Jayna Burkey works in a nondescript building Benton, KY, where locals go to cope with the aftermath of violence and tragedy.
As coordinator of the Marshall County Resiliency Center, she uses any available resources, including the center’s abundance of art and craft supplies, to help children and adults live with loss.
“The healing journey doesn’t end—ever,” Burkey says in a phone interview, the finality in her voice carrying through the speaker. She knows because she has traveled her own path of pain, and it has both crippled and empowered her.
Grief began to shadow Burkey nearly 10 years ago, on the November day when a gun misfired and a bullet struck her 16-year-old daughter in the chest. Her child, Torri, had planned to go hunting that morning with her father and boyfriend. Instead, she bled in the Graves County woods as her dad performed CPR. She later died.
Burkey remembers her only child as a beautiful, intelligent girl who walked the line between tomboy and young lady. Torri was loyal and kind, and she loved to cook. She made her mother laugh and often called her “Madre” instead of “Mom.” Burkey loved her daughter’s soft hair, gorgeous smile, and olive skin.
Yet in a matter of minutes, that bright, sunny girl was gone—leaving Burkey and her husband, James, to reel through emotions that battered their bodies and souls. They got caught in a storm that would never stop.
“It has been very hard,” she says. “I feel like we’re starting to rise back up again from just crashing.”
As people of faith, the couple turned their focus to God in the years after Torri’s passing. Burkey felt broken, angry, and powerless. She remembers wanting to ask her daughter a few important questions, and since she couldn’t, she asked God instead. She never expected to get answers, but the Lord, in His mercy, gave them anyway.
“He showed out for me,” she says. “He really did.”
That gift filled Burkey with the strength she needed to live with a devastated heart. The grieving mother admits that she will never understand why the Lord chose to take her child, but she still trusts him because he showed her grace when she suffered. God, she says, is the reason why she can talk about Torri now without falling apart.
“My state of mind is my proof of who God is,” she explains.
Yet, the Lord has never quite healed Burkey or her husband. She says they have grappled with waves of emotions that come and go without warning. They feel overwhelmed by anger and sadness on noteworthy days, like Torri’s birthday or Father’s Day. And grief envelops them at unexpected times, when ordinary objects spark memories of their daughter.
The couple leans on each other, though, during those moments. God has kept their marriage strong. He has helped them fight through the pain together, so Burkey can now look back with gratitude.
“The 16 years we had with her will never be enough,” she says. “We will always want more, but [we’re] choosing to be thankful and see the gifts of her life versus being bitter.”
God has also given Burkey another gift by giving purpose to her pain. She can help guide people through the warring emotions that follow loss because she has navigated them herself.
“I believe I could not be in this position right now, I could not be as sympathetic and empathetic to the community the way that I am, I could not be as compassionate as I am if I had not endured my own pain,” she reflects.
Every day, Burkey draws on that experience to soothe hearts and minds. She tells her clients they are more resilient than they know and that God has given them the strength to carry their pain forward. She warns that they will never again be the people they were before tragedy struck, but that doesn’t mean their lives have ended.
God still uses us all, she says, long after the world has broken us.
