Tonya King Richard

A Childlike Faith Tonya King Richard

On Friday night, August 7, 1987, my three youngest children-Amanda (eleven), Kevin (nine), and Craig (eight)-went with their daddy, my cousin Coby (seventeen, we had taken him in to live with us), and Amanda's friend Samantha to see the movie He-Man: Masters of the Universe. Craig, our youngest, had just celebrated his eighth birthday on Monday on the third (he was our seventh wedding anniversary gift). Our oldest daughter Michelle (fourteen years) had asked to go "eat and ride" with a friend and would be back by ten o'clock that night. I stayed home to wait for their return. My family would never return home on Aster Dr. The strangest fact about what happened that fateful night was that Amanda knew she was going to die. She did not know when or how. She never seemed to be afraid, but in Amanda's last eight months on this earth, she began to ask me and other family members, "Am I going to die?" She would also ask this strange question about her younger brothers whenever they fell ill or if they were injured while playing.

This is not a happily-ever-after type fairy tale. No one except for God and the hosts of heaven can rejoice the death of a child. This is a true, gut-wrenching story about love, gratitude, relationships, mistakes, forgiveness through repentance, and, most of all, faith. I know with every fiber of my being my three children are with God in heaven. You see, they believed in Jesus more than they believed in anyone! After losing them, I can clearly see God had a plan for their short lives here on this earth. As a repentant, forgiving, born-again Christian, I am simply... His witness. God had a plan for my three youngest children.

This is their story, or, as some say, "their legacy of love."