Growing up as a small boy in Birmingham, the oldest son of a lifetime steelworker and a “full-time” mother, life was not really bad. We had very little money, there were four of us boys, and I think I was nine when our family got its first automobile. We fought over the “good” groceries early in the month, but toward the end of the month until payday when even the Spam was gone, we ate butterbeans and potatoes, and for meat there was something called “beef tripe”. If you don’t know what that is, you don’t want to know! But life then was really not so bad. We never missed air conditioning or television, because we never had them.
Many fond family memories, however, are clouded by a dark shadow that hung over our household. It was never spoken of, but it was there. I didn’t know what it was or what had caused it, until one time when my father drank too much. He began to cry and to scream words that came as an unforgettable shock to my little ears. “I’m going to kill him! I’m going to kill him! Oh God, please let me kill him!” “Kill who, daddy?” I asked. Everything got quiet, my mother pulled me away, and I was left to wonder what this was all about. This kind of thing would happen again occasionally, maybe once or twice a year.
Finally, when I was still a small child, I learned of something that had happened eight years before I was born. My father’s brother Terry, when both of them were teenagers, had been carelessly murdered by a man he didn’t know and never even saw. Terry was eating a sandwich at a lunch counter and was stabbed in the back by a man who was showing off his new knife. Of course my dad’s heart had been broken, and for many years now my sweet, gentle and hard-working father had carried a lot of anger, and when he dreamed, he dreamed of revenge.
As I grew up, we never discussed or even mentioned this awful event. But to my father, it was on his mind every day. He harbored thoughts of committing a crime just to get in prison to get at the man who had taken his brother’s life. He kept it all inside. He learned not to open up, not to show his emotions, not to talk about his pain. Stomach ulcers, caused and aggravated by these suppressed feelings, were a constant problem to him, sometimes even sending him to the hospital. Anger and bitterness were taking a heavy toll on this man I knew as “daddy”. Though I was just a boy, I could see he was hurting a lot, and I was helpless to do anything about it.
Some years passed and things stayed about the same, until one day something happened that turned everything around. It was a rainy Sunday, and we had all gone to church that morning. When we returned home, my father wasn’t with us. It rained heavily all that afternoon, and we stayed inside, but he was gone.
I didn’t know where Dad was or when he would be back. Then, sometime around four o’clock that afternoon, we heard the front door open. It was still raining as my father quietly stepped inside, closed his umbrella, and stood in the doorway. Looking across the room at my mother, he spoke very softly. Tears were in his eyes. A look of peacefulness was on his face. He said, “Kate, I’m free! I’m free!”
What had happened was that my father had spent the afternoon with the church pastor. He had poured out his heart to God, and had finally, after twenty long years, forgiven the man who killed his brother! For over half of his life, my father had let what that man had done rob him of rest, plague him with bitterness, destroy his nerves, and ulcerate his stomach. Now, he had finally put it behind him.
Later he explained to me that, as the pastor had told him, forgiveness doesn’t mean you approve of, nor do you agree with, a wrong that was done. It doesn’t mean that wrong is right. It just means you decide to turn it loose, so it can turn you loose. Dad had finally, simply, let it go. At long last he was free– free to love, to laugh, to enjoy his family, to get on with this wonderful gift that we call life. After that, my father lived thirty more years.
What I am hoping to relate to you in this story is this simple but profound truth: when my father was angry and bitter, he was not hurting the man who killed his brother. He was only hurting himself and those who loved him. And when he forgave, it was HIMSELF that was set free!
The most tragic thing is not what someone says or does to hurt us; it’s what we do to hurt ourselves when we don’t forgive. God knows that we ourselves are often in the wrong and need to be forgiven, so He commands that we forgive others who have wronged us. And He commands this, not just for them, but for US, so WE can be free.
The thought occurs to me that since God has forgiven me for all the wrong that I do, and since my father could forgive the man who had hurt him so much, I should have no problem forgiving anybody who ever hurt me– anybody, any time, anywhere, in any way.
One more thought. If you do forgive (or if you don’t), you don’t have to say it– your children will know.
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