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Our 32nd annual weekend getaway is approaching, and one of our speakers is Carol Kent. Recently I interviewed her, and I want to share some of that interview with you this week. Carol and her husband, Gene, have one son, Jason, who was everything you would want your son to be. A graduate of the Naval Academy, a leader and a young man who loved God, life just doesn’t get much better than theirs was—until. . .that phone call telling them that their son had been arrested. Here’s how Carol describes that call:
Carol: We got a middle of the night phone call in Oct. 1999. Our son had been arrested for the murder of his wife’s first husband. And he was in jail in Orlando. I’m sure for all of our listeners when they get one of those situations that means “life as you once knew it will never be like the future you envisioned for yourself,” it does take your breath away and at times it really does test your faith.
Take your breath away–that has to be an understatement. Carol tells the entire story in her book When I Lay My Isaac Down, but when I asked her how Jason could commit such a crime, she explained that he was very concerned for his wife’s two young daughters, believing their father abused them. Carol says:
Carol: And we just see how he (Jason) began to make an idol out of his own ability to protect his girls instead of trusting in God alone to be their protector. He said I should have taught them to dial 911 and scream and ask for help but instead I made a very horrible devastating choice that would forever change the family of my life and that of my victim’s family.