One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting

by Marie Monville

  Linda had tacked their artwork up for display on the wall, and I easily imagined the words of praise she’d found for each. I brushed my fingers over the watercolor “masterpieces” my children had painted under the inspiring tutelage of their aunt Linda. Who knew what seeds of creativity had been planted?

  The memories of my studio days while healing from the loss of Elise turned my thoughts to Charlie. I so wished he had found an outlet for his pain.

  One day, years ago, I’d tried again to help him purge his feelings. It had been the week of Easter, which I remembered because each Easter season the loss of our two girls always seemed to resurface for him.

  That Easter Sunday as we watched Abigail and all the other little girls walking into church, he said to me, “There’s just something so beautiful and innocent about little girls in new spring dresses, with barrettes in their hair and shiny new shoes.” He squeezed my hand and I sensed, though I wasn’t sure, he was thinking about Elise and Isabella.

  The following Sunday afternoon, while Abigail, then age two and a half, and eight-month-old Bryce were taking a nap, I took a glass of iced tea to Charlie on the porch, where he sat reading a hunting magazine. He smiled and took the glass. I came back a moment later with my own glass and sat beside him. I waited a few moments to make it seem as if I were bringing this up casually, even though I was sure he could see through me.

  “Charlie,” I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Elise lately, about how life goes on after a tragedy like that. Even though it’s been nearly five years, I know it’s still hard for me. It must be hard for you too — but you don’t talk much about it.”

  He kept his gaze on the magazine and sipped his iced tea, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it with me,” I said, “is there someone else, a friend, or our pastor, that you could talk to about it?”

  He looked up from his magazine and gazed beyond the fields across the road. I waited, because Charlie had never been in a hurry to put his thoughts into words. “I don’t know what difference it would make,” he said at last. “I don’t find it that helpful to talk about my feelings. It doesn’t change anything.”

  I longed to ask him whether he was talking with God about it, as I was, but since Elise’s death Charlie had seemed very uncomfortable talking about his relationship with God. Even before her death he’d been reserved about his feelings — since then, he’d been even more remote. “But is there someone you could talk to if you wanted to?”

  He looked at me briefly, then away. “No men I know ever talk to me about their pain or their feelings — why would I think they would want me to talk to them about mine?”

  This memory saddened me. I’d prayed, I’d shared, I’d hoped, but as far as I knew, after the loss of Elise, Charlie never seemed to find a connection with God intimate enough to allow him to release the pain and find a measure of peace.

  Back in the present, in Aunt Linda’s kitchen, the dishwasher suddenly came on, the timer having been set by Linda so its noise wouldn’t interfere with the peacefulness she maintained during our days. I found the swishing rhythm a nice break from the silence of the bedroom where I’d lain awake so long.

  When my fatigue made it too tiring to sit up anymore, I headed back to bed, snuggled between Abigail and Bryce again, and let my mind wander.

  There was much to be done before the funeral. I decided to do my best to view the several visits still ahead of me through the new lens of expectancy I’d prayed for last night, and see these visitors as God’s agents, playing a role that I needed, whether or not I felt I had the emotional energy to deal with them. It occurred to me that every choice I made this week would model for my children how to handle the weights and worries of this world. I needed to help them expect to see God at work as a shining light every day, even when all we see is fog and all we feel is pain.

  It was easy to look forward to the visit of the two counselors later that day. They were great with the kids and were helping us find the words to talk about the events of the week and Charlie’s choices.

  “All three of your children,” one counselor had assured me, “are responding in healthy, normal ways to this very unhealthy, abnormal situation. You and your family are doing just what they need. Keep up the great work.”

  Listening to the quiet breathing of the children in sleep, I clung to those reassuring words. I also appreciated how the counselors offered me a safe place to explore my thoughts and feelings. My mom and dad, when comforting me, were themselves grieving a horrible loss, and I often tried to hold my grief in check so as not to increase their pain.

  There was something more I yearned to discuss with the counselors, though I realized it would take far more than one conversation. I wanted their insights on depression and what might have been going on inside Charlie that had led to this violent act. There would never be, of course, any logical explanation for his actions, as his unconscionable acts defied logic and reason. But I needed help understanding how such darkness could have been gnawing at Charlie without leaking out to those of us who loved him most. With sadness I realized that I would likely need to wait a lifetime before I could ever truly understand. Some mysteries are held for us until heaven.

  While it was easy to wait in expectancy for the counselors, I wasn’t nearly so positive about the day’s upcoming session with the detectives. How could I apply my lesson of expectancy to them? I appreciated their kindness and the importance of their work but was filled with anxiety for them. They had carried an enormous burden since Monday morning, returning many times to the bullet-ridden, blood-spattered schoolhouse and visiting the families of all the children. Were they able to sleep at night? Did they see images of the dead and dying girls when they closed their eyes? Did they still hear the cries of the wounded and the grief-stricken wails of parents and grandparents who’d rushed to the schoolhouse in terror? When they chose this work — to serve, protect, and save the lives of those around them — they couldn’t have envisioned that it would look like this. How would they recover? Would they be able to go back to work?

  I did the only thing I could for them. I prayed and believed God for his healing in their lives and his provision for their families in even greater ways than he was already doing for me.

  Four a.m. The clock on Aunt Linda’s dresser stared me down in the wee hours of the morning. Would this waiting never end?

  The funeral would be Saturday. Still more than twenty-four hours away. Though I was dreading it, I had reached the point where I wanted it behind me. All I had to do was make it through today, if today would ever dawn.

  The children were longing for home, though home without Charlie was impossible for me to imagine. Mom and Dad too must be eager to get back to their own beds. Surely Aunt Linda must be ready for a break, though I’d never caught as much as a whisper of complaint. She’d been a woman on a mission of mercy, and all of us had been on the receiving end.

  Four days. Is that really all it has been? I felt as if since Monday morning, when Charlie had called me, we’d been trapped in limbo — a bizarre existence of intense emotions, from the heights of burning-bush moments on holy ground to the depths of desperately black chasms of grief. Yet on every one of those days, God made himself known in unmistakable ways.

  I had two more hours till dawn, and clearly sleep was not coming. I turned on my side to study Abigail’s sleeping face and thought back to the rainbow God had given me to seal his promise that Charlie and I would have our Abigail.

  “We have the most wonderful New Year’s Day surprise for you,” I announced to my parents with Charlie, glowing, by my side on the couch. We were in my parents’ family room, enjoying the warmth of their woodstove, along with my brother, Ken, and sister, Vicki. All eyes turned toward us.

  “We have a card for you,” Charlie said as he handed them the handmade card I’d created. My mom and dad opened the card and read it before passing it on to my brother and sister.

  Happ
y New Year’s Day!

  This year holds a promise and whispers of a dream come true. With great excitement we invite you to join us on this adventure as we prepare for a new baby to enter our world in early September.

  Everyone leaped to their feet for hugs with tears of joy. Somehow, even from the first moment of knowing I was pregnant, Charlie and I had both believed that this pregnancy was different. Though we were anxious about reaching forty weeks, our outlook was predominantly hope-filled, believing that the baby growing in me was our Abigail.

  Each of the many medical tests I underwent confirmed that hope — everything was progressing perfectly.

  “What do you think you’re going to have?” a friend at church asked me when word got around. I always answered the same way: “A girl, because God told us so.” I would then tell the story of mowing that summer day and the exchange that followed between the Lord and me, including his choice for her name, Abigail, and the rainbow that sealed his promise. Some people lit up with interest in my God-encounter. Some looked at me askance or smiled condescendingly at what they perceived to be my naiveté. Their responses didn’t matter. I loved sharing my story.

  Being pregnant with Abigail demonstrated how the trials of losing Elise and Isabella had deepened my trust. Had I given in to anger and bitterness at their loss, I would not have enjoyed expectantly watching to see what God would do. Instead, I had gone to God in prayer, immersed myself in his Word, sung his praises, and returned to my Father over and over again during the wait. Would God have given me my Abigail even if I had not done those things? I believe he would have, because I did not earn her through those actions. She was not my prize for a job well done; she was an expression of God’s goodness and grace. But the joy and confidence of my faith would not have been so overflowing had I not waited expectantly, arms outstretched, watching for his good gifts.

  I thought of the day when God spoke her name to me and sealed his promise with the rainbow — up to that point, my most powerful experience of hearing God’s voice. But as I lay wide awake in bed, watching Abigail’s eyelids flutter in sleep, I looked back on the several times this week since Charlie’s call that I had heard God’s voice. Back in 1998 and again this week, I could have dismissed the experience as the desperate delusions of a grief-stricken woman, her imagination running amok — but I didn’t. I had been given the faith to believe his words about my future.

  I would need that faith and expectation over the next few days, especially Saturday, the day of the funeral — no matter how overpowering the grief over losing Charlie.

  I looked across the room at the clock. Finally! 6:00 a.m. Friday morning. I had things to accomplish and dawn had come.

  Counselors. Calls from a few close friends. Conversations with the detectives reviewing a few final security details, and a conversation with the funeral home refining a few details of the service. The day was a blur. But there was one thing I couldn’t neglect to do: prepare the children for every step of tomorrow.

  “Hey, kids, let’s go outside and color with sidewalk chalk,” I said. Three eager kids were out the door before I was.

  “Tomorrow is an important day.” I tried my best to sound casual as we colored. “We will have a special service at our church — a funeral for Daddy — with our closest friends and family. Then we’ll ride to the cemetery together where his body will be buried.” And so we talked. I did my best to prepare them for what was to come and to answer their questions. They were somber but didn’t appear to be worried or frightened. Maybe they were more prepared than I.

  One final task lay ahead. The children and I needed suitable clothes and shoes to wear to the funeral. I’d brought nothing appropriate to Aunt Linda’s house, and I wasn’t yet ready to go back to my house. Besides, we’d been advised to stay away until after the funeral. So my sister and a close friend offered to take me shopping.

  Vicki and Kristin arrived, filled with the gentleness that only a sister and a good friend could offer.

  “You ready?” Vicki asked.

  “I’m nervous about going out in public!” I said. “What if we run into someone I know? What if a stranger recognizes my face or the name on my debit card? I don’t feel up to conversation.”

  “We’ll make a quick job of this,” Kristin tried to reassure me.

  But a long list of fears circled in my mind for the entire twenty-minute drive to the mall. Would I overhear people talking about the shooting? How did people feel about me? What reactions would I have to endure? Since Monday morning, whenever feelings of personal guilt for Charlie’s actions began to creep in, God had stepped in to quell those feelings. But a sense of shame still clung — the sense that somehow I should have known what was coming. The time I’d spent with the detectives had convinced me that there had been no clues to his plans that I could have seen. And it was clear in my conversations with the counselors and my family that none of us had seen this coming. Did people outside my family believe my innocence of any knowledge of Charlie’s intentions, or were they skeptical and judgmental? I suspected the latter.

  Once we parked, Vicki was ready to jump out of the car and get started, but I hesitated. “Okay, let’s keep a low profile and slip in and out in a hurry,” she said.

  Easy for her to say. Since I was significantly taller than my fashion entourage, there was no hope of them providing cover! Still, however he might do it, I knew that God was capable of sheltering me. He had to, because I was simply incapable on my own.

  I got out of the car, filled with misgivings, and we did our shopping. I tried not to look at newspapers or magazines in the mall, for the same reason we hadn’t listened to the car radio on the drive over.

  When we arrived home, Mom was eager to hear how it went.

  “God sheltered me,” I said. “I didn’t encounter a single reporter, and though I saw a few people I know from a distance, they didn’t notice me.” I was tremendously thankful.

  When at last I crawled into bed Friday night, I hoped I’d finally be able to get some deep sleep. I replayed a few favorite worship songs in my mind and meditated on verses of praise. After a long time in prayer, thanking God for all he’d done this week, I decided that tonight, the night before we would place Charlie’s body in the ground, I would dwell on happy memories of Charlie.

  Charlie. I could still see his face …

  “Charlie, quick — she’s kicking!” I’d been sitting on the couch, and Charlie seemed to leap from the kitchen in a single bound, not wanting to miss a second of it. Feeling her every hiccup and even her kicking my ribs was delightfully fun. Our years of waiting were almost done. We couldn’t wait to hold her! My dreams of motherhood were finally going to be fulfilled.

  During those same months, maybe because our long-awaited dream was coming true, Charlie was allowing himself another dream: From the time he was a child, he had dreamed of having his own trucking company. At play as children, he and his best friend had pretended to be truck drivers. Now, one morning over breakfast, those dreams lit his eyes as he said with a shy but eager smile, “I know you’re not crazy about the idea, but I still think about getting my commercial driver’s license so I can drive a tractor-trailer. If your dad would take the time to teach me, I know I could do the same job — I know I could! Sure, I’d have a learning curve, but …”

  And on he went, getting more excited by the moment. And suddenly my eyes were opened to a truth about myself that I didn’t like — but couldn’t deny. Through the years of our marriage, I had been discouraging Charlie from his dream.

  “Charlie,” I said, when he stopped to take a breath, “I see a brightness in your eyes as you talk about this. And it’s made me realize something: I need to ask for your forgiveness. I’ve been wrong, and I’ve been unfair to you.”

  He looked confused. “You? No, never. You’ve always been the ideal wife.” He squeezed my hand.

  “Have I?” I said. “There’s a job you would love to have — and I’ve told you over and over that I
don’t want you to have it. I’ve been so blind, Charlie — so selfish. I’ve been standing in the way of you pursuing your lifelong dream. I’ve always wanted to be your encourager, your confidence-builder — and I thought that’s what I was doing. And yet my own family is the doorway to your accomplishing your dream, and I’ve been blocking it.”

  Charlie granted forgiveness freely, touched by my admission of remorse. I talked to my grandfather to open the door; Charlie took it from there, and soon he was spending his Saturdays off sitting beside my dad in his truck. Continuing to work full-time at his regular job Monday through Friday, Charlie trained over the weekends and whenever he could squeeze in some extra time. This was part of what I loved about Charlie — he was a hard worker who took seriously his commitment to provide for our family.

  Charlie would come home talking excitedly about his progress, describing new skills he’d learned with the gears and in maneuvering the truck around the barns and lanes of his customers. He would recount scenes of the Amish families that I had so enjoyed as a child. I loved seeing him so excited.

  After only a few months of training, he took the CDL (commercial driver’s license) test. His first attempt was successful, and he was ready to embark on a new career!

  “I can’t wait to get up in the morning,” Charlie said more than once. He was enjoying a role he’d been designed to fill, and he was great at it too. He could back an eighteen-wheeler down farm lanes and around buildings, making it look easy. And he enjoyed talking with the farmers and other truck drivers at the dairy. He would tell me about his conversations with his favorites when his workday finished. I wonder if those men ever realized that they had become his treasured friends. He enjoyed their friendly banter and laughter, and he cared about their lives. Once, when the owner of another truck company lost his son, Charlie filled in for him on his routes for a while, visited the family, and tried to find ways to bring some comfort to those grieving.