ANSWERED PRAYER

Patrol Duty: The Story of Joy Burnham

"I heard an explosion," Joy remembers. "I don't recall even feeling it. I heard the explosion and then I felt myself being thrown through the air. I looked up and saw him walking towards me with a gun and then I realized that I had been shot. On the day that this happened, I really had so much planned for my life and what I was going to do, and I was really excited about things."

March 3rd, 1987, seemed like any other workday on Interstate 85. Deputy Joy Burnham of La Grange, Georgia, was planning to leave for dinner when she suddenly saw a car going about 95 miles an hour. Dinner would have to wait. This was routine procedure for Joy, who had instigated some two thousand traffic stops in her two years at the sheriff's office. But this stop would turn out to be different.

"I went up to the car and asked to see his license. He started fumbling around for it and acted like he couldn't find it. Eventually he produced a ticket, one that he had just gotten out of jail for speeding."

Joy was just about to radio the station to check the motorist's license when he admitted it was suspended. Right then, she knew that the situation was about to change. He had to be placed under arrest and she would have to take him into the sheriff's office.

"I told him to put his hands on the patrol car and spread his legs and I did pat him down, and he kept pulling his hands off the car. I had to slightly turn from him to open the back door. When I turned back around toward him, he jumped at me and struck me in the chest."

Joy fought back. He grabbed her gun belt and began pulling on her holster. He repeatedly told her that he was going to kill her. She heard the ripping noise as he pulled her gun out.

That's how Deputy Joy Burnham landed on the interstate, wounded and facing the barrel of her own .357-Magnum.

"I was desperately thinking that I had to get up, but I couldn't. It was actually like my shirt was nailed to the road. He had the biggest smile on his face and he was so happy, and yet, he was taunting me with how he was going to kill me."

Somehow, Joy managed to kick her attacker. He stumbled and fell. On the ground, he touched the gun to Joy's head.

Joy's assailant told her, "You know I'm going to blow your head off. You're going to hear an explosion and then you're going to feel the side of your head open up and your brains are going to go out."

Joy prepared for the shot, but as she lay there, all she heard was silence. He got up and he stood over her and pointed the gun at her again. Joy had no idea why he didn't fire at her.

"I started praying at that time, 'Lord, if you can just let him leave. I know I can survive if you just let him leave.' "

Before that prayer, Joy had been a nominal Christian, merely a churchgoer. Now she was about to enter a completely different dimension of faith, beginning with the answer to her desperate prayer. The gunman did leave. He got into his car and took off. Remarkably, Joy's portable radio was on the road, just within her reach. She summoned the strength to call for help.

"I felt like my shirt was on fire. Then I saw my arm for the first time. Part of my hand was laying flat up and the other part of my arm was out straight. There were bones sticking out from all directions."

Gene Jones, the former sheriff of Troup County says, "Her arm had exploded. She was shot with a .357-Magnum and it absolutely exploded the arm. It was really a very nasty wound with a lot of blood. The blood had run probably 10 to 12 feet down the road from her."

Joy was surrounded in a pool of her own blood. "Then it really hit me that I was going to die. I thought, 'What does that mean for me?' I thought it meant that I would be going to see the Lord God. In just a minute, I'm going to be standing in front of God. I got so excited and suddenly I felt that there was a light surrounding me. I could feel the love and goodness and I got so excited and I thought that I was the luckiest person on the face of the earth. In just a minute, you think about seeing God all your life, but when you actually know you're going to see Him in just a minute--it was fantastic."

All of a sudden, she was rejoicing and feeling love like never before. Then Joy saw a vision of her own funeral and her family and friends consumed with grief. In the dream she could feel grief and sorrow. She wanted to tell them that it wasn't like that at all. But then, she heard the Lord ask, 'Are you sure?' Before Joy could even answer, she realized she was lying back in the road.

"I realized then that if I died, that would be fantastic, and if I lived, that would be great, too. I realized right then that I couldn't lose in that situation, and immediately when I realized that, there were arms up under my shoulders pulling me out of the road."

Troup County deputies had arrived and rushed Joy to the hospital. Deputy Robert Huckleberry was with Joy during the ride to the emergency room.

"All the time I saw in the X-rays the path the bullet took, the damage it did," says Huckleberry. "Being familiar with the ammo she was using, it was a real miracle she got to keep her arm, and a real miracle because she didn't bleed to death."

It was a real miracle that the gunman didn't finish her off. His intention was to kill her. Instead, the perpetrator had actually dropped the .357-Magnum, which was Joy's own gun, and when it hit the pavement, it jammed the chamber so the trigger couldn't be pulled. And that's what saved her life. It was the grace of God that the gun jammed.

Joy's husband, Mark, other family members, and friends also believe God intervened in the four years following her shooting-- four pain-filled years during which Joy underwent 33 surgeries to save her arm.

Family friend Bonnie Vowell remembers that prayers were going out across La Grange, Georgia, the U.S. and Germany, where Joy had family. Those prayers were answered in more ways than one.

Joy nurtured a relationship with the Lord in those four years. She never thought she would go through the surgeries and say that she was glad, but actually she is so happy because now she knows the Lord --and so does her husband Mark.

"I have definitely grown closer to the Lord," says Mark. "There's no doubt about it. Back then I didn't really have a personal relationship with Christ. But I do now."

Joy's attacker is currently serving a 20-year sentence. She has moved on with her life and has a new career traveling to different health departments. Now she is a shining beacon for the Lord and an inspiration everywhere she goes.

"I couldn't understand for the longest time why he didn't shoot me. I think for some people, it's to tell them that there's always hope no matter what happens. For other people, it's to tell them that whenever you're close to death, you're never alone and there is a heaven. There absolutely is a heaven."

Joy brings a message of hope to us from the heart of God, that you're never alone, that when you're about to die, when you're about to go be with the Lord, there is a heaven. You're never alone here in the midst of circumstances. Our God is always reaching down to us, wanting to have relationship with us.

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