Across our lives, roads and relationships diverge and intersect like paths through a forest. But through every twist and turn, the fingerprints of God can be traced. His mysteries move us toward His purposes, as He writes His story on the pages of our lives.

The individual stories of Nancy and Robert Hyde are marked by pain and brokenness. But God's plan to bring them together is a masterpiece of His grace, hope, and healing.

Nancy's Story

Life could not have started much better for Nancy Hyde. Born into a Christian family, she grew up with an awareness of God's presence and love for her. Her great-grandfather and her grandfather were preachers who trained at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. And her parents' own whirlwind romance was grounded in faith.

"In our family, we had such a rich history of people who followed the Lord and were not afraid to step out in faith," Nancy recalled. "That was a heritage we got from my mom and dad. So, I got saved when I was about eight and grew up in church. Most of my closest friends were in the youth group, and I went to Louisiana College, where my dad worked. 

"I wasn't doing everything right, but that's where my heart was. I just wanted to live for the Lord and to learn more about what that meant."

As she grew up, Nancy was sure about the love of her family and her God. But she also had a sense that she would marry into the ministry. So, she spoke to a minister at her church about the ups and downs of life on a church staff.

"I was holding out for a doctor, but I knew I would probably marry a minister," she said with a smile. "So, I wanted to know the good and the bad of it. I don't remember everything he told me, but he just shared what it was like for spouses and family stuff. I knew I wasn't going into church ministry myself, but I had a sense that my life would revolve around it.

Nancy's sense of God's movement in her life proved accurate. While living in Kansas, she met "Michael" (not his real name), a young man called to her local church's staff. Since Nancy was one of the few young single women in the congregation, some of the older ladies set about the task of matchmaking. Before long, Nancy and Michael came to believe that God was bringing them together.

"He came to the church in January, and things moved fast," she said. "We were married in August of that year. I was 28 at the time. A year later, we had our first daughter, and we moved to Arkansas where he took a position as a pastor."

Over 17 years of marriage, Nancy and Michael had two more children and began ministering in Louisiana. He also started working on a degree from NOBTS through the school's distance education program. On the outside, things seemed to be fine. But internally, Nancy knew something was wrong.

"I knew being a pastor's wife was my calling, but the relationship was really confusing," she said. "There was never anything cruel, but he was so distant, and I was miserable. And there was nothing obvious to say, "I have to leave." I saw how he treated everyone else and wondered how he could be so apathetic toward me. I was dealing with a lot of pain and just trying to hold things together."

In 2019, the clouds growing around Nancy and Michael's marriage transformed into a devastating storm. As the family got ready for a 10-day vacation, Nancy prayed that their time away would be the spark that provided healing and reconnection. But the doorbell announced the arrival of visitors who would change their lives forever. An hour before they were scheduled to leave, case workers from the Department of Child and Family Services came to their door.

At first, Nancy assumed they wanted to update her on a case involving a woman she was helping, a new mother suffering from postpartum depression. But the true purpose of their visit was much worse and initiated a personal nightmare for Nancy and her family.

"They handed me a piece of paper, and I saw my daughter's name on it," she said. "Then, I heard the words 'sexual abuse.' Immediately, my mind started running through a catalog of all the people she'd been around. Finally, I heard the two most inexplicable words I've ever heard in my life: 'her father.' That's how I found out."

Nancy's daughter, who was 11 at the time, had shared the abuse with a Vacation Bible School leader who also was a nurse. That volunteer contacted Child and Family Services. The day of the case workers' visit, the girl confirmed that Michael had been sexually abusing her for two years. Michael later confessed to the abuse.

While Nancy felt the motherly urge to support and comfort her daughter, her own walls had crashed in around her. She had sensed something was wrong, but she had never imagined anything close to what was becoming her reality. And while words were hard to come by in those early days, she brought her pain to God.

"I felt an urgency to prayer, but I couldn't begin to know what to pray for," she said. "At some point, what came out was 'count it all joy.' The Lord assured me of His presence. I knew there was no way over it, under it, or around it. I would have to go through it."

As the news of Michael's crime spread, Nancy began to sense God leading her to reach out to NOBTS. Michael had been expelled from his second degree program and banned from setting foot on seminary property, but Nancy wanted to share what it felt like from the spouse's side. She wasn't angry. But she thought the seminary could do better in ministering to victims of similar crimes in the future.

Within 30 minutes, she got a call from Dr. Jamie Dew, who had just started his tenure as the president of NOBTS. He shared the seminary's legal position, but he also asked about the family's current situation and about their next steps. 

"On paper, we were homeless and destitute, and I had no plan except waiting for God to reveal His plan," Nancy explained. "Dr. Dew asked if he could share our situation with some people, and he said that we should reach out to him if we needed anything. But to be honest, I felt like that was the last time I would hear from Jamie Dew."

Nancy soon learned that wasn't the case. A few days later, she did hear back from Dr. Dew, who invited her family to move to New Orleans and start a new life with the seminary's help. It was an offer that truly began the healing process.

"What Jamie and the seminary did for me was incredible," she confessed. "This was exactly where we needed to be. It didn't make it automatically fun. Some of our hardest days were still ahead of us, but we had a family. I knew it was where I needed to be."

Robert's Story

As Robert Hyde looks back on the family legacy passed to him, he remembers nothing of the stability and faith that characterized Nancy's early life. Instead, he speaks about chaos and violence—and his own self-destructive anger toward God. 

By the time Robert had turned six, his "unstable" mother was on her third marriage and had two sons. He also was living with a "highly abusive" stepfather. While arguments and physical altercations were not uncommon in their Baton Rouge house, the final one proved devastating. 

"He knocked my mom to the ground, and she told me to grab my little brother and run, so that's what I did," said Robert. "We ran to my grandfather's house around the corner. Within a few minutes, there was a phone call from a neighbor who said he heard a gunshot."

The last time Robert and his brother saw their mom, she was being put into an ambulance. She died soon afterward, leaving the boys orphaned. His brother eventually moved in with his biological father, while Robert stayed with his grandfather. That's also when his anger at God began to take root and grow.  

"I began to experience frustration and anger," he said. "I sensed unfairness, and I blamed God more than anyone else. I shook my fist at the sky and didn't want anything to do with some ridiculous notion of a good God that could let these things happen."

In a sense, Robert's background gave him a heart for justice and defending the weak. He just didn't know how to channel his feelings in a positive way. All he had known was violence, so that's how he responded. When he saw bullies picking on other kids at school, he beat them up. While his grades were "decent," his pattern of fighting left him moving from school to school. This only added to his instability and frustration.

"By the time I was 13 or 14, I started becoming more self-destructive," Robert recalled. "I had no concern for the consequences of my behavior. I began to smoke weed and do some other drugs. I started to sneak drinks. By 15, I was selling drugs so I could keep doing drugs. And I began running around with girls.

"My life was not church. I didn't know anybody who went to church. I never saw a Bible. I'd hear people say, 'Jesus,' but it was never any concern of mine."

Before long, Robert began having run-ins with the law. While he described his offenses as "nothing serious," he now sees how his path was leading him into darkness. He tried to join the army to find some stability and make a positive contribution, but he was turned away because of a felony conviction on his record. He walked out of that recruiting office feeling hopeless, and the rejection and anger drove him further into a life of drugs and violence. 

"When I was 28, I heard about a guy who had abused a woman, so I beat him up," he said. "But this time I went too far because I took his life. When I turned myself in to the state police, they booked me for second degree murder. Eventually, it was dropped to manslaughter, but I still ended up getting a 35-year sentence that I started in 2001."

Once the judge lowered the gavel, Robert knew his life would never be the same, but he didn't yet know that God would be the Author of that change. Spending months in isolation as he awaited sentencing in a parish jail, he began to rethink his relationship with the Lord. His heart began to soften, and he began asking Jesus to show up if He was real.

"The Red Sea didn't part, and bolts of lightning didn't come out of the sky, but I just had this overwhelming sense of Someone with me," he said. "I remember looking to see if the mattress next to me was dented, like someone was sitting beside me. It wasn't, but I knew that the Lord had heard me."

About that time, Robert traded in the collection of romance books he had been reading for a raggedy Bible. The first time he opened God's Word; it fell to Proverbs 5. He immediately connected with the first two words of the chapter: "My son." For the first time in his 28 years on earth, Robert Hyde felt like he had a father in his life. But he also realized that being a son carried responsibilities. That's when he asked God to forgive him and to take control of his life. It was a transformational moment, and he's never looked back.

While Robert didn't understand all he read, he continued to pore over the Scriptures and learn more about his new relationship with God. After he began serving his sentence, he started leading Bible studies with other inmates. In his first 11 years, he spent time in six different prisons and learned four different trades. He also spent time exploring a variety of religious systems, most of which did not satisfy his spiritual hunger. It was only when he began plugging in to the writings of the Protestant Reformation that the pieces began to fall into place. And he began to sense a call toward ministry.

Robert began praying for more clarity and found it through a custom car he and some other inmates built as part of a vocational tech project. The car won first place in a prestigious car show, which drew the attention of the local media and the warden. That gave Robert a chance to request a transfer to Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in America. While Angola once had a reputation as one of the nation's most notorious prisons, it also had become fertile ground for God's work through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. A transfer was Robert's ticket to a seminary education.

"When I got to Angola, I walked into the office of Dr. John Robson, who was the director of the seminary program at that time," Robert recalled. "I told him who I was, what I was doing here, and he did another thing that changed my life. He stuck his hand out and said, 'Robert, I look forward to being your friend.' 

"I never had anything like that said to me before. I always knew other people were valuable as my friend, but I had never considered that I might be seen as a person of value by others. My esteem, my view of myself, shifted right there. I realized that we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made."

Robert made the most of his decade in Angola. Through NOBTS, he earned his associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, and a master's degree. He also served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church, believed to be the first fully recognized Southern Baptist church inside a penitentiary. In time, he discovered that a change in the laws could lower his remaining sentence from more than a decade to less than a year.

Within nine months, in March 2022, Robert Hyde left Angola and walked into a new life. He soon began serving as seminary extension director at the state penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi, and working on a D.Min. through NOBTS. 

Their Story

God has used New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to make a difference in Nancy's life and Robert's life individually. But neither of them could imagine the way He would use the seminary to bring them together as a couple. It turned out to be another amazing twist in the roads their lives were taking.

While sorting out his D.Min. schedule, an administrative assistant encouraged Robert to call a "friend" whose ex-husband was in prison. The woman on the other end of the line was Nancy, and their initial phone conversation lasted more than four hours.

"We haven't stopped talking since," Robert said with a laugh.

During that first conversation, when Nancy told Robert about Michael, a light went on in his mind. Before his release from Angola, Robert had crossed paths with Michael and protected him from some dangerous elements inside the prison. He was able to assure Nancy—and, eventually, her kids—that Michael was doing all right.

Over time, both Nancy and Robert recognized that God was bringing them together for a lifetime. So, on a beach in Gulfport, they exchanged rings and were united as husband and wife. Now, they are both serving at Parchman, and Robert will be finishing his D.Min. later this year. And NOBTS continues to play an active role in their lives together.

Meanwhile, God continues to provide healing, and He continues to write a story that only He could craft.