Prodigal: Sometimes life turns scary.

Me: That is why we need the Lord!

This is from the book Sister Freaks : Stories of Women Who Gave up Everything for God by Rebecca St. James

Crystal Woodman’s biggest concern that Tuesday morning was her physics test. She hadn’t studied, and she needed every free minute during the day to cram. When lunch period started, she convinced her friends, Seth and Sara, to come with her to the library instead of going off campus as they usually did.

She had been actively involved in church and youth group as a child, but in high school Crystal had turned away from God to get involved in the party scene. After a few years of trying to be “cool” by experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and boys, Crystal began to see how empty her life was and went back to church. Not entirely committed to either lifestyle, she swung back and forth between the party kids and the church kids, drawn to the deep relationships she saw in Christians like Seth and Sara but also craving the popularity of the “in” crowd.

The three friends pretended not to notice the librarian’s glare and chatted as they found an empty table. Instead of studying, they joked around with a camera for a few minutes, enjoying each other’s company and the memories of prom the weekend before.

Slowly, they began to notice sounds and movements outside the library. Seth looked out the window, but the stream of students leaving the school looked like the usual lunch crowd. No one seemed to be paying much attention until a teacher ran into the library, screaming, “There are boys outside with guns and bombs. They’re shooting students!”

Crystal searched for an explanation: It was a senior prank. It was a student’s video project. Those were firecrackers exploding in the hallway. After all, nothing bad could happen there. They were in Littleton, Colorado, an upper-middle-class suburb of housing developments, parks, and strip malls. People didn’t get shot there.

But it was April 20, 1999, and people were being shot at Columbine High School. As the sounds drew closer, Crystal watched a terrified classmate stumble into the library, clutching his bleeding shoulder. This was no prank. There was no time to escape. Crystal, Seth, and Sara took cover in the only place they could, under a library table. Seth pulled Crystal’s head to his chest to protect her and whispered, “Start praying. I don’t know what’s happening. God is the only one who can get us through.”

Two boys with guns entered the library. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors at Columbine, began moving around the room, randomly shooting their classmates.

Crystal’s face was hidden in Seth’s shirt, but she remembers the sounds, smells, and feelings of the next few minutes. Gunshots and pipe bombs exploded around her, shattering glass and mixing with student’s frightened cries and the angry voices of the killers. She smelled the smoke from the pipe bombs and felt the floor shake with every explosion.

The voices drew nearer, and Crystal realized, It’s my turn to die. She heard a gunshot just a few feet away–a boy under the next table was killed merely because he wore glasses. For the first time, she thought she would not leave the Columbine library alive.

Crystal began to pray. “Okay, God, if You’re real, get me out of here alive. I will give You my life forever. I’ll quit partying. I will do anything. Just get me out of here. I didn’t understand then. I do now. It all makes sense now.”

One of the killers shoved in a library chair, and it hit Crystal’s arm. They had reached her table. But even as she thought about dying, a voice in Crystal’s mind told her, God’s going to get you out. You have a story to tell. God’s going to get you out.”

The two shooters began talking to each other. They had run out of ammunition, and their extra bag of bombs and bullets was in the hallway. Without even looking under Crystal’s table, they left the library.

As soon as Eric and Dylan left, the surviving students began to leave through a fire escape. They knew the killers had just gone to reload; they would come back. In the instant before she left the library, Crystal looked around. “It was the first time I had seen the room. Everything had been shot up-the computers, the windows, the books—and little fires had been started from the pipe bombs. I saw the bodies of my classmates on the floor….and I knew they were dead.”

Crystal and the other survivors in the library ran together out of the school. Not sure how many shooters there were or whether they were watching, Crystal and the other kids took shelter behind a police car parked just outside.

Eventually, police officers took everyone further away from the school. Crystal was separated from Seth and Sara and started to weep uncontrollably. “Everything I had known for sixteen years–my innocence, my security, my safety–was just stripped away from me. I didn’t know what I had just seen; I hadn’t processed it all.”

Crystal joined the chaos, throngs of students wandering through the nearby park and shopping center, looking for phones to call parents or friends. It would take hours before everyone was reunited and the names of the dead were confirmed. Crystal walked across a field with Craig Scott while he looked for his sister, Rachel. They would later find out she was the first person murdered, shot just outside the building. Crystal would hear students telling the story of a classmate killed in a different part of the library after she affirmed her faith in Christ, without knowing right away that it was Cassie Bernall, a member of Crystal’s youth group.

She eventually found a phone and called her father, who met her near the school. She filled out police reports and eventually went home for a tearful reunion with her mother and brother.

Even in her pain, Crystal remembered her promise to God, and she stepped forward again and again to tell her story. She quickly became the unofficial spokesperson for the Columbine students. She was interviewed on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, and all of the Denver area news outlets. Wracked with depression and plagued by nightmares, Crystal wouldn’t speak to anyone for weeks unless it was in an interview, but she found comfort in telling the world about how God saved her.

Over the coming weeks, as she worked through her own emotions, Crystal began speaking to groups–local churches at first, and then rallies, youth conferences, school assemblies, festivals, press conferences, and retreats. She became a living testimony of God’s promise in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God took Crystal’s damaged, wounded spirit–the one that had seen so much pain–and used it to help others heal. Later, traveling to war-torn Kosovo with Operation Christmas Child (an outreach of Samaritan’s Purse), Crystal met children who live every day with violence like that at Columbine. That event, coupled with others, led her to dedicate her life to speaking.

Crystal knows there are cruel and scary things in this world. But she knows also there is One who is stronger, and she is putting her faith in Him.

John 5:24

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org