The Faithful Servant
For fifty years, Linda Strom has ministered to women in prison, helping them reenter society and rebuild their lives. She gives the credit to God and Karla Faye Tucker, who was put to death in 1998 for killing two people with a pickaxe.
As Linda Strom’s car barrels down State Highway 36 at eighty mph, her words tumble out in a relentless cascade, as fast as the Texas landscape whipping by. Each sentence, a winding road of its own, carries the weight of countless stories of redemption and God’s grace.
“Go ahead, ask me about Karla, ask me about death row, ask me about Jesus,” she says, turning around to look at me in the back seat, her eyes alight with fervor. “I can talk about that all day.”
“Karla” is Karla Faye Tucker, the infamous Texas death row inmate whose turnaround from drug-addicted, hardened murderer to evangelist for Christ during her fourteen-year imprisonment was the topic of dozens of media interviews and books before and after her 1998 execution.
Linda, a sassy, Ray-Ban-wearing, eighty-two-year-old Texas grandmother, was Tucker’s spiritual advisor and friend. Even though Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection over twenty-six years ago, Linda still considers her a partner in her ministry. Over the past fifty years, that ministry has become a juggernaut. Linda, an improbable but remarkable leader, has quietly built Discipleship Unlimited, the nonprofit she and her late husband, Dallas, created in 1974, into a force that helps incarcerated women reenter society and reduces their recidivism rate.
DU includes hundreds of volunteers who work with women in Texas prisons. DU pioneered the establishment of faith-based dorms (FBDs), a concept Linda claims was Karla’s vision. FBDs are now sanctioned and supported by the state because of the low recidivism rate of the prisoners housed inside them. Linda was also the impetus for several spiritually based curricula used regularly throughout Texas prisons and beyond, as well as a ranch that raises kangaroos and serves as a transitional community for women as they move from prison back into society. DU also provides job placement services and housing, as well as organizations that keep former inmates connected and accountable.
On this evening, Linda is on her way to minister to female inmates in one of the eight prisons served by DU—the Hilltop Unit in Gatesville, Texas. Linda turns down a long winding driveway that brings us to the prison campus—four one-story white buildings that sparkled like diamonds in the setting sun.
“Welcome back,” the guard says, as Linda hands him her driver’s license. She carries only it and her Bible. Because the guards know her so well, she’s allowed to make her own way to the FBD.
Tagging along with Linda this evening is a homecoming, of sorts, for me.
Our First Meeting
I first met Linda Strom in July, 1994, when I was 32. I was married to my high school sweetheart and, at that time, the mother of three young sons.
I had just put my mother, Christine, on a plane back to her home in Milwaukee following a weeklong visit with me in Ohio. She could barely walk because she was in the last stages of AIDS. But she was also stubborn and wanted to go home.
Eight years before, in 1988, my mother contracted AIDS from my father, who had been living a double life for most of their marriage, having sexual affairs with men.
My parents started fundamentalist Christian churches in our living room and were active members of the Republican Party, as well as the John Birch Society, the longstanding far-right political advocacy group.
In my parents’ circle, AIDS was known as “The Gay Disease.” The televangelist Jerry Falwell declared in 1987 that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuals—a statement I remember my mother repeating. My dad’s secret life and my parents’ AIDS diagnoses imploded my family. We were the hot gossip around town. Shame engulfed us.
We moved my dad, a senior partner in one of Milwaukee’s largest law firms, out of town and changed his name; we moved my mom from the west side of Milwaukee to the east side, where, she felt, she would be less recognized and well-known.
To my mother, my father’s homosexuality was an assault on every part of her world. For her, sexual immorality outranked every other sin. And homosexuality? An abomination. I thought that was Dad’s opinion, too.
“They gave themselves over to their own evil desires,” he preached solemnly from the Old Testament.
As she pounded me with her fists, I looked her in the eye and didn’t cry; I didn’t fight back. I laid on the floor, staring up at her defiantly, bolstered by a new feeling: hate. I wanted her to die.
My mother swore she’d never forgive my father. Who could blame her? The man to whom she was married for thirty-eight years gave her a death sentence.
Twenty years before, I had sworn I would never forgive her. I ran away from home in high school. I moved in with a friend whose mother took pity on me after she saw the red welts on my lower back and legs.
I don’t remember what I did to set my mother off that time. Maybe I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom well enough, or maybe I put a dish in the dishwasher without rinsing it. Or maybe she discovered I had worn blue jeans, something she forbade because she considered them a Communist plot.
She dragged me out of my fifth-hour math class, hitting me across the chest and face as she drove home. I tried to lock her out of my room, but she kicked my door down and pulled me out from under the bed. As she pounded me with her fists, I looked her in the eye and didn’t cry; I didn’t fight back. I laid on the floor, staring up at her defiantly, bolstered by a new feeling: hate. I wanted her to die.
I wish I could say finding out she was going to die opened my heart toward her. Instead, my mind wound back to the uncertainty of every morning, of waking up every morning not knowing who would greet me—happy mother, angry mother boiling over with rage, or depressed mother, so deep in a funk she could not get out of bed.
Too much had taken place between us for me to forgive her. Ever.
Reaching Out to Linda
I first called Linda in 1994 because my mom talked about her a lot, and, frankly, I didn’t know who else to call. My mom knew Linda because she was a regular attendee of the Bible study Linda taught on the east side of Milwaukee. Most of my parents’ friends had disappeared, and I desperately needed help caring for my mother until I, or one of my five siblings, all of whom were grown, married, and living in different parts of the country, could get to Milwaukee.
At Linda’s study, my mother met some of her ministry team—former prostitutes now doing inner city-ministry, recovering drug abusers who were now working as chaplains in the state prison system. The kind of people my mother always referred to as “those people.”
“It’s so easy to live the way you’re living and so easy to judge people when you have no interaction with people who aren’t like you,” Linda says.
Linda was meeting with my mom in private, praying with her to forgive my father. My mom realized, as she was getting closer to death, she wanted peace with God. One day, during a difficult prayer session, Linda invited her to come to prison with her.
“Whenever I don’t know what to do, say, or pray anymore with someone, I invite them to prison,” Linda says. Only this prison was in Gatesville, Texas, where Linda conducted marriage seminars, spiritual renewal weekends, and served as spiritual advisor to death row inmates. She regularly took large groups there to minister.
Mom agreed to go with Linda in February 1990, though she was skeptical. It was after my mother’s first visit to prison I began to hear Linda’s name and Karla Faye Tucker’s, as well as her story of redemption.
Karla’s Redemption Story
When Karla was awaiting her trial, a ministry team brought in a puppet show. Karla attended only because she wanted to get out of her cell. One volunteer spoke about her past as a prostitute and drug addict, explaining God had set her free.
Karla said when she heard that testimony, she felt something she had never felt and wanted that same freedom. She stole a Bible from the chapel, not knowing she could take one for free. Back in her cell, she started reading, and for the first time, the full weight of her crimes overwhelmed and broke her.
“But in that jail cell, she heard God saying, ‘I love you, Karla, and I forgive you,’” Linda says.
After that, Karla told the truth at her trial and began praying and seeking forgiveness from her victims’ family members. Before her execution, Karla was said to have a ministry of thousands—other inmates, prison guards, wardens, people on the outside—including my mother.
My mom told me what a “wonderful, spirit-filled woman” Karla was. I met her comments with heavy eye-rolling.
My mom told me what a “wonderful, spirit-filled woman” Karla was. I met her comments with heavy eye-rolling. She’d try to tell me how Karla and so many of the inmates had changed, but I’d cut her off.
“People like that don’t change,” I said. And to make sure she wouldn’t say more about it, I’d call her a “do-gooder”—the ultimate insult in our family. I believed all inmates, whatever their crime, deserved to rot there. As for Karla Faye Tucker, she couldn’t be executed fast enough.
I knew my mom had once shared these views. She organized campaigns for “tough on crime” candidates, and I had spent many hours of my childhood stuffing their literature into thousands of mailboxes from the back of her white station wagon.
I spent much of my late teens and early twenties estranged from my mother. She was abusive, unpredictable and physically violent. I disagreed with much of what she believed and stood for, and she made it very clear she disapproved of many of my life choices. She was never going to change, either.
Our relationship was complicated and fraught with conflict, something Linda understood all too well.
In the Beginning
Linda Strom’s childhood was mayhem.
Her father was an alcoholic and gone a lot. When he was away, Linda felt peace; as soon as he came back, so did the pit in her stomach.
One evening at dinner, when she was ten, her father complained the potatoes were too salty. He picked up his plate, walked to the back door and hurled it outside. Her mom responded by pitching her full plate at him. Chaos ensued as they both started throwing plates at each other.
Linda ran to the closet and grabbed the shotgun.
“I walked back into the kitchen and threatened to kill us all,” Linda says. Her dad walked over and quietly took the gun from her and told her to go to bed.
Sometimes, if her father was insanely out of control, she and her mom would flee into the woods.
“I’d hear him stumbling through the woods, yelling, trying to find us,” she says. In a small town like Jamestown, Pennsylvania, everyone knew about her family.
Her relationship with her mother was difficult, too. Her mother often reminded Linda she didn’t want her: Linda’s father talked her out of an abortion.. Linda never remembered them talking about their wedding or celebrating their marriage in any way.
The best times in Linda’s life were the two weeks every summer she spent with her maternal grandmother. The daily highlight came after supper when she and her grandmother walked to buy Eskimo Pies for ten cents apiece.
“Sometimes I’d daydream that Mom was my stepmom and my real mom was coming to rescue me,” Linda says.
When she was seventeen, Linda got pregnant and married the teenage father of her son, Terry, the day after Christmas, her senior year in high school. She promised Terry he’d never know the pain she experienced. But her marriage was rocky from the start.
Two years later, she was divorced.
The best times in Linda’s life were the two weeks every summer she spent with her maternal grandmother. The daily highlight came after supper when she and her grandmother walked to buy Eskimo Pies for ten cents apiece.
“We’d unwrap those ice cream bars and start walking down the old swamp road,” Linda says. “Grandma would tell me about Jesus, about how much He loved me and how beautiful heaven would be.” Those walks, she says, were some of her happiest childhood memories.
Her grandmother took her to visit shut-ins. Jesus was the chief topic of discussion. Looking back, Linda says, her grandmother was the first person she knew who lived a life of purpose.
“She was so excited when she saw people come to Jesus,” she says. Whenever Linda was with her grandmother, she wanted to grow up to be a teacher or a missionary.
But at the end of every summer, as soon as she stepped back into the chaos of life with her mother and father, that dream disappeared.
A Heart of Stone, Changed
In 1962, to escape the pain of her divorce and her family’s reputation, Linda moved to Minneapolis to take a six-month course that would qualify her to work for an airline. She was twenty years old, unemployed and alone; her in-laws had her son, until she and her ex-husband, both too broke to afford a lawyer, could agree on custody of their son.
Shortly after the move, she met and married Dallas Strom. But like her first marriage, their relationship was turbulent.
One evening, when Dallas went to a baseball game with his friends instead of having dinner with her, Linda got so angry she tossed a pot of hot beans at him as he walked out the door. He simply wiped the beans off his jacket and left.
After he left, she broke down, sobbing, and flipped on the TV. Dr. Billy Graham, America’s most famous evangelist in the middle of the twentieth century, was speaking, his hands outstretched with a big, black, open Bible.
“But to all who received (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,” Graham proclaimed. Then Graham quoted John 3:16 and told his listeners to insert their own names into it. So Linda did.
“For God so loved Linda that He gave His one and only begotten son…,” she spoke.
“God, is that true? Do you really love me? Please love me,” Linda remembers saying. “I was emotionally drained, but for the first time in my life, I experienced God’s love. I felt immersed in love and just sat and took it in.”
As soon as Dallas walked in the door, she told him what had happened. She laughs as she remembers his reply: “It should be a lot safer around here if what you say is true.”
A few months later, Dallas heard Graham speak, then quietly began his own journey into faith.
Soon, part-time ministering in their church turned into Linda and Dallas’s full-time work. As her passion for God continued to grow and she began sharing her story all over the country, a friend told her, “Linda, you need to tell your dad you love him.”
She says God was slowly healing her from past pain. She no longer feared opening up her heart to most people. Everyone except her dad.
She says God was slowly healing her from past pain. She no longer feared opening up her heart to most people. Everyone except her dad. Their conversations never went beyond the superficial. But when he called her one evening in 1970, the Holy Spirit nudged her, she says.
“Dad, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time,” she told him that night. “I really love you, and I’m so thankful you’re my father.”
When they hung up, his voice was shaky. After this call, she never saw him drink again.
A year or two later, her father called Linda out of a meeting.
“He said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that, when I die, I know where I am going,’” she says.
A few months later, her father called again to tell her he was having surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his lung. In surgery, they discovered the cancer had spread so far that nothing could be done.
Their last Christmas together was a “dream come true,” Linda says.
She was in awe of how different—how peaceful—he had become. He had a gift for her: a brightly colored photo album with gold lettering quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.”
“I finally felt so close to him, finally experiencing the father-daughter relationship I had always longed for,” she says. Many people had witnessed dramatic changes in her father’s life. The shame Linda felt as a little girl was slowly abating. She was with him when he passed away in April 1972.
Linda knew she also needed to forgive her mother.
“I knew, as a Christian, I should love her but, to be honest, I dreaded having to spend time with her,” Linda says.
During a silent retreat, Linda says, God prodded her to deal with her bitterness toward her mother for her constant criticism and her reminders that she had not wanted Linda to begin with.
“As a believer, I realized God was there when I was conceived in my mother’s womb and He had used Dad to rescue me,” she says. “I began to see God’s plan for my life and my trust to let Him be in control was growing.”
As she started the process of forgiving her mother, she realized she needed to forgive herself.
“The resentment I felt toward her gradually fell away,” Linda says, “as God dealt with my heart.”
Karla Faye Comes Clean
In 1976, a staff member from the Fox Lake Correctional Facility in Wisconsin attended one of Linda and Dallas’s marriage retreats. Impressed by what he saw, he mentioned it to the warden, who then reached out to the Stroms with a request: could they bring that same sense of connection and hope to the prison, even if just for a day? The warden wanted them to hold a seminar for inmate couples, a rare opportunity in a place built on separation.
That first seminar was so successful, the warden sent a proposal to the state for them to do it monthly. What began in one prison quickly expanded to several other prisons throughout Wisconsin.
During this time, DU extended its outreach into every corner of an inmate’s life. Linda and Dallas saw up close the struggles these couples faced—scrambling for affordable housing, trying to reenter society, seeking jobs after release, and fighting to overcome addictions. They saw families on the brink, unable to afford food, clothing, or school supplies. So they stepped in, offering help where it was needed most.
“We became a church without walls,” Linda recalls.
Before long, members of two local mega-churches joined in, and a group of business leaders, eager to connect with the inner city, formed DU’s first board. They raised the funds to expand and rented a duplex “in the hood,” Linda says, and transformed it into a ministry center.
“That center became a gathering place,” Linda remembers. “During the day, families talked on the porch, children played, children of their families became our family, people were coming to Christ. I loved the pace.”
Ten years later, in 1986, Dallas was invited to do a seminar at one of the women’s units in Gatesville, Texas. When he came home, Linda says he told her, teasingly, “You are never going there ’cause, if you go, you’ll never come home.”
A year later, in 1987, it was Linda’s turn to speak at one of the women’s units in Gatesville.
That first weekend, she kicked things off the first night by sharing her story.. When she gave an invitation for prayer, the altar in front of the chapel was full. As Linda listened to their stories, she thought, Now the chaos and pain in my life make sense.
After the next day’s service, the prison chaplain asked if she wanted to meet the women on death row.
“When you get to the dirt road and you’re all alone, I will not leave you. I will never leave you. I’ll be with you all the way home.”
“I remember him saying to me, ‘I know this has been an intense weekend but, whenever I’m tired or discouraged, this is where I go. These women will encourage you,’” she says.
As Linda approached the housing area for death row inmates, Karla was smiling and waving behind a small mesh window in a steel door. Back then, death row was a prison within a prison, separated by another fence. The officer unlocked the gate and, after the chaplain introduced Linda to the women, Karla asked her to share her story.
Linda says she realized then her story centered around the amazing grace of being pursued by an unrelenting, forgiving Father and then having Him pour His love into her. Karla told her she could relate and began to share her story.
Karla’s household was crazy. With her mother’s blessing, she began using marijuana with her sisters when she was seven or eight and was hooked on heroin by 10.
When she was 14, her mother taught her how to be a call girl. She wanted to please her so much that instead of saying no, she did what she was asked. But deep down, she knew it was wrong.
A few years later, Karla’s mother told her she was the result of an affair.
“She seemed happy about it and acted as if I should be too,” Linda remembered Karla telling her. She didn’t know how to say to her mom, ‘You cheated on my dad and I’m the result and that hurts me. Help me handle this.’”
Karla asked Linda to pray with her to help her forgive her mother. Linda knelt beside Karla and whispered Psalm 27:10 to her: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will lift me up. Lift up your hands, Karla, like a little child. Let the Lord pick you up and hold you safely in His arms. He heals the brokenhearted. His healing love will enable you to forgive.”
Linda then told Karla and the other death row inmates this story: “As a little girl, I’d walk to spend an afternoon with my best friend, Susan. When it was time to go home, Susan would walk me halfway. Quickly, we’d get to the part where I’d have to walk by myself. It was a deserted, tree-lined dirt road with only one lonely house. It was very scary to me.
“But the Lord pointed out how this little story is like the journey of life for all of us. God brought to mind Hebrews 13:5: ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”
Linda told the women God told her to share this: “When you get to the dirt road and you’re all alone, I will not leave you. I will never leave you. I’ll be with you all the way home.”
Karla and the other inmates asked if they could lay hands on her and pray for her ministry. Afterward, alone in her room, Linda felt an overflow of the Lord’s love and soaked in His presence.
Linda couldn’t wait to return and bring others.
“I knew if they could get to prison, they’d never be the same because of the healing presence of Christ moving so powerfully there,” she says.
A few years later, she brought my mother to meet Karla.
Mom Meets a Murderer
Karla and the other women on death row prayed for my mom before she arrived.
“Your mother was intimidating,” Linda says. “She was opinionated—both politically and religiously.
Linda remembers my mom arriving at the front gates of the prison in a limousine, her wrists adorned with multiple gold bracelets. Born and raised in Mexico, my mother’s native language was Spanish. So Linda asked her to interpret for the Hispanic inmates, who repeatedly expressed their freedom and joy in their relationship with Christ. It was obvious to Linda how the women’s words were affecting my mom.
“Her eyes were filled with tears and her voice cracked while she stood in front and interpreted their stories. I remember her saying to me, ‘You set me up,’” Linda recalls, laughing.
On death row, my mom stuck to her opinionated, confrontational style and asked one of the other death row inmates if anything could have prevented her from committing such heinous crimes.
One inmate told my mom about her childhood—how her father sexually abused her after her mother abandoned them; how her mother died in a car accident the year after she disappeared; how she was placed in multiple foster homes and sent to a juvenile center at age ten.
My mom was flabbergasted that this inmate considered her childhood “normal.”
“We could be talking and suddenly she’d be struck with the awareness that her life had been cut short because of choices your dad made.”
As they prepared to leave death row, Linda says Karla knelt beside my mother and prayed for her. She didn’t ask her any questions; she just wanted to extend love to a hurting new friend.
“The walls of your mother’s heart fell, and she said to me, ‘If God could love these women and forgive them their horrible and unspeakable crimes, then he must also love my husband and extend his forgiveness to him, too,’” Linda says.
After that initial visit, Linda had a front-row seat watching my mother change, though she still struggled with rage and anger.
“We could be talking and suddenly she’d be struck with the awareness that her life had been cut short because of choices your dad made,” Linda says. Even so, Linda says, there were breakthroughs.
“She became softer, more open emotionally, and much more accepting of those who were not in her suburban bubble,” Linda says.
I began to notice a subtle shift, as well.
A Mother’s Lasting Gift
In the years leading up to her death, I spent countless hours delving into my mother’s past, uncovering the complexities of her childhood, her absent father, and her strained relationships with her mother and brothers. With each revelation, it became increasingly clear that she had endured her own share of abuse, criticism, and hardship, trapped in a cycle she could never escape. Her life was marked by a profound fear—of solitude, of relinquishing control, of making mistakes, and of how others perceived her.
Even in something as mundane as teaching me to drive, her anxieties showed: she insisted I master the twenty-three-mile stretch from our suburban home to downtown Milwaukee without ever changing lanes, her own apprehension reflected in every lesson.
As I uncovered more, a wellspring of compassion grew within me, inching our relationship slowly, tenderly toward healing.
On her last visit to my home, she asked to read my dad’s journals, given to me after his death in 1990. I reluctantly agreed, though I was afraid she’d shred them, enraged by reading page after page of how much he loved her and his lamentations of what he had done to her and our family.
She adamantly believed he used her, never loved her, and wasn’t remotely sorry for what he had done to her or his family. But after she spent all day reading his journals, she softly told me, “He did love me and he was sorry.”
By then, she was so ravaged by the disease, her frame so frail and rail-thin, it was hard for her to get out of bed. Despite that, a day or two later, she insisted I help her dress so she could come downstairs.
“She told me she had read all of your dad’s journals and confided he was tormented because she couldn’t forgive him, and knew he was going to die without receiving my forgiveness.”
From the couch, she beckoned for me to come sit beside her. I braced for a scolding, but she cupped my face in her hands and whispered, “You are so kind and I love you.”
This may have been the first time she told me she loved me and actually meant it. I saw love for me in her eyes. I felt as if, for the first time, she actually liked me.
A few days later, back in Milwaukee, Linda arrived at my mother’s home. My mother asked her how she could be sure she’d forgiven her husband.
“She told me she had read all of your dad’s journals and confided he was tormented because she couldn’t forgive him, and knew he was going to die without receiving my forgiveness,” Linda recalls my mother saying.
“Before we had communion together, I placed a crucifix in her hand as a visual reminder of what Christ went through for the sins of the world,” Linda says. My mother took the crucifix and put it over her heart and kept it there during communion.
“I knew she was finally at peace,” Linda says.
My First Visit to Prison
At my mom’s funeral, Linda invited me to come to prison with her. I agreed. She knew I was struggling, that my marriage was in trouble, and that I was overeating, drinking, and smoking too much.
“In spite of the trauma, I felt you had a deep hunger for God,” Linda says. As for me, I was just curious to know what had changed my mom and—as a journalist—I was hoping for a good story out of the trip.
The first time I walked through the prison gates, I was hit by the stench. The women in the general population of the prison share communal showers, and their toilets are wide open. A lack of privacy and being treated without dignity are part of the punishment, I suppose.
Some dorms house seventy-two women in one room, with beds lined up and stacked in cubicles. Three fans hanging from the rafters push around hot, stale air that smells like sewage and too many bodies packed into too small a space. The rank smell crawls in and fills every pore.
It’s one thing to pontificate that this is exactly what these types of people deserved, as I had done all my life. It was another thing to see it take place.
As the final maximum-security door clanged shut behind me, I caught sight of Karla sprinting towards me, her arms spread wide. It was my first encounter with inmates, let alone those on death row, and I was very afraid.
“After all your mom’s told me, I feel like I know you,” Karla said.
Karla was in prison, but emotionally, she was completely free. I was walking around on the outside, self-destructing, in a prison of my own making.
When I realized my mom had told Karla about me, my knees buckled and I collapsed to the ground. This was a woman who had so much to be forgiven for and knew she had been. She glowed and radiated a calm assurance. I couldn’t stop staring.
“God always brings you to a place where you’ll finally listen,” Karla said. “And for me it was really, really low. It was pretty low for your mom, too.” Like Karla, my mom had been given a death sentence.
In a puddle of tears, I looked up at Karla and told her, “You’re so lucky.” She was in prison, but emotionally, she was completely free. I was walking around on the outside, self-destructing, in a prison of my own making.
Karla knew she was going to die—even knew the date of her coming death—but cared enough to kneel beside me and pray. As I left, she wiped my tears and said, “Don’t be sad, I know where I’m going. And so did your mom.”
Those are the same words I found written inside the front cover of my mom’s Bible after she passed.
After my first visit, I expected to tell the world that Karla and the rest of the inmates who were claiming they’d “found God” and “changed” were nothing but a bunch of phonies. In fact, one inmate told me becoming a Christian in prison made her life harder, not easier. She said other prisoners and some correction officers made fun and harassed her, watching her every move, hoping to catch her screwing up so they could prove her faith wasn’t real. Seeing the sincerity of their faith took me completely by surprise. It changed my mind about capital punishment, as it had my mom’s.
I wasn’t expecting to be ambushed by the love of God. Neither was my mom.
“What happened on death row is unique, but it can happen any time people are willing to tell the truth, expose their pain and their desperate need for God,” Linda says. “It happens when people are so tired of being in bondage and want to be free.”
I came to the end of myself on the floor of death row. I hadn’t realized how sick and tired I was of being so sick and so tired.
Karla’s Execution
On February 2, 1998, sixteen of the eighteen members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny Karla’s request for clemency; two abstained.
The next day, the day of Karla’s scheduled execution, Linda and a few other volunteers walked from unit to unit from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 pm, bringing Karla’s message of hope.
“Grab onto the hope Jesus gives. Keep your head up. Pray for His joy, the undergirding joy,” Linda remembers telling the inmates.
A few weeks earlier, when Linda visited Karla in the Isolation Unit, the usual bounce in her step was gone. As soon as Karla sat down, she asked Linda, “What are you going to tell them, Linda, if God takes me home on February 3?”
Linda read from the book of Joshua, and told her, “These words affirm what you’ve been saying, Karla. Your life is not in the hands of anyone but God. He’s here, but for more than just being present: He’s here to take over.
Over the next couple of weeks, in interviews on national TV, Karla repeated, “My life is not in Governor [George W.] Bush’s or the Parole Board’s hands. It is in God’s hands. Either God is sovereign or He’s not. And He is!”
Though Linda was Karla’s spiritual advisor, Karla asked her to be in prison comforting other inmates, rather than with her. If her execution was not stayed, Karla wanted her to bring the message of freedom in Christ to every prisoner in every unit in Texas and beyond.
Karla also shared with Linda her vision for setting up separate dorms for women interested in growing their faith, calling them “faith-based dorms.” In those dorms, inmates would learn not only about Christianity, but also about healthy relationships, marriage, parenting, and how to manage money—skills that would help them reenter society.
“Oh, Karla,” Linda remembers thinking, “what an impact your life has made on everyone. I wish you could see how the walls are coming down between guards and prisoners tonight.”
On February 3, Linda knew Karla’s attorneys were doing everything possible to stop the execution, but she also realized 6 p.m. was inevitable.
“My stomach was in a knot but I still felt wrapped in God’s cocoon of grace,” she says.
At 5:30 p.m., Linda stood surrounded by hundreds of inmates in the prison chapel, their voices rising in a heartfelt rendition of “Amazing Grace.” The warden, anxious about potential outbursts, had assigned extra officers to keep watch over the service. But instead of just standing guard, the officers walked among the crowd, gently resting their hands on the shoulders of women who looked especially fragile. Linda noticed several of these women quietly wiping away tears, moved by the unusual tenderness.
“Oh, Karla,” Linda remembers thinking, “what an impact your life has made on everyone. I wish you could see how the walls are coming down between guards and prisoners tonight.”
The next forty-five minutes lasted forever. A moment after she heard the phone ring in the chaplain’s office, he came to the chapel and announced, “At 6:45 p.m., Karla Faye Tucker went home to be with her lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
“As he announced her death, some inmates sobbed, others raised their hands to God,” Linda recalls. “I thought, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you, Father. Thank you that she’s with you. I’m glad it’s finally over. She’s home at last.”
Going on Without Dallas
In 2003, Linda and Dallas Strom decided to move to Texas. Their ministry there was expanding, and Linda had started teaching a bible study in San Antonio. She and Dallas sold their house in Wisconsin, bought a new place in Gatesville, and started packing. A week before their scheduled move, Dallas was diagnosed with aggressive cancer on the floor of his mouth.
Linda says this was the only time she felt like quitting the ministry.
“I was feeling like maybe we’d missed God and that instead of coming to Texas to fulfill the vision, I’d come here to die,” she says. “I couldn’t see myself doing this without my life partner.”
But as Dallas fought for his life, they drew closer.
“I said to him, ‘I think we’re finally ready to do marriage seminars,’” Linda says, laughing.
Before Dallas’s illness, Linda says she was “a doer,” always overscheduled—traveling for speaking engagements, praying with someone, or on the phone with one of their kids. His illness made her ratchet back her schedule. One afternoon, between tests and appointments, they drove the 200 miles to the Gulf of Mexico and danced in the sand.
“And how could I ever keep it to myself when I believe it was you and I know it was you?”
A few years later, Dallas was told he had tumors on both lungs. There was no treatment.
In the wake of that news, at the very prison altar where inmates had knelt countless times before, every person in the chapel rose, hands reaching out toward Dallas. Tears flowed freely as the entire congregation fervently prayed for his healing. Despite their heartfelt pleas, the outcome was grim—Dallas passed away in 2008.
Linda’s faith never wavered. In fact, she says, she felt even closer to God.
“I believe in God, I believe in His Word,” she says. “It’s what I’ve based my life on.”
In fact, she says, God’s love routinely blows her away.
“Why have you revealed yourself and your love to me? And how can I ever return my appreciation and love?” she asks. “And how could I ever keep it to myself when I believe it was you and I know it was you? That’s what causes me to have this passion—the fact that He’s been so good to me.”
Visiting My Mother's Grave
After I met Karla in 1994, I drove to Wimberley, Texas, two hours south, to visit my mom’s grave.
As I approached it, I jammed my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans, eager to share my weekend with her. I told her about meeting Karla and the Hispanic women she had ministered to and how much they all missed her. I told her how hard I cried on death row and how I finally understood what happened to her there.
“Karla told me you were proud of me,” I said. “She told me you bragged about my writing.” Then, like air seeping out of a balloon, I went silent, standing there for fifteen minutes, unsure of what words, if any, could fill the void.
“I hope you’re in a better place,” I said, finally, “and that you’ve finally found some…peace.”
Peace? I don’t think she found peace until the very end, in the hospice. My tears came so suddenly, so violently, that I had to lean against the columbarium.
She never seemed at peace. Her life was marked by an endless dissatisfaction, a constant yearning for something beyond her reach, always discontent with what she had. What happened to her was a tragedy, an injustice she didn’t deserve, no matter the complexities of our relationship. It was so unfair.
I was overwhelmed by the tragedy of her life, mourning all she had lost and never had the chance to experience. Even before her illness, she had lived in deep unhappiness, convinced she had no control over her own fate. I felt like I could weep from morning till night, unable to escape the grief.
I went to meet Karla to better understand my mother. But as I sat there, it hit me—everything she left behind...was a trail of breadcrumbs, leading me back from the edge. It saved my life.
“Why did you let this happen to you?” I cried. “Why did you let everything get so out of control? Why, Mom, why?”
My mother existed but never lived. Did she ever feel joy?
I lifted my head and stared at her name plaque. I wondered if she was looking down on me, imploring me not to make the same mistakes she did, to be sure I retained my own money, my own credit; to not let anyone control me or stay in a bad relationship just because I was afraid of being alone or of what others would think. Was she pleading with me not to waste my life?
A few weeks before she died, she gave me a framed print that read: “Lord, you have given so much. Give me one thing more: a grateful heart.” Was she encouraging me to be grateful in order to feel real, unbridled, staggering, uncontainable joy?
I went to meet Karla to better understand my mother. But as I sat there, it hit me—everything she left behind, that print, those interviews, her journals, the books tucked away in her things, and even Karla herself—was a trail of breadcrumbs, leading me back from the edge. It saved my life.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for being the best mom you knew how to be. I miss you so much and I’m so sorry your life turned out this way, but…”
I stood up and took a step back from her grave.
“This might’ve been your life,” I said. “But thanks to you, it’s not going to be mine.”
The Road Ahead
When looking back on the breadth of her ministry over the last half-century, Linda is reflective.
“I know I didn’t initiate any of it–not the marriage seminars, not the healing seminars, not the ministries in the hood, not the ministries in prisons in America or Africa, not the ministries to help those getting out of prison to live healthier lives that glorify God, nor the book I wrote,” she says. “God is truly unlimited.” She believes God brought it all to her and she simply joined Him where He was already at work.
“I’m God’s human resources department,” she says. “He brought us the people, showing that Discipleship Unlimited was to be a place for His children to be released to use their spiritual gifts.”
She says she has watched in amazement as God brought DU musicians, worship dancers, artists, intercessors, and evangelists. From these, worship teams, curriculum writers, and administrators surfaced.
“People ask me if our ministry is charismatic, evangelical, or mainline, and I say, ‘Yes,’” Linda says. “God just opens His arms and the broken people come flooding in. What binds us together, both in prison and out, is wave after wave of His unending love, waves that keep going from relationship to relationship and from generation to generation.”
Linda can no longer take large groups of people into death row; only two people can go in at a time, now. Death row is also in a different location and the women no longer have the freedom they once had.
On a subsequent visit to Texas, the first time I sat cross-legged on the floor of death row, in front of one of those cells, I realized I was witnessing what happens when a person is made to literally rot to death from boredom, lack of human contact and the absence of hope.
Linda greets each woman with an expression of pure delight and recognition, drinking them in as if she’s been looking forward to seeing them for a hundred years. She looked at me the same way the first time I met her in 1994.
Like so many walking around on the outside in prisons of their own making.
Now, here I am, thirty years later, trailing behind Linda as she makes her way to the Hilltop Unit’s faith-based dorm for a Tuesday evening bible study. As soon as she enters the room, women squeal, clap their hands and leap out of their seats, lining up for their turn to hug her.
Linda greets each woman with an expression of pure delight and recognition, drinking them in as if she’s been looking forward to seeing them for a hundred years. She looked at me the same way the first time I met her in 1994. Her presence had a calming effect on me and made me think: this must be what unconditional love looks and feels like.
She says she’s slowed down, but it’s hard to believe. We’re out the door by 7 a.m., and it’s not until after 9 p.m. that we finally make it back. Each morning, she wakes to a flurry of texts from “my girls”—the women she’s guided through DU, both inside the prison walls and out. Everyone needs something. All day long, her phone pings incessantly, a digital chorus of urgent demands. But Linda? She doesn’t flinch. She’s steady, moving through each request with a calm that seems almost impossible.
I am grateful because I, too, am one of her girls.
My father’s story was a tragedy. So was my mother’s. But my story isn’t ending that way. My marriage healed. My husband and I have raised four amazing sons. We broke the cycle because I had, thankfully, become someone new. And though I’ve never spent a night behind bars, it all began in prison.
About the author
Diana Keough is an award-winning journalist and professor of journalism at the University of Georgia. She is currently working on a multimedia memoir project titled Not From a Nice Family.
Diana, blessings to you in your work. Thanks for telling us about your life and Linda Strom’s. CMc