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CHAPTER 1

DESPERATE FOR FORGIVENESS

There's an eight-year-old boy perched high in a magnolia tree. It's ten o'clock at night, and the evening is dark as molasses, so no one can see him — but he can see the people below just fine. He watches as his dad throws two men out the front door of the run-down juke joint, beer hall, and gambling den that his father operates for its crooked owner. The two men land in a rutted gravel parking lot, then quickly get up and begin hitting each other hard with their fists. After the one on the left knocks back the one on the right about five feet with a roundhouse punch to the cheek, the slugged man stumbles to his feet, pulls a knife out of his pants pocket, stabs the other, and runs wildly into the dark.

That was young Al Robertson up in that tree, and it was his pre–Duck Dynasty dad, Phil Robertson, throwing the two drunken fighters out of the joint. Phil had previously worked as a schoolteacher and coach, but he got tired of that. So he'd walked away from a decent job, determined to find a better way to make a living. That's how he wound up at a dump of a beer hall just south of El Dorado, Arkansas. The rest of the Robertson family — Al's mom, Kay, and his two younger brothers, Jase and Willie — faithfully followed along. The family of five lived in a dilapidated one-room trailer located across the parking lot from the bar.

The Robertsons were too poor to afford a TV, so young Al's nightly entertainment consisted of what happened at his father's place of employment. He saw it all: live fistfights and stabbings, prostitutes negotiating fees for their services, and wrecks of human beings who would drink until they couldn't drink anymore and then stumble outside and pass out.

A few years later, Phil would have another tired-of-that episode. This time he was sick and tired of Kay and his three boys. (Their fourth son, Jep, wasn't born yet.) Phil didn't want to see any of them anymore, so Kay took her sons to Louisiana, where she found a job.

Little Girl Lost

There's a seven-year-old girl shivering in her bed at her grandmother's house. That's where she stays when her parents go off to work each morning. Right now she's wishing with all her might that she could disappear, because she hears footsteps in the hallway and the turning of a squeaky door handle.

She knows who it is. It's a family member who will soon be touching her where she shouldn't be touched. She wants to scream out, but he warned that he would hurt her if she ever told a soul about what happens, so she shivers and tries to disappear into the bed.

That was little Lisa, who would grow up and marry Al. This hopeless scene would repeat itself over and over again for the next seven years.

Her grandmother should have known something was wrong, but she never seemed to notice. Her mother should have known something was wrong, but she was too preoccupied with her own problems and the problems of Lisa's older, wilder sister. Overall, her mother gave little thought to the things happening in Lisa's life unless they impacted her life personally.

The older women in her life weren't there to help her, so Lisa would cry herself to sleep, blaming herself for this man's sins and dreaming that, someday, a prince would arrive to rescue her.

Two Broken People

Those two broken, abused, and neglected children married each other about a decade after these experiences, and those two people are us. People say that every person brings psychological and emotional baggage into marriage. We brought big, overflowing bags full of ugliness, pain, and bitterness into our relationship. We thought we could simply forget all about these bad memories and hurts, but you know how that goes. Every time we faced a minor issue or disagreement, those bags would open up and their nasty contents would pour out into our marriage.

We were two injured people, striking out blindly and hurting each other even more in an effort to overcome or ignore the things inside us that were tearing us up. The pain we inflicted on each other wasn't always intentional, but it doesn't have to be intentional to cause harm. Not only were we blind to the pain we were inflicting on each other, we were also ignorant of the one solution that could heal such hurts.

Now fast-forward a few decades.

We're older and wiser now, we're more happily married than we ever imagined possible, and we're no longer haunted by a closet full of unopened baggage. We realized that as long as we tried to ignore our brokenness and pain, it would sneak up on us in harmful ways when we weren't watching, so we went through a process of dealing with these historic hurts. While our marriage isn't perfect, it has been miraculously transformed. Once war-torn, our union is now loving and beautiful. Our love is deeper than it has ever been, and we're grateful for the blessings of two grown children and six grandchildren (so far).

The fact that two people who couldn't even manage their own marriage are now leading marriage retreats for other couples still amazes us. We love helping the many men and women who are just as damaged, confused, and conflict-prone as we were.

Once during one of our retreats, someone asked us, "Say, how did the two of you learn about helping married people?"

We looked at each other and responded with the first thing that came to our minds: "Forgiveness!"

It's true. If it weren't for forgiveness, the two of us probably wouldn't be married to each other, not after all we've been through. We might not even be alive.

Our love story is colored with seeming opposites: brokenness and restoration, deceit and redemption, betrayal and reconciliation.

Forgiveness: What It Is and What It Isn't

Two children are playing together when one grabs the other's toy. Hopefully an adult will intervene, return the stolen toy, and restore order so the two kids can go back to playing again like nothing ever happened. That's an example of a simple form of forgiveness that many of us practice in small ways every day: letting bygones be bygones.

That's not the kind of forgiveness we're talking about in this book. We're talking about desperate forgiveness, the end-of-your-rope, face-in-the-dirt, empty-handed realization that you experience when you discover you cannot survive another day without giving and receiving mercy.

We're talking about the kind of desperate forgiveness people reach for and cling to when they've been completely shattered, exhausted, and drained of all pride.

We're talking about the kind of desperate forgiveness people seek when the sins they've committed in private become public, shining a bright light on dark places.

We're talking about the kind of desperate forgiveness that each and every one of us needs to reconcile our broken relationships with God and all the people in our lives: our wives, our husbands, our children, our relatives, our neighbors, our coworkers, and even our political opponents.

We're talking about the most powerful resource in the world for experiencing changed lives, revitalized marriages, rekindled relationships, and hope and healing for tomorrow. Take a look around our world and you can see we desperately need this kind of forgiveness today. Whether you look into people's lives, or whether you look at the divisiveness and partisan anger of today's culture, you can see people torn apart by bitterness, division, and a widespread lack of forgiveness.

Thankfully, in our relationship, we reached the point of desperate forgiveness. Both of us were so desperate for our love to survive that we had to learn to forgive each other.

Have you ever been in that dark, desperate place where receiving forgiveness is your only answer? Or have you ever found yourself on the other side of the argument, desperately needing to offer forgiveness to another person who has hurt you?

If so, we want to invite you to accompany the two of us on a journey of forgiveness. We are glad to serve as your guides because we know the territory well. We stand before you as two desperate sinners who have experienced forgiveness through Christ and have regularly practiced offering and receiving forgiveness with each other.

Forgiveness is not only what we believe. It's how we live. In fact, we've discovered it's the only way we can live.

Forgive and Forget?

When you mention the word forgiveness, many people immediately think of commercials they've seen on TV promoting auto insurance that offers "accident forgiveness." In a sense, that's the same kind of insurance God is offering us: life accident forgiveness.

When others hear the word forgiveness, they think about a Christian teaching they may have heard. "Jesus says we should forgive each other," they say. "You know, turn the other cheek and all that."

Forgiveness is right there in the Lord's Prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, and that millions of us pray every Sunday at church: "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12).

Sounds like a simple, painless transaction. But truly forgiving someone who has hurt you is actually one of the most difficult and costly decisions a person can make. This forgiveness was won for us by Christ's sacrificial death on the cross. In fact, as Jesus was dying on that cross He prayed for God to forgive the very men and women who had persecuted and crucified Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

But does forgiving mean forgetting? Does it wipe the slate clean? Not necessarily. Desperate forgiveness doesn't mean you forget the pain that others have caused you. It means you release the pain and the terrible hold it has on you so you will not be eaten up by bitterness and anger.

As the Dixie Chicks sang in their angry hit song, "Not Ready to Make Nice":

Forgive, sounds good Forget, I'm not sure I could.

Let's think back to two stories that showed the world how powerful forgiveness can be.

One morning in 2006, a man and his wife walked their two daughters to the school bus stop, then came back home. After the wife left the house, the man drove to a nearby school where he killed five young girls before killing himself. The shooting at the West Nickel Mines School, a humble one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, outraged the nation. But the community's response may have shocked this country's people even more.

Police were still on scene investigating the tragedy when an Amish man warned his neighbors against holding bitterness against the killer. "We must not think evil of this man," he said. Within a few hours of the shooting, one Amish person visited the shooter's home to comfort his wife and children. Some later attended the killer's funeral. The Amish community even created a charitable fund for his family.

Two years later, a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into an evening Bible study at Charleston's Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic church that played a significant role in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He started shooting, and then he walked out of the church six minutes later, leaving nine people dead, including the senior pastor.

Within days, many from the church forgave the killer. "It took me a while," said one seventy-year-old member of the congregation. "I just felt that I've been praying 'forgive those who trespass against us' ... for years, and now it was time to re-examine those words and practice it."

The people of Nickel Mines and Charleston may never forget the pain, heartache, and tragedy of these devastating shootings, but they've chosen how they're going to respond. By forgiving cold-blooded killers, they've decided they won't be held hostage by the fear, anger, and sorrow that, over time, could eventually turn into resentment, bitterness, and a thirst for vengeance.

That's how forgiveness can heal our hurts, turn victims into victors, and transform bitterness into blessings.

Better Than the Alternatives

Forgiving others can be difficult and painful, but it's a whole lot better than the alternative. When forgiveness is refused or rejected, people can find themselves spiraling out of control, rapidly descending into darkness and depression.

Look at Judas, one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. He was part of the inner circle. He watched Jesus forgive sinners, dine with unsavory characters, heal the broken, and tend the sick. He saw all the greatness, goodness, and grace of Jesus, but he still refused to believe that such forgiveness could be extended to him. Stuck in a whirlwind of despair, Judas was in a terrible, desperate place. His desperation revealed itself when he took his own life.

Desperation is a terrible place to wind up. Today, many people walk through life caught in the same kind of internal storm Judas suffered. They don't experience forgiveness and become locked in bitterness. They're drowning in a spiral of shame, guilt, and fear.

Isn't that the way the devil works? He wants to close us off from God's grace, making us desperate and alone. Satan doesn't want us to relinquish our hold upon the hurt and pain that consume our existence. He wants us to ignore our emotional baggage rather than clean it out and heal our hearts.

Both of us know how sin makes people desperate — desperate to find the next thing that will alleviate the guilt, or the next relationship that will take our minds off our loneliness, or the next diversion that will give us a moment of pleasure. Some people are so desperate to find relief that they will try just about anything, as long as that relief doesn't require them to shine the light of truth upon what they know is wrong in their own lives.

Some people turn their backs on forgiveness and try to address their pain and sorrow through revenge and vengeance, like the movie heroes in Braveheart, Gladiator, or many of the early Clint Eastwood films. But no matter how many times you imagine saying, "Make my day," getting even will not heal your heart. Unforgiveness only leads to unfulfillment and loneliness.

Even so, people with closed hearts usually need to be desperate before they open themselves to God's grace. Alan witnessed this while serving as a pastor for more than twenty-five years. He knows you can't push forgiveness on someone who doesn't want it or think they need it. He tried every tool in the preacher's toolbox. He taught his people about forgiveness. He reminded them about what they were taught. He pleaded with them to act upon what he had taught them. He even tried to guilt-trip them by convicting them of their sin and their need for forgiveness. But for people with closed hearts, it typically takes real desperation before they're able to see they need forgiveness themselves.

Stories of Redemption

In this book, we'll share stories of desperate forgiveness, beginning with our own. You may know some of our story from Duck Dynasty or from our previous book, A New Season. You may know about the Robertson family. All of us have lived very public lives in recent years, and we have not been silent about our problems, our insufficiencies, our opinions, or our faith. Our family is an open book.

But there's so much more to our story. You'll learn more about our battles and victories in the pages that follow. We want to be authentic and approachable because we truly believe that when lives are changed and marriages are saved, future generations are affected. Destinies are altered through desperate forgiveness.

We'll also tell you stories about men, women, and families we know who found themselves at the end of their ropes, desperate for a way out of the darkness. These people are just like the two of us — they reached the point of desperation and then found reconciliation on the other side of forgiveness.

Amid all these stories we will share powerful biblical accounts of forgiveness both given and received. As the prophet Micah tells us, God absolutely loves forgiving us when we ask Him:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
MICAH 7:18-19

Not all the stories you read in the following pages have happy endings. Some end with despair or death because the subjects closed the door on forgiveness and God's grace. Without forgiveness, desperate people tend to sink deeper into a place of despair, depression, and destruction, at least until they seek relief and restoration.

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Excerpted from "Desperate Forgiveness"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Al and Lisa Robertson.
Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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