After Pastor's Wife, Baby Horrifically Murdered, He Chooses Faith, Forgiveness

Davey Blackburn faced an absolute nightmare Nov. 10, 2015, when he arrived home from a morning workout to find his wife, Amanda, experiencing what he thought was a health crisis. But he soon found out she had been shot by an intruder who barged into their Indianapolis home. It's a harrowing story told in Blackburn's new book, "Nothing Is Wasted: A True Story of Hope, Forgiveness, and Finding Purpose in Pain." "I walked in and my wife of seven years and my 15-month-old were in the house at the time," he said. "My wife was pregnant with her with our second ... and, when I walked in, I discovered my wife was lying on our living room floor, and she was surrounded by blood." At first, he thought she might have gotten dizzy and fallen, but once she was transported to the hospital, he learned Amanda, who was 13 weeks pregnant, had three bullet wounds. Tragically, the prognosis wasn't good. "They were going to try to see if they could operate, but it ... didn't look good," Blackburn said. "And what they had surmised was that there were three men ... they broke into the home three doors down from us, saw me leave for the gym that morning, and decided to break into our home, and Amanda ... got caught up in that." Blackburn and Amanda were pastors and church planters at the time. The couple had left their dream job a few years earlier in South Carolina to follow God's call to plant a church in Indianapolis. The shocking murder unfolded just as the church was "taking some roots and getting some momentum," he said. The preacher called the entire ordeal — which quickly became a local and national news story — an "unimaginable, traumatic experience." Amanda was pronounced dead on Nov. 11, four years to the day that the couple packed up a moving van to leave for Indianapolis. "My world had just been turned upside down," Blackburn said. "I was reeling over the grief and the loss of my best friend, my soulmate, my ministry partner. I was trying to figure out how to be a single dad to my son, Weston, who had been untouched and unharmed in his crib the entire time." On top of losing Amanda and their unborn baby, Blackburn also had to contend with media scrutiny considering the story's wide reach — speculation that only added to the pain. Hear Blackburn share how he moved past the horror.