One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting (16 page)

Charlie’s “bouts of depression” rarely lasted more than a few days and never interfered with his ability to keep in step with daily tasks and work. During those times, which seemed to happen a few times each year, Charlie would withdraw — so I countered by trying to do everything within my ability to keep life enjoyable and moving forward, hoping that I could encourage his healing. I knew that he would feel better if he would just talk about his pain, but he wouldn’t. The more I pushed him to talk to someone, the more he withdrew. I wanted our marriage to include a sharing of burdens with a transparency that left us mutually vulnerable as well as mutually loved. Instead, Charlie slowly built a wall of silence I was not welcome to cross.

I was disappointed; this was not what we had promised each other — to love and to cherish, to go through life
together.
His silences weakened the vibrancy of our marriage, and over time, I mourned the loss of what we’d once shared.

In turn, I stopped sharing with him much that I was going through.

Looking back, I could see that I began to keep my problems of everyday life between myself and God. I lost the habit of including Charlie in my spiritual journey.

Of course, Charlie’s periods of apparent depression were only occasional. And though our deepest thoughts were not often shared with one another, our family time was still filled with joy. My husband loved his family, and he was a tender father who enjoyed each moment with his children. He took our daughter
shopping, taught our son to build things, and changed the diapers of our youngest without hesitation. I have many happy memories of the years we spent together and the variety of ways he gave his love and provided for our family.

Charlie and I, like most young couples, were simply living life as it came.

Yes, my husband was a quiet man, especially when it came to his feelings. Many men are. True, Charlie had bouts of lingering sadness, but they always passed.

And although my husband seemed to lack deep, meaningful relationships with other men that went beyond work, weather, and sports, how many wives would say the same of their husbands?

I, like many wives, had my prayer list for Charlie. My heart had cried out for what I knew God wanted for him. My desire was to see a close relationship with God rise up within my husband. How many hundreds of thousands of Christian wives would say the same? In the weeks before his death, I had cried out to the Lord, “Do something powerful with his life.”

Regardless of what we were missing, I loved what we had. After all, we were young. We would have other seasons of life to reignite the emotional closeness. We had a lifetime ahead of us.

Only we didn’t.

“Marie, you’re so strong.” I heard those words, and words like them, at church, at the grocery store, even in the lobby while I waited for Abigail at dance class. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t my strength they were seeing, but God’s.

I marveled at it myself. This woman so infused with strength was not the girl I had known myself to be. I had always been
the one who ran from the spotlight, avoided confrontation, the middle-child-peacemaker-problem-solver, always self-conscious about others’ perceptions of me, trying to tweak my every thought or action to total perfection before taking a step or uttering a word. Anticipating, planning, organizing the next action or need, always attempting to stay one step ahead,
never
asking for help lest I burden others. All those traits had been to compensate for and cover my weaknesses.

I was strong now not because of some innate characteristic, but because I was acutely aware of how, in all aspects, I fell so far short of the mark, and therefore I was crying out to God for help in a multitude of ways. And he was answering! I had leaned into his whispers, longing for peace, and he’d replied with a shout that redefined me.

Jesus was removing my old worn garments of self-perception and showing me instead who
he
says I am — his daughter, recipient of grace sufficient for every moment, focus of his eyes ablaze with love unconditional and truth unavoidable.

The result was not at all what I expected. Never in a million years would I have expected this breaking of myself to result in a fresh outpouring of self-confidence! In the midst of suffering, loss, and questions, I was finding episodes of irrepressible joy and unstoppable hope. I became fully convinced that not only could God do anything — but he
would
do everything needed.

By November our new family routines had been established. Daily I worked to treasure normal moments, trying to enjoy each single day without regard to what lay ahead. The calendar, however, showed a heartbreaking concentration of milestones over the next
few weeks. November 9 marked what would have been my tenth wedding anniversary. November 14 was Elise’s ninth birthday, then Thanksgiving. December held my birthday and Charlie’s, then Christmas. I didn’t want to think about even one of these dates without Charlie; the accumulation of them was overwhelming. To top it off, everyone around me was also suffering, dealing in his or her own way with loss and inner turmoil from Charlie’s actions and his death. As those dates came nearer, I felt myself slipping into gray, a deepening sadness coming over me, in spite of the newfound strength God had been giving me.

The life of a single mom isn’t glamorous. My days were long and intense. I rose early, feeling like the sole player in a symphony, racing from one instrument to another, trying to play each one perfectly according to the score set before me.

Wake up, get ready, feed the dog, wake the children. Invest myself in meaningful conversations on an elementary-school level before it was time to jump into the car and drive to school. Come home and breathe for five minutes before laundry, house cleaning, and phone calls. (
Message deletions
might be more accurate, thanks to the still-relentless producers.) Play with my baby and connect with his heart, inspire curiosity and creativity. Run out the door and back to school by the end of morning kindergarten. Then back home to feed my hungry little bears, read stories, play together, and put the baby to bed for a nap. Deposit coins of love into my son’s account, sweet moments carved out and shared between mother and son. Wake the baby, drive back to school, wait in the lobby until my eldest was dismissed. Then back home, my three treasures playing together while I made dinner, then homework, baths, and bed.

In my solitary, dusk-kissed moments after their bedtime, I
spent the last of my energy for physical exercise on my elliptical trainer to strengthen my body. While I did, I meditated on Scripture. I knew God loved to exchange my stale air for the very breath of heaven, and I was desperate for it.

One day would bring the confidence necessary to propel my little family through the next twenty-four hours. The following day would suck the air right out of me, and I would find myself weeping repeatedly. On top of all that, continued assaults from the media wanting interviews exhausted and annoyed me. When would they give up? But even on the airless days, I set aside my doubts and searched for God’s wisdom and truth, inviting it to penetrate deep, to the very center of my being.

My newfound peace answered many of my questions about the process of grief. With the quieting of those questions, however, an ever-so-gentle whisper made itself heard. From the time I was a little girl, I’d known that as God knit me together in my mother’s womb, he meticulously sewed into my heart the desire to be a wife and a mother. Yet as an adult, these most prominent desires of my heart had been defined by loss and devastation — the deaths of Elise, Isabella, and now Charlie.

Why did you make me this way?
I asked the Lord.
Why must I seek to satisfy my longing for a family only to see it consumed by the fire of loss?

I thought of all the prayers I’d prayed for my marriage. I’d desired greater growth for Charlie, enabling us to walk our road together, arms linked, conversations about the Lord easy, giving and receiving who we were, empowering each other to new heights along the way. Had those prayers been in vain?

As I searched for God’s good things in the midst of that question, I found myself praying surprising words:
I’ve always wanted to be a wife — but, Jesus, if it’s just you and me, forever, I’m okay with that. You are my husband. You will protect, provide, refresh, encourage — you embody all a man should be. If there isn’t a man on the face of the earth capable of sharing my life as it is now, I am disappointed — but I understand.

I sensed the Lord replying that no prayers were in vain, and he encouraged my heart to believe that there still might be a future husband for me and that I should continue praying those same things I’d prayed for Charlie for the new husband he would bring.

But I had no desire to meet a man anytime soon. With my first dream freshly broken, still cleaning up shards left along Charlie’s path of destruction, I wasn’t ready to contemplate a new relationship.

And I had one request:
If there is a husband in my distant future, please — just bring me one guy, Lord. I’m not going to date.

I closed the subject. God had shown that he knew my heart, and that was enough for me.

One day I received a call that encouraged me to keep my heart focused and my priorities in all the right places. An Amish neighbor called me. He was very close friends with the King family, whose six-year-old daughter, Rosanna, had sustained a severe brain injury in the shooting and had been in Hershey Medical Center ever since. The Amish gentleman wondered if I could drive his family the thirty miles to Hershey to visit with the King family at Rosanna’s bedside. He told me that he sensed that the visit would offer an opportunity for connection, given their grief and my own.

I was in awe of his invitation. I saw God at work, agreed without hesitation, and arranged for my kids to stay with my parents.

I was nervous as I drove to the Amish farm a few days later, up hills and down, across bumpy roads. The jolting ride seemed to match my emotions. Fog clung heavily to the earth that morning, and I could see only what was immediately before me. Surprisingly, that brought my heart and mind into clearer focus. I didn’t have to figure everything out in advance, I realized. It was okay to simply take the day as it came, embracing the moment but not necessarily preparing for it. I found that outlook of simplicity freeing — especially given the too-demanding expectations I was constantly placing on myself.

Once I’d picked up my guests, I chatted easily with the Amish family — husband, wife, and three children — during the forty-minute drive. When my Amish friend and I entered the elevator at Hershey Medical Center, another couple stepped in as well. The man clutched
People
magazine, details from the shooting blazed across the cover.

“Tragic, isn’t it?” he said, holding up the magazine cover for all to see. “Too awful for words.”

He clearly had no idea we were directly involved.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my anonymity. “No one can fathom the toll of such a loss.” The door opened, we stepped out, and when the door closed behind us we all looked at each other. In one glance, our eyes conveyed a heartrending exchange at a depth our mouths could not utter. My spirit felt dark and frozen. But I called on the Lord to bring my eyes back to the good he was doing in the midst of the tragedy.

Love the moment. Love my life. Expect to see God at work.
I practiced as best I could, and God enabled me to put one foot in front of the other toward Rosanna’s hospital room.

As I stepped into the room, Rosanna’s parents rose to greet me. I exchanged embraces with Mr. and Mrs. King and was moved to tears as the two Amish dads, clearly dear friends, embraced, joy mingled with sorrow.

Then an awkward silence settled over us for a moment, and I wrestled back the anxiety rising inside me. I focused on a thermos full of coffee, books on the window ledge, food brought to share between friends. These typical comforts of home settled the quaking inside me, reminding me that love and gentleness could exist in a place otherwise scarred by violence and cruelty.

Rosanna’s mother accompanied me to her daughter’s bedside. I wasn’t sure whether she was unconscious or sleeping. Monitors were beeping quietly and a bag of medication was dripping silently in an IV.

We shared life in the face of death. They spoke of Rosanna’s injuries.
Injuries sustained at the hand of my husband
, I thought. Wounds on her body, wounds in our hearts. Raw trauma in their lives and mine as well.

“Tell us, how are your children?” Rosanna’s father asked me, turning the conversation.

“They’re sleeping well and are glad to be back in school. They both rejoined their soccer teams.” I paused.

“That’s good to hear,” Rosanna’s mother said. “We’ve been praying for them.” I was struck by the relief on their faces.

“Tell us how you are,” Rosanna’s father said, while her mother looked into my eyes with such tenderness. It was clear that they wanted the sincere truth.

In this room I needed no pretext of strength. None of us did.

“It’s hard to know how to be a mom right now,” I said. With the words came tears. “I want to be everything they need, but I
know I can’t be. I’m reaching for God’s strength, but I’m so aware of my limits.”

They nodded and we all looked at Rosanna. It was clear I had just spoken their hearts as well, and their tears joined mine. I felt accepted in grace and tenderness, not in judgment.

Then came the gentlest sentence, spoken by Rosanna’s father: “At the end of the day, we each have someone to hold, someone to cry with. We have each other. And we think about you. You don’t have anyone.” This same sentiment was spoken at Bart Fire Hall by another Amish family. The concern these families showed for me was beyond my comprehension.

I felt so unworthy. I still carried shame for Charlie’s actions — shame that did not belong to me, that God did not want me to bear. This family’s tenderness toward me and my children was the picture of the heart of God for us. No guilt. No shame. Just grace, poured out to overflowing — and a gentle call to heal in his truth.