The Bottom Drops Out

Posted on by jactucke

*This is Part two of a possible four part series on “2018.” If you haven’t read the first one yet, here is the link. Go back, read it, then come back for this one.*

Well, well, well. You’re back! I promise this second one will be just about as gut wrenching as the first one. But the biggest takeaway is that God reached out to us through the darkness and comforted us. That’s the only way I can keep saying confidently that everything is and will be just fine. Now, on to the next week.

Just before dad passed, probably the month prior, we found out that we were going to have another kiddo! Oh happy day! It takes an act of Congress for us to get pregnant and we did it all on our own this time! It was so stinking amazing! In the middle of the stuff going on with the Wildman, we had a flicker of light and joy.

The day after dad’s funeral, we went for our first sonogram in Lubbock. We got into the office and sat in the waiting room with nervous excitement. We had joy in this rough time.

Our tech called us back. She squirted the goop stuff and got to work. We had shared some baby experiences with this tech before, actually with both of our prior pregnancies. The mood went from light to a little more subdued and finally somber. She asked where we were in our pregnancy. Jeg told her and she nodded her head.

Honestly, her voice turned into Charlie Brown’s teacher then for me. Jeg can explain this part better than me. I immediately knew something wasn’t right. We had to sit on this vague visit for a week before we got any kind of answers. It had to be one of the most agonizing weeks that either one of us had to date (mind you, my dad had literally died the week before.)

Our doctor told us that our baby stopped growing in the weeks before the sonogram. We had miscarried our new kiddo. That information flooded my mind and buried me under the surf. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. And that was just me. It doesn’t even come close to what Jeg was feeling.

They told us that Jeg would pass the baby naturally. So we got to play the waiting game all over again. I dealt with it by not really dealing with it. I’d talk with my buddies Scott and Tanner and try to explain my feelings, but it was just tough. Yeah, Jeg and I talked about what was going on too, but we didn’t get very deep. How could we? We were walking on the edge of this knife waiting for the final slice.

We decided that some kind of change was needed. We had to snap this stupid funk that the devil was trying to put on us. So we did what anyone who was completely overwhelmed with life and put our house up for sale. 😳

The day our house was being shown to the eventual buyer, something happened. It was roughly a month-ish after the sonogram and Jeg started bleeding. Not, “Oh no…I’m bleeding” but “Holy crap, you’re bleeding…like a lot.” And guess where I was? Two and a half hours away on a pipe recovery job.

When I got that call, my mind flashed back to a month prior when dad died. It was just fear that washed over me instead of peace. I might have kept it cool on the outside, but I was 100 percent afraid that I was gonna lose my best friend.

I thank God every day for the folks I was working with that day. My engineer and company man caught wind of what was going on and they shut down the job and we took off to Levelland. Both of them had been exactly where I was right then and they knew how important it was for me to be there at Jeg’s side.

Another big blessing was that NanaMary, Jeg’s stepmom, was with her until I got there from Odessa. She got her to the ER in Lubbock and threw her weight around to get her admitted. (Not exactly sure how that went, but I just know Mary was all momma bear status and it was awesome.) The attending doctor (who was a former OB/GYN) examined Jeg and said that she was hemorrhaging and part of what was supposed to be passed was still attached and causing the massive bleeding. If she hadn’t gotten there when she did and gotten help, she would have bled out. That was all before I even got there.

When I arrived, all the major excitement was over. We were just left with the weird emotional hangover that I guess comes with narrowly avoiding death. We were discharged and we went home. Just like that, it was all over.

Well, it wasn’t over. It was all just the beginning of us picking up the pieces of our life all over again and handing them to God to do something with. Patch us back together, throw us back together, just do something. We needed something. Some kind of answer to all the pain that we were walking through.

We’re pretty private people. We spent many years in the spotlight and under a microscope through ministry work. This wasn’t a story that we wanted to tell people every other week and it sure wasn’t a story to be told through a game of telephone. The help and support might have been there, but it sure didn’t feel like it. We were treated like we had the plague from most folks. It was just a level of loneliness that we had never experienced before

People who have gone through losing a baby will understand what I’m saying here. Nobody really knows what they need to say or even what they can say. I can say confidently on my end of things, that I was lost and just flat out sad. I didn’t know what to say to my wife, who was absolutely wrecked. What do we do?

Well, we got up and went to church. We sought after God. We figured out what He said about our situation and tried our hardest to apply it.

Second Samuel 12:16-24 talks about David losing his son. Now, this is due to him jacking around with Bathsheba, but his kid gets sick and he goes into mourning and the child dies. After the boy’s death, in verses 23 and 24 he explains what he’s doing.

“But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” Then David comforted Bathsheba, his wife…”

We can’t turn back time and change what happened. All we can do is have our time of mourning and grief. Then, trust that God has got our kiddo there with Him and know that we will go to see them one day. That’s it.

Like I said in the last post, over time things heal and change, but nothing ever goes back to the way it was. Just like in the loss of my dad, this loss left a hole. A little, baby shaped hole. When you really think about it and focus on it, a whole life is supposed to be in that hole. But you have to realize that the only thing you can fill that hole with is the peace and comfort that only the Holy Ghost can bring you. In John 14:16 it says, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby), to be with you forever—” That’s the skinny of it. The only way y’all make it through.

I realize that there is still a ton of unpacking to do in the situation, but that is the barebones of it. Trust that God is still going to have your back. Trust that He is faithful and He is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we can even ask or think. Trust that He is going to lead you and your family out of this valley and back to the mountaintop in His glory.

Phew! That was heavy. It’s so tough writing about this because you wind up revisiting and rehashing it all over again. But this is gonna bless someone. To know that someone went through it and made it out is going to encourage somebody out there.

Thanks for reading folks. Stay tuned for part three of “2018” because the hits just just kept coming that year. Y’all stay safe out there.

Wave upon wave

Posted on by jactucke

Grief and loss can be…well, weird. It stops you dead in your tracks. It disrupts everything. And your norm? Forget about it.

Over the last year, our family has had a TON of loss. It started back in February of 2018 when my dad passed away from a long battle with lymphoma. That was a huge blow. Then, the following week, we had a miscarriage and a hemorrhage where I almost lost my wife. That was one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced.

Six months later in August, my Grannie passed away. Days later, our Aunt Nona passed. Six months after that, my wife’s Mimi passed away unexpectedly. Talk about when it rains, it pours!

Loss upon loss upon loss upon loss. It was pretty tough for a good stretch of life. Explaining death and loss to a four and two-year-old is not fun, let me tell you.

It felt as if loss and grief had come and set up shop in our house.

What could we do? I went to work. Jeg kept busy. We just kept our minds focused on the task at hand: living life. We talked about everything. We prayed together. We prayed over our littles.

We’ve always been taught that there are seasons in your life. That there will be times when things are really good and times where things will just plain suck. Check out Ecclesiastes 3:

“There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth: A right time for birth and another for death, A right time to plant and another to reap, A right time to kill and another to heal, A right time to destroy and another to construct, A right time to cry and another to laugh, A right time to lament and another to cheer, A right time to make love and another to abstain, A right time to embrace and another to part, A right time to search and another to count your losses, A right time to hold on and another to let go, A right time to rip out and another to mend, A right time to shut up and another to speak up, A right time to love and another to hate, A right time to wage war and another to make peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 MSG

To me, this season did more than just suck. It was flat out terrible. Grief just came in waves. Right when you were able to get your head above the first wave, a bigger one rolled in to push you back under. Wave upon wave just pushed us further from where we wanted to be, which was on the shore with peace.

I know, the Word says that there are seasons. I said it and referenced it just right up there. But that doesn’t make it any easier in the moment. “Well, why didn’t you talk to someone?” We did and it helped…for a time. But when you’re in a season of grief, and this is solely my opinion, other people have no idea what you’re feeling. Sure they could have experienced the same loss, but the same feelings? Nah bruh. I quit writing. Nothing felt the same, no matter how many folks I sought counsel from.

The biggest thing that has helped our family has been Jesus and leaning on the fact that every one of these family members had a relationship with Him. It’s like in 2 Samuel, when David lost his son. He prayed and fasted and slept on the floor waiting for God to move. When he learned that he had passed, David got up, cleaned himself up, and ate. Most importantly, he worshipped God. It’s his actions that have really pushed me during our season of grief.

His servants were astounded by his actions. They wondered why he did what he did. Why did he worship after he passed? He said:

“…why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” Then David comforted Bathsheba, his wife…” 2 Samuel 12:23-24 NLT

He knew that he’d see him again, so he cleaned up and comforted his wife. And out of his season of grief, Solomon was born. The one who’d build the Temple. Literally, the wisest man was born out of grief and loss. How cool is that?

Things are better. Will they ever be the same? No. Not at all. But things don’t need to be the same. We have to grow, be stretched, and experience these things.

Psalms 30:5 says that, “weeping may last through the night, but joy comes in the morning.” And later, it goes on to say, “You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!” (Psalms 30:11-12 NLT)

During your season of grief, take comfort in Jesus. That’s literally the only thing that can shine a little light in your valley. He loves you and will never leave you. Remember, there’s joy in the morning.

Have a great day folks! Leave a comment or two just to let me know y’all are still hanging out. Y’all stay safe out there.

Turn the Page

Posted on by jactucke


Well, thank you for your patience over the past week. I have been just a touch busy with the newest addition to our family. Plus, Little Girl decided she wanted to start using the “Big Girl Potty” full time, so we’ve be busy. 

As we put the finishing touches to that chapter of our lives, I’m a little sad. My firstborn is becoming a full-fledged toddler, my second is making her entrance into the world, and my chocolate dog is getting even more gray on his muzzle. I want to hang out right here and just stay in this moment. But I can’t and if I could, it would selfish. 

You see, there will always be different seasons in your life. Different chapters. These chapters signify our growth and maturity as people. Major life events generally signal the end of a season/chapter and the beginning of something new. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 talks in depth about this. 

For some, this is a new opportunity. A chance to start over with a clean slate. However, Some people love the chapter that they were in so much, that they never turn the page. This could be because of heartache, anger, or even good times. 

By hanging out in the past, they delay their future. We think that we know better than God. HE is the one who signaled that chapter’s ending. HE is the one who shifted us another way. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “for I know the plans I have for you.” HE knows where we are going or should go. We just have to trust Him.

Right after that verse, we are instructed to do something that we often skip over. 

“When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭29:12-13

If you are having a rough time closing that old chapter of your life, just call unto HIM. Seek HIM. Do that and He will be true to His word. 

Take heart and know that when your old chapter is ending, something new is coming! In Isaiah 43:19 the Word says, “For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” 

God is doing something new in this next chapter. Whether you have been in good times or bad times, He is doing something new! He is literally springing life from the dead ground. Cutting paths through the overgrowth of your life.

So now I can be sad that my little girls are growing up, but I take heart and encouragement knowing that God is going to continue to move in this new season. 

Whatever you are facing right now or whatever you are looking back on, know that God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly over whatever we can ask or think (Eph. 3:20). All we have to do is move forward. Put our trust in HIM.

Thanks for reading and I pray that you have an excellent day! Y’all be safe out there.