0 it's ugly. really ugly. you can see it is not far away from here. i. tonight, pastor rick warren, his prayer in the wake of the mass shooting. >> i got on my knees and prayed for those who died a he those who are wounded and my heart went out to them. >> it's an issue that touches them deeply. their son shot himself to death, losing a battle with mental illness. >> there's no way that a gun should get in the hands of a mentally ill person. >> tonight he talks about how he returned to his church. >> i was overwhelmed by the love of our people. >> how he and his wife handled the haters that attacked them. rick warren and his wife kay since the family tragedy. >> we stood in the driveway just embracing each other, sobbing. >> this is "piers morgan live." here we me now is rick warren and his wife kay. this is the first interview since the death of their son matthew. >> thank you. >> my deepest condolences on this awful loss to you and your family. >> thank you. >> obviously you're very famous, rick, and it flew around, i can only imagine what it was like for you two. how have you been coping? >> well, you know, elizabeth kubler ross did this stage of dying. and i think there's actually six. we've gone back and forth for months. the first stage is shock. and for us the shock still happens. but at least for the first month i thought matthew was going to walk through the door. i couldn't believe it had happened. it was just so sudden. and then you go through this profound sadness that comes into your life. then you move to what i call struggle. and that's all the why questions. why now, why this, why many, why matthew. and all of that struggle. and then you move to a stage that i call surrender. i wrote in my journal, i tweeted, i'd rather have all of my requests and not have all of me questions answered than not walk with god. and then you move to what i call santification and then service. and service is i think god wants us to use a hurt. one reason we decided to do this interview with you, maybe we can help some other people. >> i feel very honored you asked me to do this interview. you're a mother of three children, it's the worst thing in the world, i have four kids. the thing you dread most is losing one of your kids. how have you been coping with this? >> you know, i've said almost from the first moment that we learned, that we're devastated but we're not destroyed. when people ask that question how are you? there's no good answer. so i finally just settled on, i'm terrible but i'm kay. in other words, we're going to survive, we're going to survive and some day we'll thrive again. it is. it's the worst thing that could ever happen. >> i have cried every single day since matthew died. that's actually a good thing. grief is a good thing. it's the way we get through the transitions of life. i find if i don't cry, then you stuff it. i have a saying, when i swallow my emotions, my stomach keeps score. if i don't talk it out to my wife, to god, my friends, i will take it out on my bodies. as guys, men, we don't do grief very well. it's not an easy thick for us. we don't like the negative emotion. grief is a good thing. grief is the way we get through the transitions of life and been helpful to me. >> on the morning that matthew died, you both had this strange sense of foreboding. you'd been with him the night before. >> yes. >> he was a troubled boy. i will come to the mental health issues he battled his entire life. tell me why you both felt this sense of foreboding, starting with you, rick. >> well, it's -- i had been going through a whole week that i had been doing what i called the battle for hope. the sunday was easter, the biggest day for saddleback and i preached 14 times and why you needed a message of hope. on each day i had a battle for hope. on each day of that week i had a battle of hope. on monday we announced i was starting a national radio program called daily hope and tuesday i announced i would write the first book since "purpose driven life" entitled "the hope you need" and the next day, called "struggling through your worst days. in fact, that weekend i ended up having tom preach it, what to do on the worst day of your life, not even knowing that would be the worst day of my life. and then on the radio program that was airing a week old, it was called "winning the battle for your mind." now, the irony of that with a son who lost hope, took his life, and had struggled for 27 years, a tender hard but a tortured mind. we just had this sense of foreboding that day. >> how had he been the night before? >> you know, he was -- it was actually one of the best weeks he'd had in a long time. >> it had been. >> we weren't surprised matthew took his life because he had been struggling with suicidal ideation for quite a while. we were surprised it was that kay. he had a date lined up for that saturday. he had a bag of new towels, he told me how he was going to upgrade his phone to an iphone 5. he had another gal that he was going to go to a fast food store because she thought he was laying eyes on him. he laid his head on the kitchen table, i was making dinner, he just said, i'm so tired, i'm so tired. he had been asked to be a part of this offline chat room he was very excited about. he said, you know, the pressure, i want people to like me but if they do, then there's the -- can i maintain it and there's so much pressure. he left, i walked him out to the car and helped him carry stuff, gave him a hug, rick hugged him before he left. >> yeah. no sense of conflict. >> i mean, he was tired. but when we got his phone back from the police, i checked and at 9:45 p.m. he was texting the girl he was going to have a date with. nine minutes later he text me and said i feel like it's all spiralling out of control and i'm going to take my life. in mine minutes. >> it was like a switch. >> he went -- i was in a texting conversation with him then for the next hour trying to talk him off that ledge, talk him into it. i knew it was very desperate. i knew he had a gun. i knew that there was -- that he had the lethal means. >> had the means now. >> so not only was he impulsively in despair but i knew he could do something about it. >> how did you know he had the gun? >> he told me. >> he told us. >> he told us everything? >> i will come to that. he bought the gun online illegally. >> he did. >> but you knew you had a suicidal with a gun. >> then he stopped texting and he was getting more and more agitated. nothing i was saying was making any difference i wasn't able to calm him down. he just stopped? we had talked him off the edge hundreds of time. i just knew. rick was very ill. i made him get out of bed and we drove over to matthew's house. >> at night. >> lights were on. i started ringing the doorbell, banging on the door. typically he would have said go away, come to the door, invite me in. he did nothing. that was not his pattern. a so i had a pretty good sense that something catastrophic had happened. >> what time was this? >> that was late on thursday, april 4th. so i was pretty sure that something had happened. but he had also told us that if we called the police, that he would take his life instantly. so a call to the police was an instant suicide. so i was living with that horrible, horrible choice of do i call the police and perhaps intervene or do i take that risk if i call and then he instantly kills himself. so we had to wait for a few hours. so, it was into the next day that i felt that he was not responding, and finally, when i sent the text saying, look, i'm calling the police. give me one word that tells me you're okay, one word i won't call the police. >> we'll call 9/11 -- 911, whatever. >> we came back and the same light were on. by there at time we knew. >> you got to the house and had this awful sense he had taken his own life but called police and were waiting. >> right. >> that moment for the both of you must have been beyond harrowing. >> we were sobbing, just sobbing. the day i feared might happen one day since he'd been born and the day i prayed would never happen happened. and i remember, as we stood in the driveway, just embracing each other and sobbing. and kay was wearing a necklace, you're wearing it today, that had the words of a book she wrote a year ago called "choose joy." and she held it up and it said, "choose joy." and i thought, are you kidding? how can i choose joy in this worst circumstance of my life but we even in that moment were trying to say, we're not in control, but we do have a greater hope and we do have a source of joy that isn't based on our circumstances. and it was a holy moment. >> but it was an excruciating to sit there, even by that point i knew that he was gone, to have an officer come out the door and just, you know, nod -- >> to say the words you never wanted. >> i hit the ground. i hit the ground. >> and the things you're saying, it's not supposed to end like this. because we had had close calls with matthew made attempts on his life before in other ways and we just kept -- you know, when matthew was born, even as a young child he struggled with mental illness as a child so we knew that this day might happen some day but it's a day that no parent wants. it's your worst nightmare. and i'll never forget, i'll never forget the agony of that moment. >> let's take a short break. i want to come back and talk to you about the appalling battles that matthew went through, the battles that you went through as parents to try to prevent this from happening. >> good. >> and when they brought his body out, i -- i hugged him for all it was worth. this was the hardest decision i've ever had to make. jim, i adore the pool at your hotel. anna, your hotels have wondrous waffle bars. ryan, your hotels' robes are fabulous. i have twelve of them. twelve? 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