PERSPECTIVES:  We can learn so much from one another as we sojourn horizons that both beckon and daunt us.  While our general experiences may have general connections, the specificity of our experiences depends on our position, our perception, and how we filter it all.  What is this all About?

This grief journey led me back to our family.  How do you navigate such a loss?  When I nervously asked if they were willing, several vulnerably shared distinctly personal elements of grief, sadness, struggle through this heavy darkness.  Each generation recognizing the varying social stigmas of suicide as well as the responses of their closest friends.  I am supremely grateful for their honesty.  While we share common relationships, every memory is profoundly unique to those who cycle through them; yet, our family’s openness to sharing weaved threads of bravery within me.

“While they spoke, I penned their words…and processed my own.”

– Heidi L. Paulec

When invited to participate in this perspective endeavor reflecting on Jamie’s life and subsequent suicide, most family members offered openness to share their story.   However, most did not feel either capable or comfortable to write their own perspectives.  Therefore, I sent surveys and conducted subsequent oral interviews from their responses.  These were used to establish primary source material from which to write on their behalf in the first person.  In each perspective, you can expect “Reflections on the Interview” and “Brief History.”  Both sections are written in the third person.  Then, the voice will shift to first person for their Perspective.

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Reflections of the Interview:

Interviewing both my parents were actually the toughest for me. (Heidi)  We spoke so many, many times about Jamie and his death…  that was actually comfortable.  But, the articulating of devastation and the growing difficulty with parenting me after … that was difficult.

Many conversations fuse to make up these reflections for which I am profoundly thankful.

My Dad’s determination to understand and honor Jamie… even in the ultimate sorrow really became a deeper quest that illuminates ideas like identity… with more clarity and compassion.  Who are we?  In particular, in the intersection of this finite earth and the eternal home, who are we?… Leads us to Whose we are & more profoundly Who He Is.

Also, my Dad’s eternal perspective grows and grows.  His saturation in the Word, his commitment to trust, his perseverance, his hope, and his contagious joy encourage those around him.  He asks questions.  As he seeks, he finds… and he returns praise and thanksgiving.

Thank you, Dad.

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Brief History:

My Dad’s name is Timothy Paul.  He shared that he feels a bit more like a Caleb (trusts God) or Barnabus (encourager).  His passions include education, agriculture, industry, and cross-cultural opportunities.

He was born  and spent elementary school years in small town Kansas.  Waving grain fields remain the “yellow brick road.”  His family moved to Wichita, Kansas when he was in junior high school.  Tim, popular among his peers and who excelled as a multi-sport athlete, broke and set records.  He has an older brother, Dave, and younger brother Carlton.  Carlton is  Jamie’s Dad.  These brothers also have two younger sisters, Lori and Gretchen.

Tim spent two summers in high school working on harvest crews that travelled from Texas to Wyoming to help farmers bring in the harvest in a helpful and timely manner.  Tim actually worked for Grandpa Ken.  It was on these summer adventures he met Aunt Karen.

After high school, Tim had two options.  One enroll in college, or two prepare to be drafted into the Vietnam War.  He chose college, so he could get the student deferment.  Despite his athletic gifting, he turned down Kansas State negotiations to run track.  He decided to follow Karen to her small liberal arts college of choice.  He earned a degree in Social Studies Education with minor in Phys. Ed.

Upon graduation, Tim secured a teaching job at Karen’s high school alma mater in Albin, Wyoming where he taught grades 3-12 for three years.  He taught social studies honing his favorite Socratic Method of teaching.  Additionally, he taught PE.  He served at assistant football coach in Burns as well as head wrestling coach in Albin.  Several qualified for state under his coaching.  During those years, he also managed irrigated farm operations for the family.

In the early 1980s, Tim ventured into business.  He served as President of a start-up oil and gas operation.  Eventually, after selling that business, Tim began brokering oil and gas properties which remains his primary industry to this day.

He’s one passionately versatile man.  Never fully shaking the teacher and coaches heart, he founded the Jenks America Track Club in the 1990s.  He ran for state senate.  He’s served as elder in his church.  He’s travelled around the world, including Africa and east Asia as an ambassador for missional business.  He loves the opportunity to share and encourage.  Organically sharing the gospel through cross-cultural business opportunities stirs wonder of what heaven will really be like.  Can you hear that choir?

Did I mention my Dad (Uncle Tim) sings, too?  Although he loves all kinds of musical genres & the history of the music, hymns remain among his most treasured.

My Dad was Uncle Tim to Jamie because Jamie’s Dad is his brother and Jamie’s Mom is his sister-in-law because she’s Karen’s sister.  However, I’m not sure the title without explanation is adequate to describe their relationship.  As mentioned in Karen’s five part perspective, Tim and Karen were not able to conceive more children beyond Heidi.  They both loved children.  In many ways, Carlton and Kathy’s children became like their own.

Uncle Tim loved Jamie like a son.  He corrected him, disciplined him and encouraged him very similar to the way he guarded and guided me (Heidi).  I think Jamie looked at Uncle Tim as a second-father figure.

written by Heidi L. Paulec

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Perspective:

Right around the time of Jamie’s death, Eric Clapton released a song he’d written after the loss of his own son.  The song?  “Tears in Heaven.”  My soul didn’t question God’s Sovereignty.  Yet, my emotions resonated with some of the questions he posed in that powerful song.

Do you know Horatio G. Spafford?  He was a businessman who faced devastating loss.  First, he lost a son.  Then, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 impaired his enterprise with great loss.  When his friend Dwight L. Moody planned an evangelistic campaign to Europe, Mr. Spafford decided he and his family would join him.  He sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him with plans to join them in a few days.

After their ship sank, he received this from his wife… “Saved alone.”  Immediately, he boarded the next available ship to join his wife.  While at sea, he penned the world-renown hymn “It is Well.”

1. When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
   When sorrows like sea billows roll;
   Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
   It is well, it is well with my soul.
2. • Refrain:
     It is well with my soul,
     It is well, it is well with my soul.
3. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
   Let this blest assurance control,
   That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
   And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
4. My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!—
   My sin, not in part but the whole,
   Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
   Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
5. For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
   If Jordan above me shall roll,
   No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
   Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
6. But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
   The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
   Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
   Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!
7. And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
   The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
   The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
   Even so, it is well with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend…

What powerful imagery!  This is not merely imagination.  He’s coming back.  Why?  To bring His own to the Heavenly Home.  Jamie’s life and untimely death rolled back some clouds for me.  Darkness… more real.

Inevitably, our beliefs are tested.  Shaken.  We may even wonder if we might sink under the losses.  When we sift through it all, where does my hope land?  Why is it a trustworthy foundation?  How do I live humbly… honorably… every day in the shadow of Heaven’s Hope?

…continued Uncle Tim… Heaven Draws Near (part 2)