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Luis Palau held his evangelical festival, Beachfest Santa Cruz, at Main Beach on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 22 and 23,
2001. Lynn and I and our two teenage girls, Mandie and Carrie, attended the Saturday event, along with about 20,000
other people. Lynn had gone earlier that day to the prayer meeting, and the girls and I caught up with her in the afternoon.
We left Beachfest that evening and headed for our car parked in the neighborhood across from the trestle where we usually
park to go to the Boardwalk. We drove up Cayuga St. toward Broadway, heading home to the Live Oak area. A woman
who was drunk and had coke and meth in her system had just picked up her two kids from a babysitter, and was driving
her Suburban on Windsor St. toward Cayuga at almost 50 miles per hour, ran the stop sign, and crashed into us on the left
side of our mini van. The impact sent us into a power pole and then onto a neighbor’s front yard.
Neither Lynn nor I have any memories of the accident, and very few memories of that day. Lynn remembers leaving the
prayer session before the Saturday festivities began, and hearing God’s voice in her heart that it was not the worst thing in
the world for a Christian to die. She wasn’t sure why God spoke that to her, but she certainly didn’t think it was meant for
herself.
We woke up in Dominican Hospital, Lynn on Sunday morning and I on Monday morning. Lynn had three fractured ribs
and a broken pelvis in two places that prevented her from putting any weight on one leg for about six weeks. I had no
fractures but suffered torn cartilage in my chest, a sprained coccyx (tail bone area), a neck injury, and embedded safety glass
in my face and elbow that had to be removed later. Both of us had concussions. Lynn remembers that Luis Palau had
visited Sunday morning before going back to Beachfest for the final day; I was still unconscious in the ICU.
My pastor has said that he told me right away when I seemed coherent – I don’t remember. The first time I remember
grasping it was when someone visiting me in my hospital room had said that they were sorry for my loss. I had asked,
“What loss?” They told me I had lost my girls. I remember sharing that news with others that came to visit as if it were a
baseball score; it’s amazing what shock and drugs can do to your emotions.
My Mom and Dad in Oregon were called the night of the accident, and drove down right away. They had a key to our
house and let themselves in, cleaned up a bit, and came to the hospital. I remember how comforting it was to see them
when my bed was wheeled into the room Lynn was already in. My Dad told me the first thing he did when he saw me was
reach for my legs to see if they were still there. I remember also how good it felt to finally take a shower, which was located
across the hall from our recovery room. As I walked back in my robe toward our room, I saw a lady writing on the butcher
paper the staff had taped to our door – apparently we were attracting too many visitors, so they were being asked to write
notes on the butcher paper instead. The lady turned around and saw me reading what she was writing. I gave her a big hug
and invited her in to see Lynn. Robyn now has her own story to tell of what God has done through this accident.
I was discharged to go home on Thursday but Lynn was sent to the Recovery Care Unit, located in the former Santa Cruz
Community Hospital building where both Mandie and Carrie were born. She spent about a week and a half there letting
her fractures begin to heal.
Our pastor Barney performed an interment service for the girls at Holy Cross Cemetery on Friday, October 12, and a
memorial service the following day at Twin Lakes Church in Aptos. At the interment, Barney could not contain his
emotions as he spoke what was on his heart. The realization that the pain of losing the girls was not our pain alone, but
was shared by everyone who knew and loved them, stunned me. It seemed that everyone we knew came to the memorial
service, included the guys I had worked with at a hospital in Salinas. I remember being a little too exuberant when I saw
the guys in the hallway before the service began, and later wondered what they thought of me and my apparent lack of
grief. All I can say is, it’s amazing what shock and drugs can do to your emotions.
My Mom and Dad stayed with us for a couple of weeks. I would hear Lynn getting up each morning, and peek down the
hall to see her and my Mom hugging and crying. I felt guilty because I didn’t have the same emotional loss Lynn had. I
can now attribute that to a few things: the pain of my injuries, my narcotic pain meds, and the fact that I was no longer
getting up at 5:00 in the morning to go to work all day, but staying home with the one I love. Eventually the pain
diminished, I trimmed down on the meds, and the novelty of being home all day wore off. It took about a year; then all
hell broke loose inside of me. While Lynn was processing and healing, I was heading off in the opposite direction.
We had been interviewed twice by the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper. In one article I was quoted saying, “I feel God’s
Holy Spirit is resting on me and allowing me to physically heal before I grieve." My time was coming soon.
I guess what triggered my anger and resentment toward God in those days were the Scriptures I kept running into, such as
Ephesians 6:2,3 (HCSB): “Honor your father and mother--which is the first commandment with a promise--that it may go
well with you and that you may have a long life in the land.” Nobody had honored their parents more than Mandie and
Carrie had, and yet that promise was not for them – why not? And Psalms 1:6 (HCSB): “For the LORD watches over the
way of the righteous…” Psalms 25:13 (HCSB): “and his descendants will inherit the land.” Proverbs 12:21 (HCSB): “No
disaster overcomes the righteous…” Those didn’t apply to us either, so why bother asking God for protection? In fact, why
bother asking God for anything? If He couldn’t or wouldn’t protect my precious girls, how could I trust Him with anything
else in my life? Someone had told me it was OK to be angry at God – He’s big enough to handle it. What they didn’t say
was that I wasn’t big enough to handle it! My depression deepened as I grieved the loss of my girls and my relationship
with God.
Lisa, the woman that hit us, was sentenced to prison the following March for 7 years 8 months. But in my mind, she was a
minor player; God was the perpetrator. Consider this example: The four of us are taking a walk, and along a particular
section of sidewalk a brick or concrete wall begins to rise. One of my daughters steps onto the wall and walks along it as it
rises higher and higher, eventually reaching several feet above the sidewalk. A dog suddenly barks right next to her, and she
loses her balance and falls toward the sidewalk. I’m standing right there, and could easily catch her if I choose to. I don’t. I
can perfectly understand my wife’s rage at me, not the dog, for letting our daughter fall to the concrete and getting injured,
and would be hard pressed to give her a reason for my inaction. These were my thoughts toward God. Why didn’t He act
to protect us? I was His child and had gone to church all my life. I was a good person and had even served in leadership. I
was entitled to His protection, wasn’t I?
I had conjured up an image, probably from watching too many war movies, of God as an Army general (like Patton),
standing in the map room, drawing up strategies. He points to a particular location on a map and says to one of his
colonels, “If we move this platoon into this area and draw the enemy in, then we can move this brigade around the enemy
and defeat them there.” The colonel replies, “Yes that would work, but you realize that these troops you’re moving in will
suffer great loss.” God says, “Yes, don’t worry, I’ll take care of that. But I am unwilling to let this opportunity for victory
pass.” This fantasizing has led me to believe that perhaps God, with the Big Picture in mind, isn’t as concerned about our
individual suffering and pain level (as we might think) as He is about saving people.
I came to realize that I have a choice of what to believe about God, whether to believe my own thoughts and feelings or to
believe the revelation God Himself gave us, that is, the Bible.
My own thoughts and feelings want me to believe that perhaps:
God did not have the power to stop the accident,
or God did not know it was going to happen,
or God was tied up with other business and could not attend to us at that time,
or God did not have the authority to stop the accident,
or He simply didn’t care.
Or I can choose to believe what He said about Himself in the Bible:
He is all-powerful – He could have stopped it;
He is all-knowing – He certainly knew it was going to happen;
He is everywhere at all times – He was there then;
He is sovereign – He had the authority to stop it;
He is Love – therefore this action, or non-action, on His part was an expression of His love.
That last part about God’s love is the hardest for me to grasp. How could having my girls taken at such a young age be an
act of love toward me? I don’t know; it’s a complete mystery to me. But I must choose either to accept it, or reject
everything the Bible tells me about God – there is no picking and choosing what to believe; it’s all or nothing. Either the
Bible, that is, God’s own revelation about Himself, is correct and reliable, or it isn’t.
We got a letter in August 2008 from a parole officer that Lisa would be released from prison on September 8 after serving
85% of her sentence, as mandated by the judge. I called the parole officer and asked if he could set up a meeting between
Lisa and us so we could finally meet her. I explained that we had never gone to court because she had pleaded guilty, and
therefore we had never actually met her. The parole officer said it was an unusual request, and that meeting with us was
against Lisa’s conditions of parole. Since he didn’t have the authority to grant it, he asked me to write a letter stating our
case that he could present to his superiors. I did, and heard back that our request had been approved to meet at the Parole
Office in Santa Cruz. So we set a date – a date, as it turned out, just a few days shy of the 7th anniversary of the accident.
Lynn and I took along the director of a recovery house in town who had come out of a drug-and-alcohol background and
had accepted Jesus. We felt she would be a good person to help us interact, as she had been corresponding with Lisa in
prison over the past year. We met the director beforehand to show her the girls’ gravesites at Holy Cross Cemetery, then on
to the parole office. I’m sure each of us had something we wanted to say or ask of Lisa, but we really didn’t discuss it.
Personally, I just wanted to get this meeting over with, and get that last door closed. We knew from the moment she was
sentenced to prison 6½ years earlier that the day would eventually come when we’d meet her, and we wanted that first
meeting to be in a controlled environment like this, not in the check-out line at some grocery store.
When the three of us, following behind the parole officer, walked into the meeting room and laid our eyes on Lisa for the
first time, it seemed natural to each of us to greet her with a hug; no exception for me. But when I hugged her, I started
crying and couldn’t stop and couldn’t let go. The thought crossed my mind that this may have seemed awkward or
unseemly, but in my heart I felt a sense of relief. After 7 years, I was finally meeting the woman who had killed my
daughters. But I felt no anger, no hatred – just relief. So I cried.
We eventually sat down around a large table. Neither Lynn nor I can remember much about the meeting nor who spoke
first, but it was evident that the Holy Spirit was there. We do remember that Lisa talked of her new relationship with Jesus
and her 12-step recovery process, and that step 9, Making Amends, would be for her a living amends. Lynn asked her to
clarify what she meant by that. Lisa wanted to share her experience with others, and convince them to not do what she had
done that took the lives of Mandie and Carrie. She would invest her life, as it were, to make that kind of living amends in
the girls’ names. I thanked her for pleading guilty and keeping us out of the court proceedings. She kept saying, “I was
guilty.” Then, to wrap up the meeting, the parole officer said that he had never seen anything like this, and it was
happening only because of our faith. Then he said that we serve a God of reconciliation, including himself in that
statement. The three of us walked out of that building rejoicing that the final door had been closed, that the meeting we had
dreaded was certainly covered by God’s grace, and that even Lisa and her parole officer had professed faith in Him. Lynn
and Lisa have since been invited to speak together, and have been interviewed by the pastor of a large church here in Santa
Cruz County. God continues His marvelous work in people’s lives on the issue of forgiveness.
At the time of this writing, it has been 9½ years since the accident. My relationship with God has been healing, and may
even be deeper and more genuine than before; Lynn and I are, separately and together, involved in ministries that, in our
“former life”, would have been unimaginable. Someone early on had told us that God does not waste His children’s pain.
God has certainly used us to save and touch many people’s lives. It may happen some day in Heaven – for all of us – that
lines will form with people telling you and us that they are there because of our testimonies. Sometimes it’s hard for me to
rejoice at that prospect compared to having our girls with us now, but the fact is that in Heaven we’ll feel no sorrow or
grief, no suffering or pain of loss. While I have considered that I may never again feel a true sense of joy or happiness in
this life, I know that when God is done with me here, I will spend eternity with Him and with our girls in Heaven. And
then I’ll rejoice!
One last thought:
Recently I visited a friend in the hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident. The day before, he had had a trans-
metatarsal amputation of his left foot. As he talked about it he seemed a bit cavalier, and I realized that he was still under
heavy medication. I can certainly relate to that. Because he remembers our girls and the accident well, I wanted to tell him:
When you go home and the medication wears off, and you realize the full impact of your loss, don’t do what I did. Don’t shake your fist at
God and demand to know why He didn’t protect you. Those were the darkest days of my life. Know that God loves you very much, and
cares about your pain and loss. Know also that while He may not restore what you’ve lost, as you allow Him He will heal you and use you
to bring others to Him.
I do believe that God does not waste our pain. And I know that He sees the Bigger Picture. Pain and suffering are the way
of life on earth, no exceptions. But if our aim is to bring others to Jesus, then how we respond to suffering is so important to
those around us who don’t yet know Jesus. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus said. But if, like my garage flashlight,
our light is dim or flickers or keeps turning off by itself, how will they “see your good works and give glory to your Father
in heaven”? (Matthew 5:14-16)
1 Peter 2:21 says, “For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you
should follow in His steps.”
Amen.
Dan Wagner
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