INDIANAPOLIS — A former Indianapolis pastor whose pregnant wife was murdered nine years ago has written a book detailing the crime and the trial that gripped our city.
For the first time since writing that book, Davey Blackburn is sitting down to talk about the perpetrators and his journey from bitterness and anger to forgiveness.
These days, you may find Blackburn raising chickens with his kids or baking a cake with his wife of seven years, Kristi.
The Indianapolis native, who planted and pastored Resonate Church, became a household name in 2015 when his wife, Amanda, died after a violent home invasion. Three men are now behind bars for the crime. All of it is documented in Blackburn's book, "Nothing is Wasted."
"I wrote this book because I wanted to chronicle the journey God took me on as I was healing from losing Amanda," Blackburn said. "'Nothing is Wasted' is the idea that God doesn't waste our pain. God's not to blame for our pain, but he has a plan for our pain. And that plan is to take everything we've gone through and to leverage it for our good and for the good of other people."
Readers will learn how he met, fell in love and married Amanda.
"One of the things about Amanda that was so beautiful, she just had the purest heart. She had a commitment to purity," Blackburn said.
The couple became parents to a son named Weston and were expecting a second child.
The book's cover is in honor of Amanda's hobby of restoring old furniture and how she applied that same attitude toward people.
"There was nobody who was beyond the grace of God. There was nobody who had made so many mistakes that they could not experience restoration," Blackburn said.
That same faith helped him get rid of his rage, anger and bitterness that he felt toward the perpetrators.
"Instead of fighting bitterness with bitterness, it's to fight bitterness with forgiveness," Blackburn said.
Blackburn said he has forgiven each of the three perpetrators.
"That's a decision I have to make every single day," Blackburn said. "You never feel like forgiving, but when you choose to walk in forgiveness, you wake up every day and say, 'I'm no longer going to hold this on myself, I'm not going to hold them accountable personally for what they've done to me.' You walk in freedom.
"These three men are not my enemy. They're not the real enemy. The mastermind behind all of it, evil, is Satan. That's the real enemy. I absolutely believe Jesus would forgive them for what they did to Amanda. We see evidence in scripture. We see Jesus dying a criminal's death on our behalf. While he's on the cross, he looks over at two thieves who are also dying. One of them says, 'Will you remember me? Will you forgive me for what I've done?' He recognizes what he had done. He had a contrite heart. Jesus told him, 'Today, you'll be with me in Paradise. I forgive you.' I believe forgiveness is available to anybody and everybody," Blackburn said.
Months after his wife's death, Blackburn registered for the 2016 500 Festival Mini-Marathon in Indianapolis.
"I was determined to run that Mini-Marathon in honor of Amanda. Not just run it, but to PR it. I was going to do my very best to have a personal record," Blackburn said. "Halfway through, literally the furthest away from the starting line that you could be, I pull up with a cramp. Massive cramp in my calf. And I walked all the way back to the starting line."
Blackburn remembers having a conversation with God during that time.
"The whole time, I'm wrestling with God. I began thinking that's the journey I feel like for many of us. We come to a place where we get to the end of ourselves. We have so many good intentions. We're like, 'We're gonna do it,' but we get to our own insufficiency. And we realize we need something other than us to carry us through this. There are times when you can become so weak and so hurt that you cannot move on. Those are the moments and spaces when you begin to wrestle with God. He is very open to difficult questions," Blackburn said. "As you begin to ask those difficult questions, he begins to do something within you where his strength is made perfect in your weakness.
"As I'm wrestling with God in that Mini-Marathon, those were paradigm-shifting moments for me. It didn't just change the way that I looked at my own journey, it changed the way that I help people look at their journeys now," Blackburn said.
Two years after losing Amanda, Blackburn found love again. He met a single mom named Kristi.
"Something about that woke my heart. I can't explain it, other than the fact that she's absolutely beautiful, and she's very intriguing, very smart and intelligent. Something about her woke my heart up. When we started seeing how God was in our stories to weave each one of our stories to bring us together, we knew God had something special in store for this relationship," Blackburn said.
The couple got married in 2017. Their blended family includes three children.
"It's been a wonderful, beautiful, difficult, abnormal life since we got married, in all the most beautiful ways," Blackburn said.
Blackburn said he knew God was bringing them together when he learned Kristi's stepfather was a jail chaplain.
"He had been assigned to the three men that killed Amanda. He had conversations with them," Blackburn said. "How kind is it of God that of 7 billion people in this world, he would write something so personal to me? It's not just to me, it's to all of us. He's that personal of a God. He wants to write intimate details in our story to restore us through our story."
The title of Blackburn's book is now his purpose in life.
"As they read it, I don't want them to go, 'Wow, Davey's an incredible guy. Look how he mustered his way through this whole thing,'" Blackburn said. "I want them to say, 'Wow, God is an incredible God. If God can get Davey through this, he can get me through whatever I'm going through.'"
Blackburn's podcast is part of his purpose.
"We have a ministry called 'Nothing is Wasted,'" Blackburn said. "What we do is help people in trauma, tragedy, major life transition. We help them find purpose in their pain. We began putting out resources for people as they were walking out whatever tragedy or trauma they were going through. It wasn't just loss. It was all kinds of different things. It was divorce. It was sexual betrayal. It was addiction. It was childhood trauma. Abuse. Lots of different pain points. Now what we do is we have a course called Pain to Purpose. We launch it in churches. We launch it in college campuses. We're in correctional facilities. It's a beautiful thing to see how God is using all of what we've walked through and what we've learned to help other people through their own journeys."
As Blackburn enjoys this season of life with his young family, his faith in God remains strong.
"The God that I believed in before all of this, the God that carried me through other things in my life, is the same God. He's been faithful through all of this," Blackburn said. "I think one of the things this has done for me is to help see who God really is, that he is a good father, that he wants good things for his kids. That he is going to step in the middle of whatever we're going through and walk us through the valley of the shadow of death. These are situations where it can shake your faith or it can shape your faith. I feel like through all of this, my faith has been shaped in a way that's been stronger, and now I can share with other people."