It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because the
latter may be an impulse of a moment of heat, whereas the former is a cold
and deliberate choice of the heart.
-G e o r g e M a c d o n a l d
When Mariett a Jaeger’s seven-year-old daughter was kidnapped from their
tent during a camping trip in Montana, her initial reaction was one of rage:
I was seething with hate, ravaged with a desire for revenge. “Even if Susie
were brought back alive and well this minute, I could kill that man,” I said
to my husband, and I meant it with every fiber of my being.
Justifiable as her reaction was, Marietta says she soon real-ized that no amount
of anger could bring her daughter back. Not that she was ready to forgive her
daughter’s kidnapper: she told herself that to do that would be to betray her
daughter. Yet deep down inside, she sensed that forgiving him was the only
way she would ever be able to cope with her loss.
It was that sense – that and sheer desperation – that led her to pray not
only for her daughter’s safe return, but for her kidnapper as well. As she prayed
over weeks, and then months, her prayers became easier and more earnest. She
simply had to find the person who had taken away her beloved child. And she
even felt an uncanny desire to talk with him face to face.
Then one night, a year to the minute after her daughter had been abducted,
Marietta received a phone call. It was the kidnapper. Marietta was
afraid – the voice was smug and taunting – but she was also surprised at her
strange but genuine feeling of compassion for the man at the other end of the
line. And she noticed that, as she calmed down, he did too. They talked for
over an hour.
Luckily Marietta was able to record their conversation. Even so it was months
before the FBI finally tracked him down and arrested him, and it was only then
that she knew her daughter would never come home. The investigators had
found the backbone of a small child among the kidnapper’s belongings.
State law offered the death penalty, but Marietta was not out for revenge.
She writes: “By then, I had finally come to learn that true justice is not about
punishment, but restoration and rehabilitation.” Later she requested that her
child’s killer be given an alternative sentence of life imprisonment with psychiatric
counseling. The tormented young man soon committed suicide, but she
never regretted her decision to offer him help. And her efforts at peacemaking
did not end there. Today, she is part of a group that works for reconciliation
between murderers and the families of victims.
Kelly, a long-time acquaintance, lost her fiancé when he left her ten days
before their wedding date. It was the last time she ever saw him. They had been
engaged for more than a year, and although the relationship had occasionally
faltered, she was sure that this time everything was going to work out. She was
deeply in love, and very excited. She had finally graduated from nursing school,
and her wedding dress was nearly finished. Then everything fell apart:
My fiancé revealed that he had been dishonest with me – there were things
in his past that were still an obstacle to our marriage. To make things
worse, he wanted to run away from it all rather than confront it. I was
shattered. I wept for days and was heartbroken for years. I blamed myself
for his dishonesty, and I became bitter.
Thirty years later, Kelly is still single, but she is no longer bitter. Even though
she cannot tell him, she has genuinely and entirely forgiven her fiancé. And
although she sometimes still aches for the marriage that never was and the
love she lost, she has found fulfillment of another kind in helping and serving
other people – the old and the sick, expectant mothers, and disabled children.
Happy and energetic, she is too busy to entertain self-pity, and few, if any, of
her friends know about her past:
Because I am single, I can do things a busy wife and mother could never
do. I can give of myself whenever and wherever I am needed. And I have
cared for and loved more children than I ever could have otherwise. But
before I could do any of this, I had to stop focusing on myself and my loss.
First I had to forgive.
When Julie discovered that her husband, Mike, was molesting their
daughter, she was beside herself with shock and anger. Yet after confronting
him and taking steps to ensure that his behavior would not continue, she
decided to stay with him. For one thing, she wanted to believe him when
he insisted it would never happen again; for another, she could not bear the
thought of asking him to leave. But the family broke up anyway.
I was foundering on the verge of desperation. Mike had become a stranger
to me, and I could no longer live with him in what had become a hell. We
stayed together about a year, struggling to rebuild our relationship – or at
very least keep it from falling any further apart – but it was no use.
Finally I left Mike and moved back to my old hometown, taking the
children with me. I was angry, hurt, hateful, rejected, despairing, outraged,
humiliated – and even this long string of adjectives cannot express what I
felt. A battle raged in my heart.
Part of me wanted to forgive Mike, but another part wanted to lash out
at him in revenge. This was especially so after he divorced me and married
again. Every time I thought of his new wife it rekindled my anger.
This was my battle: deep down, I felt I should forgive Mike, and I genuinely
wanted to. But how should I express my forgiveness practically? And
how could I, when he showed so little remorse?
I didn’t want to gloss over what he had done in any way, and I had let
him know, when I left him, that I could never allow our children to stay
with him again. But aside from that there seemed nothing I could do, other
than acknowledge the fact that our marriage was over for good, and accept
the divorce.
It has not been an easy battle, and it continues still, as I witness the effect
of the abuse and the breakup on our five children. I have also discovered that
forgiveness is not a one-time thing – it must be affirmed again and again.
Sometimes I doubt that I have ever forgiven Mike at all, and I have to battle
through that, too. But I know that, ultimately, the wrongs he did to me
cannot destroy me.