Parent Compass Radio

Jonathan Pitts: My name is Jonathan Pitts. I am a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee. I've only lived here about 18 months, but I was in Dallas for about 14 years. I'm a father of four girls. My oldest is 15, then I have a 13-year-old and twins that are now 10, almost 11. I'm a widower. I've been a widower for about 19 months now. My wife, who was my best friend, her name was Wynter, passed away suddenly in my arms, really.

I've been on this journey of figuring out what does it look like to raise girls without my wife and their mom, who was an amazing mom to them. Also, how to do ministry without her because we did ministry together as well. I've found myself in a new place but with the same God, which is really comforting. It's been an interesting journey and God has been really gracious and kind to me through it all.

I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were amazing parents. I grew up in a biracial home. My mom is German-American and my dad is African-American. Growing up was interesting because for me, trying to figure out who I was, identity was a big deal. My dad did a really good job of helping us to understand, my mom too, that our identity was not rooted in our race. Our identity was rooted in who we were in Christ.

That took many years to figure out and work out what that really meant for me. It was probably my college years before I started to figure it out. I grew up in an amazing Christian home. My parents did kids' ministry and youth ministry my whole childhood and were an amazing example to me of what Christ-likeness looks like. They lived their faith out authentically. There was nothing pretend about it, nothing fake about their lives.

When I got to the point of having to reconcile my own faith, that's how I knew I wanted to follow the Lord because I watched them do it—not perfectly, but really intentionally and with pure hearts. My testimony is I've tasted and seen that God is good because my parents literally force-fed me the gospel. When I started to taste other things that weren't the gospel, it all tasted kind of bitter and Jesus was that much better.

Funny thing in marriage, my wife and I were married for 15 years and 27 days when she passed away. We actually turned in a marriage book called *Emptied* the day that she died. One of the things, a few months before that, Wynter was writing and she said, "Read what I wrote." She wrote this story. She grew up in a single-parent home with her mom and her grandma. Her dad was a drug addict and so she grew up with just her mom and her grandma. She slept with her grandma for all of her childhood.

In 1989, when the movie *Pretty Woman* came out, her grandma, who was a new Christian, watched that with her granddaughter who was nine years old. Wynter had this idea of what a husband was supposed to be based on who Richard Gere was to Julia Roberts. I've never seen the movie, but basically, I know that she was a prostitute and he loved her romantically through all that. Oddly enough, I was raised by two parents that were loving Christian parents and my idea of what my wife was going to be was my mom.

We came into marriage with two totally different perspectives. She shouldn't have been my mom; I had the wrong idea about that. I'm definitely not Richard Gere, so that was problematic. It was just funny to think about how two perspectives can change or how you can come into marriage with two different perspectives. Having grown up in a really good Christian home, I had this self-righteous idea that my wife was supposed to be my mom.

Looking back now, I just laugh about that story because Wynter and I learned that story about each other together. It's just really funny to think about how we all bring our own perspectives in and we all think our perspective is right. Neither of us were really right.

When I met Wynter, she wanted to be a coffee barista in Italy. She would meet me, we'd fall in love and I would literally wreck that dream. Not on purpose, but simply because we weren't moving to Italy. We had to get jobs, we had college loans, and so we ended up living in South Jersey where I grew up, which was not a place that she enjoyed.

She worked in communication and grant writing, which was really her field. She actually went into communications because it was the only school within our college that didn't require an essay, which is hilarious because Wynter would become an author and a writer, which she always wanted to do. She wanted to be a barista in Italy and she also wanted to write a book. I asked her, "Write a book about what?" She told me, "I don't know." I said, "Well, you might want to figure that out."

She wouldn't figure that out for a long time. She'd actually come home—we'd moved to Texas and she would come home from writing grants, I guess at about the age of 25, after we had our second daughter. She would find herself really drowning in motherhood, finding it really difficult and not feeling like she was built for it. We had our twins, Cameron and Olivia, a couple of years later and she would find herself really drowning.

At one point, I just think she got to a point where she was really desperate for Jesus to invade her space and she was trying to understand what her life was about. Is her life over? Is her career over? Is she not ever going to be what she wanted to be? At one point, she decided to write down a scripture: "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." She wrote that scripture down on a 3x5 card, posted it in her closet, and would just commit that verse to meditation, meditating on that verse day and night and asking God to meet her.

What's crazy is the minute she decided to own that verse, she began to see the deep needs that our girls had. Specifically, our oldest daughter who at the time was about seven years old. Wynter would find out that she was really smart and could read at a high level. All the books that she was reading for mommy-and-me type stuff, she was just growing out of that.

Wynter would discover that there was a space for what you would call tween girls where there were not a lot of resources for them. Wynter desperately looked for resource after resource, couldn't find any, and eventually, she would actually start creating this little resource in Adobe InDesign software. She didn't know it, but that was the beginning of her starting a magazine called *For Girls Like You*.

She would start and build this magazine called *For Girls Like You*, which still exists and has actually grown beyond her life here on earth. She'd go on to publish nine or ten books at this point and she's still got some books that are still being published even beyond her life. God is still using her in crazy ways, not only with our girls but thousands of other girls out there that God called her to reach.

We moved to Dallas from New Jersey. We went to visit Wynter's family, this family known as the Evans family. I didn't know them. I had received a gift from her uncle at our wedding and that's kind of all I knew about them. We went for vacation and her uncle's name is Tony Evans, who happened to be a well-known pastor who's been pastoring for nearly 50 years and is the first African-American to produce a study Bible and a commentary.

At that point, he was just her uncle and we went and visited. As God would have it, Wynter would work in that ministry for about a year and a half and that's how we got to Texas. I would begin working with the Evans family, starting with Dr. Evans' son Anthony Jr., who's a worship leader and singer. He was early on in his career and we'd become friends. I would manage him for about seven years. That would lead to me building trust with Dr. Evans, Tony Evans, and I would run his national ministry for seven years.

In between that space, I actually worked at Dr. Evans' church. The national ministry is called The Urban Alternative and his church is Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, where I worked for a couple of years as well. I walked into ministry. I was a sales guy, never wanted to do anything but make money and sell, and oddly enough, God kind of put me into the business of being this business development personality within ministry.

I got to sell the only product that never disappoints you, which is Jesus. I've been able to work in ministry now for 16 years. I'm pastoring now in Nashville, but I had 14 years in Dallas working with the Evans family, which is one of the greatest gifts God ever gave me. Not only were they a family that I worked with in ministry that I would grow with both developmentally and professionally, but also personally. They became like a family that when I lost Wynter, they just surrounded me and were a massive part of my healing.

For whatever reason, we knew that change was in the air, probably about two years before she passed away. There were a couple of opportunities that would pop up for me and I was so loyal to the Evans family. I loved working with them in ministry, so it was never a consideration to make any changes. But at one point, through a friendship, I was introduced to Church of the City, this movement of churches in Nashville. It's five churches total.

She and I both knew as we entered into conversations with this ministry that this might be the next step for me. We chose to come to Nashville together. We took the job together. We bought our home together. We picked our girls' school together. We moved into our home together on July 10th, 2018. We lived in our home for four nights and then we went back to Dallas for me to finish up my last week of work.

It would be in Dallas that Wynter would breathe her last breath. What was crazy was we were already in the middle of a massive life transition. When she passed away, we were glad to be in Dallas because it was a healing place for us. The Friday, the day before her funeral, my oldest daughter just stopped me and said, "Dad, are we going to Nashville?"

I took a walk and I did what I thought was the mature Christian thing to do. I said, "We need to pray about it and talk about it as a family." I was trying to be this leader and she just looked at me and she said, "Dad, Mommy was more excited about Nashville than any of us. I think we're supposed to go." At the same time, my now-boss, a guy named Darren Whitehead, who's the pastor of this movement of churches, would call me that same day.

He would say, "If you guys want to go back to Dallas, we'll send your stuff back. We'll figure out how to sell your house. Don't worry about anything." He said, "But if you come, you'll find a family that's ready to adopt you." They have adopted us. Our family is just grafted into this church. What's beautiful is because I was a pastor coming in—I'm an executive pastor—people knew who I was before I'd ever met anybody. When we got back to town, we've just been loved on. It's been like this incubator and this cocoon of healing that God's allowed us to be a part of for about 19 months now and I'm really grateful for it.

The day that Wynter passed away, we were staying at her cousin Priscilla's house. We stayed in that house and I remember waking up that morning at like 5:00 in the morning. We were traveling a lot and I was exhausted. But one of the things I love to do when I'm tired is I love to run; it just gives me energy. I took a run at 5:00 in the morning and I remember getting a mile and a half out on this super country road in Dallas and I remember just thinking I need to pray for my girls.

As I'm running, I'm praying for my girls really deeply and I had no idea why. I would come back home. Wynter was still asleep in bed and I would get ready for work. I'd leave for work. She would still be asleep and the girls were still asleep. It was like a lazy summer day. A little bit later on in that afternoon, I was finishing up my work. I was also saying goodbye to some of my staff members that worked for me.

The last thing I did before I left the office was I took a manuscript form. You have these forms when you write a book that you have to sign off on for a final edit. Wynter and I had been reviewing this book, *Emptied: Experiencing the Fullness of a Poured-Out Marriage*. This marriage book wasn't like a 'how-to' book, it was more like, "Join us on the journey as we've discovered what God can do when we submit our lives and our marriages to Him."

On my way home, she texted me and just said, "I feel," and then she put the sick emoji. She said she was feeling sick. I asked her why; she never responded. I would get home and she was with my sister-in-law who was at my house and a couple of my nieces were there and they were just playing with the girls and having a good time. I would just go lie down because I was exhausted from a long day and an early morning on my run.

I lay down for like 20 minutes, jumped up to get dinner ready to let Wynter have the evening to work on her writing project. I would walk back into the bedroom. At the time, I didn't know what was happening. I thought she was having a seizure, but she was experiencing a cardiac event. Bottom line is for several minutes I tried to save her life and she died in my arms. That was the hardest day, evening, and night of my life.

But I do remember the only thing I thought to myself was I have to take care of my girls. They were my only concern. I think more than anything else, knowing that they were going to be having lots of questions, I just needed to be a confidence for them that they probably couldn't have. So that's all I did. My main concern was them, speaking with them with the confidence that I believed all my life about life and death—that we all have a point in time to live and we all have a point in time to die.

It was really hard for me in that moment to experience my own feelings and it would take me lots of time to work all that out. But ultimately, I knew that I had to lead in that moment. God would give me every bit of strength to do that because I didn't have it on my own. I look back on it now and I just realize how important worship is to the life of a believer. Worship is great when life is going well, but worship is invaluable when life is not going well.

I found myself in this moment, actually in the hospital. We got to the hospital. Wynter didn't have a pulse, then she had a pulse, then she didn't have a pulse. I remember the emergency room doctor calling me in and just saying, "You probably want to say goodbye to your wife." So I went in and I just knelt down beside her and I was just kind of caressing her hair. To me, she was still my wife and she was still there.

I just sang: "It's Your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise, pour out our praise. It's Your breath in our lungs so I pour out my praise to You only. Great are You, Lord." In that moment—that's a song by All Sons & Daughters, a beautiful worship song—I think what I was doing was reminding her of where she was going and reminding myself of who I could trust in letting Wynter go.

That would be the first time I would sing and then the second time would be that night when we got back to the house, to my brother-in-law's house. We went to a different house, Wynter's brother's house, and we stayed the night there for two weeks. That first night, there were family members there, people there that had been with us at the hospital.

After some time of being together as a family, I went to their guest bedroom and lay on the bed with my four girls. I had no words for them, felt empty, felt fear, felt darkness, felt all the things that probably should come with death because death is an ugly thing. The only thing I could do was worship. So we just lay on that bed and I led them in worship songs, which Wynter and I had done with them year after year.

It wasn't a new thing for us; it was something we always engaged in as a family. The thing that was different and significant was that Wynter wasn't there. We've been singing ever since in our darkest moments and our hardest times. When we don't know what else to do, we just sing to the Lord and just sing about our gratitude.

The thing that I have in my 15 years and 27 days of marriage and my 17 years being with Wynter is a lot of gratitude for a gift that God gave me that I didn't deserve, that I couldn't have held onto if it wasn't for Him. I have four beautiful daughters with her that are constant reminders to me of who she was and who she is. I'm just grateful. One part of worship is just this gratitude for what God has given me and what God has done. The second part of it is just desperation for Him to do it again and for Him to show up time and time again when we need Him. Worship is everything.

I had four girls that I was stewarding and when Wynter left, that didn't stop and I had to do that. My sister showed up, Carmen showed up and is still with me and helping me. But I had another baby in Wynter's ministry, *For Girls Like You*, her magazine and all of her writings and the ministry that she was doing. I knew the day that she died that I was supposed to carry that on. I just wasn't exactly sure how.

God would provide all of these different women, actually, that just volunteered in the ministry and would help out, that would help us continue the ministry on, even as it grew. That would culminate with Wynter's best friend, a woman named Nicole, showing up to kind of run it. There are so many different ways that God has provided in tiny ways and massive ways. I hope I never get to a point of not trusting Him again because He's, time and time again, just showed me that He is trustworthy.

I'll never forget, I think it was probably an email the first time I talked to Natalie Jones at Parent Compass. I remember talking about this brand new show that was going to highlight families and highlight the value of family and how God uses family. It was certainly new at the time and I just remember talking to Wynter about it and we were just like, "Let's do it."

It is beautiful that I have this documented short film of my family, including Wynter, sharing her story and how God showed up for her. It's like a time capsule for my family that we have that is ministering to families all over the world and I'm incredibly grateful for it. It's funny, we did it when my girls were extremely young—well, younger than they are now. It is a beautiful time capsule and a neat reminder of how God provided then and being here now is a reminder of how He's continuing to provide.

Just before the Parent Compass episode—at the time, we were just a regular family, we still are a regular family—I just remember not realizing all that God was going to do. Just before recording the Parent Compass episode, my oldest daughter Alena was cast in a film called *War Room*, which is one of the highest-grossing Christian films at the box office of all time. She was the little girl named Danielle Jordan in the movie *War Room*.

I think the impact that it had for most people was just the reality of how strategic prayer is to the life of a believer. Prayer isn't just some casual thing we do, but it is a strategic thing we do. You think about marriage and the reality of how important communication is to marriage. How much more is communication with God in our marriage with Him, our relationship with Him?

Wynter and I wrote this book together called *Emptied: Experiencing the Fullness of a Poured-Out Marriage* because the thing that we discovered was most important in our marriage was literally emptying ourselves out for each other. Philippians chapter 2 talks about how although Jesus is equal with God, He didn't consider His equality with God as something to be taken for granted or taken advantage of.

But it says that He emptied Himself and became a servant and took on the form of a servant and emptied Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. God literally, to love us well, gave up His life. We oftentimes think in our marriages, "Well, I don't hate them, I'm doing the best I can." But the reality is that love looks like not being indifferent towards our spouse, which means being really proactive and intentional in our marriages.

Through the Christian lens, that intentionality looks like death—that love looks like giving up what you want, giving up what you need, and giving up what you deserve for the benefit of somebody else. Over the course of our marriage in increasing measure, Wynter and I were learning how important that was. In so doing for each other, we were receiving that much more love and finding it easier on our hearts to love each other.

We were giving up for each other and it's kind of funny, I look at our marriage in three five-year buckets. We had 15 years and 27 days—three five-year buckets. The first five years were about having our own expectations and our own desires about what marriage was going to be and we were kind of stuck in our positions on that.

The second five years was like, "Okay, we understand these differences and we understand that if we're going to make it, then we have to start giving up these expectations and giving up what we want." Because we were committed to doing that, not perfectly but intentionally, our last five years of marriage were these beautiful years of ministry where we got to serve each other well, travel together, and do ministry together. God would give us rich years of faithful love to each other.

I have these memories in my head right now—I am thinking about one a little over a month before she passed away. One of the things that Wynter always wanted to do was take dance lessons. In the middle of our move to Nashville, in the middle of chaos, we went and took dance lessons at this salsa studio. We were talking about how excited we were to go take salsa lessons in Nashville when we got there.

For me, I didn't want to do that. I hate dancing. I'm not a very good dancer, but Wynter always wanted to do it. Death to me in that moment in marriage looked like going to take salsa lessons with my wife and seeing the joy in her eyes when she, with her two left feet, would do salsa because she couldn't dance either. That's just one example, but there were all these different examples of things like expectations I'd have to give up and ideas about what I wanted my marriage to look like.

I had to give those things up in order to experience what God wanted for me and the same for her. I hesitate sometimes to offer people advice on what they should do in marriage because I don't know their story, I don't know their situation, I don't know their spouse, and it literally takes two people in a marriage for it to work. But the Bible says, "As far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."

All you can do is really take care of the things that God is calling you to do. There are many things in our life that we know that we want and sometimes we struggle to identify what we need to do to change. Ultimately, we never struggle to understand the things that we want really deeply, the things that we're selfish about.

I would just say, more than anything right now, ask yourself the question: "What are the things that I am holding onto that if I don't get, I feel like I am going to walk away? Or if I don't get, I am going to be angry? Or if I don't get, I am going to ignore my wife today? Or if I don't get, I am going to deny my husband my love?" Whatever that "if I don't get" is—what is that for you?

Once you discover what that is, it's probably the thing that God is calling you to lay down and give up. Ultimately, love is unselfish. Love gives, it doesn't take. There are so many things that we entrench ourselves in these positions about the things that we need and the things that we want, and if we don't get them, then we're going to whatever.

That's typically the thing that God wants to release us of because, ultimately, to hold onto those things is to not be loving. Jesus demonstrated His love for us in this—that while we were still sinners, while we were still doing the wrong thing, He loved us. He intentionally gave up everything for us. As believers, that's our call in marriage, it's our call in parenting, and it's our call in life.

It is funny, one of my daughters just reminded me of an argument that my wife and I had that she remembers. Arguments were pretty normal. Wynter and I were two very opinionated people. I was a much louder opinionated person and she was a much quieter opinionated person, but we were very opinionated. We'd have lots of healthy conversations, we'll put it that way.

Early on in marriage, I didn't handle disagreements really well because for me, handling disagreements well means that you talk stuff out and just kept getting after it. But for Wynter, that was actually really draining. It wouldn't be life-giving for her to keep talking things out. Sometimes she wanted to process things, she wanted quiet, and she processed better in quiet.

Here I am just continuing to throw my opinions out. Over time I learned to just walk away sometimes, to give her room and space to process. I actually process out loud, so for me, and for probably one person in a couple, it is typically the case: one processes out loud while the other one processes a little bit more quietly.

I had to learn to give her space to process. Then she had to learn to engage me sometimes in ways that would allow me to process because I didn't process as well quietly. I process more when I am having conversations. Again, it is like give and take and for me, all I can do is learn to give and hope at one point that she is going to give at the same time.

We're 19 months into our journey right now and if you would have told me that my girls would be where they are health-wise today, if you would have told me that a year ago, I wouldn't have believed you. They are doing really well. I mean, they've all handled the loss of their mom really differently and they've all processed it differently. We've all been in counseling.

They have an amazing counselor, which is a whole other God story of God sending someone to rescue our family. They are doing really well. They are all healthy. I think they all trust that God knows what He's doing, even if we don't understand it. We all wrestle at times, but we've learned—one of the beautiful things is that we've learned in our grief and our loss of Wynter to keep talking about her.

We keep talking about the things we loved, keep talking about the things we missed, and keep talking about the ways that we loved her and the ways that she loved us. Her name is not quiet in our home; it is mentioned. We talk about it as if she were still alive because guess what? She is; she's just not here. That's been a healthy thing for them.

I have heard stories of other widows where it is like they just stop talking about their spouse and then their kids don't feel comfortable talking about their spouse. That was something I never wanted to do because I really always wanted to honor her. To not talk about her for me would be to dishonor her, I feel like. That was just my perspective.

I heard a Christian psychologist say that to the degree that a parent can make sense of their story is to the degree that a child can actually be secure in theirs. I've done a lot of things wrong and I've made a lot of mistakes. But if there is anything I feel like I've tried to do right, it is make sense of what is happening. Not understand all that is happening—I don't understand why God would take Wynter, why she had to leave Earth, why their mom couldn't be here for their weddings and graduations.

But I do believe that He knows what He's doing and I do believe that He's making all things new and He's reconciling things and I do believe that one day we'll understand. I've tried to convey that to my girls and I've tried to live that out in front of them and I do think at this point that there is a level of health that they have because they're being secure in a story that is true, that God made true. So we can trust it.

For families, but for parents mainly, the thing that I would encourage parents to do is just be really intentional in their lives. Be intentional in their own relationships with God, intentional in their relationships with their kids, and then be intentional about trying to make the connection between the relationship with their child and their relationship with their God.

Ultimately, as the steward of their child, that is their primary task—introducing their child to the God that loves them. So I would just say: don't try to be perfect, but do try to be intentional. There's this reality that the more that we engage in something, the better we get at it. As parents, we oftentimes want to beat ourselves up because we don't do something perfectly.

I would just say keep practicing because practice makes perfect. Keep practicing your relationship with the Lord—it is practice. Keep practicing your relationship with your child and keep practicing trying to make this bridge between those two other relationships that are the primary relationships that you have in your life.

His Holy Spirit is the secret sauce that brings our imperfections and our best intentions and fills in the gaps for that. I just think being intentional in those different ways is really important. I guess I'd like to pray about parents doing that.

Father, I just thank You for the families that are watching this, Lord. I thank You for the lives that You are touching through this show. I pray, Lord, that for the parent that's listening and for the family that's watching, God, that needs to know who You are, God, that You would help them see You as clearly as possible.

For the families that know You that are just struggling to figure out their identity, struggling to figure out what it looks like to know You more, and struggling with what it looks like to spend time with You more, whether it be through reading Your scripture or through prayer, God, I pray that You would just encourage their hearts now.

I pray, Lord, that as they are intentional and as they lean into Your love, God, that You would fill in their best intentions with Your perfection. Jesus, that You would be their guide, that You would be their comfort, God, that You would be their affirmation, and that You would be all that they need. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.