Saved by Grace

Layne Mason, and his wife, Marsha.

Celebrate Recovery has become so successful in transforming lives that judges across the state advise parolees to take part as a step toward learning to live on the straight and narrow.

That declaration is the first step required for successful participation in Celebrate Recovery (CR), a 12-step program that puts a directly Christian spin on the formula created by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its sister programs including Narcotics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. Founded 30 years ago by John Baker and internationally renowned pastor Rick Warren (author of the mega-selling Christian self-help book The Purpose Driven Life) of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, CR has grown to have chapters in 20 languages at nearly 37,000 churches worldwide.

“Basically, Celebrate Recovery is a place for anyone with a hurt, habit or hang-up,” says Layne Mason, 56, the minister at First Assembly of God Church who oversees the direction of CR at the church and 11 satellite groups at locations in Arkansas and as farflung as New York City and even Afghanistan. “It’s a Christ-centered program, meaning we declare who our Higher Power is, and make no mistake about it — He’s Jesus Christ.

“We declare that’s who we serve and who gives us the strength and power to do this. What makes it so much different is our groups aren’t just for drugs or alcohol. Only about one out of three people who attend are there for drugs and alcohol. Most are there for some other life issue like codependency,

Inside First NLR is a spacious and comfortable atmosphere.

anger, grief, abuse or sex addiction.”

Mason knows the power of CR personally, since he admits being an addict of “some substance or something” since he was 10 years old, starting with pornography before adding cigarettes, alcohol, sex and finally drugs to his personal list of temptations. His wife of 20 years, Marsha, who’s 52, also battled addiction to drugs and alcohol, and the pair first got together in 1997 in Salt Lake City before moving to the Sin City capital of Las Vegas after they became friends during their prior marriages.

“We didn’t do anything right. We weren’t believers in Jesus, and there was verbal and physical abuse because of my alcoholism,” Layne recalls. “I was arrested in January 2003, and that started my recovery journey. I went back to an AA sponsor I’d had been exposed to before, but it was eight months into sobriety before we were introduced to CR, and miracles really started to happen.”

Even after joining CR and becoming leaders of the program in their Las Vegas church, the Mason marriage was struggling. Their relationship had deteriorated so badly amid their mutual drug use and physical abuse toward each other that it took two years for Marsha to fully trust that Layne was truly determined to change for good.

The Masons moved to Little Rock 13 years ago when Layne took the job of internet sales manager for the state of Arkansas for AT&T. He had started attending Bible college before arriving, and he took eight years to earn his degree, as the couple planted their roots at First NLR. They eventually started CR at the church about seven and a half years ago and have seen it flourish ever since.

“We had about 325 people attend each week before COVID, and we’re now at about

half that but growing our numbers back each week,” Layne says. “We also have a program for children called Celebration Place, which is ‘pre-covery’ for children because they’re learning the same things as adults, only in an age-appropriate way. We also have child care, and we used to have a CR teens program that we want to start again.”

Each week at First NLR — which is the core location for all Central Arkansas CR activities — there is a catch-all gathering in which attendees sing praise and worship music before listening to a short speech by Layne and a testimony from a person who’s experienced success in their recovery. Each of the 12 steps of AA is read aloud, but with a corresponding verse from scripture that spotlights how each point is tied to Christian ideology. The crowd then disperses into small groups that are broken down by the various types of issues people face — drugs, alcohol and codependency are the main ones — and separated by genders.

“The separating of the sexes leads to more transparency in sharing because there’s another level of openness when you’re called to share with your own sex,” Marsha says. “When people are in mixed groups, there is posturing to impress or a desire to keep certain things secret. It’s very rare that a woman would admit to being a sex addict in front of a male, and vice versa. And you certainly wouldn’t want to put them all together in the same group, because that’s a recipe for disaster.” Celebrate Recovery has become so successful

Each of the 12 steps of AA is read aloud, but with a corresponding verse from scripture that spotlights how each point is tied to Christian ideology.

“Basically, Celebrate Recovery is a place for anyone with a hurt, habit or hang-up.”

in transforming lives that judges across the state advise parolees to take part as a step toward learning to live on the straight and narrow. Each week, several buses pick up men and women at halfway houses across the city and bring them to the meetings and step studies (which are held on Thursday nights) and the specially designated CR church services on Saturday nights.

Layne also leads a prison ministry called CR Inside that offers 10-week stepstudy programs to inmates at Pulaski County Jail, as well as state prisons at Pine Bluff, Malvern and Wrightsville. He takes particular pride in the transformations he sees among prisoners in the program.

And that brings us full circle to this night, where well over 100 people nail their problems to the cross, believing that they could put them to death once and for all and experience the joy that comes from faith in the resurrection of Christ.

“That was the cool part about CR — the big difference comes in things like nailing your problems to the cross,” Layne says. “Recovery is fun because you’re doing it together as a forever family. A lot of our people don’t have healthy normal families they come from.

“Here, we have a healthy family of people who are willing to admit they’re not OK, and they come to this place where they’re vulnerable and honest — not there because they have to be, but because they want to have that different life dynamic. We’re healthy because we admit we have problems, and secondly, we know a program that’s gonna help us maneuver through those problems, and we know the source of all hope is Jesus. You combine all that seriously, and if you work this program hard, it works 100 percent of the time.”

When considering a facility for short-term rehabilitation services, families want the best they can get for their loved ones, and they have to look no further than Superior Health and Rehab in Conway.

Our rehabilitation gym offers state-of-the art rehab and features interactive equipment to enable our licensed therapists to create a comprehensive therapy program designed to get our residents back to their prior functional level, regain their self-reliance and facilitate a return to home as quickly as possible.

This side of SEVEN

– By Jason Pederson

When the VOW BREAKS

Arkansans marry. A LOT. And Arkansans divorce. A LOT.

In 2019, only wedding destination states Nevada and Hawaii had higher marriage rates than Arkansas (8.4 marriages per 1,000 people).

And in 2019, Arkansas trailed only Nevada for the highest divorce rate (4 per 1,000 people).

And in the state’s history, perhaps no one participated in more marriages and divorces than Melba Burks.

Burks is buried in Saline County’s Fairplay Cemetery. Before her death in 2011, Melba showed her tombstone to her brother, Stanley. On it, she chose to list all 12 of her husbands (one she married twice).

“I asked her which one she loved the most?” recalls the now 82-year-old Stanley Burks.

Melba refused to answer his question. But Stanley thinks he knows why. “She didn’t marry out of love,” he says. “She married out of convenience.”

Melba was a proud (and disabled) veteran who served in both Korea and Vietnam. She claimed to be the first female military police officer in the United States. After her service, she worked as a long-haul trucker, a Realtor and a political activist (she ran unsuccessfully for both sheriff and mayor in north Arkansas). During one of those campaigns, she told voters she was a four-time cancer survivor and that she had been “shot, stabbed and died twice before being revived.” She also said, “I don’t take nothin’ from nobody.”

Her 13 failed marriages didn’t come up on the campaign trail.

“Mainly it’s because she wanted to be the boss all the time,” her brother says. “She was a tomboy from the start. She chewed tobacco as a young girl and liked it. Her language was pretty rough. She was physically strong. You never would want her to get a hold of ya. Honestly … she was a little crazy.”

Melba was the product of divorce. Her parents, Velva and Luther, split when she was a teen. Stanley says he and his father moved to California. Melba wanted to go with them, but she and their other two siblings stayed in Arkansas with their mom.

Stanley says life was hard for them.

In his 2014 book Labor’s Loves Lost, sociologist Andrew Cherlin posits that the breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children. Instability and complexity at home, Cherlin argues, impact school performance, thereby reducing future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. “There has never been such a split between marriage-based families on the top rungs of the social ladder and cohabitation and single-parent-based families on the middle and bottom rungs,” Cherlin writes.

The Institute for Family Studies backs

Melba Burks’ gravestone, which she had list all of her husbands.

The football field at Mountain Pine.

Marriage is not designed to be convenient, temporary, disposable or replaceable.

this up, making this finding after examining the 2018 census data: “For Americans in the top-third income bracket, 64 percent are in an intact marriage, meaning they have only married once and are still in their first marriage. In contrast, only 24 percent of Americans in the lower-third income bracket are in an intact marriage.”

In other words, one way to help avoid poverty and produce healthier and happier children is to get married and stay married, hopefully happily married. There are no guarantees, but statistics indicate it helps.

Twenty years ago, the Arkansas Legislature passed the “Covenant Marriage Act.” It was designed to strengthen the institution of marriage by making it harder to get divorced. From 2002-2019, there were 544,168 marriage licenses issued. Only 2,932 couples chose to enter a “covenant” marriage (just over one-half of 1 percent).

It is difficult to legislate a greater esteem or respect for the institution of marriage.

Which brings me to one of the most blatant abuses of the institution that I ever covered as a reporter.

Back in 2017, retired Rev. John Vise married a pair of 17-year-olds at the Garland County courthouse in the middle of a school day. He didn’t ask why they were getting married. “I’m not the moral compass as far as who is getting married, or why,” Vise told me.

In this case, the “why” had little to do with love and a lot to do with football.

In January 2017, a star athlete transferred from Lake Hamilton to Mountain Pine. Mountain Pine Schools Superintendent Bobby Applegate wanted to get this new student eligible to play sports as quickly as possible.

In Arkansas when a student moves from one district to another, they cannot immediately play sports. Generally, the student-athlete must sit out a year before eligibility is restored.

There are exceptions.

If the new student marries and moves in with a person already living in the district, that is one of those exceptions. And one day before the second game of the season for the 0-1 Mountain Pine Red Devils, Rev. Vise united two teenagers in holy matrimony.

And in that second game, the newly eligible player scored five touchdowns in a victory. The Red Devils would win seven games in a row and make the playoffs for the first time since 2010. The season was a success.

And the marriage? It lasted an unhappy 20 months.

Here is what the young bride had to say in a May 2019 divorce filing: “I was only 17 when we got married. We lived together for two months after our marriage, and then we lived with our parents. When we were together, he was verbally abusive on a regular basis. He was physically abusive once, and that’s when I filed for divorce.”

What did the young groom have to say? “I’m alright with this divorce.”

Which seems to echo the sentiment of much of the nation — alright with divorce.

The oft-cited statistic that “50 percent of all marriages end in divorce” is not true and most likely never was true. A more accurate assessment puts the divorce rate at 39 or 40 percent. Still not great, but much better than 50-50.

Marriage is not for everyone. Jesus taught about God’s plan for marriage and about the oneness and stability that can be found in marriage, but Jesus Himself never married. While being single was his preferred status, the apostle Paul taught that if a widow or someone single cannot control themselves then it was better to marry than to “burn with passion.” (1 Corinthians 7-9)

Maybe Melba burned with passion, so she married. And married. And married. Her tombstone reflects variety but not commitment. It also reflects a lifelong search for someone, or something, better.

Maybe those two Garland County teens started out in love and really tried to make it work. But it seems more likely that their marriage was a sham — a temporary solution to a temporary problem, concocted by the adults in their lives to exploit a loophole.

Marriage is not designed to be convenient, temporary, disposable or replaceable.

And when so much of society doesn’t follow the design, we should not be surprised by the results.

For two decades, Jason Pederson served as KATV-Channel 7’s “Seven On Your Side” reporter. Now on the other “side” of his award-winning time on the news, he leads the Office of the Ombudsman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services. His perspective-filled and thought-provoking column, “This Side of Seven,” publishes exclusively in AY About You magazine monthly. JASON PEDERSON

MURDER MYSTERY:

Murder at Horseshoe Lake, Part 1 – By Janie Jones

The murder of Martha McKay at Horseshoe Lake in March 2020 was like a tragic case of déjà vu. Her mother and cousin had been slain there in 1996, and the same person killed all three victims. The unusual circumstances drew national attention despite the other pressing news of the day: the COVID-19 pandemic. The history of this lethal legacy is the history of a family, blessed and cursed — a family Tennessee Williams might have conjured up.

The McKays are descendants of Robert Bogardus Snowden, who was a colonel in the Civil War. After the war ended, Snowden returned to his home in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was a successful landowner and businessman. He married Anne Brinkley, whose father established the Memphis-to-Little Rock railroad, which went through what is now Brinkley in eastern Arkansas. The town was named after him in 1872. Robert Bogardus and Anne lived in an elegant mansion, known as Annesdale. On the National Register of Historic Places since 1980, Annesdale is in the Italian Villa architectural style. It is now used as a venue for weddings and other events. Coincidentally, a crew doing repair work at Annesdale in 2016 found some old bones inside a boarded-up fireplace grate. Due to the age of the bones, the discovery was considered a curiosity instead of a crime.

The pair had five children, including Robert Brinkley Snowden, who followed in his father’s footsteps and became a land developer. Then came Robert Bogardus Snowden II. Upon his return from serving in World War l, Snowden II bought 1,000 acres of land and established a cotton plantation at Horseshoe Lake near Hughes in Crittenden County. He and his wife, Grace, built a lovely but modest house with a screened-in porch that looked out over the lake. In 1949, the structure was transformed into a 6,000-square-foot, three-story showplace with a grand staircase, marble floors and crystal chandelier. Grace patterned it after a Louisiana antebellum home she had admired. Snowden II and Grace had a son, also named Robert, and three daughters: Sara (better known as Sally), Edith and Dorothy, who was nicknamed “Happy.” All had blissful memories of Snowden House to take with them when they grew up and moved away. By 1982, Sally was divorced from her second husband, actor David McKay, and her children were out of the nest, so when her father died, it was Sally who returned to Horseshoe Lake. She was a certified public accountant and well-suited for the job of overseeing the family business that included, among other things, 30 lake-front cabins. Her own home was near Snowden House, which was leased to a couple who turned it into a bed and breakfast. McKay also had an antique shop.

Joseph Lee Baker was Sally’s nephew. He taught English at Hughes High School but was better known as a primo blues musician and vocalist. Baker lived on

Sally Snowden McKay. Joseph Lee Baker.