As Blackburn moved from despair to forgiveness, he also grew closer to God. “What’s so beautiful about how God works is he works like a great judo artist,” he said. “He takes the opponent’s momentum and turns it around on the opponent.”
If the pastor were to meet Amanda’s killers someday, he’d tell them he hopes they experience a “heart change” too. “I would implore them that they would turn the page in their story, because I don’t want their life to be wasted either,” said Blackburn.
A Legacy of Creating ‘Something Beautiful’
Blackburn remarried in 2017, and he and wife Kristi share three children. Blackburn tries to have age-appropriate conversations with Weston, now 10, about what happened to his mother. In an interesting twist, Kristi’s stepdad is a prison chaplain who had visited Amanda’s killers behind bars and shared the gospel with them.
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Davey and Kristi Blackburn founded Nothing Is Wasted Ministries, have a podcast, and work as guidance counselors. Their ministry’s name honors Amanda’s skill at bringing value to what’s been discarded. For example, she transformed cast-off furniture from garbage into “something beautiful,” Blackburn said.
The pastor now strives to honor his “selfless” and “faithful” first wife through his own life. “The pain that we’ve gone through has been so deep that we don’t want any of it to be wasted,” he said. “Now I have to do my part to make sure that I don’t waste my pain.”
