Forgiving when things seem unforgivable

MICHELE MARR

She turned on her car radio and heard a man say, “I don’t care what

his state of mind was. It doesn’t move me.”

She knew without being told it was Juan Manuel Alvarez the man was

talking about. The week before, Alvarez had parked his Jeep Cherokee

on some railroad tracks outside Glendale, and then abandoned it. The

ensuing train derailment killed 11 people in a train wreck and

seriously injured scores more.

The early-morning coverage of the aftermath reminded her of the

morning of Sept. 11, 2001, although this catastrophe was scarcely on

the same scale as the one that had brought two skyscrapers, a big

chunk of the Pentagon and four jetliners down. It was more contained

than even the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid.

This wreck seemed so improbable, nearly impossible: three trains

derailed together side by side. Later on, someone would describe it

as “a perfect storm of an accident.”

As she did on Sept. 11, she tried to picture the husbands and

wives, the sons and daughters, the fathers and mothers and the

friends of the injured, missing and dead. Did they know? Were they

still on their way to work or school or, just after 6 a.m., still in

the shower?

Her heart hurt for them, suffering as they would, one of her worst

fears, to kiss her husband good-bye one morning as he left for work

then to have him never return.

Yet, though she barely dared to think it, she also grieved for

Juan Manuel Alvarez. When she looked at his photo, she couldn’t help

but see someone else she knew well: herself.

She could picture herself in Alvarez’s shoes. Years ago, when she

was nearly the same age as Alvarez, she lived in a dark, shadowy

place where no one, it seemed, could reach her.

Doctors called it depression; she was sure it was an annex of

hell.

It was not unlike the prison J.K. Rowling wrote about in her book,

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” In Azkaban, creatures

known as dementors sucked the souls out of prisoners through their

mouths, leaving them with nothing but emptiness and relentless

despair.

She knew well that depression, when severe enough, could feel like

being tortured to death by your own mind. And depression could be

only too eager to tell you death is the only way out.

Perhaps that’s what it had told Alvarez that morning. What he had

done was now all too horribly clear to him, she was sure, as well as

to everyone else but she was just as sure he couldn’t imagine how he

was capable of it.

What she could imagine was this: In the disconnected, desperate,

irrational realm of depression where she once lived, she could have

done something equally horrible.

I know she could have because I am she.

What I didn’t yet know during those insufferable years, is what

the Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God is faithful; he will not

let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are

tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up

under it.”

Perhaps, though he apparently owned a Bible, Alvarez didn’t know

that either. Or maybe, in the night of depression, he managed to lose

his way.

For me, the way out was to trust God, who I’d had many doubts

about; a God I found to be not only faithful but also forgiving, even

of the things we believe are unforgivable. Forgiveness is as much his

nature as he intends it to be ours.

Jesus taught, in the prayer known as the Lord’s Prayer, this

petition, “Forgive us for the wrong things we have done, the way we

forgive those who have done wrong things to us.”

In the words that follow the prayer in Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus made

it clear that our forgiving others is not optional.

“If you forgive others for the wrong things they have done, then

your Father in heaven will forgive you,” he said. “But if you do not

forgive others, your Father will not forgive you for the wrong things

you have done.”

It can be the hardest thing in the world to do; it’s taken me

years to forgive some of the wrongs I felt were done to me. And those

wrongs did not include the murder of someone I love.

I have learned, though, as tough as forgiving others can get, it’s

not only what makes life bearable; it’s the essence of what makes it

joyful.

And that moves me.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach.

She can be reached at [email protected].