Wonderstruck (16 page)

Along the way I discovered a facet of faith I never noticed before, the truth that forgiveness is not an action as much as a discipline. A solo acknowledgment of absolution or single act of disentanglement from the situation wasn’t enough. I had to choose to forgive as though I were engaging in a spiritual discipline. Choosing to let go wasn’t a one-time action but a required repetition month after month. Though I mentally chose to forgive, pouty emotions still surfaced with every notice from the IRS, every call from the accountant, and every breaking story of someone else being swindled by yet another crook.

Maybe this is one reason Jesus told Peter to forgive seven times seventy; he knew how many times total forgiveness sometimes takes. For me, somewhere between 372 and 379, I finally lost count and began to let go in the deeper recesses of my heart.

A very tough moment arrived when a group of individuals
embezzled by the payroll company organized a lawsuit against the head of the company. I was invited to join in. I felt torn. I craved justice and retribution but also recognized signing on meant an even greater level of involvement in the case for years to come. More than justice, more than the money, more than anything, I pined for freedom.

The decision over whether or not to become involved in a lawsuit became a watershed moment. When I mailed the notice that our company wasn’t going to join, I crossed the threshold from captivity to liberation. Bitterness faded. Anger fled. Exhaling a sigh of relief, my muscles relaxed as though I’d just climbed off a massage table where all the knots in my neck and shoulders had been worked out. Until that moment, I’d been unaware of the anxiety I’d been harboring for months.

When others hurt us, the wounds they leave behind are sometimes gaping, leaving us breathless in the aftermath; or sometimes the wounds are shallow, and we don’t realize the harm done until months later. However, when we don’t allow the healing power of forgiveness to mend our injuries, we give opportunity for the infection of bitterness to ulcerate. A tiny scratch riddled with bacteria can become a candidate for amputation with enough time. Even the smallest of annoyances, when left unforgiven, can mutate into sources of great pain.

I was so consumed by the hurt and the injustice done to me, I hadn’t noticed my ardor for God slowly slipping away. When I gave permission for enmity to fester, the fervor for
God cooled in my life. But the moment I slid the notice into the mailbox, I recognized the extent of how much I had been enslaved by unforgiveness and how much my lack of forgiveness had numbed my desire for God.

In choosing to forgive, not only was I released from the company and its owners, my heart was restored to God’s. During the process, a sense of wholeness and completeness was ushered into my life. Quite unexpectedly one day, the impulsive desire to slip a silver chain into my pocket faded away.

That’s why the day was so meaningful when Eugene Davidson’s name flashed across my computer screen and I felt nothing. I knew I’d been set free.

As followers of Jesus, we’re commanded to forgive just as we’ve been forgiven. Indeed, Jesus says that God’s pardon of us is dependent on our forgiving others. God calls us to the life of forgiveness. In forgiving the undeserving, I submit myself to God, and Christ’s clemency flows through me.
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Such grace emanates through the life of Christ and his death and resurrection. Hanging on the cross, Jesus asks God to forgive those who scorned and abused and robbed him most. The religious leaders. The Roman cohort. The mass of humanity. Even after the resurrection, his first words to the disciples are those of forgiveness. Jesus sends his followers into the world with forgiveness as one of their central missions.
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The hard truth I had to face was that unforgiveness ranks
among those things for which I most need God’s forgiveness.

Whose name pops up on your computer screen that makes you bristle? Whose picture incites animosity? Who do you sense the Spirit is nudging you to radically forgive?

Thanks to God’s work, I don’t hold bitterness toward Eugene anymore, but I’m working on forgiving other situations and people now. Eugene was only the beginning of my journey.
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Unforgiveness feels like a prison built by the hands of a criminal where we end up incarcerated. Whether robbed, violated, or betrayed, we find ourselves trapped by the bondage of bitterness, the chains of cynicism, and the shackles of sin. With enough time, we can convince ourselves the prisons of our past were built by someone else, but unforgiveness is a cage we construct ourselves. If we choose to stop focusing on our inward pain and instead scan the perimeter, we discover the door to freedom hangs wide open thanks to Christ. The choice is ours.

A
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN
with curly auburn hair limped across the parking lot. I ran to introduce myself. That’s when Karen looked up, winced, and offered a modest hello. With unmistakable determination in her eyes, she made her way toward the coffee shop one painstaking step at a time.

Karen’s face softened as soon as she sat down. Her countenance transformed, and she budded with vitality. “What do you know about my story?” she asked.

“Only bits and pieces I’ve heard from your sister,” I said. “Though I’ve been praying since I heard about your family.”

Karen flashed through a series of memories. A roommate in college had set her up with David on a blind date. Timid as a big-eyed field mouse, he had only said five sentences the entire night. Karen assumed the evening was a disaster, but David called her the next day. The couple’s affections blossomed like a lily. Eighteen
months later, they traveled to Florida to scuba dive together. Awed by the colorful corals and the tropical fish, Karen noticed David swimming away from the reef. Puzzled by his interest in what looked like nothing more than rubble and sand, she watched as he picked up a shard of concrete to write the words “Marry Me” on the ocean floor. Three months later they exchanged vows.

David’s work as a general contractor building hospitals complemented Karen’s work as a nurse. For the next few years, building projects took the young couple around the country before they settled in Colorado to be closer to family.

Karen told me that David was always interested in flying, in part because his brother flew F/A-18 fighter jets. David decided to get his pilot’s license. A few years later he began looking into building an aircraft. David asked Karen if he could build the tail of a plane in the garage, assuring her that the whole project would cost less than a thousand dollars. After completing the tail, David wondered if he could build wings for just a few thousand dollars more. The conversation repeated itself over a five-year period until David had built an airplane from the ground up.

Karen acknowledged the way flying had inspired David to become more extroverted. “David was always extremely quiet and reserved,” Karen recalled. “But something about flying sparked a wild passion in him. He became more sociable. He joined the flying club. He even became more interactive with coworkers and joined the office fantasy football league.”

David took the plane across the country on multiple occasions
to visit family and friends. Weekends were spent working on the plane and teaching their son how to fly. “I always gave him a tough time that he never took me!” Karen said. “We always said that when the kids were out of the house, we’d fly together more.”

Two weeks shy of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the day finally came when their youngest daughter turned sixteen. The couple decided to leave her with her older brother and fly to Texas to attend their nephew’s graduation. The plane took off without incident on a calm blue-sky Colorado morning.

Karen became entranced in her mystery novel until David announced, “Honey! You’ve got to see this.”

The clouds opened as they flew toward them, peeling and splitting to the sides as the aircraft pushed forward. In all their years of flying, neither Karen nor David had ever seen anything like it.

As they neared their destination and the plane approached the runway, Karen sensed David’s excitement in seeing his family. Karen glanced at the plane’s altimeter. Everything was set for a smooth landing; they were even on time for lunch.

Suddenly, something went terribly wrong. For some unknown reason, the plane dropped. One minute she was looking at the runway, and the next the airplane’s wings were brushing the tops of the trees. Karen momentarily lost consciousness.

“No! No! No!” David screamed as the plane banked sharply to the left.

Karen awoke surrounded by wreckage, hanging by the straps of her seat’s safety harness. She remembers pushing herself up so she could breathe. She looked over at her husband, his arms extended across her lap possibly in an effort to protect her. He was covered in blood, and she could see a deep gash on his head.

Karen watched as a team of paramedics cut David from the plane first before pulling the engine mount off her leg to remove her. She leaned down and picked up three parts of her foot and ankle held together by connective tissue. She handed them to the paramedic.

Once secured onto the stretcher, they loaded her onto the helicopter. In shock, Karen didn’t realize the severity of her injuries.

“Does anyone know about David?” she asked the medics on the helicopter.

No one knew.

Wheeled into the emergency room, Karen felt the chilly metal edge of scissors. A nurse cut off her clothes to assess the injuries. Again she asked, “Does anyone know about David?”

No one knew any details.

In preparation for surgery, Karen was wheeled into X-ray. While the technicians debated the best way to take the images without exacerbating her injuries, Karen learned from an untrained student chaplain that David had passed away. The pain was insufferable—not only from losing her husband but also from the open wound exposing the remaining tendons of her ankle.

Tear-stained, blood-soaked, Karen survived with a pelvis smashed in five places, three cracked ribs, a dislocated clavicle, a severely sprained right ankle, and a shredded and crushed left leg.

After a series of surgeries, the doctors gave Karen an agonizing choice: whether or not to attempt to save her foot. The medical professionals explained that the process of rebuilding the limb would require more than two years without any guarantee of success. The procedure involved multiple surgeries with muscle and skin grafts. The painful recovery meant staying in a rehabilitation center with constant medical supervision.

Or she could have the foot removed.

More than anything, Karen wanted to get home to her children. She elected for the amputation. But the surgery didn’t go as well as anticipated. The doctor was unable to close the wound. Karen remained in the hospital three additional weeks before the leg tissue was healthy enough for a skin graft.

After returning home, Karen continued to heal, but when the time came to be fitted with a new leg, the prosthetist noticed the skin graft hadn’t healed properly. The graft was painful to touch and folding in on itself, plus bone spurs had resulted from the traumatic nature of the injury. She needed additional surgery before she could walk again.

The surgeon had to remove six more inches of her leg.

Karen eventually received a prosthetic leg, but the issues continued.

She took another sip of her coffee before glancing down at
her foot and announcing, “We’re still not done!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She pulled up her khaki pant leg to expose the shiny steel metal frame of an artificial limb. “The tissue refuses to heal, so I’m going to have another reconstruction,” she told me. “And while I’m in the hospital, I’m going to have my right ankle, which was also damaged in the crash, repaired. I’ll come out of this surgery without a leg to stand on.”

The joke Karen cracked was meant to be funny, but I was too caught up in the horror to laugh. I inspected the face of someone about to enter another operation that would leave her immobile, a woman whose brow should have been furrowed, her expression marked by anger, her tone rigid and bitter. Instead I observed glitters of levity, gratitude, and joy.

“Considering all you’ve been through and have yet to go through, you seem in good spirits,” I said.

“I’m thankful!” Karen said.

“For what?” I asked.

“For so many things!” she answered, launching into stories of God’s presence and provision.

Shortly after David’s death, she found herself infused with what she could only describe as “liquid love.” She felt the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit supporting and comforting her in the first weeks after the crash. This presence allowed her to have an inner peace that astonished the nurses and helped her
to endure the tremendous pain as well as the physical and emotional challenges she faced.

“I found out hundreds of people I did not even know heard about my story and were praying for me,” she said. “It’s extremely humbling to be the object of so much love and support from fellow Christians.”