Chapter 12 
Chapter 12 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.
—PSALM 127:3
LISA: Any child’s first birthday is a big deal, but for us, Anna’s first birthday was a major celebration—a huge deal, given the fact that we did not know whether she would survive the first week of her life, much less end up a thriving, happy one-year-old a year later. We filled our house with balloons and decorations, and all of our family and friends came to celebrate. We still have a video of all of us happily wearing party hats, eating cake and ice cream. Miss Kay—who would become “Mamaw Kay” to Anna—brought paper dolls, baby dolls, and Barbie dolls. After all those years of raising four roughhousing boys, she was so happy to have a little girl for whom she could buy presents. We thanked God for seeing Anna through such a hard beginning of life and for bringing us through it with so much grace and strength.
Miss Kay—who would become “Mamaw Kay” to Anna—brought paper dolls, baby dolls, and Barbie dolls.
About that same time, I found out I was pregnant again. Al and I were so excited to think about giving Anna a little brother or sister. We hoped and prayed for a smooth pregnancy and for my ability to carry this baby full-term and have a normal delivery. Feelings of guilt over the abortion years earlier haunted me again, as they had when I was pregnant with Anna. I still had not forgiven myself, and I spent many days afraid something would go wrong this time.
Al and I stayed amazed at what God had done in Anna’s situation and in our hearts. We talked a lot that summer with each other and with his family about our growing faith. Within a couple of months, most of us Robertsons left the small church we had attended for several years, one fairly close to where we lived. Al and I, and the rest of our family, had been happy there. He led the singing, Phil taught a Bible class, and Pa got to preach occasionally. We were not angry or hurt over anything in the church. Al and I wished the pastor had handled our situation with Anna differently, but we did not decide to leave the church because of that. As a family, we all simply reached a point where we felt the church was not helping our faith grow and realized we wanted a different church experience. In addition, Phil believed we could use our gifts better in a larger environment, and we agreed, so all of us went back to a familiar place, White’s Ferry Road. We were so happy to be back at the church that had helped Miss Kay so much when she and the boys first moved to West Monroe and where the whole family had gone after Phil’s conversion. Returning to that congregation turned out to be a great decision. We all loved it.
That summer, I almost went into labor early again, but the doctors were able to stop it. They determined that I had a weak cervix, which is why Anna was premature, and they put in a simple stitch that enabled me to carry this baby to full term. In fact, she was two weeks late! The relief I felt over realizing something fairly minor was wrong with me anatomically was significant. That simple knowledge brought me great peace and was the first step in setting me free from wondering all those years if God was punishing me for the abortion. Once I realized my struggles with pregnancies had an explainable, fixable, physical cause, my longtime emotional and spiritual wrestling with my past began to subside. It did not go away completely, but it no longer struck fear in my heart the way it once had.
Al and I were thrilled with our new baby girl, Katie Alexis Robertson, born November 30, 1987. In those days, ultrasounds were not conclusive and for some reason, we felt certain this baby would be a boy. We planned to name him James Alexander, after my dad (James) and Al’s dad (Phil Alexander) and call him Alex. When the baby was a girl, we still liked the name Alex so much that we simply kept it as a nickname for Alexis.
Alex was a happy, healthy baby and an easygoing child. She went through some rebellion in her teenage years, as many teenagers do, and all of us struggled through that season. But she eventually realized the errors of her ways and today she is a trained chef and a wonderful wife and mother. When she married, she wished my dad were there to walk her down the aisle along with Phil. All of us were sad about that and still missed him after his death in 2004. At least she had an escort from one of her two beloved grandfathers.
We also experienced a miscarriage in the fall of 1988. With my having so much trouble carrying our girls to term, we decided not to try to have any more children. We were saddened by the loss as we really wanted a son, but we trusted that God had given us exactly what we needed.
As happy as Al and I were with our two daughters, we also felt the financial strain of a growing family. Even though many of Anna’s medical expenses had been written off, we still had significant hospital and doctor bills. With two babies, our household and living expenses also increased, but our income did not. I was the primary breadwinner, and thankfully I had been working at a good job at the bank for a few years by that time and then moved to a better job at a loan company. Al was still trying to help Phil with Duck Commander, which was struggling at that time. Some weeks the company had money to pay him; some weeks it did not.
That year, the number of ducks a person could kill during hunting season was reduced, and that affected Duck Commander’s business much more than people might think. A lot of hunters stopped duck hunting altogether because it is an expensive sport and they did not want to invest in equipment if they could not get as many ducks as they had in the past. Others kept hunting but did not buy new accessories, such as our duck calls. Just when we thought Duck Commander was going to survive and grow as a business, the new limits took effect, and the company’s customer base shrunk dramatically. The business suffered under the financial pressure of low sales, but Phil still believed in it and so did Al.
The number of ducks a person could kill during hunting season was reduced, and that affected Duck Commander’s business.
Al now says he should not have stayed with Duck Commander full-time during that period without also taking some other kind of job to bring in regular income for our family. He truly had good intentions to help Phil build the business and knew Phil needed his help, but he also realizes now how much pressure that decision put on me. Whenever I spent money, he made comments to try to make me feel guilty about it. I resented that, because I was the one making the money. Besides, I felt he needed to take more responsibility for supporting our family. Money problems, like ours, are so common in marriages and often become the root of all kinds of trouble between husbands and wives. Al and I had no idea how serious the problem was or how far its negative impact would reach into our marriage.
While Al and I struggled to make ends meet, we remained thankful that our girls were healthy and growing. We were also happy and extremely active in our church. Several leaders there recognized that Al and Jase, who was only eighteen at the time, had great potential as preachers and influencers, and they encouraged them to attend our church’s preaching school. One of the challenges, especially for Al, was that he would have to go to school full-time, meaning we would lose whatever paycheck we did receive from Duck Commander, and he would have to spend time raising money to fund his school fees and to help support our family. I was not in favor of that.
After talking about the opportunity to attend preaching school and truly considering it, both Al and Jase responded to the leaders with a polite “Thanks, but we’re not interested” answer. But to the family, they basically said, “People who go to preaching school are weird.” We laugh about that now, because Al, Jase, and Willie all eventually went to preaching school. Plus, we definitely see the humor in Robertsons calling other people weird!
The following summer, in 1988, the duck-call business had gotten worse, not better. The same gentlemen who approached Al and Jase to talk about preaching school a year earlier came back to try again. This time, they brought a man who could help financially, a man named Alton Howard.
Mr. Howard was Korie Robertson’s paternal grandfather—a smart, personable, successful entrepreneur who spent lots of time, energy, and resources in various ministry endeavors from West Monroe to the far reaches of the world. He promised Al and me eight hundred dollars a month during Al’s first year of preaching school. If Al did well, he said he would consider renewing that commitment for the second year. The promise of regular income made preaching school seem more doable for us. Al and I both knew he had a heart and a gift for ministry; we were just nervous about how we would support our family while he trained.
Over the next few weeks, four other couples also related to Korie agreed to support Al with twenty-five dollars a month each, so that gave us another hundred—and we have always been grateful to them for their support. A nearby church offered to support Al as well, so he had commitments for one thousand dollars a month. We soon realized that with my salary too, we would be okay financially if he went to preaching school. So that’s what he did, while still helping Phil with Duck Commander, which was barely surviving at that point. Jase also decided to go to preaching school, so the two brothers started classes together in September 1988.