The spirit to forgive

By Bettie Gray Staff Editor

"For so many years my reluctance to forgive was like a darkness inside, a barrier that barred joy and love and so many good things from my life. Forgiveness smashed that barrier and has enabled me to experience the giving and the receiving of love again." These are the words of Debbie Cuevas Morris, who, years after being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a pair of murderers who raped her and repeatedly threatened her life, was able to write of her terror and pain in the hope that her story might help others who have lived through deep emotional trauma.

But it isn't the story of her 30 hours at the hands of escaped criminals Robert Willie and Joseph Vaccaro, or her identity as a survivor of their unspeakable treatment of her, that will be most helpful to readers. Morris's real story, and one she clearly loves to tell, is her discovery of the healing power of forgiveness.

Forgiving the Dead Man Walking (with Gregg Lewis, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), is Morris's story of her bumpy path to healing. It helps answer the question: Why should I forgive? She observes, "...our reluctance to forgive is based on the false assumption that forgiving means giving in or giving up something valuable. We think it might mean granting the other person some reward he or she doesn't deserve. ...But that's not how forgiveness works. By forgiving Robert Willie, I in no way absolved him of his responsibility for what he did. ... he gains nothing from it. However, the refusal to forgive him always meant that I held on to all my Robert Willie-related stuff—my pain, my shame, my self-pity. That's what I gave up in forgiving him. And it wasn't until I did, that real healing could even begin. I was the one who gained."

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