Mourning Caleb Kellso’s Death, Trusting In Our Good God

Dear family, friends, and many we have never even met,

We want to express our thanks to you all for the overwhelming love and care we have experienced these last few days. Thank you for praying. Thank you for encouraging us with Scripture. Thank you for your practical provisions. Thank you for mourning with us so well. And we especially thank God Who is our Rock and ultimate Comfort. He has used you all as a means of grace to us in our sorrow.

For those of you who do not know, on Monday 10/12 our benevolent Lord saw fit to take our precious youngest child Caleb (5) from this world. Our family was vacationing up at our family ranch as we often do. The Lord’s kindness to us was so abundant as we had a wonderful week together as a family. Caleb got to hunt with Asher, Elijah, and me. Caleb got to ride the quad by himself for the first time. He did AMAZING and LOVED it so much. Caleb was the first out of the house to congratulate Asher on his deer, and the whole family enjoyed time processing the deer together. He played many foosball games with everyone in the family. He enjoyed hunting for lizards, spiders, and moths with Kyla. Julie and Caleb got many sweet snuggle times together. There were many hugs, kisses, and “I love you’s” this last week. There were too many joys to mention them all and we continue to treasure each one with thankful hearts.

In the afternoon, as we were preparing to come home from our family vacation, we were loading up my truck. The kids were all helping. As usual, Caleb was jumping in to help as well. He was such a sweet servant! I (Josh) was going to move my truck closer to the home to continue loading up. While I had thought the kids dispersed behind me for another activity, our precious Caleb had actually moved in front of me. As I pulled the truck forward, I inadvertently ran over Caleb. The best we can tell, he had possibly dropped something in front of the truck and was attempting to get it. Realizing what might have happened, I quickly jumped from my truck and sought to care for Caleb. It is clear now that Caleb passed very quickly. We thank God for that grace. However, I, with Julie’s help, performed CPR until medical professionals arrived. As they took over, every attempt to revive Caleb was made with no success. We are grateful that the Lord protected Julie and the other children from having to see the tragic accident take place. That was a mercy from the Lord.

My cry while performing CPR is our cry today, “WE KNOW GOD IS GOOD!” We dare not ask God to bend His will to ours but rather ask that He bend our will to His, even if that means being broken and crushed. For the tender mending care of our loving Shepherd is precious to us. We will not reject the anguish for in the depths of our anguish are the mountains of His comfort. And we do not fight against our sorrows. For the intensity of each sorrow is a testimony of how precious our Caleb was to us and how intense our love was for him. Both of these are graces from God to us. We thank God for the undeserved blessing it was to be with Caleb for 5 years, 9 months, and 20 days. Each moment with him was an indescribable gift. He brought such joy to our lives and sweet energy to our home.

We do not need answers to why beyond what our sovereign God has given us in His Word. For in His Word is every answer we need and His Word is more precious to us than all the riches of the world. Even more than the riches of parenthood. What else would we need, and where else would we go than into the loving arms of our Savior! Our great God has provided for our biggest need in the forgiveness of our sins through the death of His own Son. With that precious truth in mind, we dare not question His love. How could we? Rather, we cling to Him. You all have been a means of God’s loving care for us. And for that, we thank you and worship Him. We know God is sovereign, and there is no better place for us than where He has us today. We TRUST! We YIELD! We mourn! We BLESS His Name! And though our tears fall almost constantly, we fall on our faces and worship! Blessed is the name of our Lord!