Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

and drinking more than he ever had before. When I came home one night, he accused me of having an affair, which was so stupid. I had never done anything like that, and it wasn’t because his friends weren’t hitting on me, either. It was because I wasn’t that kind of person. I always told him, “If I leave you, I’ll divorce you and find somebody else if I want to. I would never cheat on you.”
    I’ve always considered myself a good person. I don’t know if it’s my personality or what, but I’ve always been a very serving person. During all of Phil’s troubles, I felt like I was operating on my grandmother’s faith and what she instilled in me. I finally realized you have to have your own faith. Phil was cursing me and calling me every ugly word under the sun. It was the first time in my life that I felt hopeless. When I was younger, I read that a person can live so long without water, so long without food, but that you can never live without hope. I have always believed that hope and dreams are what keep us going. My entire life, all I had ever wanted was to be the best wife and mother I could. I didn’t want riches or fame; I wanted to have a loving, good, and safe home for my boys—that’s all.

    “When I came home one night, he accused me of having an affair, which was so stupid.”

    The night Phil accused me of having an affair, I hit rock bottom. I went to the bathroom and cried. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t know how to fix the problem. It’s the only time in my life that I had suicidal thoughts. I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up because I didn’t know how to fix our lives and didn’t know what to do. Would I have gone through with it? I hope not, but I really wanted Phil to suffer because of what he was doing to me.
    But as I sat there contemplating what to do, I heard my little boys’ house shoes running down the hall. Alan was nine, Jason was five, and Willie was three. Alan knocked on the bathroom door and said, “Mama,don’t be sad. Don’t be crying.” I’ll never forget what he said next: “God’s going to take care of us. You’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. Daddy will quit drinking one day.” It was like a light went off in my head. I thought, “Oh, my goodness, what am I thinking? I’ve got three little boys. Am I going to leave them behind to live with a drunk?” Phil couldn’t have taken care of the boys in his condition.
    I prayed to God and asked Him to help me find some kind of peace. Obviously, my life wasn’t going right, but I knew I had to take care of my three boys. The next day, I was watching a TV show called Let the Bible Speak, and there was Bill Smith, the preacher Jan brought up to the beer joint. The things he was saying were what I needed to hear—what I wanted in my life. He was speaking about how to obtain peace and hope. So I called the number on the screen and set up an appointment to meet him the next day. Somebody kept the kids for me, and I went over to White’s Ferry Road Church.
    One of the first things Bill Smith asked me was, “If you die, do you think you’ll go to heaven?” I told him, “I sure do. Let me tell you what I’ve been living with.” I went into how bad Phil was and how I’d still been a faithful and loving wife to him. Smith asked me if I thought I’d earned my way to heaven, and I told him that I certainly had. Smith asked me if I had peace and hope in my life, and I told him, “Now, that’s the problem.” There was some sort of disconnect because I felt I had earned my way to God, but I didn’t have any hope and didn’t feel any peace.
    Smith shared the gospel with me, and I became convinced that Icouldn’t be saved on my own good works. I was a good person, but I was a good person without Jesus Christ in my life. That’s not enough. Smith told me that if I wanted to, I could leave the church that day with Jesus Christ in my life. I confessed to Jesus and made him the Lord of my life and was baptized. The best thing Smith told me that day was that when I went home, Phil would still be as drunk as ever and would still act terrible. But Smith told me I would be different because I would have God’s spirit living in me. He told me that when things were bad here on Earth, I just had to think about my next life in heaven and how wonderful it would be. I left his office as a Christian and started developing my own faith.
    I went home and tolerated Phil’s behavior because