Are Miracles Really Possible?

Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone.

— [A Course in Miracles

National headlines recorded a miracle of deliverance even as I was writing this book in the spring of 2005. Nothing but more death should have followed the slayings by an escaped prisoner at the Atlanta Fulton County Courthouse in March, but as authorities searched for the killer, something remarkable occurred.

Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols: Pancakes at Dawn

On Friday, March 11, defendant Brian Nichols was being escorted to his trial for rape and aggravated sodomy by a female deputy. When they reached the holding cell, the deputy uncuffed one of Nichols's hands, at which point the former college linebacker knocked her down, grabbed her gun, and beat her unconscious.

Although he could have simply escaped, Nichols instead crossed the bridge to the courthouse, where he hunted down, shot, and killed the judge in his case — Justice Roland Barnes — and the court reporter, Julie Brandau. He then ran back across the bridge and down a stairway to the street. On the way, he shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Hoyt Teasley, who had pursued him as he fled the building. Nichols then carjacked a string of vehicles, murdering a customs agent named Rick Warren in the course of stealing his pickup truck later in the day.

Around 2 A.M. on March 12, Brian Nichols stuck a gun in the ribs of thirty-three-year-old Ashley Smith as she got out of her car in the parking lot of her apartment building. Nichols told her that if she screamed, he would kill her, but he added that if she would just do as he said, he would not hurt her. Smith assured him that she would do whatever he wanted. Nichols made her take him to her apartment, where he tied her up with electrical cords and duct tape.

Smith lost no time in beginning a conversation with her captor. She informed him that her husband had been stabbed to death four years earlier and had died in her arms. She said that if Nichols killed her, her five-year-old daughter wouldn't have a mommy or a daddy. She told Nichols that she was supposed to meet her daughter at church at 10 A.M. the next day and asked if he would let her go. He said no.

After searching the apartment and taking a shower, Nichols sat Smith down on her bed, and she asked if it would be all right if she read. When he said yes, she selected The Purpose-Driven Life, and she began reading aloud where she'd last left off, at Day 33: "How Real Servants Act." Nichols asked her to repeat a passage, and they began discussing the role of purpose in their lives, which led to talk of God.

Smith later explained that she had been intent upon reaching out to Nichols at a human level, encouraging him to see her as a real person. Throughout their encounter, Smith talked about herself, her family, and things she had done, in an effort to establish a relationship with her captor. She repeated her request to be allowed to go and see her daughter Sunday morning, and Nichols's "no" gradually changed to "maybe" and "we'll see."

As they talked, Smith quietly exchanged the role of hostage for that of confidant. They discussed their faith, their families, and the massive manhunt going on outside. At some points they watched the coverage of the escape on television, and Nichols said that he could hardly believe that that was him they were talking about. Over the course of the night, Nichols untied Smith, and at his request, she showed him pictures of her daughter, as well as other family photos.

Eventually, Nichols asked Smith what she thought he ought to do. "If you don't turn yourself in," she replied, "lots more people are going to get hurt." Nichols called her "an angel" and his "sister in Christ," and he said God had led him to her door so that she'd tell him he had hurt a lot of people.

Ashley asked her captor if he believed in miracles. "You got out of that courthouse with police everywhere, and you don't think that's a miracle?" Smith demanded. "You don't think you're supposed to be sitting right here in front of me? Your miracle could be that you need to be caught for this. If you go to prison, then you need to share the word of God with all the prisoners there."

As Smith explained to reporters later: "He needed hope for his life. He said, 'Look at my eyes — I'm already dead.' I said: 'You're not dead! You're standing right in front of me! You're here in my apartment for some reason.'"

Before dawn, Nichols told Smith that he needed to ditch the pickup truck he'd stolen from the federal customs agent he'd murdered. Smith agreed to follow him in her car and to bring him back to her apartment after he dropped off the vehicle. Although it might have been possible for her to escape at this point, she said she followed through on her promise because she believed that if she abandoned him, he might have killed her and he would almost certainly have gone on to kill others. Besides, she had an idea that if she hung in there, she would be able to convince him to surrender.

Back at her apartment, Nichols quietly put his guns under her bed as if he were finished with them. He said that he'd rather have Smith shoot him than the people hunting him. Ashley Smith replied that she didn't want anyone to be hurt, not even him.

When morning came, Nichols was "overwhelmed" when Smith made him pancakes with real butter. He told her he "just wanted some normalness to his life."

Eventually he asked her, "What time do you have to go?" and Smith told him she had to meet her daughter at their church at ten o'clock, and so she would have to leave by 9:30. She thinks that by this point he understood and had accepted the fact that she would summon police, although nothing was said about it.

"He gave me some money when I was about to leave. Just kind of like he knew. I said, 'You might need this money.' And he said, 'No, I don't need it. I'm going to be here for the next few days.'"

Nichols asked if there was anything he could do for her while she was gone. She had just moved into the apartment two days earlier, and he offered to hang curtains for her. Significantly, before she left, he asked her to visit him in jail.

"I know he was probably hoping deep down that I was going to come back," Smith said, "but I think he knew what I had to do — that I had to...