Some time later, Rodney confirmed that he’d taken me fishing to cheer me up and encourage me but that I’d encouraged him more than I would ever know, just by sharing my story and showing him what God was doing in my life.
If God could do that with my friend, He could do that with others, too.
My mind went back to that misty, foggy morning when I’d sat on a boulder on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Arkansas River. I had told God that my life was His and that I’d do whatever He wanted, as long as He opened the doors and showed me what He wanted me to do.
Now I had my first answer. God had showed me what He wanted me to do. Now all I had to do was to wait for Him to open the doors.
As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait very long. Word spread quickly about the testimony I shared at Hilltop Baptist Church, and I began to be invited to tell my story in other places as well.
One of the first places I spoke was the Van Zandt County Jail in Canton, Texas. After I finished speaking, a young woman named Jessie 1 came up to me and said, “I’m going to be getting out of jail soon. I’ve got a husband and two children at home, and I don’t want to go back as the same person I was when I left them. I’m lost, and I need to be saved.”
I took her aside and began to share the Good News of Christ with her.
I had Penny’s Bible with me that day. Although it was scorched, it was one of the few things that had survived the fire intact. Inside was one of her bookmarks that had the Romans Road, a simple presentation of the gospel, printed on it.
Using that bookmark as a guide, I shared with Jessie how all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s perfect standard, and how the wages of our sin is death but God’s gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ. As I worked through the verses that showed her how to place her trust in Jesus Christ, she hung on my every word.
A few minutes later, we knelt together, and she trusted Jesus Christ as her Savior. The jail chapel had a portable baptistry, so the chaplain and I pulled it out and I baptized her on the spot.
Before I left, I took the bookmark from Penny’s Bible and gave it to Jessie.
“I want you to have this,” I said.
She shook her head and brushed away tears. “I can’t take this. It was your wife’s.”
“I know. But I think she’d want you to have it. Keep it to remember this day and the commitment you’ve made to God.”
She thanked me as she and the other inmates returned to their cells.
As I watched her go, an indescribable feeling of joy filled my heart. I began to realize how God could use what had happened to me to turn people’s lives around. There were so many hurting people in the world, and God could use my tragedy to help them overcome the trials that they faced.
As I was there in that jail, I also felt a connection with Erin. I couldn’t be with her to minister to her personally, but I could share with women who were facing similar circumstances. I hoped and prayed that there would be people reaching out to Erin in the same way.
MOVING BACK HOME
It was time to go home.
I don’t fully understand how I knew, but I knew that the time had come for me to move back to my property. In the last three months, I had been living with others, and I was so grateful for their help and encouragement. If it hadn’t been for Mary and Mike, Larry and Virginia, and Tommy and Helen, I don’t know what I would have done. They protected me, nurtured me, and encouraged me when I was overwhelmed with grief and pain. But if I was ever going to fully recover, I needed to be on my own again.
True, I was living in my own RV, but it was parked on Tommy and Helen’s land, and right by their house, where I could run if I needed a refuge. I needed to move it back home.
I knew that Penny, Matthew, and Tyler were with the Lord and that nothing was going to bring them back. But I still felt a need to be at the place where we’d spent our last night together.
So I set a date. I asked Tommy to help me move the RV back to my property on Saturday, June 7. That was going to be a difficult weekend because I had to speak in Brookston, Texas, the next morning. What would make it even more difficult was that June 8 would have been Bubba’s fourteenth birthday. I suppose I could have put off the move a week or so, but I decided it was time to make the change. The longer I put it off, the more difficult it would be.
Would the memories be overwhelming? Maybe. But I was going to face them anyway.
God and I would face them together.
1 Not her real name.
Chapter 19
Home Again
I will go in the strength of the Lord God.
—PSALM 7I:I6 (KJV)
FOR MOST PEOPLE, June 7 was just another day.
For me, it was a new beginning. I was excited, but at the same time, I was afraid. After three months and six days, I was going home. Not to the home I once knew. That, along with my family and everything I once owned, was gone forever.
Some people questioned the wisdom of going back to live at the site of such horror. How could I possibly move forward or begin healing from my grief when I was living in the very place where Charlie Wilkinson and Charles Waid had shot and stabbed my wife and sons and then burned down our house? How could I live in a place of such pain when I knew that Erin was being held as an accomplice in the murders?
Some people thought I was crazy, but they didn’t understand.
I knew the danger. I knew that returning to my property could rip open wounds that now were only just beginning to heal. But if I was going to move forward, I had to start back there, the place where my family once lived. A place of good memories—and good sounds.
I missed the sounds of simple things, like the squeak of the dryer as Penny put in a load of wet laundry just before bedtime. I’d always ask her why she didn’t start it earlier. Penny would say in her soft, sweet voice, “I’m sorry. I just forgot.”
I missed the sounds of the kids whispering and giggling at night. “You need to be quiet and go to sleep,” I’d tell the boys. They’d still giggle, only quieter.
I missed Penny lying next to me in our bed as we held each other and drifted off to sleep. I missed the gentle sound of her breathing. In these months after her death, I sometimes reached out for her in the middle of the night, only to find an empty place there.
It was the little things I missed the most.
Which would be stronger, I wondered—memories or fear? For that matter, would I even make it through the first night?
I couldn’t answer those questions. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to allow what had happened in the past to rule my life. I wasn’t going to allow the actions of two young men to keep me off my property. If I was going to move forward, right there is where I needed to start.
So in a way, this was a new beginning, a new chapter in my life.
My heart pounded as I drove my truck behind Tommy Gaston’s tractor. Even though I was moving only about three hundred yards up the road, I felt as if I were heading off on a long journey. As Tommy pulled my new RV up the narrow road toward my twelve acres, I knew that the only way I would be able to follow through on my decision to move home was with God’s help. The words of Psalm 71:16 kept running through my mind: “I will go in the strength of the Lord”(NKJV).
As Tommy turned into our driveway, there was the sign that so many news programs had featured: The Caffeys, Joshua 24:15.
“As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Those words still held true for me, even though they had been severely tested over the last three months. Like Job, I had lost everything: my possessions, my family, my health. Like Job, at times I had wanted to die. Like Job, I had questioned God’s actions, asking Him why He would take my family and leave me to go on without them.
And as God did with Job, He answered me in a way I would never have expected.
Tommy’s tractor slowed and stopped, and I rolled to a stop behind him.
As I looked over my property, I felt as if I
were bringing part of my family back with me. I could almost see Penny standing in our doorway, as she so often did when I came home from work. Matthew out back, shooting aluminum cans off the fence. Tyler pulling his dirt-filled red wagon behind him—with more dirt on him than in the wagon. And Erin running out to greet me and ask how my day had gone.
I got out of my truck and stood there for a few minutes. I could almost hear the echoes of the kids’ voices as they rode the Mule around the back part of the property.
Only time would tell if moving back here had been a good idea.
But, for now, I said softly, “Penny, kids, we’re home.”
FIRST NIGHT
Although I’d been sleeping alone in my RV for more than a month, this was the first night I would be really alone. I didn’t have Tommy and Helen’s house right outside my front door. No one could be there almost instantly if I needed help. I was back at ground zero. I was vulnerable again. And as the sun went down, I could feel the fear rising within me. It was going to be a long night.
The last time I’d gone to sleep here, someone had sneaked into my house and caught me totally unprepared. That wouldn’t happen this time around. In fact, that would never happen again. I’d purchased a .9mm handgun and a license to carry a concealed weapon. Never again would I be caught unable to protect myself. When I went to bed, I made sure my gun was within easy reach.
I needed to get a good night’s sleep, because the next day was going to be busy and difficult. I was supposed to speak at Brookston Baptist Church, near Paris, Texas. Also, it was Bubba’s birthday. It probably hadn’t been wise to accept an invitation to speak on a day that was certain to be difficult for me, but I believed that God had opened the door, and I was committed to going through with it.
I stayed up late, reading my Bible and praying, hoping that I would eventually become sleepy enough to drop off without too much trouble. Before I went to bed, I went through my new nightly routine. Instead of barricading the door, the way I had at Mary’s house, I thoroughly searched the RV to make sure that nobody was hiding in any of the nooks or crannies. I checked out the bathroom and any other places where a person might be able to hide.
When I was convinced there was no one else in my RV, I checked my gun to make sure it was loaded and ready. I placed it by my bed, where I would be able to grab it quickly if I needed to. Then I climbed into the bed and turned off the lights.
I was pretty tired, so I figured that it wouldn’t take me too long to fall asleep.
I was about to drift off to sleep when I heard something hit the window at the head of my bed. I was instantly on alert.
I heard the sound again, and again. It sounded as if someone were throwing pebbles against my window.
Thump, thump . . . thump. More pebbles.
My heart pounded against my chest. I checked to make sure my gun was still nearby.
Thump . . . thump . . . thump, thump.
My mouth was dry. I wanted to hide. Was someone going to attack me again, the way Charlie had attacked us a few months ago? Finally, I mustered enough courage to get out of bed and peer through the window blinds.
When I saw what was making the noise, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
June bugs—a host of them—were flying kamikaze-style at the windows and the metal sides of the RV. They were the mysterious “pebbles” that had frightened me so.
Knowing the source of the mysterious sounds helped a little, but I still found myself attuned to every noise I heard, and I still felt compelled to investigate until I figured out what it was. I knew that I needed to pray and give this fear to God.
“Lord,” I said, “I know that You are the one who protects me. Please give me Your grace and protection tonight, and help me to sleep.”
When I had finished, I felt at peace and soon fell into a deep sleep.
BUBBA’S BIRTHDAY
Tommy and Helen had helped me get through Tyler’s birthday by suggesting the impromptu trip to Broken Bow, Oklahoma. I’d managed to get through Easter mostly because that holiday focuses on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself said, “Because I live, you will live also” (John 14:19). So even though Easter was a holiday, I took comfort in it because it was a reminder that Penny and the boys would one day be raised from the dead, just as Jesus was. Easter was a holiday of hope.
But as I awoke on Sunday, June 8, depression and sadness swept over me. My sweet, gentle son Matthew would have turned fourteen that day. I didn’t want to drive to Paris and share my testimony. I just wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. What had I been thinking? I should never have agreed to speak somewhere on Bubba’s birthday.
I wanted so badly to call the pastor and cancel, but I knew I couldn’t do that, not this late. It wouldn’t be fair to him or the church.
“God,” I prayed, “I can’t do this on my own. Please give me the strength to share Your word with those people.” As I prayed, a verse popped into my mind, the same one I’d thought so much about the day before: “I will go in the strength of the LORD.”
If I tried to do this in my own strength, I would surely fail. But if I relied on God’s strength and His power, I could trust Him to use my words to touch people. And I could trust Him for the strength to get through the day.
So I got dressed and made the hour-and-a-half drive to Brookston Baptist Church.
I felt so weak and powerless that morning, but as I got up and shared what God had done in my life, He began working in hearts again. Shortly after the service was over, a tall man approached and put his arms around me. He wept as he told me that just a month before I lost my family, his son had been killed in an automobile accident. He said that he’d been struggling terribly since that day, but because of what I had shared, he had hope for the first time since his son’s death.
“If you can go on after what you went through,” he said, “then I can go on too.”
I drove home that afternoon rejoicing that God was able to take my tragedy and use it to bring about good.
After I got back to Emory, I went back to my RV, changed my clothes, and then drove to the cemetery in Wills Point to visit Matthew’s grave. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I must have sat there for a couple of hours, just talking to my son and praying and crying: It isn’t fair. We should be having a party right now. We should be celebrating your fourteenth birthday. All of us should be here: Mama, Erin, Tyler, and most of all you, Bubba.
A feeling of heaviness had settled over my heart. I felt so empty, so alone. I went back to my RV, but I didn’t feel any better there. A host of family memories flooded my mind, and with each one I felt more lost.
I decided to hang up my clothes and put them away, but I kept fumbling with my shirt. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it go on the hanger correctly. Finally, in frustration, I threw the hanger across the room. Then I picked up more hangers and threw them at the wall.
“It isn’t fair!” I shouted through my tears. “I want my family back! I need them! How can I go on without them?” I put my face in my hands and wept as if I had just lost Penny and the boys all over again.
This sudden, explosive feeling of grief took me by surprise. I thought I’d been doing so well lately. I was making progress. I had stopped taking the pain pills and the anti-anxiety medication. I had started a new life. God was speaking to me through His Word. He was using me to speak to others, and I was having an impact on their lives. What had gone wrong?
As I sat there, overwhelmed with sadness, I began to realize that even though all those things were true, it didn’t change the fact that I had suffered a horrific loss. My family was gone, and nothing would ever change that. And no matter how God was working through the tragedy, the grief and the pain were still there and would continue to be there. I would have to work through those feelings for a long time. I would probably come to a point someday when the pain would ease—or at least become bearable—but I would always have to face the painful reality and live
with it every single day. And the only way I would be able to do that was with God’s strength.
I went to bed that night and tried to think of the good times we’d had as a family.
Once, when the kids were younger, Tommy was going to teach us how to make poke salad. You might call poke salad the Southern counterpart to the Japanese delicacy puffer fish. Just as puffer fish can be deadly poisonous if it’s not prepared correctly, the pokeweed leaves are highly toxic but are edible if correctly prepared.
On this particular day, Tommy told the kids what to look for and sent them out to collect the pokeweed leaves. After a few minutes Erin came running back with an armful.
“Is this it? Is this it?” she asked, thrilled at her discovery.
“Nope.” Tommy said, grinning. “What you’ve got there is an armful of poison oak.”
I grinned as I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 20
Crises
I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the LORD sustains me.
—PSALM 3:5
THE PAIN WAS ALREADY so bad that I didn’t think it could get any worse.
I was wrong.
Matthew’s birthday triggered a wave of discouragement and depression that went on for more than two weeks.
Father’s Day was coming up, and I knew that would be difficult. But even before Father’s Day I received a devastating telephone call from Erin’s lawyer. On Monday, June 9, the day after Bubba’s birthday, Mr. McDowell told me the prosecutors were going to request that Erin be certified to stand trial as an adult. A hearing would be scheduled to decide whether or not that would happen.
“Who makes that decision?” I asked.
“The judge will make the decision,” replied Mr. McDowell.
“Then it’s possible he could decide to keep her as a juvenile?” I asked, hopeful.
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