Life From Tragedy

When God whispers, Heather (Rogers) Kuhlman listens—and as a spiritual director, she helps others recognize the sound.

But after her only child died tragically on his honeymoon just three days after his wedding, everything Heather knew about hearing God’s still, small voice was tested.

Would she not only be able to discern the divine in the midst of tragedy but also continue to guide and inspire others in their spiritual journeys?

The answers came slowly as Heather, a graduate of Franciscan University’s School of Spiritual Direction, remembered and practiced something her mother had told her: “You have to be quiet and listen.”

That advice had been given to her as she experienced her first Mass after growing up Protestant. “Mom taught me to focus,” she recalls. In the absence of the big music or other worship elements they were accustomed to, Heather’s mother had said, “Close your eyes. Jesus is there. There’s so much Scripture in the Mass. You just have to be quiet and listen.”

When Heather and her husband, Gordon ’92, lost their son, Nathaniel ’22, in a water-skiing accident in St. Lucia on October 31, 2023, Heather says, “My heart was hurting so badly … that I knew I could not trust my heart. I had to go by what I knew about the faith in that moment.”

As she did that—and listened—her belief in Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies was reaffirmed. “I knew that if everything spoken was fulfilled in him, he truly is the Messiah, and therefore, I can trust what he said.”

She clung to Christ’s promise that there are many mansions in his Father’s house and that he would go ahead to prepare a place for his own.

“He had prepared a place for my son,” Heather says. “Therefore, even in this tragedy, I knew God is so good because he was providing for him in a place beyond the veil, and I knew I could trust him because his word is true. And that’s what I held onto, and that’s what allowed me to keep walking, trusting, and to hold onto those Scriptures till my heart could feel again.”

Heather also found that she couldn’t pray the way she had before her son’s death, but she persisted.

“For the first six months, I could not even pray on my own. It was just ‘Help!’” She used the Pray as You Go podcast as an aid and found God present in her darkness and showing up in amazing ways.

She relied, too, on the Rules of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which she learned in the Franciscan University School of Spiritual Direction.

“Those rules have helped me to deepen my trust in the Lord and to lean on him in times of deep desolation. At times, there would be so many overwhelming thoughts that would just send me in a downward spiral, and the Holy Spirit helped me to see they were not from him. So, when I noticed these thoughts, instead of entertaining them, I started to give them to Jesus.”

Through it all, Heather says, she knew the Lord had not left her.

He was there when family members and friends—joined in spirit by prayer warriors around the world—gathered in St. Lucia for a “big ask” as they prayed the “Lazarus prayer” over Nathaniel’s lifeless body in hopes God would raise him from the dead.

“I said no matter what happens, we still will give honor and praise to God,” Heather says. As they prayed, she recalls, “The Holy Spirit was palpable, like I had never felt. It almost felt like we were … fighting against death.”

For one hour, they prayed in tongues and in English in the presence of two police officers. The next day, the officers said they were so struck by what they witnessed that they were shocked Nathaniel didn’t get up and walk. “We have never seen people pray like that,” they said.

At one point during the prayer, Heather says she felt like she had nothing left to pray.

“I had given everything. In that moment, I just felt Nathaniel’s presence on the right side of me and there was this light. I put my hand on my shoulder, even though I knew he wasn’t there. I thought, ‘You’re not coming back, are you? You’re not coming home because you are home.’”

After their return to Florida, Nathaniel’s wife, Mariana (Garcia ’23), wasn’t sure about remaining in the apartment where the newlyweds had spent their wedding night and where they had planned to live. She asked Nathaniel’s parents if she could stay with them. The answer was, “Yes, as long as you want.”

Then, on Thanksgiving Day, less than a week after the funeral, Mariana learned she was carrying Nathaniel’s child. God had answered the “Lazarus prayer” by giving life in another way.

Heather says when they shared the news of Mariana’s pregnancy, “The joy, the resounding joy, was everywhere.” It spread through Guardian Angels Catholic School in Clearwater, Florida, where Heather teaches, and the Kuhlmans’ parish of St. Ignatius of Antioch in Tarpon Springs.

Raphael Patrick Kuhlman was born July 18, 2024, and baptized in August in the church where his father’s funeral had been nine months earlier.

For Heather, the joy of her grandson’s birth mingled with the heartbreaking loss of her son has made her feel at times like she is living in two dimensions.

“I miss my son. I want him back. I’m so sad. Yet the other dimension is that my son is exactly where he’d want to be. He beat me to heaven. I don’t understand God’s timing in this, though I appreciate that I don’t have to worry about him because I know where he is. Yet, I think, how many more Christmases and Thanksgivings do I have to be without my child on earth? How do we proceed with him in a different way?”

Some of Nathaniel’s friends have told her that they have sensed him during their own prayer. One said it seemed Nate was praying for the same person he was praying for. That fits with Heather’s belief that her son is on mission in heaven and continuing to intercede for others as he did on earth.

Heather also says she heard from a nurse who told of asking for Nathaniel’s prayers for a critically ill patient in her care. The patient, a young man, was unconscious and on a ventilator, and the nurse had prayed he would be able to walk out of the hospital.

“A few days later,” she wrote in a Facebook message to Heather, “he was waking up and following commands and off the ventilator.” He later told the nurse, “I know you. You were the one praying for me—you and some other guy.” The nurse said no male nurses, caregivers, or chaplains had been on the unit that week.

“Whether this was a confirmed miracle or not,” Heather says, “I decided it’s time to ask for Nathaniel’s intercession. Let’s just see what God does. His story is not over. Our story is not over. In some ways, it’s just beginning.”