Archive for March, 2012
Dennis
Our 15-year-old son was killed when the car he was riding in was broadsided by a vehicle that ran a stop sign at 55 mph. Our son’s best friend and the mother of our son’s girlfriend were also killed in the crash. The driver of the other vehicle, a young man on his way home from a wedding reception, and his girlfriend who was riding with him, were not injured.
My immediate reaction to the senseless tragedy was to get revenge. I wanted to kill the driver who so carelessly killed our son. I thought about buying a gun to carry out my “make him pay” mentality, especially after a jury somehow found him not guilty of all charges related to the crash.
Although I never purchased a gun, I was tormented for years with the hatred I felt for the man who ended my son’s life so prematurely and my desire for revenge. Those negative emotions turned me into a bitter, resentful and unhappy person. They were, in effect, controlling my life and impacting the failing relationships I had with everyone around me. My life was miserable.
After years of anguish, an astute physician at the VA Hospital helped me discover a weapon much more powerful than a gun–the power of forgiveness. After recognizing the damage my emotional state was causing to my health, he referred me to a counselor who patiently walked me through the steps in Forgiveness is a Choice by Dr. Robert Enright. The path to forgiveness outlined in that book was one of the most difficult journeys I have ever undertaken because it focused first on me and not on the one who initially caused my grief.
By choosing to forgive the offender, I gave up the bitterness and resentment I felt for him that was so negatively impacting only my own life, not his. By forgiving him, I freed myself.
I Forgive My Son’s Killer
NYDailyNews.com. “I forgive my son’s killer,” says Phyllis Ferguson after her son, Demetrius Hewlin, was killed in an Ohio high school. “Until you’ve walked in another person’s shoes, you don’t know what made him come to this point.”
The parents of a teen killed in a shooting at an Ohio high school cafeteria on Monday have forgiven their son’s suspected killer, saying it was “God’s will” that their boy was taken from them in the morning rampage.
Phyllis Ferguson, the mother of Chardon High School shooting victim Demetrius Hewlin, told ABC News that if she had the chance to talk to suspected gunman T.J. Lane, “I would tell him I forgive him because, a lot of times, they don’t know what they’re doing. That’s all I’d say.”
