Are You Unafraid?

 

On May 18, 1978, my wife, Susie, witnessed a murder in her public school classroom. An eighth-grader at the time, Susie was listening to her much-loved teacher, Rod Grayson, when her classmate and neighbor walked in and calmly fired three shots from a .22 rifle into him from just a few feet away. Mr. Grayson died moments later.

It was the first school shooting in the US in nearly forty years, making Susie and her other classmates now the oldest surviving group of school shooting witnesses in the country.

The murder devastated my wife, who over the years developed a major fear stronghold and a distrust of God. She loved God, but she didn’t trust him. In her young mind, God had proven to be unreliable. He had let this bad thing happen, why wouldn’t he let something horrific happen again?

Susie embraced fear as her guardian, believing that hyper-diligence and caution would protect her and those she loved from the bad things of the world. But fear is no guardian, but rather a tyrant. Susie was soon a slave to the tyranny of fear.

In the early 1990’s Susie began to show symptoms of PTSD, including having flashbacks from the shooting. That was actually the beginning of Susie’s healing, and in the coming years my tentative and fearful wife was freed from her stronghold and grew into a brave and courageous woman.

Today, her calling is to find fellow “fear-ers” and to help them be delivered from the tyranny that she knows all too well. This woman, who for years couldn’t even talk about the shooting, has now written an amazing book about her experiences and God’s healing.

In Unafraid: Trusting God in an Unsafe World, Susie tells the story of the shooting, her subsequent battles with fear and the miraculous freedom that God brought to her. Scattered throughout the book are beautiful stories of God’s gentle work in Susie’s life, including a pivotal moment when he spoke to her through the regrowth and new life in a Colorado forest that was devastated by a fire in 1978, the same year as the shooting.

If you would like to know more about Unafraid and Susie’s story, check out Susie’s blog at Susiedavis.org. Unafraid will be released on April 21st. If you order it today you will have your copy on the release date.

Unafraid will be a great resource for any women’s, small groups or survivors’ ministries. It will also be a great a great gift for anyone struggling with fear. And as every mom worries about her kids, it will be a perfect Mother’s Day gift.

Please write to me and let me know how God uses Unafraid in your life.

 

 

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