[Editor’s Note: Unlike other stories in our Who’s Who series, written to introduce you to our pastors, Pastor Loftis’ story is the recent history of a storm through which the Lord has brought his family. It is a story he is ready to share in hope that it will encourage others weathering life’s fierce storms. I know you will be encouraged.]

“He spoke, and the winds rose, stirring up the waves. Their ships were tossed to the heavens and plunged again to the depths.”  Psalm 107:25-26

In the wee hours of the morning on June 1, 2008, Worship Pastor David Loftis and his wife Carol were sound asleep when the shrill ring of a phone cut the thick silence of night. A phone call in the middle of the night is never good. What they didn’t hear, or couldn’t have possibly imagined, was the sound of the wind picking up outside and the waves stirring up and approaching their front door. For the next fifteen months, they would be tossed and plunged through the depths of a storm unlike any they had yet weathered.

That night was the beginning. Carol’s mother, Susan, had suffered an aneurysm. The next six months would bring surgeries, rehab, 75 days in the hospital and trips to Missouri for Carol to help her father. Finally, a decision was reached to move Carol’s parents to Raleigh. The week before the move was scheduled, the family spent their last Thanksgiving together, “a bittersweet, precious time,” recalled David. Carol’s mother went home to rejoice with her Savior just days later.

The family’s loss and the busy holiday season were followed by a five-week struggle with pneumonia and bronchitis for Carol. The next wave crashed with the deaths of two close friends, which David described as “timely, heavy hits.”

Waves of grief and pain washed over them. Still the storm raged on.

In May, David would learn that his throat was hemorrhaging and scarred with cysts and polyps. An operation would have to be scheduled, but it would bring the risk of losing his singing voice. Recovery required a period of total silence. Then slowly, beginning at a whisper and adding just ten minutes a day, talking was restored. But, it would require three months of therapy before singing would be allowed.

Just before surgery, David had begun a study of the psalms. “There are insights you see when you can’t sing,” he said. His heart’s song would remain steady and find new energy even when it could find no voice. “I had lost touch with my creativity during those stress-filled times,” he said. The months of loss and grief had left him drained. But, he said, his time of silence was like “a medical sabbatical from God. It gave me back in my mind and into my being my creative juices.”

On a day early in his recovery, David and Carol were sitting in a small chapel near a beach where a friend had offered them a place to stay. Carol read from Psalm 13: “I will sing to the Lord for he has been good to me.” For David it was a promise. He would sing, and, when he did, he would offer God the first fruits. (This would be the beginning of an idea that would develop into the Sing a New Song worship celebration held October 25.)

“It’s so humbling to know that God still wants me to do what He’s gifted me to do and that He still wants to use that in the Kingdom,” David said. “Something like this really focuses you. Life is short and the windows [of opportunity] may be short.”
Earlier in his career, David was reticent to share the songs that he wrote. But, on the other side of silence, there were new songs to sing. Songs to the God whose unfailing love had anchored them during the storm recently weathered and who would continue to anchor them in the days ahead as the storm would escalate.

Just a month after David’s surgery, their oldest son, John David (JD) fell gravely ill and was hospitalized. JD’s illness shook the tight-knit family, when his sister Jessie, preparing to leave on a mission trip, and his 16-year-old brother Josiah were barred from visiting due to strict hospital rules.

For Carol and David, the storm would plunge them to depths no parent can bear imagining. For days, the cause of JD’s illness could not be determined. He was coughing up blood and had lost so much that he was left weak and ashen. At the lowest point, David said they were prepared “to give him back to the Lord.”

Eventually, a diagnosis came: Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare disease that inflames
blood vessels and attacks major organs. The disease can be fatal, but was caught in time for treatment to be effective.

“Lord, help!” They cried out in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves.” (Psalm 107:28-29)

The storm has stilled, but a storm always leaves behind it a wake of destruction. There is pain that is still raw and sorrow that is tender. There are questions without answers. There is emotional exhaustion. But picking up the pieces are a family of servants who are humble and grateful to the Lord who has shown His mercy so vividly and love so tenderly. Together they sail on with the confidence, the hope, the truth, and the song that God is good and loves them so.