I was still in my senior year of high school. Charlie, ever the gentleman, had asked my dad for permission to marry me, assuring him that we would wait to marry until the fall after I graduated. My parents had seen this day coming and had already talked about it.
“Of course, I said yes,” Dad told me later that evening, describing how nervous Charlie had been when he’d asked for my hand in marriage. “But my answer may have been a little slow in coming. After all, I wanted Charlie to squirm a bit.” Dad had mischief in his eyes. I enjoyed seeing how much my dad and Charlie liked one another.
We set the date for November 9, 1996, allowing us plenty of time to plan. Charlie had been working hard and saving his money since high school and was eager to buy a house. In the spring of ‘96, we found the perfect little house in Lititz (about forty-five minutes north of Georgetown). It needed lots of tender loving care, so neither of us moved in. I graduated in June, began working full-time with the healthcare company, and we began spending our summer evenings and weekends fixing up the house — peeling wallpaper, painting, cleaning. It was a magical time. Not only was I preparing for our wedding day, I was also preparing the house that would become our home. As we carefully selected the colors of paint, we envisioned what this masterpiece of our future might look like.
With each step closer to the wedding day, our sense of commitment deepened. I was a girl in love, and the future sparkled with endless possibilities.
We chose two words to be etched inside our wedding bands to stand as a reminder of the choice we had made — Our Promise. We embraced the pledge of unity in our home church, High View Church of God, declaring honor and preference to one another, vowing lives led by love regardless of the roads we would travel. My childhood dreams had become reality. I had a wonderful husband who loved me and who shared my devotion to God and vision for life.
We stepped out of our little red-brick church as husband and wife — without a clue of how quickly a shadow would fall over our lives, bringing us back to this very spot with hearts ripped wide open in pain rather than bursting with joy.
A most unexpected change occurred within me in the wake of our wedding vows — a dramatic deepening of my spiritual life. The act of standing before my heavenly Father and declaring a lifelong promise stirred my sense of eternity and my connection to the God who had made me and given me such a gift. Not that my relationship with God hadn’t already been important to me; it had been since childhood. But the act of making a covenant with God to be a wife to Charlie for the rest of my life was so profoundly life altering, such a rite of passage, that my eyes were opened to spiritual truths in a richer sense.
My prayer life became more vibrant. Scripture passages took on deeper meaning. The beauty of the world around me spoke to me of the love of God lavished upon our lives. The ring on my finger, a circle without end, became a visible symbol of my unseen covenant, a daily reminder to embrace the choice of selfless love. Only death could part our hearts, and, of course, I assumed that death would not come for many decades.
This choice became the measuring stick by which I judged my life: Was I living in a way that reinforced our oneness? I was learning to be a loving wife rather than a high school student, and I quickly realized how huge a leap I’d made. The desire to honor God and my husband forced me to recognize and lay aside selfish attitudes for the betterment of our marriage. I was discovering something exquisitely beautiful about the selfless love shared between husband and wife. This one-on-one demonstration of preferring another helped me understand the heart of my heavenly Father in a whole new way. The experience of being loved unconditionally, deeply, tangibly, made Jesus more real and deepened my appreciation of God’s promise of eternal life in perfect communion with him.
I was full of joyful anticipation! I longed to find out what the future held — never imagining that a hurricane was starting to spin off the shores of our otherwise picturesque horizon.
Within months of saying our wedding vows, my childhood dream for children of my own was deepening. Charlie too was eager to start our family. Around Father’s Day in June of 1997, we announced our pregnancy, with a due date in February 1998. Many in our immediate circle — neighbors, family members, friends from church, and coworkers — were also expecting. It seemed to me that everywhere we looked there were precious babies growing! If I thought the beginning of my marriage represented early strokes on the canvas of a masterpiece, there was almost no way to describe the significance of what was growing in my heart now.
Pregnancy was a time of wonder for both of us. Hopes stirred for our child.
“I wonder who he will grow up to be,” Charlie said one night, patting my bulging tummy as he crawled into bed.
“Will she have my hair and your eyes?” I teasingly countered.
He cupped my chin in his hand and lifted my face toward his. “I hope she has your heart,” he whispered, catching me by surprise with his tenderness. He kissed me softly.
Everything that my heart beat for was becoming reality. I was living my dream! God was answering my prayers and empowering me to live out my destiny. During this season, I found myself contemplating God and yearning to know him in a whole new way. The Creator of the universe was creating something inside me. How miraculous! He was orchestrating this work I could not see, and his love was being deposited into my heart.
While there were many exciting markers along my path toward childbirth, like setting up the nursery and receiving baby clothes, I was especially drawn to the importance of selecting a name. If you look at the Old Testament, you’ll see that the meaning of a child’s name often ended up reflecting exactly who they turned out to be — for good or bad. So as Charlie and I compared names we liked, I researched their meanings. We decided to give each of our children a middle name from someone in our family, a perfect way to honor our family heritage and carry that legacy into the future.
I felt pretty sure I was carrying a girl, and the ultrasound confirmed it. As we chose to name our unborn child Elise Victoria — Elise meaning “pledged to God” and Victoria after my sister, meaning “victorious” — we felt one step closer to the reality of holding her. Everything was going just as it should. I was healthy; our baby was growing. It felt like perfection.
I soon discovered the special bond among women when it comes to the experience of pregnancy — a knowing nod from a woman who has been there, a shared laugh as we ask questions of one another that we’d never known to ask before our bodies began to change so drastically. I was enjoying sharing every aspect of this journey, not only with my mom, but also with some friends at church. That is when it first occurred to me: Where were Charlie’s friends?
When Charlie and I began to date, he, like most men I knew, didn’t have a large group of friends, just a couple of solid relationships with guys he trusted. As our life had shifted toward marriage and his friends remained single, those friendships fell away. The activities they’d previously shared as singles weren’t as appealing to Charlie as a newlywed. Now that he was going to be a father, where were the friends with whom he could share this experience?
“Sure, sometimes I miss my old friends,” Charlie said when I asked him about it. “Maybe I should give a few of the guys a call one weekend.” Though he spoke about rekindling the fading connections, he never actually sought out or replaced those relationships. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But looking back, I can see that his lack of deep, meaningful relationships became detrimental later. He had no “brother” to lean on, no shoulder to cry on, and no one to confide in, aside from me. Only years later would I discover the disastrous consequences of this choice.
At the time, since it wasn’t worrying Charlie, I decided it shouldn’t worry me. After all, it was common for friendships to come and go throughout the years. Young and living in our idealistic little world, we both assumed that we’d quickly establish new relationships with other couples with children.
I took some comfort in knowing that Charl
ie 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 t
enderness.
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.
6
the canvas
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.
One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting Page 6