The final post in a series I wrote after meeting Hannah Overton’s church and family. If you have not already done so, please consider writing a letter to the governor of Texas asking for clemency for Hannah. Details can be found on this Facebook page.   Part 1: Staring at Walls Part 2: Quorum Part 3: Chains Part 4: Locusts Part 5: Pain and Loss Part 6: The Bride Emma wouldn’t let me hold her, at first. She let me stare at her. She smiled for this picture. She even tolerated the touch of my fingers running through her irresistible curls. But when I reached to take her from Noreen…

Part six of a seven-part series on my visit to Calvary Chapel of the Coastlands, Hannah Overton’s home church.     Part 1:Staring at Walls Part 2: Quorum Part 3: Chains Part 4: Locusts Part 5: Loss The body of Christ is a beautiful thing. I saw glimpses of that beauty in Texas — testimonies that stood in sharp contrast to the dark injustice of Hannah’s ordeal. From the beginning, Pastor Rod and Noreen Carver, along with several other couples, did the dance of court-ordered guardianship for the Overton children. Larry and Hannah — then out on bail awaiting trial — were not allowed to be alone with their own…

Part five of a seven-part series on my visit to Calvary Chapel of the Coastlands, Hannah Overton’s home church. Part 1: Staring at Walls Part 2: Quorum Part 3: Chains Part 4: Locusts A little knowledge can paralyze you. In one of our early conversations about the retreat, Noreen had shared the story of one of the women in their fellowship — a woman named Linda whose daughter had been murdered five years earlier. I could relate to that situation because we’d gone through that ourselves, and at nearly the same time. Then, just a few days before I left for Texas, Noreen told me that Hannah’s mother, Lane, would…

Part four of a seven-part series on my visit to Calvary Chapel of the Coastlands, Hannah Overton’s home church. When I first wrote this, back when I went to Corpus Christi and met her family, she’d already missed so many moments with them. Three more years have passed since then. Please keep praying.   Part 1: Staring at Walls Part 2: Quorum Part 3: Chains After the first session, I came back to my room and found this picture waiting for me in my inbox. My cousin, Tracy Willms, had sent it to me — a memento from my visit last September. That reunion was 26 years in the making.…

Part 3 of a series on Hannah Overton and the people in her life. Part 1: Staring at Walls Part 2: Quorum The moment Noreen and I settled on the retreat theme, months earlier, my internal debate began. I remember ending that phone call thinking, How do you speak for four hours on the subject of joy to a roomful of grieving women? They need joy, the optimist in me said. But you can’t push them there, the pessimist argued. Would my illustrations be insensitive? Would my admonitions be too bossy? Would it all sound implausible — impossible, even? Every time I sat down to work on my teachings, those…

Part 2 of a 7-part series on Hannah Overton. Please pray, and please consider joining this Facebook page to find out how to write the governor of Texas and ask for clemency.     Hannah’s Story Part 1: Staring at Walls The plan had been to grab a latte after dinner before heading to the resort. I have to point out here that Corpus Christi, population 300,000, has two, count ’em, two Starbucks … whereas my little town of 30,000, situated as it is in the shadow of Seattle (otherwise known as the birthplace of Starbucks), has nine. For a time, we had ten, but that was back when someone…