Please Pray

    Please keep Paul Staup, his wife Lori, and their son David in prayer.  On May 10, 2006 their son David and daughter Jenna were driving home from college.  They were in a terrible car accident and Jenna was killed in the accident. 

    If you would like more information you can follow this link to www.caringbridge.com.  When you get to the home page click on the "visit a caringbridge site icon".  That will take you to the next page where you type in     jenna-david    where it says site name.  Please keep them in your prayers through this devastating time.

Update- September:  David is back at college and is doing well, please keep him in prayer as he resumes his studies.

Update- December:   This is a letter written to the GCM family and mailed in December.  We are making it available on our website so that all of you can stay informed, be comforted, and encouraged to continue to pray for the Staup family as they deal with the holidays without their daughter, Jenna. 

Dear Family and Friends,

            It has been more than 6 months since Jenna’s passing and, like many of the hurdles our family has had to face, we will be spending our first Christmas without her.  As you can imagine this will be difficult and we continue to covet your prayers as we face each new day and each new challenge.  I want you to know that your prayers have made all the difference.  I used to take prayer for granted, but that has all changed now.  I like to say to people that I am able to go forward because I am “walking on prayer.”

            Certainly, my life has been forever changed because of the loss of Jenna.  She was a special girl.  I knew this about her from the day we brought her home from the hospital and she ended up sleeping through the night.  When she was little she was an uninhibited drama queen who loved to ham it up.  As she matured, her intelligence became unmistakably obvious as she aced every class she ever had while making it look easy.  Her giftedness in art laid dormant until her junior year in high school when her art teacher took me off to the side during the art show to tell me “there’s only one person in my class who knows how to paint and that’s your daughter.”  I didn’t know what to say because I was unaware that Jenna had this developing talent.  Jenna also had an inner quality of sweetness about her that reminds me of her mother.  This sweetness was just there; it was the way God made her and it stayed with her until she died.  She was truly one of the nicest people I have ever known.  Lastly, the quality that I respected the most in her was a natural inclination toward spirituality and the genuine way in which she loved God.  She had a spiritual intuition about her that was perhaps her greatest genius.  She was a great example of Jesus’ command to “love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

            My depth of grief is unimaginable, but it is also matched by a deeper sense of peace.  The grief is like a soul ache that I feel everyday.  It is like someone has taken away one of my most loved possessions and there is nothing I can do to get it back.  People who have gone through a loss like this tell me that I will feel this as long as I live, but that with time it does get easier.  I could cry now as I write these words to you because of the emotions that are brought once again to the surface.

            This brings me to one of the lessons I have learned because of this great loss, and that is the awesome power of pain.  Yes, I have become more acquainted with pain than I was ever before.  I have learned to appreciate pain’s power and its pervasiveness in me and in all of us.  This has helped me in my counseling because I am more empathetic toward the pain other people share with me.  I have also realized that there is no need for me to compare my pain with other people’s pain.  Pain is pain, and it hurts, and we all have it, and we always will until we are in heaven.  Therefore, my compassion for other people has increased as I continue to be an agent of healing in a world that is overflowing with loss, pain, sin, evil, and tragedy.

            The peace I feel is definitely a God thing.  I trusted Him before the accident and I trust Him even more now.  I trusted Him before because He had brought me through some very deep losses.  Through those prior recoveries I was able to see that He had been with me all the way, even when I doubted that my prayers were making it past the ceiling.  Those lessons learned before have resulted in my being able to see God’s fingerprints all over this thing with Jenna.

                Something as big and life-changing as this couldn’t have happened without God, at the very least, allowing it, and possibly even ordaining it.  In this sense the accident that my kids were involved in was no accident at all.  If we are to believe that “all things happen for the good for those who love God,” then we have to apply this biblical truth to Jenna’s passing also. Psalm 71 has also been a comfort to me:

v 3; Be my rock of refuge,

to which I can always go:

v 5; For you have been my hope, O sovereign Lord,

my confidence since my youth.

From my birth I have relied on you;

you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.

I will ever praise you.

v 19; Your righteousness reaches to the skies, O God,

you have done great things.

Who, O God, is like you?

v 20; Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,

you will restore my life again;

from the depths of the earth you will bring me up.

v 21; You will increase my honor and comfort me once again.

            The deepest sense of peace comes from knowing that Jenna is in heaven, that she’s happy there and that she doesn’t want to come back.  My knowing this is more than a head thing, it is something I feel deep inside.  It comes from my understanding of scripture, from my relationship with the Lord, and from a mystical and spiritual awareness that Jenna is alive.  There are many times that I can feel her presence.  I knew when I looked upon her casket that she was not there, for “to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord.”  When I go visit her gravesite, I also know that she is not there, but rather, in heaven “seeing music and hearing colors.”  Her gravesite is a place where I can go to grieve, a place where I can talk with her and pay my respects to one of the greatest people I have ever known.  I was truly blessed by God when He decided to let me father her for 19 years.  To be that close to such an awesome person, a person who was talented in so many ways yet as normal as apple pie, was and continues to be a humbling responsibility.

            In the days that have followed since receiving that dreaded phone call on May 10 Lori, David, and I have moved forward.  We all continue to heal in our own ways, and it is relieving to be able to tell you that David has healed from his injuries and his subsequent surgeries 100%.  David has returned to Palm Beach Atlantic University, Lori has returned to teaching 3^rd grade, and I have returned to Grace Counseling Ministries.  This is the way Jenna would want it for all of us.  She would want us to use her death as a motivator for good.  My learning from previous losses has taught me that God is able to make the redemptive gain even greater.  Some of this has already come true as people’s lives have been changed in miraculous ways.  I suspect more of this is coming in the future. Keep praying for us, and give the ones God has put in your life a bigger and longer hug than usual this Christmas season.

                                                                              Because Jesus can be trusted,

                                                                              Paul