FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness a powerful but underrated force

By Sunday Pearson
Sacramento District


Forgiveness is a powerful but underrated and often overlooked force in our lives.

Not long ago, I heard about forgiveness for a murder, which helped me find forgiveness for a murder in my own life.


In July 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. That evening, two disgruntled Ku Klux Klan members decided that they needed to kill a black person. Any black person.

A 19-year-old black man named Mike Donald happened to be walking along a street in their town, and the two KKK members randomly chose him to be their victim. They drove Mike to a remote area and killed him. That evening, they drove back into town and hung Mike's body from a tree.

Mike's mother sat through the entire trial of the two killers. Each day, the prosecutor meticulously depicted to her and the jury the details of her son's murder and the despicable nature of the two men who perpetrated the crime.

One accused man who turned informant took the witness stand. He was overcome with emotion as he addressed his victim's mother. It is reported that the courtroom was silent as he began to sob and tell Mike's mother how sorry he was for what he had done to her son.

It is said that you could have heard a pin drop as Mike's mother shifted back in her chair, looked first downward, then back up into the face of her son's killer. In a soft yet clearly audible voice she said, "I forgave you a long time ago."

The attorney who was interviewed on television later said there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom. Although it has been almost 40 years since Mike's mother spoke those words, their impact is undiminished.

Most of us can relate to anger more easily than we can to forgiveness. Let's face it…forgiveness sounds like a great idea until we are the one who has to actually do it! Forgiveness is powerful, but it is very hard to do because it goes against the grain of our human behavior. And it is scary because it opens the door to unsettling feelings that require painful soul-searching.

A friend of mine once said, "Forgiveness is not something we do for other people. We do it for ourselves. We are saying, 'I'm not going to let this eat me alive. I'm going to get well and move on.'"

He's right. Forgiveness is a choice that cannot be forced or coerced. But by clinging to the past, we scarcely exist in the present.

Inspired by the story of Mike's mother, about three years ago I tried to locate the man who shot and killed my brother, a policeman in Oakland, Calif., a tough waterfront industrial town across the bay from San Francisco. I wanted to tell my brother's killer that I had long ago forgiven him, too.

In the beginning, it would have been inconceivable that I could ever forgive the man whose heinous act caused such tremendous pain to my family. But I now realize that I had become complacent in my hatred for him. The anger and resentment I felt had somehow assimilated itself into my everyday life, and I was only vaguely aware of its insidious nature.

Letting go of that won't erase what happened or the enormous grief the killer caused me. But doing so allowed me to emotionally disconnect myself from him and to give up the hostility that had built up inside of me.

My wrath, although understandable, had become a cancer. It was polluting my life and my relationships with others. That awareness helped me to let my anger go. And to my surprise, forgiving my brother's killer left me feeling stronger and less vulnerable.

I did not surrender my desire for justice, mind you! What I did was consciously decide in my heart to release myself from my disturbing emotional entanglements to the killer. Had I not done that, I would have continued to inflict upon myself (and upon others) the pain the killer created when he took my brother's life.

I found that it takes no extra strength to forgive, only courage. The energy I used to hold onto the resentment was the same amount of energy it took to release it.

Who knows? Maybe one day I will meet the man who took my brother's life. But if I don't, I'm OK with that. It is no longer necessary, if forgiveness is something we do for ourselves and not for the other person.

What is more important is that I unleashed the power of forgiveness, freed myself from the poisonous influence of anger and hatred, and that, in turn, strengthened my capacity to love others.

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.)

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