Forgiveness: One Man's Journey Part 2

This article was originally published in the Franklin News-Post.

As I graduated high school and began a career as a firefighter, the sense of shame and worthlessness remained in my thoughts.  I did not have any expectation that I would find anyone who could love me.  I was damaged goods.  I met a woman named Terri Lee Richards on February 20, 1987.  Terri Lee showed an interest in me.  She was beautiful.  I didn’t stand a chance at having a relationship with her.  She was far too pretty, and I, too far gone.


This woman and I did date.  We discussed my ongoing battle with depression.  In spite of this, she entered a relationship with me, and we became engaged.  Just over six months to the day of meeting, we were married.  That was 32 years ago.


The first 22 years of our marriage, this woman walked alongside me as I battled these mental health issues.  It wasn’t pretty. Fortunately, all of my anger and hatred was internalized.  I struggled to understand how she could love me so deeply when I couldn’t even love myself.  Many times, I would try to push her away from me.  In these times, she would hold onto me even tighter. She would remind me that she made her vows with me before her Father in heaven.  She developed a faith that I couldn’t understand.  She was living her faith out right in front of me.


Our marriage was not grounded in biblical principles.  We were unequally yoked for a long time.  My wife continued to develop a deep and abiding faith.  I really did not want any part of it.  I went to church, usually when she was insisting that I go.  I did not want to interact with anyone at church.  People were nice enough.  They showed me they cared, but I knew they wouldn’t be so nice if they knew the real me.  That’s what I believed anyway.


Looking back, I am certain that my wife endured much during this time.  She carried burdens that she was never designed to carry.  She wouldn’t walk away from me though.  There were times when I would wake up in the middle of the night and she would be laying along side me with her hands on my shoulder praying over me and my life.  She loved me.


It would have been easy and justifiable for her to walk away from me. But, she did not.  She pressed in even harder.  I once discovered a shoebox of sealed envelopes that she had collected.  When I looked at the outside of the envelopes, I noticed that each was addressed simply “To God.”  I secretly read one once.  In what I read, I discovered the depth of her love for me and the level of pain that she was bearing for me.  I talked to her about the letters.  She said she would write them episodically when she just needed to give it to God.


My wife had a faith and a relationship with God.  She was living it out in front of me.  She prayed.  She attended church.  She journaled. She studied her bible.  She raised our three girls in the church. She was the spiritual leader of our home.  She endured all of the moments when I would lash out in anger toward myself.  She endured the pain as she witnessed the effects of me trying to terminate my life.  Through it all, she stayed.  She endured.  She loved me.


In the beginning of 2009, I had finally reached that point in my life where it was going to come to an end.  I had imagined it ending very differently than it did.  My wife never quit on me.  She never allowed her faith to wane.  She has told me repeatedly the last few years, “I knew my God was going to deliver you – in His timing.” When I asked which verse spoke truth to her in enduring all that she did during the first 23 years of our marriage, she said, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV).


(to be continued)