At St. Mary, Our Lady of Grace Church in St. Petersburg, on October 28, 2023, from behind the barrier that hides the bride before weddings, she peeked into the church.

At the altar, Nathaniel Kuhlman, 23, waited for her.

His favorite part of wedding prep was planning their Mass, Mariana said. “That was going to be the foundation for the rest of our lives.”

Just Like Heaven

At 1:11 a.m. on January 14, 2000, Heather Kuhlman went into labor.

It took six years after a miscarriage for her to get pregnant, so “I had almost given up on being able to have a child,” she said.

But her “miracle baby,” Nathaniel Patrick Kuhlman, was born at 3:50 p.m. the same day.

“To hold him, to be able to nurse him, to be able to love him,” she said, “it was just like heaven for me.”

Nathaniel grew up as a parishioner at St. Ignatius in Tarpon Springs.

“I always prayed for a happy, healthy, and holy child,” Heather said.

In high school, Nathaniel prayed over the intercom every day as a chaplain at the Christian school he attended.

He met Mariana while they both studied at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. 

“From the moment I met him, I just knew how special the Lord regarded him as well as how close he held the Lord to his own heart,” Mariana said.

He loved the Lord more than he loved her, she said — exactly what she wanted in a husband. They dated for a year and two months before he proposed.

The Accident

Mariana sat next to Nathaniel at breakfast on October 31, 2023, at a resort on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

They decided they’d start the first full day of their honeymoon by water skiing.

Both were experienced water skiers. They approached the resort’s water sports desk and learned they would go one at a time. Nathaniel went first. 

Mariana waited on shore. She got confused when, after a while, the boat sped back, too fast to be pulling anybody. She saw someone on board receiving CPR: Nathaniel.

“And then everything changed,” Mariana said.

While he lay unresponsive, she prayed Hail Marys, and she called out his name. Then she called Heather.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Heather recalled Mariana saying. “This is not your fault,” Heather insisted.

Still on the phone with Heather, an ambulance took them to the hospital, where attempts to revive Nathaniel were unsuccessful. Inexplicably, he had drowned.

“Your whole world just comes crashing down,” Heather said. She just wanted to hug Mariana. But for now, “she was all alone.”

A Family’s Last Hope

Back at the resort, Mariana waited 24 hours while family rushed to meet her.

Staff moved her to a new room, so she packed her things and Nathaniel’s. She broke down every five minutes, she said, and stayed on the phone with Father Beau Schweitzer, a priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, who served as chaplain for a mission trip she took in college.

She had texted to ask him to pray for her. He called right away and provided what she needed: prayer and distraction.

“He was such a comfort to talk to as I was packing,” Mariana said. “I just didn’t want to do it alone.”

After the call, she moved into her new hotel room.

Her body “broke down,” she said, in response to her grief. “I was nauseous, not eating, stomach cramps.” 

Whenever she tried to pray, she only cried.

While waiting, she spent most of her hours on the phone with her mom, with Nathaniel’s parents, and with friends, including the bridesmaids and groomsmen. They mourned together. 

Mariana’s last call on the day Nathaniel died was with his mom.

“I didn’t want her to be alone,” said Heather, who, during the call, told Mariana to turn off the lights, to try to get some sleep.

“I’m here,” Heather told her, “and I’m not going anywhere.” 

Heather waited until Mariana’s breathing changed, “so I knew she was asleep.”

Then, with the call still connected, Heather slept, too.

A Bold Request

Heather, who has about 1,000 Facebook friends, felt led to put a prayer request on Facebook — that God would restore her only child’s life. But she worried: What if God says no?

“I don’t want people to lose their faith because of this,” Heather prayed. God answered: “Let me handle that.” 

She posted the request on November 1, the day she arrived on the island. The next day, she’d “get to see Nate and pray over him,” she wrote in the post. She asked her friends to set their alarms “and join us from wherever you are.”

On Nov. 2, she posted again: “Heading to the hospital now,” she wrote. “St. Lazarus, please pray for new life to be breathed into my son.”

The family prayed, and so did their friends. They called it the “Lazarus hour.” 

But Nathaniel didn’t wake up.

The Miracle

In a waiting room, during the autopsy, Nathaniel’s grandfather wondered: What if God answers our prayers a different way? What if Mariana is pregnant?

Everybody cried at the thought.

But Mariana had tracked her cycle. Pregnancy wasn’t possible — unless God intervened.

“Our hope of a grandchild was gone when my son passed away,” said Gordon Kuhlman, Nathaniel’s father.

But in Mariana, the Kuhlmans had gained a daughter.

So they said “absolutely” when Mariana asked if she could move in with them — she just couldn’t go back to the apartment she’d planned to share with Nathaniel.

In her first days living with her in-laws, she prepared for her husband’s funeral. 

She was certain, still, that she wasn’t pregnant, even though she had missed her cycle. Surely, she thought, the trauma had disrupted it. 

But to put the idea out of her head, about a week after the funeral, Mariana took a pregnancy test. 

Pregnant, it read.

“I was so overjoyed,” she said, and “sad that Nathaniel wasn’t there for this.”

But, Mariana said, a baby meant “I was going to meet our love personified.”

A New Beginning

Contractions started around 1:00 a.m. July 18.

Mariana wondered: “Is this actually going to happen?”

She had waited nine months. But she prepared for marriage for nine months, too, “and we (only) did that for three days.” 

On the way to the hospital, she prayed. To remember Nathaniel in the delivery room, she brought one of his childhood stuffed toys—a gift for their son.

During labor, Mariana was missing Nathaniel “a whole lot and wishing I didn’t have to do this without him,” she said.

But she did.

Raphael Patrick Kuhlman was born at 7:19 p.m. on July 18. 

“And getting to hold a part of my husband again in my arms” is a gift, Mariana said.

Grieving With Joy, Hope, and Mercy

When Mariana, now 23, looks at her son, she sees so much of Nathaniel.

“I'm still grieving, but I'm so joyful to have him in my arms,” she said. “I think that’s the beauty of our Catholic faith. We get to suffer with joy because of this reality of heaven that was given to us by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.”

Her in-laws have joy in their grief, too.

“Who gets this opportunity, when their son dies, to be grandparents?” Heather said. “Even in the pain and even in the sorrow, the Lord is still so kind.”

As she grieves, she counts on Lamentations 3:22–23.

“The Lord’s mercies are new every morning, and great is his faithfulness,” she recites.

The Kuhlmans have experienced those mercies in many ways.

A family friend launched a fundraiser to help cover unexpected expenses and any other needs. A meal train meant they didn’t have to think about cooking when they got home from St. Lucia. Their parish made planning the wake and funeral Mass easy, Mariana said.

Friends created spiritual bouquets in journals that recorded messages, Masses offered, and prayers prayed. Strangers bought so many gifts off the baby registry that friends she’d invited to her baby shower asked Mariana to add to it.

“The people who have held us in our hearts, I just as much have held them in mine,” Mariana said.

She is grateful, too, for her in-laws.

Before she knew she was pregnant, she had planned to live with them temporarily. But they knew she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. 

“There’s nothing I can do for my son,” Heather said. “But there is everything I can do for her.”

Separately, Heather and Gordon prayed about how else they could help.

Then, “we came together,” she said, and decided: “How about we give her the gift of being a stay-at-home mom?”

Now, Mariana shares Nathaniel’s childhood room with her son. 

“I couldn’t imagine myself being anywhere else,” she said.

A Story They’ll Keep Telling

Since Nathaniel’s death, the Kuhlmans “could see how what happened and how we responded has brought people closer to Jesus,” Mariana said. 

The doctor who tried to revive Nathaniel at the hospital later saw Mariana at Mass in St. Lucia and sought her out. He hadn’t been to church in a while, she learned. It’s possible, she believes, that noticing her miraculous medal or seeing her on her knees in the hospital hallway stirred his faith.

She gets messages from people all over the world who are inspired by the Kuhlmans’ story.

“This is why we can’t keep it to ourselves,” Mariana said.

As Raphael grows up, they’ll share it with him.

They’ll tell him his dad was an “apostle of life and missionary of love,” titles Nathaniel believed God gave him.

They’ll tell him “his dad loves him,” Heather said, that “he’s up there, still on mission with the Lord, always praying for him from heaven.”

They will visit his grave at Calvary Catholic Cemetery with confidence.

“We know where he is,” Heather said. “His body is in the ground, but he is for sure in Heaven.”