When disaster strikes, it’s easy to comfort ourselves with empty phrases like “It was a freak accident” or “That’s so unlikely to happen.” Much easier, certainly, than acknowledging that none of us are immune to tragedy. We soothe ourselves with statistics of survival, but inside we know the path of our lives has already been determined. Data is no weapon against God’s sovereignty.
Those unlikely, catastrophic events do happen—as they did to Davey and Amanda Blackburn. Davey, a pastor, had hardly expected to come home one morning and find his pregnant wife fighting to survive on the kitchen floor. He couldn’t have guessed that a violent crime would take Amanda’s life and tear his family apart.
Nearly nine years after Amanda took her last breath, he’s able to see that with God in control, even such brutality isn’t just random senselessness. But the pathway he took to reaching that conclusion wasn’t so smooth. In his new book, Nothing Is Wasted: A True Story of Hope, Forgiveness, and Finding Purpose in Pain, Davey documents his walk through that season of grief, sharing what he learned about trusting God amid horrific tragedy.
‘Things seem too easy’
When I first heard about Amanda’s savage murder, I was eight months pregnant. Only weeks before, I had moved back to my hometown of Indianapolis. Amanda, already the mother of a 2-year-old boy, had been pregnant herself. She lived in downtown Indianapolis, just a few miles from my sister’s house.
The murder hit me deeply as an expectant mom and fellow Christian. Amanda was the picture of an all-American girl, the last person anyone would expect to be killed in a drug-fueled robbery. The community was shaken—heartbroken and shattered for Davey, their son Weston, and Amanda’s close-knit family.
Given Amanda’s close connection to ministry and evangelism, local Christians were especially rocked. Everyone seemed to have a connection to the family, including me, when I discovered a member of my Bible study was Davey’s cousin.
The Blackburns had moved to Indianapolis after feeling God’s call to start a church there. In the book, Davey writes about launching Resonate Church and planting his family in this new Indianapolis community. The church grew, friendships formed, and Amanda’s budding venture as a furniture restorer began to thrive as well. With a second child on the way, their lives seemed charmed—almost too much so.
In the brief time Amanda spent in the hospital before her death, Davey remembered something she had said months prior: “Davey, things seem too easy right now. There’s no way this can last. I feel like we’re about to walk into a tough season.”
As she lay unconscious in the hospital bed, he was convinced God would heal her, but that belief soon passed when doctors told him Amanda was brain-dead. Suddenly, Davey faced a question he never anticipated: What happens when God doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we wish?
This question anchors the narrative of Nothing Is Wasted, where Davey candidly shares his experience in the aftermath of Amanda’s death, recounting depression, confusion, and even sinful responses (like feeling prejudice against men of color because the killers were Black).
To its credit, the book doesn’t advertise “feel-good” Christianese as a formula for overcoming suffering. Rather, it honestly portrays the stages of grief and their effects on one’s faith. “What do I do with God now that it seems His calling actually led us into this tragedy?” writes Davey. “If He were God, couldn’t He have prevented this? And if He were good why wouldn’t he have?”
Readers also get to know Amanda in her own words through some of her journal entries, where she recalled feeling peaceful about moving to Indianapolis and blessed by Hillsong United lyrics that read, “I will take up my cross and follow Lord where You lead me.” We meet a woman who was fully devoted to the Lord and grateful for his hand in nearly every aspect of her life.
The utter injustice of Amanda’s death was nearly impossible for Davey to comprehend. The world without Amanda felt unsettled, dark, and temporary, as he imagined Amanda entering heaven with the little girl he never got to meet, Everett Grace. He writes, “I could feel my heart longing for an otherworldly place—one that would last forever, one that could not be shaken or torn down, one that could not be stolen from me.”
Like many survivors, he also felt guilt—for going to the gym that morning, leaving the car unlocked, and talking on the phone in the driveway before heading back inside. Davey writes of being comforted by Amanda’s father, who assured him that God was not surprised—that he had “orchestrated things ahead of time to show us that He’s in this!”
Davey began seeing small signs of this orchestration at work. A casket was mistakenly sent to the funeral parlor made of reclaimed barn wood, which was Amanda’s favorite material to work with in her furniture restoration business. He then found that the church hosting her celebration of life service had also used reclaimed barn wood to renovate its stage and walls.
Past conversations with Amanda and her detailed journal entries revealed God’s prophetic provision for a future where Davey would be on his own, something they couldn’t have anticipated then. “I know it may not be like this forever, and you may have things ahead of us that are unbearable,” she wrote in a prayer. “When the valleys do come, please keep our family strong.”
These glimpses of God’s providential care shape the book into a guide for those facing tragedy, encouraging them to recognize the supernatural signs of his presence where they least expect it.
An architecture of hope
As Davey put his life back together, a divine architecture of hope took shape. It helped him view Amanda’s killers, at least in part, as victims of their life circumstances. It gave him the freedom to cultivate forgiveness.
Seemingly insignificant memories would resurface in Davey’s mind, illuminating clear markers of God’s preparation for moments of resentment and disorientation. “Your sin and my sin murdered Jesus,” Davey recalled a pastor telling him at seven years old. Remembering this remark, he was reminded that no matter how violent a crime, all sin is deadly in God’s eyes.
Along the way, God provided words of wisdom, encouragement, and prophecy from meticulously placed pastors, friends, and community members. When Davey began having regular nightmares, consistently jolting awake at exactly 6:37 a.m., random friends began texting him with prayers right at that moment each morning. None of them knew about the nightmares.
“You were built for this. You have been placed in this position for such a time as this.” In a serendipitous meeting one day, Davey heard these words from a local Black pastor who worked with inner-city youth like the ones who killed Amanda.
Such confirmations began to appear at every turn. All the signs and wonders could only point back to God, who was leading Davey to something far bigger than himself or Amanda. Davey recalls hearing God say, “I’m a God who restores out of the ruin,” and that he would “completely” restore this situation too.
In one of the book’s most powerful pages, a friend asks Davey if he thinks Amanda would have chosen to move to Indianapolis if she had known her fate in advance. The question floored him, but in considering it, he remembered something Amanda wrote just one day after moving. It read, “I will take up my cross and follow wherever you lead.”
Soon, a rush of other divine moments came flooding back: a night of small-group prayer, when the Holy Spirit had clearly been moving; the morning before Amanda’s death, when Davey found her face-down on the bedroom floor in the posture of a surrendering prayer. He could finally see that Amanda would have said yes to Indianapolis even if she had known what was to come.
Ministry to the grieving
Nothing Is Wasted covers nearly eight years of Davey’s life, showcasing his process of healing and the restoration of his faith, trust, and mission. Without sugarcoating the details, Davey offers a pathway to a deeper purpose within our pain—even the worst kind.
Ultimately, as the court case proceeded against Amanda’s killers, he was able to look them in the eyes and say, “I do not hold this against you.” He recognized a recurring theme amid his pain and the pain of others he met on the journey. Simply put: Nothing is wasted. Our pain and tragedies will be used for God’s purpose and our good, no matter how bad things get.
This realization resulted not only in the book but also in Davey founding the Nothing Is Wasted ministry, through which he hosts a popular podcast, along with classes and retreats for those walking through hard things.
He remarried and had another child, still cherishing the love he had with Amanda and mourning the loss of his unborn daughter. Over the years, he’s faced hurtful rumors, hateful criticism, and even murder accusations, but he walks forward in his divine calling to minister to the grieving.
In this book, readers will find resonance, hope, and a truth that holds even in the darkest of nights.
Ericka Andersen is a weekly columnist at World magazine. She is the author of Reason to Return: Why Women Need the Church and the Church Needs Women.
