A Journey To Comfort And Joy

How District Judge Rebecca Eggers-Gryder Copes With Death Of Son

By Yogi Collins

It’s easy to forget that we all have pain and challenges that we don’t let others see, personal struggles we might hesitate to share. The temptation to put on facades so we seem “normal” or “good enough” can be especially tempting for Christians, as if a certain appearance makes us holier and more blessed. But if we Christians can’t reach for a higher standard of authenticity, why should anyone else? 

District Judge Rebecca Eggers-Gryder, known as Becca to her friends, has seen her share of grief and challenges, but this strong woman makes herself vulnerable in an effort to point to God’s faithfulness and bring Him glory.

Growing Up

Growing up in Boone, Becca knew at 16 years old that she wanted to be a lawyer. Her father was a well-known attorney who started the law firm now known as Eggers, Eggers, Eggers, and Eggers. He taught Becca and her brothers and sister about the law from an early age, regularly discussing legal strategies at the dinner table.

“I wrote my first contract when I was nine,” she beams. “It was a contract between my brother and sister and me to look after his kitten and, in return, our kittens got to stay underneath the pool house. It was notarized and everything, but my brother got a little upset because I handed him a piece of paper and said, ‘Here, sign this and I’ll fill it in later.’”

After graduating from Appalachian State University with a Political Science degree and Campbell University with her law degree, Becca moved back to Boone and married Kelvin Gryder from Blowing Rock who she dated as a senior in high school when his sister fixed them up. They will be married 32 years this fall. “My folks were a little upset that I didn’t marry a local boy,” she teases.

Ahead of her time, Becca chose to hyphenate her maiden and married names because, she points out, “I was proud of being an Eggers, but I was also proud of being a Gryder, so I got the best of both worlds on that. But it makes for a very long name to sign.”

A New Calling

While her professional accomplishments are evidence to the strong, bold woman she is, Becca has experienced brokenness that has strengthened her journey with Christ, a journey that really took hold in high school. Though Becca grew up going to Grace Lutheran Church down the street from her home, it was during a visit to her high school boyfriend’s Baptist church where God and the Holy Spirit really got her attention. “I had never been to a church where they yelled at you,” she says with a chuckle. “It made quite an impression on me. It got my attention! That’s about the time the Living Bible came out, and it was really understandable for me. That’s when I felt ‘it.’”

“It.” God making Himself known to her via the Holy Spirit. The same way He did when, after working in the family practice for 29 years, Becca felt the call to be a judge. When the opportunity arose, she knew she had to throw her hat into the ring. “I had never really understood the concept of being under a conviction until it happened to me and then I knew. It was one of those things where I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I had to make up my mind fairly quickly, and once I decided to leave the family firm and seek out this appointment as a judge, I had a peace about it.”

But Becca wasn’t appointed the first time she tried for the judgeship which, of course, made her wonder if she had misinterpreted the calling or somehow got her wires crossed. “In hindsight,” she explains, “it’s all in God’s timing, and it wasn’t the time. I can look back and there were various things I needed to finish first. It was also a test of my faithfulness. When the good Lord tells you that you have to do something, you have to do it. I knew I had so much experience in the very courts where I now preside, and I could really help children. So when I put in the second time, I really felt it was where I was supposed to be because I could help more kids this way.”

Sworn in as District Court Judge in the 24th District, this mother of two sons—Travis and Daniel—began serving in February 2015, knowing she was there to help children. “God had been equipping me the whole time I practiced. I had a lot of difficult cases and hard cases make hard law,” she recalls. “I had such an incredible skill set. I’m not bragging on myself, I just had it. I had a heart for children and I knew as a judge that I would be in a position to look after these children when their parents sometimes are struggling to do that.”

Tragedy Strikes

Meanwhile, music had been an outlet and pleasure for Becca since her brother Stacy taught her three chords on the guitar and gave her a Mel Bay guitar book so she could play with him as he played banjo. After her brother died of a heart attack in 1990, Becca didn’t think she would ever play again but playing music and writing songs turned out to be a great comfort and source of joy for her. And it would be a comfort for her when tragedy struck again in 2015.  

Just three months after she was sworn in, her son Travis was killed a mile away from Becca and Kelvin’s house when he was headed there for a visit. He was just ten days shy of his twenty-second birthday. 

In an instant, her professional triumphs felt small as she grappled with the weight of this devastating loss in her personal life. 

“Frankly, your experiences are part of what makes you who you are,” Becca points out. “For a year after my son died, I kept a ‘Comfort and Joy’ journal because you have to look for it. Every day I needed to find three things that gave me comfort or gave me joy. I just had to journal about the whole situation and I wrote down Travis and Daniel stories. You know, while I had one son that died, I had to be very present for Daniel because he lost a brother. And though I miss [Travis] every day, I also have peace because I know where he is.”

Choose Joy

Though the grief is incredibly deep and will always be painful, Becca makes a point of choosing to be joyful and praise God despite the pain. “It’s all about you,” she insists, “and you can choose to be joyful, you can choose to look for the comfort. Or you can choose to be bitter and nasty and unhappy. I choose joy. Every time I feel that overwhelming grief, I praise God that I got to be Travis’ mother. That’s how I keep from wallowing in the despair. It’s not that I’m so great or that I’m such a great Christian. That’s just how I cope because God is good all the time. It’s like Dr. Seuss said: ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.’ That’s become my motto.”   

As Becca continues on her journey, she recognizes how God uses her experiences to bring Him glory via her job. “I really feel like everything I’ve been through makes me a better judge, makes me a better Christian, and it makes me a better Child of God. He’ll give you grace, all you have to do is ask for it. He’ll get you through these tough times. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun, but He’ll get you through it. And He’ll do it well because you give all the glory to God.”

This article was originally written for the Winter 2018 Edition of The Journey magazine.