Pastor's Widow Speaks Out After Death By Suicide

Kayla and Andrew Stoecklein. (GodsGotThis.org)

Kayla Stoecklein, the wife of the late Andrew Stoecklein, wrote a heartbreaking post online this week expressing her grief and shock over her husband's death. 

"Nothing can take away the suffocating pain I feel now you are gone," she wrote in the opening sentences on their family's blog, God's Got This. 

Andrew had started the blog after his father, Dave Stoecklein, was diagnosed with leukemia. The elder Stoecklein had founded Inland Hills Church in 1987. He would pass away from cancer in October of 2015, and left his young son to lead.

"You were right all along," Kayla wrote on the blog. "I truly didn’t understand the depths of your depression and anxiety. I didn’t understand how real and how relentless the spiritual attacks were. The pain, the fear, and the turmoil you must have been dealing with every single day is unimaginable."

Andrew had just returned to work in mid-August after a forced four-month sabbatical to attempt to deal with anxiety and depression. It has been revealed that the elders of the church forced Stoecklein to take the leave after he had a panic attack in the church just after Easter. In his final sermon, he revealed just how much he had been struggling with his mental health over the last few years.

Kayla's blog continued to apologize to her husband that despite the efforts to get him help he continued to feel alone and misunderstood. "I am so sorry you were fighting a dark spiritual war virtually alone, I am so sorry you were unable to fully get the help and support you needed."

She closed the blog by saying, "Until we meet again I will cling to my Father in heaven. He will carry me through every second, every minute, every hour of every day. I read a verse this morning and I know God is reminding me that even now, in the midst of my deepest pain that He has got this."