A Childlike Faith: For All I Trust Him

By Tonya King Richard

On Friday night, August 7, 1987, my three youngest children-Amanda (eleven), Kevin (nine), and Craig (eight)-went with their daddy, my cousin Coby (seventeen, we had taken him in to live with us), and Amanda's friend Samantha to see the movie He-Man: Masters of the Universe. Craig, our youngest, had just celebrated his eighth birthday on Monday on the third (he was our seventh wedding anniversary gift). Our oldest daughter Michelle (fourteen years) had asked to go "eat and ride" with a friend and would be back by ten o'clock that night. I stayed home to wait for their return. My family would never return home on Aster Dr. The strangest fact about what happened that fateful night was that Amanda knew she was going to die. She did not know when or how. She never seemed to be afraid, but in Amanda's last eight months on this earth, she began to ask me and other family members, "Am I going to die?" She would also ask this strange question about her younger brothers whenever they fell ill or if they were injured while playing. This is not a happily-ever-after type fairy tale. No one except for God and the hosts of heaven can rejoice the death of a child. This is a true, gut-wrenching story about love, gratitude, relationships, mistakes, forgiveness through repentance, and, most of all, faith. I know with every fiber of my being my three children are with God in heaven. You see, they believed in Jesus more than they believed in anyone! After losing them, I can clearly see God had a plan for their short lives here on this earth. As a repentant, forgiving, born-again Christian, I am simply…His witness. God had a plan for my three youngest children. This is their story, or, as some say, "their legacy of love."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098068981

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A Childlike Faith

For All I Trust Him

Tonya King Richard

Copyright © 2020 by Tonya King Richard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

God Is Always in Control

My Greatest Joys

It Takes a Village

My Sorrows

Life after Death

Empty Souls and Saving Grace

My Joys Too

Faith Not the End

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, to our Heavenly Father, I thank you with every fiber of my being, for sending us your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. His unconditional love and forgiveness for anyone who believes in his precious blood sacrifice and resurrection from the grave is your greatest gift to all of us. God, I love you and believe in you and Jesus as did my sweet children. You know in my heart how very thankful and blessed I am to be the mother of Michelle, Amanda, Kevin, and Craig. Thank you, God, for my babies. Their love still fills my entire being. Thank you for saving me from self-loathing and pity. If not for your intervention (I know you spoke to me that morning), I would not be twenty-four years sober today. Thank you for not only saving my life but the lives of everyone I did not hurt during those eight long years of drinking and drug abuse. Thank you, Bucky, for saving me with your love and emotional support. I put you through so much during the first two years of our marriage with my drinking and self-abuse, yet you stood by my side and helped me realize I was still here for a reason. To my mother-in-law, Emily Richard, it was you that encouraged me to write the stories about my children’s lives. You were a much-loved librarian/teacher at the Bellingrath school, in Baton Rouge. Thank you for your love and your support.

Thank you, Mike, for being a wonderful, loving father to our children. To Michelle, my very first gift from God, I have loved you the longest. I have many loving precious memories of you. You were a wonderful, supportive big sister to Mandy, Kevin, and Craig. As I write this, I am reminded of something your Pawpaw King told me when we were leaving the gravesites of your sister and brothers. I did not want to leave them there, alone. He told me, "Tonya, your children are not here. I know you may not understand this, but God has a plan for you. Stop running. Look around and see everyone who is also suffering your children’s loss. Michelle needs her mother."

With all of my heart and the fondest memories, thank you to our families and friends for your constant love and support. Thank you, Brookhollow Baptist Church, for your bus ministry Dr. Clyde Box, the pastor, for your blessings and eulogy; and Donna Vaughn and her sweet daughters. God sent that big yellow bus all the way to our Oak Cliff neighborhood from Desoto.

Dr. Box founded Brookhollow Baptist in January of 1967. It was his wonderful bus ministry, the children’s church, and Dr. Box’s ability to speak as though He was talking only to you that made us feel at home in that huge church. Eventually, my husband and the father of our four children would accept Christ as his personal Savior with our children watching. We found our church home at Brookhollow.

I wish to add that our beloved pastor, Dr. Clyde H. Box, is now in heaven with his sweet wife Betty. He wrote many cherished sermons, books, and poetry about our Master, Jesus Christ. My favorite sermon was The Folded Napkin. It is a wonderful explanation of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I gladly give you the link to Dr. Box’s recording of this moving sermon. I pray it blesses your lives as it has many, many others.

The Folded Napkin (https://youtu.be/_a-kwtE9kK4)

To Andrew Rutherford of Christian Faith Publishing, your encouragement and faith in me and the writing of this book is a blessing I will never forget. Thank you.

Finally, to everyone who honored Amanda, Kevin, and Craig with their wonderful memories and service to them during their memorials, my deepest gratitude. Thank you, Principal James Ross and Coach Pat Lopez, from our beloved Lida Hooe Elementary School, for the loving eulogies about Mandy, Kevin, and Craig. To Audrey Salazar, your beautiful poem entitled The Children on the Block Are Quiet Today truly made us all understand just how much you loved them and how they loved you and everyone they knew. To our families and friends, who helped carry my children to their final resting place, words cannot express the immense gratitude we all felt. To all of the children that grew up with Mandy, Kevin, and Craig, know that they smiled from heaven at the songs you sang and from all of the precious gifts of love you left with them. All of us who loved them thank God for every single one of you. It is all too rare these days to have the love, acceptance, and support we experienced as a family with all of you who graciously shared your lives with ours. Hundreds of hearts, a lifetime of loving memories.

Until that glorious day when Jesus Christ returns, my prayers are that God blesses your lives as much as He continues to bless mine. Amen.

Introduction

In the Beginning

As a child, God blessed my life with a strong, God-loving network of many families. Even though our parents divorced, we never worried about being cared for, much less loved. In fact, we were blessed with loving stepparents, whose families in turn accepted us as though we were born into their lives. Throughout our young lives, we were told that God wants us to trust in Him just like a child trusts their loving parent. I do not ever remember worrying about being cared for or truly loved. In turn, our four children never worried about eating or where they would lay their heads to sleep. I can honestly say that they never questioned our ability to provide their every need. Even though we were not wealthy by monetary means, they grew up in a life rich with love. God gives His children of faith a village of love, support, and blessed assurance that He is our true Creator. He kept this promise by allowing His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to sacrifice his own life as payment for our sins. God wants us to know that He will always give us everything we need if we trust in Him completely, with a childlike faith.

God did not just put us here on earth. He has a perfect plan for every one of us, His children. This is my story, my testament of faith. My name is Tonya. I am the mother of four beautiful, loving children: Michelle, Amanda, Kevin, and Craig.

When I was a child, I remember fondly going to church on Sundays. In fact, Sunday was my favorite day of the week. My little brother Donny and I would get to spend the weekends with our grandparents, and thank God they went to church. At Lolo and Bepaw’s house, we had bacon with biscuits and white gravy for breakfast before church. My mother’s parents were Mormon, so we were taught the Mormon religion. They attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Dallas, Texas. Honestly, all we remember is singing, hearing stories from the Bible about God and Jesus, and taking Sacrament. The only thing I did not like was when we had to fast on one Sunday a month. We just did not understand the importance and the significance of sacrifice. Rest assured, I now know how precious the symbolism of partaking the body and blood of Jesus truly is. God’s love is just like that—constant, reliable. A child’s faith in God is stronger than any other form of trust they experience in their young lives. Children instinctively rely on God to answer their prayers. For example, they see their parents praying to God and realize we also need God’s reassurance when we are afraid. My youngest daughter, Amanda, would hear we were under a tornado warning, and she would begin asking God for His protection. If one of her siblings or a loved one became ill, she would drop to her knees in prayer. When she prayed, she knew in her heart God heard her, and her faith gave her confidence. As my young sons grew in God’s word, they too showed their love and belief in Jesus Christ with their random acts of kindness and generosity toward others they loved and those they deemed less fortunate. In our childlike minds, His love fills not only our hearts but our entire spirits.

My daddy’s parents were Baptists. When we spent the weekend with them, we would get up to biscuits and syrup. My Mimi always began Sunday dinner before we went to church, so that when we came home the house was filled with delicious smells of a home-cooked dinner. At Calvary Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Texas, I remember standing in my fold down chair and singing every hymn I knew. My pawpaw would hold the chair so it wouldn’t slip out from under me, and my Mimi said I sang so loud the other church members would laugh and sing with me. I sang Love Flifted Me. No, the spelling is not wrong. It is written exactly like I sang this wonderful hymn. I have heard the stories of how I and my little brother Donny marched in place when we sang Onward Christian Soldiers. Children bring true joy to the spirit of a hymn once they learn their favorite song.

What I remember most about my childhood was family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We celebrated each other’s lives together. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births, and graduations were all a huge family event. What breaks my heart today is I believe that the generation we grew up in is a dying legacy of the true American family as we remember it.

The best meaning of FAITH is simply this: For All I Trust Him.

We are all given God’s blessings. Of all the many blessings He has bestowed on my family and friends, God blessed my life and my first husband’s life with four beautiful, loving, good children. We in turn dedicated their young souls to God and Jesus. Children are innocent. Unless they can truthfully understand the consequences of their actions, all infants, all children go straight to heaven. This rule applies to the age of accountability. Only God can see inside our hearts. He cannot be lied to. Oh, you may think you can lie to Him. God knows your heart, every lie, every excuse, and every intention. There are poor souls who actually lie to themselves as well, but that is another chapter.

I know we are not supposed to question God about His will. I know He wanted us to have the ability to choose right from wrong. He gave us a free will. Why? Well, when I die and meet my Heavenly Father, He will already know the most important question I have for Him. I would ask, What was so wrong with making us worship You, appreciate You, and love You above all others? God is our Creator. He loves us enough to put us above his first creations, His angels. He made everything so perfect for us.

When Satan tried to divide heaven and claim he could be God, why didn’t God just destroy him? Satan created all perversions of sin, like vanity, jealousy, hatred, greed, and lust. He is the lie. The scientists (like Charles Darwin) would like to have us believe we evolved from apes or a hairy, ugly caveman. This is the biggest lie of all. Satan is the serpent we all want to destroy when one slithers onto our path. God created man in His image. What is truly amazing about this fact is God is so omnipotent that just the light from His spirit is all-encompassing. The New Testament tells us through scriptures that the mere essence of Jesus’s loving spirit was so beautiful to behold that He commanded the attention of young children, men, and women to follow Him. Maybe scientists such as Charles Darwin had ancestors who actually looked like creatures or apes. After all, Satan had fornicated with God’s creation. When Satan was one of God’s angels, God cast him out of heaven because he (Satan) wanted to be God. From the time Satan and his demons were driven out of heaven, Satan has wanted to corrupt us and God’s will for us. When Satan and other angels corrupted God’s people by fornicating with them, God felt He had to destroy mankind. God was mad at his children. We all know the story of Lot. Angels had fornicated with God’s people in Sodom and Gomorrah. God sent two angels to rescue Lot who was a righteous man and sick of all the corruption and evil. He prayed to God to protect his family. God, knowing His children as He does, answered Lot’s prayers and sent two of His angels to rescue Lot and his family before He destroyed the sinful city with fire. When the wicked, sinful inhabitants found out that God’s angels were in their midst, they demanded Lot turn them over so that they could know (fornicate) them. The angels managed to get Lot and his family out of the sinful city, and God said to Lot, his wife, and their family, Run and do not look back lest ye be turned to salt. Lot’s wife looked back when she heard the screams and cries of the wicked being destroyed, and she was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.

When we ask Christ for forgiveness, He forgives our sins, and once we receive that wonderful reprieve, we know we should never look back on our old lives or give into false beliefs that we will never be able to forgive ourselves. When Satan causes us to remember the sins we have committed in our lives, he is trying to incite us to sin yet again. He knows we have been forgiven and he has lost his power to claim our very souls.

Noah was the only descendant of Adam whose bloodline was still pure. God told Noah to build the ark and take two (one male, one female) of every animal God created, along with Noah’s wife and family. God was forced to destroy His world because Satan and his demons had corrupted God’s people by fornicating with them. When the earth was flooded, God made a sign that he would never destroy the earth again by floods. That wonderful, beautiful sign was a rainbow. Alas, Satan was not destroyed, and he made false prophets to confuse and lie to us. Satan wanted God to break His word with us.

Until Jesus. God chose a chaste woman of faith by the name of Mary to be the mother of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. As Jesus grew, He realized we would never be perfect. Jesus is the only way we could ever be together, forever in our Father God’s house. Jesus made us worthy of our Heavenly Father’s love with a drop of His precious blood. Jesus was part human, and as He lived with us and saw our need for proof of God’s love, He showed us miracle after miracle, and yet we still wanted more proof. When Jesus realized that He would have to die, He asked God to forgive us all for our sins and weak faith. Jesus beat Satan and sin with His death and then a miracle no one could question, His resurrection from death. We as mere humans never have to die. Yes, we have to shed this mortal, age-old flesh. Those of us who know You, Father God, and Your Only Begotten Son Jesus, must tell everyone about His precious sacrifice and give our brothers and sisters His invitation. All we have to do is believe in Him, ask His forgiveness, and repent and we too shall not die; we will be resurrected and live forever praising God and Jesus in heaven.

I just had to share God’s most important promise.

What or who on this Earth is keeping you from accepting His love? If you are saved, praise God! Share your joy! Tell your story. Every one of us has a story. That is why God created His book, the Holy Bible. Through God’s own people, miracle by amazing miracle, God spoke His word to us. God’s story of the divine creation of the universe and the earth, His creation of Adam and Eve, and His promises to the devoted and the promises yet to be fulfilled are in the only true, worldwide accepted word of God. God’s word is more than two thousand years old. His story has never changed, but God’s church has. The New Testament tells God’s people