Losing Matthew:
Losing Matthew:
A Journey through Grief and Finding God’s Abiding Grace
A Journey through Grief and Finding God’s Abiding Grace
by: NANCY MAZUR
Born in Lima, OH and raised by parents with a strong faith who were both actively involved in parish life at St. Gerard’s church in which she was raised, Nancy’s Catholic education started early. She attended elementary school at St. Gerard’s and high school at Lima Central Catholic. Nancy admits that all of her life her faith was very important to her, and she learned at an early age that this faith would be challenged.
Nancy married her husband Mike in April of 1976. Leaving her home in Lima for the first time, the newlyweds moved to Swanton, OH where they lived until the early ’90s.
Nancy’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. She says, “It was hard to deal with all those dreams that you lost for your very first child. But in 1980 we were blessed with our first-born child, Nicole Marie, and I was more than ready to become a mom. After getting an education to work in a preschool, I realized deeply how much I longed to be a mom.”
Born in Lima, OH and raised by parents with a strong faith who were both actively involved in parish life at St. Gerard’s church in which she was raised, Nancy’s Catholic education started early. She attended elementary school at St. Gerard’s and high school at Lima Central Catholic. Nancy admits that all of her life her faith was very important to her, and she learned at an early age that this faith would be challenged.
Nancy married her husband Mike in April of 1976. Leaving her home in Lima for the first time, the newlyweds moved to Swanton, OH where they lived until the early ’90s.
Nancy’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. She says, “It was hard to deal with all those dreams that you lost for your very first child. But in 1980 we were blessed with our first-born child, Nicole Marie, and I was more than ready to become a mom. After getting an education to work in a preschool, I realized deeply how I much I longed to be a mom.”
Blessings & Loss
In 1984, Mike and Nancy were blessed once again with their second daughter, Tiffany Lynn. The young couple was so excited, and they dedicated themselves to becoming strong Christian parents. Nancy admits that she always wanted a big family. Having eight siblings of her own, she often found herself wondering how many children she and her husband would be blessed with. But God had other plans.
Mike and Nancy lost their next child, again to a miscarriage, in 1987. As Nancy struggled with the loss and with trying to figure out what God wanted from her, she was elated to find out in 1988 that she was pregnant again; this time with a son, Matthew.
Sharing Her Story
In the book, Losing Matthew: A Journey through Grief and Finding God’s Abiding Grace, Nancy shares with readers the journey she had with bringing Matthew into the world and parting with him as he entered the next on the very same day. Physically Nancy’s body healed through the trauma of his birth and immediate death, but healing mentally through the loss was much more of a challenge.
Even in the midst of the tragic loss of their son, Nancy’s longing to be used in God’s creative miracle to bring more children into the world was still there. Three years later, in the summer of 1991, Nancy learned she was pregnant again. What joy! And yet, within a few short months, this pregnancy too was lost to miscarriage. So, the plans—Nancy’s plans—changed again. It was at this point that Nancy realized that the plans she had for herself and her marriage (though good and even holy) were not the plans God had for them. Trusting in God’s goodness, they continued their journey as Nancy documented it all in her journal, patiently waiting for the day she would be reunited with her son as she remembered and cherished all the children she bore that were now in God’s hands.
Nancy began journaling after losing Matthew as a part of her healing journey. Nancy wrote in her journal faithfully. She found the process of writing very therapeutic and helpful, and each time she read through its pages she would see for herself how far God had brought her through it all. In the time that followed, she realized more and more her desire to share Matthew’s story (and her own) with others.
Nancy looks back at this time in her life with a grateful heart. She says, “I never did anything alone even though there were many times that I felt God had abandoned me. I was certain of only one thing during this time: the road God had me on was going to challenge my faith way beyond anything I had ever expected. During this journey, I came to understand through my own experience one of the greatest and most lasting Truths the faith teaches us; the Truth that I wasn’t carrying the cross alone. I learned during this time that it was God Himself who was carrying the cross for me. What’s more, I learned that He was carrying me, too. This became clear because at times I couldn’t (on my own) make it through the hour, or even the minute, let alone the entire day.”
The publication of Nancy’s book Losing Matthew: A Journey through Grief and Finding God’s Abiding Grace has been decades in the making. To learn more about the early days of Nancy first sharing Matthew’s story with others, check out this article published in The Catholic Telegraph in 2011. Journeys Revealed Ministries is honored to be the means through which the story of this soul will, thirty-seven years later, be bound and printed in book form.
Nancy's book has been FULLY funded!
Journeys Revealed Ministries is a non-profit Catholic apostolate dedicated to sharing the stories of souls. We walk with each writer on the difficult journey of writing and publishing their faith journey at no cost to them in hopes of blessing others with the message of hope and healing. We are one body in Christ called to help others by giving authentic witness to God. Publishing books, of course, incurs cost. We cannot fulfill our mission without the generosity of people like you. Look for future opportunities to help us fund our next book!
* All donations are tax deductible and all funds donated to this publication will be categorized as such and used for this publication only. The funding for this publication will be open for three months and will expire on October 1, 2025. If the funding needed for this publication is not raised in its entirety by this date, anyone who donated to this publication will be contacted by a member of the JRM team and asked if (1) they want their donation returned to them or if (2) they would like JRM to keep their donation and move it into JRM’s general operating fund. Please note: The total cost estimated to publish this title includes a good faith estimate of all the costs JRM will acquire based on the current quotes we’ve received and our work on previous publications. The actual cost of publishing this title may be less than this quoted amount. If the actual cost of publishing this title comes in at less than what we have quoted in our estimate above, the donor agrees to allow the funds they’ve given to this publication to be moved into JRM’s general operating fund.
Nancy's book had been FULLY funded!
Journeys Revealed Ministries is a non-profit Catholic apostolate dedicated to sharing the stories of souls. We walk with each writer on the difficult journey of writing and publishing their faith journey at no cost to them in hopes of blessing others with the message of hope and healing. We are one body in Christ called to help others by giving authentic witness to God. Publishing books, of course, incurs cost. We cannot fulfill our mission without the generosity of people like you. Look for future opportunities to help us fund our next book!
* All donations are tax deductible and all funds donated to this publication will be categorized as such and used for this publication only. The funding for this publication will be open for three months and will expire on October 1, 2025. If the funding needed for this publication is not raised in its entirety by this date, anyone who donated to this publication will be contacted by a member of the JRM team and asked if (1) they want their donation returned to them or if (2) they would like JRM to keep their donation and move it into JRM’s general operating fund. Please note: The total cost estimated to publish this title includes a good faith estimate of all the costs JRM will acquire based on the current quotes we’ve received and our work on previous publications. The actual cost of publishing this title may be less than this quoted amount. If the actual cost of publishing this title comes in at less than what we have quoted in our estimate above, the donor agrees to allow the funds they’ve given to this publication to be moved into JRM’s general operating fund.
