During our five years in the Carrick neighborhood of Pittsburgh, our family did everything possible to make Jesus known through all things neighborly. Our son Amos was just 1 when we arrived, and we would push him up and down the hills in his little stroller as we made our way down the community’s main corridor, Brownsville Road.  A couple years after we were there a family of five moved in a few doors down. A mom, Rachel, grandmother Cecille, and three kids, Jamal, Travis, and Sarah. There was no husband around and we quickly befriended Rachel and she became a dear friend over our last several years there.

We originally met Rachel when we did a pizza at the park event at the little park right behind our place. I remember talking for quite some time with her as Charity introduced Amos to her. Amos spent several days each week at the library with Rachel’s kids as he got older, and we would often walk back and forth to the library together. Once when Rachel was trying to make ends meet and work during the time her kids returned home, she checked with Charity and I to see if we could watch the kids during this time. She wanted to make sure they had a place to go, and she trusted us.

Little by little Rachel and her family got more involved with our church. They came to our place for house church a couple of times and were regularly at the community dinners we put on. We would talk often in the front yard or stop by one another’s homes just to say hello. 

When Rachel learned that I had taken a job down in Atlanta she seemed sad, but she knew that it was right for our family. She knew that we were in transition and needed to do what was best for us. Rachel was the last person in Pittsburgh who said goodbye to us before loading up our car and driving away. 

Charity found the news article first. A fatal gunshot had killed someone in our old neighborhood during the wee hours last Saturday morning. This is all too common news for the neighborhood. The grip of violence, drugs, and despair is known amongst so many beautiful, hopeful signs. I never got used to this contrast during our years there. So much hope. So much friendship. . . . yet so much despair. I continued to read the article. I knew the street. It was just a few blocks away and I had walked that street often. The article read that it was a homicide, and a woman was laying in the street with a bullet wound to the head. I kept reading. It was Rachel. What was she doing there at that time of night? Why did the article say she was getting dropped off to urinate there when she was literally 4 or so blocks from her house? What really happened? Rachel Warner. Rachel Warner.  I kept reading over the name again and again. Rachel Warner. 

Then it hit me. Sarah was just 8 years old. Travis is 10. Jamal is now 17. They have no mom now. Can their grandma take care of them? Can their ad be involved? “She was doing so much better I thought.”

She was getting on her feet and the hope of Jesus had come to her house. Now she was gone. Rachel Warner was murdered ruthlessly in the streets of my old neighborhood just blocks from where she lived.

Charity and I have been through some stuff. We have seen tragedy, loss, and evil knock on our door. Within a 6-block radius of our old house were multiple shootings, frequent sightings of prostitution, multiple fires started intentionally, drug overdoses galore. . . we called the police often. There was a lot of darkness. We have lost people we have known to violence before. We have known the scar of sin that weaved its way through our neighborhood. But not Rachel. She was the least likely of people that you would think this would happen to. She was a good, good mom. She was so exceedingly kind. 

Charity and I fell in love with Carrick during our time there. We fell so in love with it in fact that we named our ministry/church, Love Carrick. In a neighborhood that has experienced brokenness and decay over the last decades, there are so many Rachels. So many good neighbors who genuinely care for each other and do the best they can do with what they have been dealt. There are heroes on every single block in the neighborhood who continually model what friendship, hard work, and compassion looks like. Rachel was one of them. 

Rachel, I wish we could have said goodbye. I wish it did not end this way. I know full well that the enemy of our souls will not relent. He truly is a thief desiring to kill and destroy (Jn. 10:10). My heart breaks for the Warner family. Charity and I will not be the same. But this is also a war ground. This battle was costly and devastating. The war isn’t over. Death will not get the last word.  I know the other part of the story. In the face of oppression and evil, there is new life. This world cannot be the end. There must be a new world. I look through hope at that place where God will make all things new. May Rachel, the kids, and everyone grieving during this time fix there gaze not on what is seen, but what is unseen. I say goodbye with hope. 

This is a hope to see you again, yes, but it is also a violent hope that will do everything through the resurrection power of Christ to see Satan’s kingdom thrown down in places where he has attempted to set up his reign. May the love of Jesus not go out in Carrick, in Clarkston, in the lives of those where the darkness is so very dark. This violent hope destroys Satan’s work, and we are down today but we will rise. Oh God, protect these young kids and allow your hope to burn so very bright during such loss.