Debbie Morris offers a thought – ” Forgiveness
is a beautiful word – until you are the one who has to forgive,”
Morris should know.
As a 16-year-old Louisiana youth, she was brutally raped by
Robert Lee Willie, the prisoner whose life was chronicled in the 1995 movie,
“Dead Man Walking.”
Debbie Morris offers a thought – ” Forgiveness
is a beautiful word – until you are the one who has to forgive,”
Morris should know.
As a 16-year-old Louisiana youth, she was brutally raped by
Robert Lee Willie, the prisoner whose life was chronicled in the 1995 movie,
“Dead Man Walking.”
Years later, Morris would chronicle her own story in her own
book – “Forgiving the Dead Man Walking.”
Earlier this month, she shared that story of anger, pain and
forgiveness during the Southern Baptist Womans Missionary Union annual
meeting in St. Louis.
“Forgiveness is a difficult thing to do sometimes,”
acknowledged Morris, who lives with her family in Mandeville. “It takes
courage. It takes faith.”
Morriss story begins when she and her teenage boyfriend,
Mark, were kidnapped and taken to a remote area in south Alabama and viciously
attacked.
Morris recounted her thoughts when she was raped for the first
time, while her boyfriend was confined in the trunk of their car.
“I would survive, no matter what I have to endure,”
she recalled thinking.
In her testimony, Morris acknowledged that resolve had to have
come from the God she had accepted two years previously.
She also recalled wanting to remember every single detail,
such as the look of her captors faces, so she could later help convict
her attackers.
“I was so filled with hate and with the need for revenge,”
she said.
While she was repeatedly raped during a 24-hour period, her
boyfriend was taken into the woods, hung on a tree, shot in the head, stabbed
in the side, slashed across the neck and left for dead.
Miraculously, he survived and now is married to another woman.
Morris said she remembers thinking in the midst of the ongoing
attacks: “Where is God right now – the God that I love? Does he even
exist?”
That answer would come much later for Morris – when Willie
was seated in the courtroom answering for his actions.
“Why did you let her go?” Willie was asked at the
time.
“I know it was a stupid thing to do,” he responded
in court. “But there was something different about her. When I looked into
her eyes, I saw love.”
Morris said she could not believe her ears. Love? Disgust,
contempt, hatred, but surely not love, she said.
“When I thought that I had been abandoned by God, he really
was there,” she told Womans Missionary Union participants.
What Willie saw was not her love but the love of Jesus Christ
in her, who was looking back at him, she emphasized.
After long, grueling trials, Willie and his partner were sentenced
for numerous crimes. Willie was given the death penalty, which meant the electric
chair at the time.
“Even with the revenge that I felt, (the punishment) was
a heavy burden for a 16-year-old to carry into life,” Morris said.
Though justice had been served, and it was time to go on with
life as it was before, Morris said she felt bitter and scared and her whole
world was turned upside down.
“It didnt matter to me anymore whether I was a cheerleader
or homecoming queen,” she said. “It didnt matter if I even passed.”
Fearing the state psychiatric hospital in a nearby city, Morris
said she kept her depressed feelings to herself, which eventually led her to
drop out of high school, where she once had been an honor student.
She turned to alcohol, like her parents, even after promising
earlier in her life that she never would.
When the time came for justice to be carried out through Willies
execution, Morris said she finally realized all she wanted was peace.
“I had held on to this hope that once justice was served,
I would be healed (and experience peace),” she said.
“(But) Theres no justice in this world. There is
no justice in our justice system. We answer to a much higher justice system.”
Morris said she realized that the people, alcohol and other
things she had tried did not give her that peace.
Instead, she asked God to reveal himself to her again, to help
her forgive the man who had done these terrible things to her.
The morning after Willie was executed, Morris admitted that
she was not healed immediately, but she did feel a burden lifted from her.
Knowing that forgiveness was a process, Morris set about to
learn about complete forgiveness.
“I learned that I had turned my back on the Lord, and
I needed his forgiveness,” she explained recently.
“Forgiveness is something I did for me,” she said.
“Robert Lee Willie did not benefit that night because of my forgiveness.
He died in the electric chair that night. But I got new life when I forgave.”
Morris recounted how later, one night when she was nursing
her newborn son, she began to think of Willies mother, who had aided and
abetted her son in escaping from prison on a prior conviction and who had lied
about Morris on the witness stand.
“I began to realize that there was a time when Roberts
mother held her newborn son in her arms, dreaming of the life ahead for him,”
Morris said. “For a moment, I felt a bond with her. For the first time,
I understood a love so strong that we might do something wrong to protect that
love.
“God softened my heart toward this mother,” Morris
recounted.
Later, when Morris saw the movie “Dead Man Walking,”
she saw the scene when Willies mother visited her son for the last time
before his execution. She had to say goodbye without wrapping her arms around
her child one more time.
“Our hearts must go out to these women,” Morris insisted,
tearfully.
She related how she later had a burning desire to go to her
rapists mother, to ask her for forgiveness for holding a grudge against
her.
However, she found that the elder Willie had died from cancer.
“I realized, again that I was the one who needed forgiveness,”
she said, noting that forgiveness has different outcomes. “God may not
always include restoration, but forgiveness is for everyone.”
Though she had understood that intellectually, Morris said
it was not until she went on television to share her story that she realized
there was still a part of her that felt Willie did not deserve to be in heaven.
She said she has since understood that Gods love is boundless
and his mercies are unfailing for all people. Though there is no evidence Willie
ever repented, Morris said if he did accept Jesus Christ as his savior in the
final minutes or seconds of his life, she will welcome him in heaven, where
she knows she will be.
“As a Christian, I realized that I was required to forgive,”
she said, before challenging others to examine their own lives.
“Look at the co-worker who received the promotion you
deserved or your husband deserved,” she urged persons.
“Look at the committee member who always thinks their
ideas are the best. Even in our churches, look at the catty gossiping that takes
place. Think about the people who have children on the same sports teams as
your children. Think about your husbands ex-girlfriends or new wife.
“God is very clear about how we should treat these difficult
people,” Morris said, drawing from Matthew 5.
“We are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute
us.”
Morris acknowledged that following the command is not easy.
“It takes courage to love those who seem unlovable,”
she concluded. “It takes faith to forgive in our humanness those we declare
as unforgivable.
“Will you accept the forgiveness of someone else or forgive someone today?”
(BP)