Though He Slay Me

Shortly after the death of their daughter Robin, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans met a pale little boy who stuck out his hand and said, “Howdy, pahtnah!” He had been abandoned in a Kentucky motel, and was physically and mentally disabled. Roy and Dale adopted him, calling him Sandy in honor of his hair. He was bright-eyed and good-natured.

During a Billy Graham Crusade, Sandy became a Christian. Roy and Dale enrolled him in military school and he loved it. At seventeen, he enlisted in the army “to prove myself’’ Sandy worked hard and won respect. He was sent to Germany, then volunteered for Vietnam.

“Put your faith in the Lord,” he wrote home, “because (as I have found out) he’s always around when you need him. All he asks in return is your devotion.” Then one day Dale Evans, returning from a trip, was met at the airport.

“It’s Sandy, Mom. He’s dead.” Sandy had returned from 26 days of maneuvers, dog tired. His buddies had taken him out for the night, needling him to “prove you’re a man.”

Sandy, who couldn’t tolerate alcohol, had given in. They fed him hard liquor until he collapsed. He was found next morning dead in his bunk. Dale Evans survived the sorrow only by drawing strength from Scripture, particularly from Job 13: 15.

“Tragedy in a Christian’s life is a refiner,” she wrote. “God has not promised an easy way, but peace at the center of the hard way.

The clouds of sorrow have been heavy, but I have reached the point of no return in my Christian experience, and with Job I can cry, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.’ “