Wheaton Bible Church pastor writes book after wife's death

The enormity of his loss swept over the Rev. Robert Bugh in his laundry room one evening about two months after Carol, his wife of 27 years, died of cancer.

Only a year and a half before, he had lost his best friend to cancer. Now Carol, his life partner, the mother of the their five children, was gone. Bugh, the senior pastor of Wheaton Bible Church, was faced with being a single parent, running a household, doing the mounds of laundry Carol had always done.

“I can't do this. I don't want to do all this,” he thought to himself. “I can't run the house and take care of our kids. I don't want to be a single parent. This is impossible!”

Bugh said God's answer came back to him — inaudible, but unmistakable: “Rob, you can do this; I will get you through this.”

Six years later, Bugh has written “When the Bottom Drops Out,” a book about how God did get him through and the faith that sustained him and his family during the most trying time of his life. Published by Tyndale House, the book is being released to the public on Oct. 1.

Bugh said he believes it is a story God wanted him to tell to encourage other believers going through disappointment and suffering.

“On one hand, it was really painful, and it doesn't do any good to pretend otherwise,” he said. “On the other hand, I have a deep confidence God is in control and this (the suffering) was his assignment.”

The bottom

Bugh met his best friend, Tom Williams, shortly after he became pastor of Wheaton Bible Church in 1994. A surgeon who became president of the medical staff at Central DuPage Hospital, Williams shared Bugh's passion for adventure, love of barefoot water skiing and deep commitment to sharing Christ with others. Their families often vacationed together.

In January 2005, Williams was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer of the thyroid, and five months later he was dead. Williams never wavered in his faith during his ordeal, but Bugh knew his own life would never be quite the same. That summer, he sold the ski boat they owned together.

Only three months after Williams died, Carol was diagnosed with what turned out to be a very rare and aggressive internal melanoma in August 2005. The Bughs were referred to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Bugh, who acknowledges that hospital visitation had never been a favorite part of his job as a pastor, spent months shuttling Carol back and forth to Houston and sitting in waiting rooms filled with terribly sick people.

The church prayed, with more than 1,000 people turning out for one prayer meeting while the Bughs were in Texas seeking treatment. But months before Carol died, the Bughs knew they were fighting a losing battle. One night in his hotel room across from the hospital in Houston, Bugh realized he would never have his wife back as a companion.

“That was a horrible moment because I realized how alone I was,” he said.

Yet, even in the darkest of times, neither Bugh or his wife gave up their faith in God's goodness and power. Carol accepted her illness with grace, finding blessings in those who encouraged and supported her.

Bugh found strength in Scripture and turned again and again to the account of Jesus' anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the night of his arrest, Jesus prayed to be delivered from what was coming, but submitted his will to God's.

“Not my will, but thy will be done, that was huge for me,” Bugh said. “In an ultimate sense, that was God's difficult assignment for her (Carol) and for our family.”

Carol Bugh died in August 2006 after an 11-month battle with cancer. The couple's three daughters were young adults, but their son, Ryan, was only 12. Bugh doesn't pretend to understand the good of taking a mother away from a son so young, but said he trusts in God's sovereignty.

“It's the confidence that God always has my back, that he's in control,” he said.

Pain and adversity

Although some might question why a good God would allow such suffering, Bugh said adversity is part of living in a fallen world.

“God's ways are bigger than our ways and God has a plan for our lives and that plan does involve pain and it does involve suffering,” he said. “Could it be that suffering is to the soul what soap is to the hands — that our adversity, our pain and our loss make us more like Jesus.”

The Bughs received an outpouring of emotional and practical support from church members, who did everything from fly to Houston to be with them to cut their grass and keep their cars repaired. But Bugh acknowledged that not all the responses they received was helpful.

Most hurtful were suggestions made to his friend Tom Williams and to Carol that if they had more faith, they would be healed.

“That's not what the Bible teaches,” Bugh said. “God sent his son to deliver us from sin, but not necessarily from the difficulty of our circumstances.”

Hardships in life can throw people in a tailspin because they do not believe they should happen, he said.

“The American dream is that you should be healthy, wealthy, successful and prosperous, and if you're not, something is the matter with you,” he said. “There's a contrast between the American dream and what I call the Kingdom dream.”

The Kingdom dream is to believe God loves you and to cling to him when adversity comes, he said.

“It's easy to get stuck on the back side of a question mark,” Bugh said. “We have to let go of the what ifs, and even the whys, because we can't answer them.”

Light dawning

Grief is different for every person, but Bugh said his own cloud began to lift a few months after Carol's death. Unknown to him, church members were praying that he and Rhonda, the widowed wife of his friend Tom Williams, would get together. As he describes it, the two of them met with another couple for dinner and suddenly he saw her in a new way.

Bugh and Rhonda, a pediatrician, were married in December 2007, slightly less than a year and a half after Carol's death. Bugh acknowledges that the remarriage might seem rapid, but he said the fact they already knew each other and the similar circumstances they both had been through drew them together.

Stepfamily life presents its own challenges, Bugh admits. The seven children they have between them have been supportive after being reassured the couple still honored and treasured their first spouses. Still, building new family traditions and common memories is a long process, he said.

“The honeymoon in a stepfamily takes place years down the road because it just takes time,” he said.

A “poster boy for suffering” in his church, Bugh said his openness about his struggles has led others to share their pain with him, from job losses and divorces to suicides and deaths of loved ones. Attendance has gone up during a six-week sermon series he is preaching on dealing with disappointment.

“Suffering is a common language for us. If we're not in the middle of suffering, we know someone who is,” he said. “People want to know they're going to be OK.”

A self-described Type A personality, Bugh said his own suffering made him more compassionate and even more patient.

“I have learned that life is brief and much more fragile that I ever realized. The bottom can drop out at any moment,” he said. “We have chosen not to get bitter, not to get angry, because we have confidence that God is working all this together for good.”

For more information on Bugh's book, or to see and hear his sermons on dealing with pain and disappointment, go to wheatonbible.org.

How to help those in pain

The following are tips for helping those in pain from Rev. Rob Bugh's book, “When the Bottom Drops Out,” and from a conversation with him.

1. Sometimes it's better to say nothing, but listen, especially when the person is in shock or the tragedy is recent

2. Come alongside. Simply be present.

3. Choose words carefully to convey empathy and understanding. A sincere “I'm sorry” can be better than pronouncements.

4. Do practical things that need to be done — run errands, prepare a meal, help with household chores.

5. Be patient. Each person grieves in his or her own way.

6. Understand the process. Bugh read books on grief, loss and disappointment that helped him deal with what he was going through.