14
Facing Firsts

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline.

—2 Timothy 1:7

The next morning I walked into church with some trepidation. While a number of our church friends had stopped by during the last week to pray with us and offer support, this was the first time we’d be facing the entire congregation. Would we encounter the love and compassion we’d received from the Amish community? Or would we see speculation, condemnation? Surely many must be wondering what we had done or missed for our son to have committed this crime.

But if so, we did not see or hear such. I fought back fresh tears as I responded to hugs and murmured sympathy. The worship music was sweet refreshment to my soul. Pastor Dwight spoke a few words concerning the events of the last week. Then a rustle of surprise swept across the congregation as my daughter-in-law Marie stood up and walked forward. Her pretty face showed the strain of these last days, but there was courage in her gaze and strength in her voice. She touched briefly on what had happened, then went on to speak of God’s grace and healing manifested these last few days in her life, her children, and even the Amish families.

“Please continue to pray for our family,” she finished. “And for the Amish families, the first responders, and all who were touched by this tragedy. Rejoice with me too that God is working in all our lives through this.”

I was so proud of her. Worry for Charlie’s wife and children had been an additional burden these last days. But I could lay that burden down. Marie was finding her own healing in this darkness. My sweet daughter-in-law and precious grandchildren were in God’s hands. God would use this tragedy and sadness for His good purpose in their lives as well as in mine and others’.

On Monday, I headed back to work and Zach returned home. Just in these few days, we had seen in him such a change in attitude. Before he left, Zach told me, “The world really needs to hear this message of forgiveness. I live every day in a culture that has not seen this.”

Little did Zach or I know that over the following years his own piece of this story would become a vehicle to share the message of forgiveness. Little could I have guessed how far God would take me personally in sharing the story.

Many years later, Zach came for a three-week visit. I was scheduled to speak at a church in York, Pennsylvania, and I invited Zach and Chuck to come along with me. It was the first time Zach had ever heard me share my journey to joy through adversity, which included his story as well as Charlie’s and my cancer ordeal. After the event, a mother approached me with her teenage daughter, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’m embarrassed to call myself a Christian,” she cried. “I have forbidden my sister to even come to my funeral. I’ve actually drawn up a legal document specifying she can’t attend. I’m leaving here today to destroy that document and call my sister.”

When I asked her what about my story had changed her heart, she responded, “It was Zach’s story, hearing how he released his bitterness to forgive and come to his brother’s funeral.” How that encounter impacted Zach as well as me!

The funeral had been an uplifting experience. But getting back to “normal” life did not always prove easy. Chuck had already returned to work that first Thursday. The encouragement he’d received from his Amish clients, their assurance that they still wanted him to be their friend and in their lives, had been greatly healing to him.

At my own job, colleagues were for the most part kind and welcoming, careful not to bring up recent events in my presence. But a co-worker in my department had been a first responder at the schoolhouse. She was struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome over all she’d seen, and she could not bear to see me or work near me. She requested reassignment to another department where she wouldn’t have to encounter me, and eventually resigned from our place of employment.

Mel Lantz—First Responder, Volunteer EMT

I was driving my delivery truck on Route 741, east of Strasburg, when I heard a radio alert of a mass casualty event at the Nickel Mines schoolhouse. They were requesting five additional ambulances. I couldn’t imagine what kind of event could need that many units. I immediately turned my truck around and headed to the scene.

SWAT teams and emergency response had the area cordoned off. I identified myself to the police as an EMT. Walking into the schoolyard, I saw a scene I’ll never forget. Such a surge of anger went through me that someone had shot these children. I immediately went into triage mode and began to assess the situation. I could see life-threatening injuries, but I felt so helpless and inadequate, since there were not enough resources at the time to treat the victims.

After the girls were taken care of, I treated an officer with a cut finger. But there was nothing else for me to do. Afterward all the first responders were called to the Bart fire station for a debriefing. How are you supposed to sit there and tell people how you feel when you’re not even sure what you’re feeling? Eventually I left to finish my deliveries. I wondered why God had me there that day. If that call had come in just five minutes later, I’d have been at this delivery and wouldn’t have gotten the call. I had to believe God’s hand was in this.

Going home to my children that first night, they just seemed more precious to me. The following days, it felt as though a dark cloud hung over me. I couldn’t forget what I’d seen. I remember a phone call from a family member asking about the event and just breaking into tears. My wife encouraged me to go to the viewings for the little girls. We went together. Seeing them at peace, sharing with the families, brought the beginning of healing.

The following Thursday, the schoolhouse was demolished. I took my truck to haul debris. I recognized family members of the victims. One mother asked me how I was doing. I remember thinking, You just lost your daughter, and you can ask me how I’m doing? It was like a dagger in my heart, but in a good way.

After “The Happening,” as the Amish call the event, I came to know the families well. My wife and I visited the girls who’d survived and their families. I drove a number of times to take one of the survivors to doctor appointments. Sometimes I’d go out with the men for coffee or drive them to the store. That first year was exhausting mentally and physically as I struggled to deal with the trauma. But the connection I developed with the Amish helped both sides in the healing process. My desire was to minister to these families, but I found them ministering to me.

People say forgive and forget. Do I forgive the shooter? Those first moments at the schoolhouse, I was so angry. But I can honestly say I hold no feelings against Charlie or his family. If the families of the victims can forgive, surely I can. I’ve seen the power of forgiveness, how choosing forgiveness helps and heals people. I will never forget one of the girls’ fathers saying, “The journey begins with you making the choice to do that [forgive].”

He wasn’t suggesting that forgiving is easy. It’s still a process. As to forgetting, I’m not sure I want to forget. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have the relationships I have now [with the Amish]. We would never choose this to happen. But it did, and we have to find good in it. These Amish families, and Terri Roberts too, have helped me see this. If you can bring the sides together—those who lost, those who survived—it makes a difference. One thing I’ve learned is that when you’re in grief, if you can reach out to someone else who is also grieving, there is great healing power in this on both sides.

What happens when that exchange occurs? It’s God’s grace.

Seeing my colleague struggle moved me to pray more deeply for all the EMTs, law enforcement, and other first responders who’d been there that day. I could not blame her, because I too was still struggling. Each new “first” brought tears. The first time I drove past an Amish schoolhouse. Going to the mall and spotting a man’s profile that looked like Charlie. Walking into our local hardware store and seeing a young Amish child. Even a hug from Chuck brought a flood of tears that Marie would never again know such an embrace from Charlie.

The tearing down of the Nickel Mines schoolhouse was a mile marker in the healing journey. We concurred completely with the Amish families, who did not want their children to have to walk into that building ever again or to have it become a tourist attraction for the countless outsiders who come every year to explore Amish country. Classes resumed for the surviving children inside the garage of a nearby Amish business while a new school was being built. We were thankful that their teacher, twenty-year-old Emma Mae Zook, was there to welcome them back.

One first I’d been dreading was my first shopping expedition to Costco. I walked through the aisles, steeling myself against whom I might run into, what they would say. Little stands offering food samples are part of the Costco experience. As I paused to pick up a sample, the woman handing them out looked sharply at me and commented, “Hey, I just saw you on TV!”

I froze, my heart plummeting. Then she went on, “I think it was that Sight & Sound commercial. Were you in that?”

Sure enough, not long before I’d participated in the production of a video advertisement for Sight & Sound that was used as a pre-show promotion at the theatre. Quickly regaining my composure, I murmured some response and escaped, only too thankful she had not connected me to recent news.

At our local grocery store, I was not able to avoid recognition. As the checkout employee greeted me, she added, “I am so sorry for what happened. But we do still want you to shop at our store.”

“Thank you,” I responded, breathing thanks to God for the kindness of the Lancaster County people. “I’m planning on coming again.”

In the outside world, things seemed to be very much back to normal. Even the media had largely drifted off to some other new and exciting story. As I drove to work, I saw Amish farmers again in their fields, bringing in the harvest. The fall landscape was as beautiful and serene as it always is in Lancaster County. How can the world be so normal? I asked myself. How can people go about life as though nothing has changed?

But I realized they were right. The more I focused on those things that were normal, steady, real, the better I was able to get back on track. I found myself returning again and again to the Scripture passage that had meant so much to me going through cancer—Philippians 4:6–7:

In every situation (even this unspeakable tragedy!) . . . with thanksgiving (Lord, I see even less to give thanks for now than in the cancer, but I will choose to pray with thanksgiving anyway!), present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (oh, yes, heavenly Father, let your peace take hold of my heart and mind, regardless of my feelings!).

The very next verse, Philippians 4:8, also became significant to me:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (give me strength, Lord, to focus on the good you have placed in my life, not the evils with which this world abounds!).

One great help in moving forward was the grief and trauma counseling provided to all involved in this tragedy—our family, the Amish, the first responders, even the area children. Various counselors had come to talk to us from the beginning. A priority was the Bart elementary school that Charlie and Marie’s two older children attended. Counselors had been assigned to prepare the teachers to deal with questions and trauma, but also to prepare the other children for my grandchildren’s return.

Thankfully, our grandchildren experienced nothing but a compassionate welcome upon their return to classes. A strong factor to which that can be attributed was the counselor assigned to that school, a woman who would have a great and healing impact on my own life. Cheri Lovre was a world-renowned trauma counselor from the Crisis Management Institute in Portland, Oregon. She’d been invited by the school district to bring her grief and trauma expertise into the larger challenge of helping the entire community move toward recovery.

I will never forget my first meeting with Cheri. Chuck was working, so did not attend, but Marie and her parents, Ken and Nadine, were with me. We met with the school administrator, who led us to the library for our meeting with Cheri. Instantly I was set at ease by her warmth and smile. Such a grave circumstance had brought us all together. Yet it was immediately clear that this was Cheri’s calling, because her astute questions, the thoughts she had us ponder, not only helped us release our emotions in a healthy way, but offered a safe place to sort through events that remained so unreal and hard to deal with.

We all talked in depth for about two hours. One statement that brought me to fresh tears was made by Ken, Marie’s dad. Charlie’s father-in-law made a comment suggesting that any father would have been proud to have Charlie Roberts as a son-in-law.

Oh, how it blessed my spirit to hear that from my son’s father-in-law! Oh, how I wished Chuck had been there to hear that statement! It was not in any way a mitigation of Charlie’s actions. But it was a reminder that there had been another Charlie we all knew and loved.

Cheri spoke as well. I don’t remember all she said, but several of her comments are engraved on my mind. Life would never be the same “normal” we’d known, she told us. “You will have to find a new normal.”

She also reassured us that our continued grief was to be expected. “You will cry buckets of tears. Right now your buckets are full to overflowing, and nothing has to happen for those tears to flow, but that will gradually subside. It is not that tears will not continue to come. But in time those buckets will no longer be full. Over time, as the level of tears goes down, you’ll find more resilience in life, but there will always be an inch of tears in the bottom of that bucket. And that’s what will give you a deep capacity for compassion when sharing with others who have faced overwhelming adversity.”

Cheri did not stay long in our community. She had to return to her work at CMI in Oregon. But she did not leave our lives. Especially mine. She’d made clear her willingness to be there day or night if I needed to call. My emotions were running high in the weeks that followed, and more than once, I took her up on that offer. Her encouragement and understanding allowed me to move through stages of emotion that at times overwhelmed me.

I count Cheri as one of the most precious gifts God gave me in my healing process. Over the years her wise counsel blossomed into deep friendship. When she came back to the Northeast for various conferences, she always scheduled time to get together for a chat or to visit the Amish families with me. I’ve visited Cheri in Oregon too. She took time to meet with our son Zach when working in New York City. She was even a part of a documentary program we did for public TV in Canada. I can still pick up the phone at any time of the day or night and be blessed by her gracious counsel.

Cheri Lovre, Trauma Counselor

The Amish hold values that have been true to their communities for generations, and they were founded in a belief that there is something more powerful—and more virtuous—than violence. That they hold these values in our midst—quietly, humbly, but ever present—has a value we can’t quite name. Whether it was ever an influence that we would have identified, it became so with the shooting at Nickel Mines.

And so it was that I was told early on, “These people are different. They won’t be asking why Charlie did this. They’ll see it as God’s will.” From the first hours of this event, the Amish had gone to Charlie’s home to tell his wife and family that Charlie was forgiven. Many times Amish asked what they could do for Marie, Charlie’s widow.

So as a community, they live out forgiveness, even now. To greater and lesser degrees, according to the individual, some struggle with forgiveness for a time. But it is their way. What Charles Roberts did that day defies understanding for all of us. We can come up with a story line, an explanation, an answer. But for one, we’ll never know what was going on in the tortured heart or soul of this man who was beloved and loving. And even though the Amish live their faith, they are the first to see that having the “English” (all of us who are not Amish) see them as having forgiven Charlie is a burden for some of them. As though somehow now they have to be sure that their children are even more forgiving. More pure. More faithful.

As I met the families on all sides of this event, I found myself relating to one thing. Of all the school shootings to which I’d responded, all the knifings, all the natural disasters, this one was different. In all the school shootings before now, there were many who ran headlong into the wall of anger that was there for any who chose to visit it. The anger of the families can give people a place to join. At Columbine, a faith-based group put fifteen huge crosses in the ground, which means they were putting up crosses representing the deaths of all twelve students, the one teacher, and the two aggressors. The parents of one student who died innocently that day pulled two crosses out of the ground, unable to allow those representing the two boys who did this to be present where their child was represented. The parent in me can entirely identify with that.

When the shooting at Nickel Mines left five little girls dead and five wounded, the Amish didn’t react in anger. That isn’t to say none of them felt anger. But those who did struggled with it quietly. They didn’t teach anger as the way for their children. None put voice to it. Early on, there were those who struggled with whether they individually in their hearts had forgiven Charlie, even though they were grateful that the Amish way is to do so, and that the community as a whole stood in forgiveness, even in the midst of their struggle. That’s how we all survive these things. To stand together. To stand with each other. And sometimes to stand for each other. And the Amish stand together in support of one another in forgiveness. But the Amish say over and over that if they struggle with this, they must simply pray harder and more diligently. Forgiveness is the way. It is their way. So if they are struggling with forgiveness, they’ll simply pray more. Pray earnestly.

I related to these Amish families that no other national tragedy had made it impossible to avoid doing a lead evening news story on forgiveness. They couldn’t get pictures of the funerals or the profound grief of the parents or the interviews with adolescents who were seduced by the cameras. They couldn’t get pictures of the blood, of the mayhem of the survivors. The network and cable newscasters were left with no choice but to speak of the power of Amish forgiveness and how it mystified most of the rest of us. This to me is a watershed moment in the American conscience and in our national crisis of faith. This to me is the reminder of how God actually meant for us to live—humbly walking every step of our lives in a way that confirms our belief in the goodness of humankind. Rising above the distinctions and differences that divide us and somehow making room for all.

Another amazing blessing in my life was Linda Shoemaker, the guidance counselor at a Strasburg area elementary school. Linda and Cheri actually met that first week at an informal brunch for a few local school counselors who already knew Cheri and her work. The chair of the Pennsylvania School Counselors Association had asked Linda to attend because she had close friends who were Amish. She’d be able to help Cheri understand their culture, needs, and ways. Linda and Cheri were seated next to each other and became good friends. None of us knew at the time that within a few months my grandchildren would be moving into the school district where Linda was counselor. What a peace I felt, knowing my grandchildren were in the care of such a fine woman gifted to meet their needs.

Then there was Kate Zook, whom Marie and I both met through the counseling center (Zook is a common Amish name, and though raised in the culture in her early years, Kate is no longer Amish). She’d been through severe trauma herself as a result of a serious motorcycle accident. She volunteered simply to pray for us and be a friend on call. Over the years, Kate has accompanied both Marie and me on speaking engagements and been there for both of us in countless ways.

I could list so many others. There are not words to express what a tremendous outlet and source of direction it has been to have special friends like these in whom to confide and share the sorrow. I encourage anyone who is going through grief and trauma to seek out at least one person willing to be your listening ear and helping hand, not just short-term, but for the years ahead that it will take to heal completely. And, if at all possible, seek out professional grief or trauma counseling as applicable to your individual situation.

Cheri’s words that day in the school library have certainly come true. The tears still come, but the bucket is much smaller these days and needed less often. Those tears that remain have truly given me a more compassionate outlook on this hurting world and the multitudes in it going through adversity every moment of every day.

As to finding a new normal, I learned soon enough what she meant. But I never could have imagined then how interwoven my new normal would be with the very Amish families against whom my son had sinned.