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Pastor Stephen Nunn got a new perspective on grief when he lost his wife unexpectedly
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Published: July 14, 2011
Updated: 07/16/2011 10:31 am
Stephen Nunn had just wrapped up his radio show on WTBN when his cell phone rang.
"Dad, Mom is passed out. You need to come home. Now." His daughter's voice sounded calm but urgent.
"The Ambassador of Praise," as he's known to his audience, was still feeling a good vibe from the evening's high-energy gospel playlist. As always, he had spoken several times to his wife, Aria, during station breaks. Certainly this couldn't be serious.
"Dad, I think she's dead," said Rachel, 18.
He doesn't remember the drive home. He does remember the paramedics, the worried looks from family members who had arrived, the police officer gently trying to keep him from entering the bedroom where Aria lay. He insisted on going in anyway.
Aria was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later. Nunn, Rachel and son Stephen, 25, knew the truth in their hearts before it was made official.
It was five days before Christmas. Aria, his wife, best friend and co-founder of Trinity Gospel Community Church, which they led together, was 51. She died of congestive heart failure. She had lived with the hereditary disease for years but rarely discussed it, so her family wouldn't worry.
Nunn had known Aria since his youth. Their families were friends and they attended St. John Progressive Missionary Baptist Church together. After he graduated from Tampa Bay Vocational Tech High School in 1979, he served a stint in the Air Force. When he came home and saw her at church, he looked her straight on and said: "I'm going to marry you."
"You're crazy," she shot back.
They took their vows 18 months later on Jan. 9, 1982. He was 20; she was 25. That was the beginning of a beautiful journey, he always declared.
Then she died, long before that journey was supposed to end. The pastor who counseled so many others through tragedies and difficult times, the upbeat gospel music radio host with the honey-laced voice, who brought comfort and gospel praise music to the Tampa Bay community every Saturday night, found himself in another role he wasn't prepared for: grieving widower.
How he would go on, he just didn't know.
He felt the calling to serve God early in life. But he spent many years resisting it.
Nunn didn't want to be different than his friends. Yet in his teen years, he actually wanted to go to church. He wanted to be a servant for the Lord.
His father was a minister. His mother and a sister played the piano at services. He was happiest when he was helping people, especially those who were hurting. He was a good listener.
Nunn worked as a national marketing manager for Dun and Bradstreet Planning Service and then Poe and Associates, traveling extensively. First came Stephen Jr.; eight years later, Rachel. He took Bible courses and seminary training on the side. After much prayer, he and Aria started the nondenominational Trinity Gospel Church in leased hotel space. He juggled pastoral duties along with his regular paying job, warding off that tug in his heart to give it up for God fulltime.
When the moment came, it was swift and inexplicable. He was on the road visiting clients in upstate New York. When he walked into his hotel room, he started weeping uncontrollably. OK, God, he thought. You got me.
"I knew it was time to quit running away," he says. Nunn called his boss and gave his resignation. When he called Aria at home with their toddler daughter and young son, she supported him.
"Honey, you're a man of integrity," she said. "You're a very, very focused person. Whenever you put your mind to something, you give it your all. So I'm right there with you."
He never regretted that leap of faith in 1995 when he became the church's full-time pastor. The congregation grew steadily, and they were finally able to buy a $100,000 10-acre tract of property at Diana Street in east Tampa for a permanent home. Today, nearly 200 members worship in a modular building on the site. Still a businessman at heart, Nunn doesn't want to take on too much debt or expansion until the congregation can afford it.
"Our time isn't always God's time," he says.
When Aria died, the Nunns weren't the only ones who felt a deep sense of loss. The congregation also lost its church mother. She was beloved among the members for her gracious and kind demeanor, her compassionate and caring nature. If you needed her counsel, she always had time to sit and listen.
Now she was suddenly gone, and the solid, strong man who always stood next to her was paralyzed with sadness.
"It was a shock to all of us," says longtime member Gregory Mason, a plant manager. "Especially me, since I had just spoken with her at length that day. She was such an integral part of our church family. Now we had to find a way to go on without her, as she would have wanted."
Aria always told her husband she never wanted a wake with a public viewing of her body, nor did she want a somber funeral with a casket. He honored her wishes with a celebration of her life, two days after Christmas, in the church where they had met nearly four decades earlier.
St. John was filled to capacity. Nunn was stunned by the overflow crowd, coming out on a holiday week to pay their last respects to his wife. He remembers thinking: She has touched more lives than I could have ever imagined.
Former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Lee Roy Selmon spoke at the service. He and his wife, Claybra, were good friends of the Nunns. He says the outpouring of support on that December day was just a reflection of what the couple has meant to this community.
"They are genuine people who love the Lord," Selmon says. "They've given so much to others. Though I knew Steve was going to be hurting for a long time, I also knew that he would be surrounded by love to pull him through this."
As a pastor, Nunn has ushered many through the grieving process.
He holds their hands, helps plan funerals, speaks at services and counsels them in the aftermath.
Handling his own grief was another matter.
"Until it happens to you, you really don't understand," he admits now. "You can tell folks you understand their pain, but not really. Not until you've felt it yourself."
He shut down after Aria's death. He couldn't lead his church and he couldn't host his popular radio show. He had once been whole; now he felt like half. His sounding board was gone, and so was his motivation. How could he possibly return to Trinity Gospel when everything connected to it would remind him of Aria?
Daughter Rachel, a college student, took over running the house. Son Stephen, who works for the city of Tampa's water department, moved back home temporarily. Always a close family, their presence gave Nunn the foundation he needed to begin rebuilding his life.
Concentrating on her father gave Rachel a break from her own despair. Knowing that her mother would not be there to share the milestones in her life – college graduation, a wedding and the birth of her own children – made her sad and angry. But seeing her father suffer was even worse. She wanted his hurt to go away. So she focused on the happy memories and being present for Nunn.
"I knew he would be happy and get his passion back again one day. That's his nature," she says. "But I also wanted him to know it was OK to feel this way now, that he just had to go through this part first."
Though Nunn had gone to a place of darkness he had never experienced, he didn't waver in his faith. He did have questions for God, however: Lord, is there something I did wrong? Is there something I needed to do that I haven't done? Is there a point you are trying to make? Is there a message in this, and if there is, did it have to come by these means?
He also wondered why it couldn't have been him instead of Aria. She was such a sweet soul and deserved a longer life.
Church members, friends and extended family reached out. They brought meals, a shoulder to cry on, Scriptures that spoke to his pain and gave hope for the future. Associate ministers stood in for him on Sundays and at Bible studies. All the love that Nunn had shown to others through the years now was coming back tenfold.
But as fellow pastor and longtime friend Craig Holloway notes, "Ministers are used to being on the giving end, not the receiving end" when it comes to consoling.
"We're out of our comfort zone when the shoe is on the other foot," he says. "But what we have to remind ourselves is that just because we're called by God to serve, we're not exempt from experiencing our own personal tragedies. And we have to rely on that same faith we preach about to get us through."
Grief has no time limitations.
For Nunn, it took about two months before he was able to get back to a normal routine.
He had battled through the depression that left him feeling unable to ever minister again. All the overwhelming support he had gotten from his congregation family made him realize that this is where he belonged. He felt that same love from his WTBN listeners, many of whom had sent cards and left messages at the station.
And at his deepest, lowest point, he says God was there waiting for him, giving him the cushion needed. With that, Nunn had come to a place where he realized that life would never be the same again, but that didn't mean it still couldn't be a wonderful life.
"I never say it was a 'bad day' anymore," he says. "I believe in bad moments in the day, but a whole day, never. There is always something good we can extract. That's what we need to focus on."
He is back in the pulpit, even more passionate than he was before. His daughter sees that fire and is amazed by it.
"He's always telling us to live every day to the fullest, and live it like it's your last," she says. "He's always telling us how much he loves us. I think this whole experience has freed him to open his heart even more, because we just don't know when our time is up."
In August, Nunn turns 50. He thought he would be celebrating that milestone with Aria. God had other plans, he says.
If her death taught him anything, it was that pain will not kill you. It will illuminate your life and teach you things you might have never known. He now lives that message in his life, and preaches it with great conviction.
"Make a difference in this world. Be a light and example," he says. "You have an opportunity to make an impact in somebody's life, so don't let it pass you by. Every single day is a gift; make the best of it."
TBO.com, search keyword: Nunn, to see a WFLA-TV report on a pastor's journey back from grief. mbearden@tampatrib.com (813) 259-7613
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