Why? Think about what happens when we don’t forgive. For me, rather than forgive and move on, I become preoccupied. I overanalyze the offense and, in turn, find that my thoughts are dominated by how I was hurt. That, in turn, creates a huge distraction in my daily routine. I remember once being so engrossed with unforgiveness that I had forgotten to make dinner. As the dinner hour came and went unnoticed by me, my kids said, “Hey, Mom, are we still having dinner?” I was completely shut down because I hadn’t taken the steps to forgive the person who had hurt me earlier that day.
The writer of the book of Hebrews says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (12:15, NIV). Being quick to forgive, then, prevents bitterness from keeping my heart captive to the wrong that’s been done to me; what’s more, it breaks the bondage of bitterness from being passed to the next generation.
I don’t want my children to be harboring anger at Mr. Watts or Harris Williams because they’ve watched me be destroyed by their actions. To be sure, if I had given in to the trap of having a pity party for myself over the fact that Mr. Watts got out of jail early, my kids would have watched me serving his time in my own self-pity-induced prison. I’d much rather that they see their mother being free in Christ and learn, as I’m continuing to learn, about the power of forgiveness to set us free.
At times, when I was younger and feeling self-pity about my situation, Aunt Dot would help me put my life in perspective. She’d say, “There are a lot of people who have been through worse things than you have, Becky. What’s more, they didn’t necessarily have a supportive family or God to help them through it.” I hadn’t thought of that.
She reminded me, “There are children who have never heard their parents say, ‘I love you.’ Your parents loved you and Daniel so much and said so regularly. More importantly, God loves you, and you know He’ll never leave you. He’s right by your side until you’re reunited with your parents in heaven.” The thought that other kids had gone through worse things than we had awakened compassion in me and got my focus off myself and my pity party. It also opened the doorway to forgiveness.
My aunt Dot went a step further by giving me a practical way of knowing whether I’ve truly forgiven someone from my heart. She said that, if I were to see the offender walking down the street, I should be able to wish him or her well. Forgiveness is a choice, she said, not a feeling. Aunt Dot wasn’t suggesting that I have to have a relationship with such people again or invite them into my life or be their friend.
Some people still have serious issues.
Others have toxic personalities.
For some with unresolved problems, the damaging things in their lives could spill over and hurt me. But that shouldn’t prevent me from wishing them God’s best . . . from a distance if necessary.
No Apology in Heaven
The journey of forgiveness takes an interesting turn in the road with the fourth observation: If I have trouble forgiving, it might be because I’m actually angry at God, not primarily at the person who wronged me. Our inability to forgive others often has to do with our unwillingness to make peace with God over what has happened. Whether or not we’ve stopped long enough to see that this dynamic is at work, subconsciously it’s possible we’re mad at God for not preventing our pain in the first place.
You know, it’s God’s fault that such and such has happened.
For example, God could have stopped a spouse from committing adultery—or from being a lazy bum who’s unwilling to provide for the family. God didn’t intervene, and now we’re mad at Him because our marriage has fallen apart or because the bank has foreclosed on our home.
Perhaps we think God could have stopped a business partner from embezzling the profits or kept a prodigal from leaving home after all of our prayers on her behalf. He didn’t. We’re so filled with anger and disappointment that God didn’t show up at the last minute and answer our prayers, there’s no way we’d ever forgive the business partner or wayward child.
What’s more, it’s tempting to think that God owes us an apology for the betrayal, suffering, insults, hard knocks, or wounds we experience here on earth. When we get to heaven, we’re gonna have it out with Him; we’ll march right up and say, “Why, God, didn’t You heal my mate of cancer?” . . . “Why, God, did You allow my sweet daughter to marry that creep of a guy?” . . . “Why, God, did You blah blah blah?”
I’ve got news for you.
There isn’t an apology coming.
In my case, the devil was in pew number seven, and God knew about him all along. He knew what kind of fellow Mr. Watts was, as well as the severe damage that his actions were having on my daddy’s nervous system. In spite of this knowledge, God didn’t prevent Mr. Watts from carrying out his five-year campaign of terror against us. Had God stopped Mr. Watts in his tracks, Daddy wouldn’t have suffered with paranoia. Perhaps he’d still be alive.
If I’m honest, I must admit that my real issue could be with God, not necessarily with Mr. Watts. I might be tempted to withhold forgiveness because I’m actually mad at God. Thankfully, with the help and teaching of my parents, I learned to keep things in perspective. They helped me see that God is still God even when things don’t make sense. God hasn’t made a mistake yet, so He can be trusted even when my circumstances suggest otherwise.
He is the Potter; I am the clay.
God is still good even when life is hard.
As I mentioned in the last chapter, my need for God trumped my need to be mad at Him. I’ll admit I lost track of the number of times I pounded my fists on the gates of heaven, demanding an explanation from God as to why He permitted what He had allowed. Somewhere in the midst of that ongoing wrestling match, just after my sixteenth birthday, I found the Scripture that says that God is a Father to the fatherless (see Psalm 68:5). I hung on to those words with everything I had.
I came to see that I had to make a choice: I could contend with God, exhausting myself every day in the vain pursuit of securing an apology from Him. Or setting aside that fruitless quest, I could immerse myself in the Scriptures where the Maker of my soul was quick to meet me and give me His peace.
What’s more, God reminded me that He has the long view in mind. I only see through a glass dimly. As 1 Corinthians 13 puts it, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (v. 12, NIV). To paraphrase evangelist and American reformer Hannah Whitall Smith, a great many things in God’s divine providences do not look like goodness. But faith sits down before mysteries such as these and says, “The Lord is good;84 therefore, all that He does must be good no matter how it looks.”
Again, in my case, the long view that God had in mind was the use of our suffering to bring Mr. Watts into a place where he accepted Jesus into his heart. I’d love to believe that one day the same will be true for Harris Williams. Which brings me back to something I mentioned earlier—forgiveness isn’t necessarily a once-for-all action on our part.
Even if we’ve made our peace with God and have set aside that crazy notion that one day He’ll apologize to us in heaven for exercising His sovereign will on earth, forgiving someone might require repeated doses of grace.
Such was the case with Harris.
Say It Isn’t So
Things aren’t always as they seem.
When Harris Williams was sentenced to life in prison, I thought that meant exactly that. He had taken my mother’s life and robbed Daddy of his wife and livelihood. The court said Harris would have to serve those years behind bars for his crime. But in April 2005, out of curiosity, my husband, Kenny, looked up Harris’s status on the Internet. Much to his amazement and to my shock, Harris had been released from prison in 1999 and given five measly years of parole.
Ironically, in 1999 we lived in North Carolina, working just two-and-a-half hours from where Harris was living. Did anyone contact me or my family to inform us that Harris was up for parole? No. Did anyone ask us if we wanted to
be at the parole hearing? No. Did anyone tell us that he was released after serving twenty years and that he would return to the same town he had lived in before he was imprisoned? No!
The news tore open my old wounds.
Where was the justice?
If given a million years, I would never have thought that a man could take someone’s life—and shoot with the intent to kill another person—and then, after a short stint in jail, be walking around as a free man. So many questions ran through my mind when Kenny told me this news. The feelings I had laid to rest regarding the loss of my mother reemerged.
I knew I had a decision to make.
I had to choose to forgive Harris all over again.
The first time I worked through the forgiveness of Harris, I was an innocent child; I had been following the teachings and the example of my parents. Now, however, I would have to forgive Harris on my own, as an adult. It would be harder for me this time. I kept dwelling on how unfair it was that Harris had his freedom back while I was still without my parents.
It bugged me that Harris had served less time than my mother had been gone. He got his life back, while mine would never be the same. I found myself wondering what he was doing with his freedom. Had prison reformed him? Would he return to his drinking and hardened behavior? Or would he make something of his second chance?
I wish I had a second chance with Momma.
I had to let go of my anguish over and over again. I called a friend and shared with her the endless mental gymnastics I was having upon hearing the news that Harris was out. She said, “Becky, you have two choices. You can let these negative thoughts continue running through your mind like a locomotive, robbing you of the God-given peace that you have, or you can stop these thoughts right now dead in their tracks by forgiving him again.”
Did Harris deserve my forgiveness?
That wasn’t for me to decide.
I’m not his judge. God is.
Besides, Jesus commanded me to forgive him. Did that strike me as being unfair? Of course it did. And yet, as I pressed myself into the Scriptures for answers, I was drawn to the story of the criminals who were crucified beside Jesus on the two adjacent crosses. It dawned on me that if I were to ask the families who had been wronged by those convicts if they thought the felons should receive the full penalty of death for their crimes, they’d say, “Absolutely.”
But Luke, the only Gospel writer to give this version of the incident, describes a conversation between one of the criminals and Jesus. During their exchange, the criminal freely confesses that he deserves his death. He makes no excuse. He doesn’t shift blame. He accepts his punishment. That’s when an interesting thing happens.
This condemned man, after asserting the fact that Jesus has done nothing wrong, says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus replies, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43, NIV).
As I reread that familiar passage, I didn’t understand how Jesus would forgive a criminal who had broken the law and hurt people and then allow him to receive the same eternal salvation as someone who had led a godly life. I still don’t know the answer to that mystery, but I do know that God, in His wisdom, knows why He extends the gift of grace to any of us. That’s His business. My part is trusting God and praying for His will to be done in my life.
After the initial shock of hearing that Harris had been released from prison, I spent some time listening to my daddy’s testimony, which he had recorded on a cassette tape before his death. When he got to the part about Harris and the shooting, Daddy’s tone changed; there was an unmistakable compassion ringing clear in his voice as he said, “I forgive the man who shot me and my wife. I know alcohol makes people do things that they would not normally do. My hope for him is that he would be saved.”
His words touched my heart in a deep and profound way, both then and even now as I write these words. My daddy and hero displayed the forgiveness he had modeled so many times before. His words reminded me that I have to walk in forgiveness and that my prayer for Harris should be the same as that of my daddy’s, namely, that Harris would be saved. That Harris, like the criminal on the cross, would know the saving power of Jesus; that nothing he has ever done would be unforgivable to His Creator.
That Jesus loves him and died for him.
Once I prayed that prayer for Harris, the burden and accusation lifted.
I felt free again.
The Heart of the Matter
If I were to boil down what I’ve learned about forgiveness, I’d say it’s ultimately a matter of the condition of my heart. Momma demonstrated that reality with her life. Her goal, her driving purpose every day, was to become more like Jesus, to conform her heart to His heart. He forgave, so she forgave. He loved without placing conditions on His love; she loved others with the same fervor.
He extended grace; she did the same.
Because Momma was teachable and tender toward the things of the Lord, her heart was highly receptive to the things that the Lord wanted to plant there: love, joy, grace, peace, kindness, and forgiveness, among other things. Momma was willing to do anything God asked her to do. And because she kept the garden of her heart free from the weeds of anger and bitterness, those weeds were powerless to choke out her love of people. In turn, she found it easier to forgive those who persecuted her . . . even if it cost Momma her life.
Perhaps the clearest enduring example that Momma’s greatest desire was to align her heart with that of the Lord is represented in a poem she penned in 1966, twelve years before her death. You can almost read between the lines the words of Jesus in John 15:13 (NIV), which says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” She wrote,
Has the meditation of my heart been acceptable to my Lord, or have the words of my mouth caused some soul to go astray?
Have I shed enough tears to wash my Savior’s feet, or is my hair long enough to dry them with?
Have I pointed Him to the world with Judas’s finger, and lost my love for Him because of gold?
Have I forsaken all to follow Him the last mile, or do I prefer the mob that scorned Him?
Could I have watched His blood trickle down the stones without a guilty conscience, or stood in silence from fear of man?
Did I hold the nail they pierced Him with, or did the thorns pain Him with my sins?
Do I, as Peter, deny that I ever knew Him by not confessing Him to my friends?
Do I love my brothers and sisters enough that I would lay down my own life for them, or do I love Him enough to introduce my Savior to a lost world?
Oh Lord, may I be aware daily of Thy sufferings for me, for I am not worthy of Calvary.
I think Momma would agree that I’m the keeper of the door to my heart. To love and forgive others as I’ve been loved and forgiven by Jesus, I have to guard what I allow to take root in my heart. If I open my heart to self-pity, anger, grudges, and unforgiveness, I give the enemy of my soul an invitation into a very expensive home—a home purchased by the blood of Jesus. But as I become fluent in the language of heaven, as I open the door of my heart to Jesus and in His strength forgive others, that’s when I’m set free.
Afterword
After I share the details of my story and how I survived those unbelievable years, I’m often asked, “So how’s your brother, Daniel? Where is he now? And how did he cope with everything?” I’m happy to report that Daniel made it through those storms as I did. He’s been a strength to me when the waves are high and winds are blowing.
I credit much of our “post-traumatic success” to Aunt Dot. When she promised Daddy that if anything happened to him, she’d take care of his children, she became both Momma and Daddy to us. She made a decision to do everything in her power to give us the life that our parents would have wanted us to have and enjoy. I am forever grateful for her love and investment in our lives.
For example, in middle school when Daniel sh
owed an interest in music, Aunt Dot didn’t hesitate to help him get a saxophone. He polished his skills and ultimately played in the band from those early years well into college. He’s so musically inclined he plays the guitar by ear and can read music—just as Momma did. I know Momma would be pleased that her love for music and talent were passed down to her son.
One of Aunt Dot’s goals was to help us get our college degrees. Having pieced together a patchwork of grants, scholarships, and personal savings, we did. I graduated from Missouri State University with a bachelor of science degree in interior design; Daniel graduated from the University of Alabama with a mechanical engineering degree. I know Daddy would have been proud of Daniel for working so diligently to obtain that degree.
I should point out that Daniel is a spitting image of Daddy. He’s six foot three and handsome just like my daddy. He loves the Word of God and cares about people and living out his purpose here on the earth. Even though Daddy is gone now, we have a big part of him here in Daniel. I’m so proud to call him my brother.
What’s more, my brother has felt the tug of ministry on his heart. Loving and serving God has taken him to Scotland and Mexico on mission trips as well as on several homeless-outreach missions. Daniel followed the call of serving others just as my parents did. It has been a blessing to me to have such a friend in my brother and to watch him walk out a life of integrity and service.
The world would have lost a lot had Daniel died the night Mr. Watts blew out two windows in his bedroom, sending glass and wood into his crib. God obviously had—and continues to have—big plans for my brother.
After I got married and Daniel graduated from college, Aunt Dot was left with an empty nest. Through the years she has kept herself busy going on mission trips to India and holding women’s conferences along the Gulf Coast. She continues to work part-time in the legal profession. Aunt Dot still lives in the Nichols family home in Mobile where she finished raising me and Daniel. She loves the fact that Daniel bought a house only a few miles from her. Although I’m living in the Nashville area, we all get together on holidays and other times during the year, visiting and building memories together in our old homeplace. Aunt Dot says that one of her greatest joys in life now is being “Grandma” to Kolby and Katelin.
The Devil in Pew Number Seven Page 24