Two months before I graduated from high school, I came home from a date about midnight on a Saturday, and I heard my mother crying. I remember running into her bedroom yelling, “Mom what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” She sat up in bed and said, “Son, your father has broken my heart.” And then she reached down and put her arms around me and pulled me to her and said, “Son, I have lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you graduate, then I just want to die.” Let me tell you that was hard to hear as a kid.
Do you know what happened? Do you know the irony? Two months later I graduated from high school. Sixty one days later, and the next Friday, the 13th, my mother died. Don’t tell me you cannot die of a broken heart. My mother did. My father broke it, and I hated him for it. After I made that decision to place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, to accept His forgiveness, a love--I can only say the love of God through Jesus Christ-- came into my life and took that hatred and turned it upside down. I found myself looking my father right in the eyes and saying, “Dad, I love you. I love you.” Well, that shook me up, because I didn’t want to love my dad. Even as a brand new Christian, I chose, by an act of my will, to hate my father. Do you know why? I believe it is because I didn’t want to give up that satisfaction or the joy of hating the man who had killed my mother and destroyed my family.
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