One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting (6 page)

I took some comfort in knowing that Charlie greatly enjoyed his construction work and seemed to enjoy the guys on the crew. Though he never socialized with them outside of work, he’d fill me in on the events of his days and the lives of his coworkers.

Charlie also started talking about his interest in becoming a milk hauler like my dad. Secretly, I’d cringe. I would change the subject of conversation. I’d grown up with my dad often working seventy to eighty hours a week, over holidays and weekends. I didn’t want the same for my new family.

In late September (right around twenty weeks of pregnancy), life took a frightening turn.

“Charlie!” I called early one morning from the bathroom. “Something’s wrong!”

Hearing the panic in my voice, he instantly leaped out of bed and came running. “What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly alarmed. “Are you okay?”

“I’m bleeding. Not a lot, but some. Something’s wrong.” Afraid, I started to cry.

Charlie stayed calm. In a comforting voice, he said, “Marie, you’re going to be fine. Don’t panic. Let’s get you into bed and call the doctor.”

We saw our obstetrician that day, who sent me for testing. The tests couldn’t determine the cause of the bleeding, so I was put on bed rest until the bleeding stopped or the baby was born. I had to stop working — in fact, I felt I had no connection to the outside world. It was a frightening time for both of us. Although I showed no signs of being in labor, there was a risk that our daughter could be born prematurely. I followed the doctor’s recommendation and confined myself to the bed or the couch. Charlie hovered over me when he was home, driven to serve me and make me comfortable.

My desperation for the Lord grew fierce during this time. I needed him to protect our child, to protect me, and to guard our family. I pressed into the Word and into my knowledge of him in a new way. I needed to understand: Why were we going through this terrifying experience? I cried out for healing, desperate for a miracle from Jesus like those mentioned throughout the Gospels. Just one touch could restore me, and I longed for that touch!

With little else to do while confined to my bed for weeks, I read and prayed. Sometimes I felt the Lord still my heart and
bring peace to my fears. But that peace would be short-lived, because worry would begin to erode the work he was doing. I’d never been tested by personal crisis. I didn’t know how to trust that everything would be okay when appearances told me otherwise. His Word told me to fear not and to cast all my anxiety on him, but I didn’t get how it was possible to live out the reality of those Scriptures in my moment of crisis. Was God going to fix this? Not knowing the answer, I did everything in my power to fix it myself, as I always had. I followed the doctor’s instructions to the letter, but the bleeding got no better. It came and went and came again, no matter how I prayed.

Charlie was at work from 6:30 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon. During those long hours alone, I battled the what-ifs swirling in my mind. What if the baby dies? What if I hemorrhage? What if there’s something wrong with my baby? What is wrong with me? Then I’d read Scripture and cry out to God to heal whatever was wrong.

Ever so slowly, God began to show me a new kind of trust. One verse in particular whispered peace into my heart: “I sought the
LORD
, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34:4 – 5).

By my standards, it didn’t feel as if I was getting it right — still, I sensed him tenderly leading my heart and encouraging me to grow in trust
despite
my circumstances. Sometimes it felt like one step forward and two steps back, but I clung to verses of Scripture promising that he was faithful to me even when I lacked faith.

Although the bleeding didn’t stop, no other symptoms emerged, so we settled into this new and difficult routine as much as possible, holding on to the hope that Elise would be born at full term.

Charlie and I celebrated our first anniversary on November 9, 1997. Five days later I went into labor three months premature.

I awoke that day feeling sick. I didn’t know what labor should feel like, but I was sure this was it. With a feeling of dread, knowing our baby girl wasn’t yet developed enough to enter this world, we called our doctor and headed to the hospital in Lancaster at the peak of morning rush hour. We inched along at what felt like a crawl. We tried to reassure ourselves that Elise would not be born that morning. Certainly, we told each other, the doctors could do something to stop this.

At the hospital, they didn’t seem to believe me at first when I said I was in labor. But when they finally realized that I knew the truth of what was going on in my body, nurses and doctors started scrambling, and my whole world came crashing down. My daughter was indeed going to be born that morning, and very soon. There was nothing they could do to stop the labor, so they started prepping for delivery and called in the neonatal intensive care unit team. Within minutes Elise Victoria made her appearance — so tiny, so fragile, and so beautiful. She was born at 8:25 a.m., 12¼ inches and 1 lb. 3 oz. The doctors from the NICU immediately went to work trying to place a tube into her lungs, as she was too small to breathe on her own. Each of their attempts proved unsuccessful.

Elise lived for twenty minutes, passing from my arms to the embrace of heaven in mere moments. My brain could not compute that an hour and a half earlier, this whole nightmare was just starting and my daughter was alive within me, her life still a possibility. Now she was gone, my womb was empty, our hearts were broken, and our dreams were shattered.

Our immediate family didn’t even know yet that I had gone
into labor. Everything had happened so fast that morning that we hadn’t had time to call. Charlie and I were alone. I asked him to call our parents, as I couldn’t bear the thought of telling them. I was still holding Elise, knowing that the nurses were going to take her soon. I didn’t want to lose one second of precious time with her, because these moments were going to have to hold me until our reunion in heaven. It was going to be a long wait — a whole lifetime.

I can only imagine how difficult that call was for Charlie. As he sat nearby, calling his parents, I could hear his mom sobbing over the phone, her cry piercing the air. Parents have an instinctual desire to love and protect their children, even when those children are adults, and I know our parents grieved to see our pain. As for Charlie and me, to lose Elise made us feel that we had failed to protect our daughter. We knew, logically, that we’d done all we could, but logic couldn’t dispel the emotions that flooded us.

Our parents came to the hospital and tried to comfort us. The hospital staff asked about funeral arrangements and other decisions, but I couldn’t think. Thankfully, my mom came alongside Charlie, and the two of them took over, deciding to have a private funeral service and burial. I wasn’t even twenty years old — what did I know about such things? My progression into adulthood had been jolted in a way I had never anticipated. This beautiful canvas, this masterpiece we’d been creating, was covered in black paint, the beautiful brushstrokes completely hidden by loss and devastation.

We spent one night at the hospital, in the postpartum unit. It was torture. Emanating from the hallway outside my door were the cries of newborn babies and the congratulations of family members filled with exclamations of happiness. But the air in our
room was different. It felt devoid of life, dark, and hopeless. The hospital staff kept us at the quiet end of a hallway, but nevertheless we heard it all, and it inflicted agony on a level neither Charlie nor I had ever known before.

We wept openly, trying to comfort one another not with words, but with a tender stroke, the squeeze of a hand, the wiping of a tear. Charlie was so gentle, so vigilant over my care. I could see how badly he wished he could have spared me this grief, yet how helpless he felt to take away my suffering, physical as well as emotional.

There was one moment, however, when a beam of light from heaven broke through my darkness — in the form of my nurse. She was with us that whole day, and during her shift she spent a lot of time in my room. I was touched by her tenderness.

Though not scheduled to work the following day, she came to see me anyway, before I left the hospital. “Marie, I brought something for you,” she said, gently handing me a small box. I opened it to find a necklace with a charm: an angel holding a topaz gem. “It’s the November birthstone,” she explained softly. The gem caught the light and sparkled.

“Elise’s birthstone,” I whispered, fresh tears spilling over. “It’s beautiful. Thank you so much.” She fluffed my pillow and tucked the white hospital blanket securely around my legs.

Her small gift spoke volumes of love. It offered me the freedom to celebrate my child, Elise Victoria, in the midst of mourning my loss. It was like a tangible kiss of Jesus, speaking something that I could not articulate. God’s light in my darkness.

It felt like a lifetime since Charlie’s desperate call that morning. The afternoon light had faded, and dusk would soon begin to settle in. We had been at my parents’ home for about seven hours, huddled together in hiding, trying to absorb the shock of this day.

I got up off the couch, where Bryce had been sitting by my side, and wandered into the kitchen just to stretch my legs and see what Dad was up to. I found him leaning back against the kitchen counter, gazing out the window where I’d stood to watch the Amish men approach a few hours before. He looked like I felt — weary and weighed down.

Typically, we’d be hearing the clippity-clop of an occasional horse and buggy or the droning engine of a car in the early evening, but all I could hear was the unnatural silence. I followed Dad’s gaze, wondering if he was thinking what I was: that the buggies were probably all gathered at a few Amish farmhouses filled with grieving families and frightened children coping with the assault on their community this morning at the hand of my husband. My stomach lurched, and for a moment it was hard to
breathe, but I forced a few shallow breaths. I moved closer to Dad and laid my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me.

“How is it possible that just this morning it was a typical Monday, with me leading a Moms In Touch prayer meeting at church, praying, of all things, for the well-being of our children at school?” I wasn’t really looking for an answer, just still trying to absorb my new reality. I didn’t give voice to the rest of the question rattling in my head: …
while my own husband was carrying out his plan to murder the children of our neighbors?
I shook my head as if trying to clear it of some horrible nightmare. But this was no dream.

Dad made no attempt to answer the unanswerable. He squeezed my shoulder, then led me through the kitchen door and down the few steps into the ground-level family room on the back of their little one-story house.

My mom was reading a book to my children on the couch. They were snuggled in close and looked tired. I looked at the clock — almost bedtime. I needed to get my children to bed soon. They needed normalcy, or at least as close to it as possible, and a night’s sleep would at least put an end to this horrendous day. In spite of the fact that I felt weary to the bone, I couldn’t fathom even the possibility of rest.

Earlier in the day, we’d all agreed that the children and I couldn’t stay here at Mom and Dad’s. Aunt Linda had stepped in and offered the perfect solution. “Marie, Uncle Jim and I would like you, the kids, and your parents to come to our place and stay as long as you need to. You know we have the room. I’ve been on the phone with our closest neighbors; we’ve known them for years and completely trust them. They’ve sworn themselves to secrecy. You’ll have peace and rest there. One of our neighbors even offered
the use of his garage to keep your car out of sight. Others volunteered to bring meals and treats for the kids. Do you remember the little park down the street? Jim and your dad can take the kids there to play, and no one will know who they are.” She’d thought of everything. I was stunned by her generosity and grateful for a hiding place.

The media knew our present location. We couldn’t even step outside without the fear of being watched. We knew from friends’ calls to my brother, uncles, and aunts on their cell phones that television networks were giving constant live updates, running and rerunning footage of the schoolhouse and the Amish, weeping and praying. Reporters from everywhere were all over our tiny town, in a frenzy to capture the Amish and us on film, phone, or any way they could, with our cooperation or without it. They were canvassing neighborhoods and businesses, asking questions about our family. Bart Fire Hall, literally a few doors away from where we were hiding, had become the impromptu central gathering spot for the live television updates. Our nightmare was their news story. We needed privacy, a safe place somewhere “secret” where we could grieve, breathe, heal, and just be.

I wondered what my Amish neighbors were doing to cope with this media invasion. A surge of guilt jolted through me for thinking of myself when, surely, their pain was much heavier than mine. They lived apart from our society by intention. I could not fathom how violated they must feel to be so hounded at this time of unspeakable grief. The Amish object to having their pictures taken based on their understanding of the second commandment, Exodus 20:4 (KJV): “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” My
entire life I’d seen them tolerate tourists who would knowingly disregard this preference just to satisfy their desire for a photo. Now their pictures were being taken incessantly at the most horrific time in their lives. If my family felt like hiding, how much more violated must they be feeling?

Aunt Linda’s had been my place of healing from a loss long ago. She and Uncle Jim lived in the town of Lititz, not too far from the first house Charlie and I had bought nearly ten years before. No media. A quiet, secluded neighborhood. Yes, how perfect.

We waited until after sunset to leave my parents’ home. I helped Abigail and Bryce into the car while Mom buckled Carson into his car seat. I drove, Dad sat beside me in the passenger seat, Mom followed in her car. That’s just me; I didn’t want someone to do things for me that I could handle on my own. I was determined to not become paralyzed, to not become a victim. My children had only one parent left, and they needed that parent to be strong and steady, no matter what I felt on the inside.

It felt surreal, sneaking out under cover of darkness. Wasn’t this the kind of scene you’d see in a movie? How could this be real? As we passed, Dad nodded to the policeman who’d been parked at the end of our street all afternoon to keep reporters away. Rather than turn right out the drive and onto the main road, we turned left and took back roads through the farmlands to avoid being followed. I checked my rearview mirror for media vans with satellite dishes but saw none.

As we rode in the blackness of night, I felt my fears returning. It felt as if the ground had opened up, revealing an abyss the size of the Grand Canyon. The bold confidence I’d been given by the
Lord this morning seemed to have evaporated. Devastation outside my control had forever changed the landscape of my world. I faced an immense chasm — no bridge could span it, yet there was no way to turn back. I had no choice but to face the other side of my life, a side filled with unfamiliar territory and frightening challenges.

I reached for God in the darkness and offered him my thoughts, asking him to chase out the lies with his truth. A calm began to spread back over me. Never had I experienced such dramatic, instant answers to prayer as I had this day. I felt a flush of supernatural warmth. Even though many things had abruptly changed, some things remained constant, God reminded me. I was still a beloved child of God. I was still dedicated to being the best mom possible. I could still trust the Holy Spirit to help me accomplish what I could not do in my own strength. I would find a way back to “normal,” even though our new circumstances were anything but.

As we stepped into Linda and Jim’s home, they welcomed us with open arms. The love in their eyes shone like bright lights compared to the darkness I’d just driven through. Memories associated with this place called to me immediately. My great-grandmother at the piano, playing and singing Christmas carols, slumber parties with my cousin, and family picnics in the summer.
This home holds the celebration of life
, I reassured myself.
God has prepared this place for us.

Everywhere I looked, the love of life looked back. It could be seen in the careful mix of antiques and reproduction art, treasures both gathered and created. Elegance and beauty lifted my heart and encouraged my spirit. Linda lives and breathes with effortless expression. Theorem paintings adorn her walls, marked with her
signature. The comforting fragrance of linseed oil, an aroma that speaks of a home well cared for, welcomed me.

In a flash I was flooded with memories of my healing time here after Elise’s death nine years before.
Each room holds a story all its own
, I thought.
I stand taller here, walking with a grace inspired by Aunt Linda. She challenges me to think in new ways. She knows herself, displays her style — confidence surrounds me here and penetrates my skin. Yes, God prepared this place for us, for this time. His light is shining here.

I watched my children absorbing their new surroundings. Abigail’s eyes were wide and soulful as she looked at the paintings and antiques. Bryce, still unusually quiet, poured himself into a chair and scanned the room. Carson, however, tried to bury himself in my mom’s arms, as if trying to “turtle up” and pull his head into his shell. He was the picture of what I felt I needed at the moment.
God’s arms, warm and strong, will hold us securely here
, I thought.
I don’t know how long we will stay. I don’t need to know. For now, this will be a shelter from the storm.

Uncle Jim, his usual smile now replaced with compassionate grief, spoke with softness to my children. “How about a glass of milk and a snack?” he offered, leading them into the kitchen. “Some nice neighbors brought cookies just for you.”

I remembered how he had encouraged me, at age eight, to play the piano for him when my parents realized that music spoke to my soul and had invested in a piano and lessons. I’d felt too shy to play for Uncle Jim at first, and while it took some coaxing, he didn’t give up. He praised and encouraged me until I played with greater confidence. Even as a child I knew that his kindness would last for more than a moment, and Uncle Jim took a special place in my heart. Where Linda brought creativity and new adventures,
Jim added strength and stability. It was a powerful combination that my own children would now enjoy, just when they needed it.

I don’t recall much of that evening, but I do remember that I didn’t resist when Linda insisted that the children and I take their master bedroom. I followed her up the stairs and into the room. It looked like a spread out of a magazine of a posh hotel. The cherry-wood four-poster king bed sat high off the floor, the mattress thick and inviting. I turned down the plush comforter and ran my hands across sheets that were obviously of a higher quality than anything I’d ever felt before.
Is this what Egyptian cotton feels like?
Downy pillows lined the headboard, at least two for each of us with some left over. They beckoned us to rest, promising softness and comfort after a day bathed in hardship.

“This is just like spending the night in a fancy hotel,” I told the kids, trying to ease them into some semblance of their nighttime routine. “Let’s skip baths tonight and just change into our jammies and brush our teeth.” I pulled their pajamas out of a bag and laid them out on the bed, then found our toothbrushes stuffed into a pocket of one my duffel bags and sent Bryce and Abigail off to the bathroom. I lifted Carson up onto the high bed to get him changed.

“Fluffy!” he declared. Bryce came trotting back into the room and climbed up next to his little brother. Abigail came to my side and just leaned against me, watching her brothers, but no smile on her face.

“Where are you going to sleep, Mommy?” she asked.

“I think we should all sleep together this week. Does that sound good to you?” I stroked her hair as I answered, aching to
find some way to soothe her soul. She nodded and pressed herself into me. Her demeanor was so somber and quiet — like mine, I suddenly realized. Given our day, we ought to both be sobbing and wailing inconsolably, showing the external evidence of the sorrow of the day. Instead, we were both very controlled, as if our energy and voices had been dialed back to “low” as we went through the motions of changing for bed.

Abigail crawled onto the bed, and she and Bryce nestled between the layers of crisp sheets and soft blankets. It seemed as if all three of my children were trying to be extra good, looking for ways to bring a sense of peace to our shattered world. Moonlight filtered through the curtains, nature’s attempt to diffuse the darkness around us with light. I laid Carson in the portable crib in an alcove under the window. He chewed his pacifier and snuggled with his favorite soft puppy dog. The events of the day did not disturb his ability to find rest — I wished it would be the same for me.

I crawled between Abigail and Bryce, pulling them in close to me, attempting to surround and cover them in love and peace. I prayed aloud over our family and began to sing the songs they loved. Simple lullabies, familiar phrases, ordinary elements in a strange new world. I didn’t know if it brought comfort to their hearts, but it settled mine. They drifted off to sleep easily, while I lay awake in ominous silence. I had not expected sleep to be effortless for them. I listened to their rhythmic breathing, first Abigail, then Bryce, and then Carson. The cadence spoke deeply to my weary heart, infusing me with purpose.

I cried out to the God who had met me in my living room, who had promised light beyond this darkness:
You know I don’t pray big prayers, Lord. You know that I’d rather do what I can on my own, but I can’t do this. I’m desperate for you. There is nothing I
can do without you. I know that your Word says you take care of the orphan and the widow, and I know you have seen the deposits of faithfulness we’ve made throughout past years. I know you will honor them. I’m asking you to do something really big, beyond anything I could imagine, and I am asking you to start right now.

I lay in silence. When I heard faint sounds of clinking in the kitchen, I imagined cups of tea, warm and comforting, enjoyed in close, loving company. I was not alone. The softness of feet moving up or down the stairs outside our bedroom felt peaceful. Mom and Dad were in the room right next to mine; Linda and Jim were settling into their own guest room. I was not alone. As I lay awake listening to the sounds around me — water running in the bathroom, doors closing, good-night whisperings — my heart smiled. I was not alone. Inside, the voice of God stilled my questions and calmed my fears; outside, my family surrounded me. I was not alone.