Buckhead author moves on from major life crisis to inspirational writing.
The story Courtney Pray Duke, 43, has to tell starts when she was growing up in Arkansas and met her future husband, Andrew. She was 8; he was 9. Eleven years later, the childhood sweethearts married, and over the next 10 years, life went cheerfully on, filled with three children and a Christian community in Dallas, Georgia, where Andrew was the worship pastor.
But life changed dramatically the day before Thanksgiving in 2012 when Andrew headed out for one of his regular bike rides, and Duke stayed home to finish holiday prep.
“It was a beautiful, clear day,” she says. “On his way out the door, we said I love you, and I remember hearing the garage door close. Then I went on with the morning, making sandwiches and cleaning the Christmas decorations we’d gotten out the day before.”
In the midst of that, she let an unrecognized number go to voicemail.
“It said, ‘Your husband has been in an accident; get to the trauma center at Kennestone Hospital immediately,’” Duke says. “I got the kids in the car, and before we could get there, I got a call from a family member telling me to pull over. That’s when I learned he’d been hit by a charter bus and didn’t make it. Our whole world just crumbled.”
A widow at 29, Duke says her husband’s unexpected death upended her life. “All my dreams, everything, came crashing down. The rebuilding process was disorienting and awful, awful.”
But a few months into the grieving process, Duke found supportive friends who attended Passion City Church near Peachtree Hills, and the draw of that community inspired her to move to Buckhead.
“I just got in a moving truck with my three kids and the fishbowl splashing everywhere,” she says. “It was beautiful to see how these people offered us strength and support. Through them, I felt God did some miraculous healing in my life and my kids’ lives.”
One of those miracles was meeting and marrying Jon Duke, with whom she has a son, 8. “I was terrified to date; I had never really dated anyone,” she says. “It was a slow process to open my heart to love again.”
But the story doesn’t end at a happy second marriage, she says. About three years ago, she began putting her experiences in writing. “I had a vivid dream that it was time,” she says. “From that day on, I woke up every day and wrote for the woman who would be on the other side of the book.”
In February, after more than two years of writing, Duke published And She Got Up, a work wrought from her pain and growth. “It’s interesting how suffering in a strange way can be a gift, and I couldn’t run away from it,” she says. “But it’s not just me telling my story; I’m wanting to show women this is how I did it, and how this is what’s possible for you, too. Whether you have faith or no faith, I want you to pick this up and know hope is possible, and your story’s not over yet.”
That reminder keeps Duke going. “It’s still so hard; we miss Andrew every day, but I’ve learned to hold grief and joy at the same time,” she says. “When I lost Andrew, I thought my life was done, and that was the end of the story. This is a life I could never have planned, but it’s not the end of the story.”
COURTNEY PRAY DUKE
courtneyprayduke.com
@courtneyprayduke
