Tragedy turns into an outreach for support. A pastor with ties to the upstate is back in our area sharing his painful story after his pregnant wife was murdered in their Indianapolis home months ago.

Amanda Blackburn was fatally shot back in November. She and her unborn child died two days later.

“I am so grateful for the strength Jesus provides and the people he surrounds us with,” Davey Blackburn said. “Her life was about helping people, and so she would have wanted her death to help people and to heal people.”

Amanda Blackburn thrived when she was ministering at church according to her husband Davey.  He says she was also a devoted pastor’s wife friend and loved being a new mom.

“Some of my favorite moments was watching her step into motherhood,” Davey added. “I still think about it every time I look at my little boy and I look at pictures of him cuddling up with her.”

Their family’s world was shattered that early November morning last year.

“There is just that gut wrenching feeling. There is just this friendship that I cherish and really, really miss,” he said about his wife and best friend.

Davey says without god and support of other believers, he doesn’t know how he would deal with her murder. “I made the decision to daily forgive. I’ll have to wake up tomorrow and do it again. I’ll have to wake up the next day and do it again. Three years or ten years down the road, I will have to continue to make that decision. But, what it boiled down to was I didn’t want bitterness and unforgiveness to destroy me.”

Now, he says he’s at a point where he can do what Amanda would want him to do to share how faith is helping him through. He began at Newspring Church in Anderson Sunday.

Davey and Amanda moved to Indiana to start their own church. They were a part of new spring church in the upstate before then.

He says he came back to the Upstate because that is where they got their start and he wants to use their story to help people. “What I have learned through a lot of this about hearing people’s stories of pain is I am not alone, that really helps me out.”

He wants to tell as many people as he can that they’re not alone in their suffering either.

“If the roles were reversed, if it had been me and she was the one who survived me, she would have done the exact same thing,” he added.

The 3 men charged with killing Amanda are scheduled to make appearances in court next month.