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Every time I look at this picture of my son Charles in his forties, on a motorcycle, heading to a church baptism that was moved to the river at the last minute, I marvel at how much that single image captures his independent, outside-the-box spirit.

Born 1/19/1968-–Died 3/3/2014

“Hand me your keys, Charles. You knew there'd be consequences for your actions. You won’t be driving your car for the rest of this week.”

Charles briefly glared at his father, who was sitting on the sofa, before rushing toward the front door, clutching his car keys tightly.

Monty quickly sprang between his angry teenager and the door. “If you go out that door in rebellion like this, you need to understand you will NOT come back in. If you live here with your feet under our table, you’ll have to abide by our house rules,” Monty said firmly.

Although a teenager, Charles was nearly his father’s size and pushed him aside to yank open the front door. As he ran to move his car so no one could block him from using it, he yelled, “It’s MY car and YOU won’t tell me when I can use it.”

Shaking and stunned, I watched Monty lock both outside doors and realized I was witnessing a clash between two alpha males. Charles had been increasingly testing his boundaries.

When he tried to re-enter the house a few minutes later, he had his car keys but no key to unlock the deadbolts to the house. His initial rage turned into pleading because he had impulsively run out of the house with only his precious car keys and wallet. There were no cell phones in the 1980s to call a friend, which made his life complicated since the only phone was inside the house. 

Teary-eyed, I listened to the pain in the father’s and son's voices as they talked from different sides of the locked door. I hated the situation. It wasn’t something I would have chosen. Still, we needed to show unity when our teenage son tried to assert himself and was unwilling to accept his father’s decision, which had seemed fair considering the circumstances.

In the days that followed, Charles’s bedroom and desk became my place for Bible study and prayer. There, I felt closer to him during the difficult days of worrying about him sleeping in his car or on the couch of a sympathetic friend. I felt like a complete failure as a parent and wanted to find a hole to crawl into, as did Monty. We struggled with the question, “Was our tough love too tough?”

 My quiet time at his desk usually started with writing out my complaints to God about the hurt and anger I felt in the situation. Next, I read some scripture and responded to what I had just read by writing what I wanted to say back to God, followed by more scripture reading. Each day, I maintained this alternating routine until I found peace for that day.

The remarkable thing about this back-and-forth was that I initially started with my anger, hurt, and criticism, but eventually—through scripture—I found God holding up a mirror that revealed how I was displaying the same attitudes toward God that I was angry at my son for having toward us. Gradually, my attitude and prayers began to shift.

Our good news was that Charles continued attending school to prepare for college without risking his full merit scholarship. He did not give up the swim team or his job.

To keep communication open, I occasionally baked his favorite cookies and drove to the high school parking lot to leave a plate of cookies in his unlocked car with a note inviting him to a specific home-cooked meal. He never turned down my invitations to a meal.

One day, I was pulling two pans of fresh cornbread out of the oven when Charles unexpectedly appeared at the front door. We were sitting down for our meal and invited him to join us. We soon discovered that beans and cornbread broke this first separation because—much to my shock—the way I cooked beans turned out to be one of his favorite foods that he had been missing. As we sat around the table talking, he asked if he could return home and acknowledged his willingness to live by house rules. I whispered a silent prayer of thanks.

Unfortunately, his determination to “go his own way” and be “solely in control of his life” caused him trouble again after he started college. At one point, when he stopped by for a meal, I suspected he was on drugs. After he left, I prayed that God would stop him “by any means necessary” if he was involved in drugs. A few days later, he called because a large region-wide drug sweep had landed him in the Houston jail—not in an individual cell, but in the “tank.” 

We didn’t bail him out because he needed to realize deeply that his attitudes and decisions had consequences. He would call and scream at me for not getting him out of that “hell-hole.” He was in pain. It was nearly unbearable to leave him in jail until his hearing before a judge. 

Monty and I prayed and discussed the situation. A part of the story of the Prodigal Son in the Bible reminded us that we should let Charles suffer the consequences of his actions until he realized (like the Prodigal) that his choices had led to this. We prayed for God to bring him to his senses, for he had definitely ended up in a type of pigpen.

I asked the jail Chaplain to give him a Bible. With no TV or other entertainment, he had lots of time to read, especially as he tried to stay awake to protect his few personal belongings from being stolen. He was still trying to control everything in his life, but couldn’t.

After several weeks and a computer glitch that kept him in jail longer than expected, he sent us a long letter demonstrating a radically changed heart and asking for our forgiveness. Among all of those in the tank with him, he told us about two older men who kept telling him that he had all the right head knowledge, but it hadn’t reached his heart to live it. They challenged him to grow up and commit his life to Christ, rather than to himself. Surprised two prisoners were saying that, I wondered if the two men were angels in disguise, placed there in response to my prayer for God to protect Charles from the terrible things that could happen to a young man in the “tank.”

His long letter from jail explained how he finally trusted Christ to be in control of his life and to guide his decisions. He said the Boy Scouts had taught him to weave a cross, so he pulled strings out of the jailhouse mattress to weave a string cross to symbolize his change of heart and his experiences before fully submitting to God.

About fifteen years later, in his thirties—after graduating at the top of his class from Georgetown University Law Center with a juris doctorate and advancing in his legal career—Charles told us that the night in Texas when his father stood up to the teenage Charles was one of the best things that happened to him in his life.

Then, a decade later in March 2014—as he was reaching a peak in his legal career—he slipped and fell while clearing snow and ice from the driveway of the Arkansas home he shared with his wife. The fall caused a deep bruise that led to a blood clot, which resulted in a pulmonary embolism and took his life before the weekend ended. Words fail to express the shock and sorrow parents feel at the death of their child, regardless of age. However, the God of Hope walked with us, and peace came through knowing that Charles knew Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. We knew he was in a better place, and we would see him again.

After setting up his law practice in Arkansas, I knew Charles had been an active Episcopalian and a passionate collector of antique Bibles and prayer books, as well as personally restoring many of them. In the days surrounding his funeral, I began hearing stories about how he helped people in unexpected ways. The twists and turns of his life made him a deeply caring person, and his Christian faith shone through in ways I never expected. We learned he was a quiet, self-effacing benefactor of various scholarship programs. His peers often noted that he possessed a rare combination of honesty and brilliance, and seemed especially drawn to the disenfranchised and those considered indefensible by others. At his funeral, former skid row occupants sat with judges and lawyers from across the country. 

A former client of Charles told me that after his court case ended, Charles met with him in his office for a stern confrontation about how he was messing up his life and needed to “straighten out his way of thinking and living.” Charles suggested he find a church, which he did, and he attended Charles’s funeral to pay his respects to the one person who managed to get through to him by confronting him about becoming a better person. From a reference he made, I realized Charles had kept wearing that string-cross under his clothes, next to his heart, as a reminder of the pigpen he had landed in before accepting Christ on God’s terms instead of trying to negotiate his own terms.

God used the lessons Charles learned to give him a sensitivity to “see” and help others who were on a difficult path. He was committed to defending the individual rights of people, regardless of their status.

The following year, we learned even more about our son’s contributions to landmark court cases. Todd McFarland, associate general counsel for the Seventh-day Adventist Church (shown in the picture), invited us to join Charles’s widow, whom they had flown from her home in Arkansas to Washington, D.C., to attend the 2015 Annual Religious Liberty Dinner alongside many dignitaries. They recognized the significant legal work Charles had done and the achievements he had helped accomplish for religious liberties across the United States during his brief life.

It gave me deep comfort to realize that our motorcycle-riding, bagpipe-playing, spelunking, rare-book-restoring son, who loved matching wits in a lively debate, had helped so many people. A lovely legacy of a person is in the mind-pictures of those they've touched. It’s almost like the scent of perfume or aftershave left in a room after someone departs. Charles left a sweet fragrance in the lives of those blessed by him.

“[W]hen he came to himself….he arose and came to his father….‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight’….the father said….‘my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.” Luke 15:17-24  (NKJV)

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NOTE: Some people have been confused about Charles’ name. The combination of the two names (Charles Melvin) means he is named after my deceased brother, Charles’ father, both of his grandfathers, and two of his great-grandfathers, because my father was Buel Melvin, and all the rest of the relatives had Charles in their names.