Life has a funny way of exposing the past and offering up the truth. I’ve always wanted to hold my pain and secrets tight to my chest. I would have been satisfied taking my hurts to the grave with me, but God always had a better plan. After giving my life to Christ, I began to understand that God has a plan for us and that even through our deepest pain, his plan is always beautiful. Becoming a Christian and truly surrendering my life didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to continue to face heartache and hurts; it did mean that I would have someone who would carry me through them. I started to accept that the dirt on my feet would be what God would use to help me lead others to him. It gave me the opportunity to show others that even though my feet were dirty, my path leads to Jesus. In this short time on earth that we’ve been given, that’s truly all that matters.
After my dad’s funeral, when the dust settled and everyone went on with their lives, my feet still felt stuck. I remained silent and hid my tears behind the door of my bathroom in the dark of the night. Every time I got in my car I would listen to the song that was played at my dad’s funeral. I set the player to repeat and as long as I was in my car, that song was playing. I repeated his eulogy in my head several times a day; I knew it by heart. Even though Brandon knew my pain, I felt like I was suffering through life alone. How could anyone possibly understand how I felt or what my heart was going through? How was I ever going to get over what had happened and move forward?
I spent many nights begging God to help me understand why this had happened in my life and how he was ever going to use it for good. My pit seemed to be bottomless. Even with a strong Christian family and strong faith, I was beginning to think God had made a terrible mistake. Had he picked the wrong person to put on this path? Why did he allow me to be the rejected little girl? Whoever coined the phrase “God only gives you what you can handle” is a liar. Life gives you more than you can handle, and that’s why we need God. In the midst of my pain and pleading, he started putting my biggest hurts back in front of my face and making me come to terms with them. He taught me to forgive. In fact, God somehow gave me that strength in abundance; forgiveness wasn’t a problem for me. My pain was in the feeling of worthlessness. I forgave with ease; why couldn’t my heart heal at the same pace?
A few days after my dad had taken his own life, I was with a coworker who knew my story inside and out. We had spent several hours in the car with each other each day and shared our stories. She knew my struggles. We pulled into a shopping center to get our boss a gift card at a local barbershop for Christmas. As we pulled into a parking spot I glanced to my left and saw his car. The man who had sinned against me twenty years ago was parked just a few spots away. I gasped for air so loudly that it spooked my friend. My instinct to run and hide took over and we made our way into a store nearby, a store I was sure he would never enter.
My sweet friend hunkered down next to a shelf of hair dye and held my hand. She knew my fear was overwhelming. Instead of trying to talk me down, she supported me by hiding alongside me. She could tell by the way my eyes fixated on the front of the store that my fear was more than she could help with.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know what to do.”
The bell on the door handle rang, and I knew someone had walked in. I slowly scooted back, making sure I was protected behind the bottles and brushes. I heard his voice, a voice etched in my mind, and realized he had come in too and was up front talking to the cashier. I stopped breathing so that I could try to make out what he was saying, but I couldn’t hear. I would have to get closer and I was too scared to move. My friend could see the look on my face and decided to de-escalate the situation for me since I was frozen in fear. She pulled my hand and we almost ran out the door, completely undetected by him. We snuck into the next store, and my body shook like a wet dog.
Here I was, twenty years later, a grown woman, a wife, and a mother, and still completely in fear of the one who had crushed my dignity so long ago. How had he held this power for so long? How was I still his emotional puppet? I frantically pulled my phone from my purse and struggled to work the buttons with shaky hands. I called my aunt and told her what was going on. She knew the man I feared, but she didn’t know why I feared him. She knew that he was my dad’s best friend and that neither were good people, but she didn’t know how much he had damaged me. I simply told her that he was near and I was panicked. She assumed his sin against me was emotional from being an accomplice with my dad. I was hoping that she would tell me to get back in my car, rev the engine, and run him over when he emerged from the store. But she didn’t. She calmly told me that maybe, just maybe, this was God’s way of allowing me to let it go and forgive the man and the sin that consumed me. Maybe this was God’s way of freeing me. Maybe this was the beginning of my redemption song. I knew she was right but couldn’t imagine facing this man, so I went back to my car to collect my thoughts and pray that God might give me the courage to make brave choices.
I sat in silence in the front seat, waiting for him to come out of the store. I had no idea what I was going to do or if I was going to do anything at all. I watched as tiny specks of rain began to cover my windshield and the blast from the heater danced on my face. I wasn’t thinking. I felt completely blank with zero emotions. For once, I was empty and without a plan.
And then I saw him.
He confidently marched out of the store with a bag dangling from his arm and headed toward his car. I paused for a moment and in the second of the pause my friend asked me what I was going to do. I didn’t answer. With a courage that wasn’t mine, a courage that I borrowed from my heavenly Father, I got out of my car and walked up to him. I yelled his name as I approached, and he turned around with a confused look.
“Who are you?”
He didn’t know me. He didn’t recognize my face. A flood of emotions didn’t rush through his entire body the way they had done in mine. He hadn’t been locked in the same cage I had locked myself in.
Who are you?
That one sentence felt like a bomb in my stomach. How did he not immediately know who I was? How had my face not been etched in his memory? I realize I wasn’t the sixteen-year-old girl he had stolen from and that my face showed years of aging. But his face had never left my memory. I thought mine had never left his.
“Candice Snell.”
I used my maiden name so he would be sure to make the connection, and I prayed that the very mention of my name would be like a baseball bat to the face. I used my dad’s last name for a little extra sting.
“Candice,” I said again.
I saw it in his eyes the moment it clicked, and he realized who it was standing in front of him. He looked down, took a deep breath, and then he cried.
I lacked any compassion. I couldn’t have shed a tear if you sprayed me with pepper spray. That was his fault. That’s what he had stolen from me as a child. He single-handedly took any tears I might have had for him twenty years ago.
He mentioned my dad and cried harder as we talked about his death. He’d already known about it, but as I laid out the details he became more and more upset. My dad had held some weird special spot in his life, and I knew he had just lost one of his best friends. I had a hard time sympathizing with him and did absolutely nothing to comfort him in the midst of his pain. I was over sacrificing myself to help him. I wasn’t going to cower, not this time. I lifted my head a little higher and set my shoulders back an inch or two in an effort to state my position. I was not a weak child any longer.
Then, like a kind and gentle man, he told me about his daughter. His eyes sparkled as he said her name, and my whole body went numb. God had let this man become a father. He didn’t consult with me or ask me if it was okay; he just gave him a child. Not only was he given a little girl but he was so proud of her. He beamed at the mention of her name, and I was jealous. I was jealous because she had in her dad, the man whom I feared, what I was desperate for in mine. A little girl admired and loved this man, and I knew in that moment I had to end it all. I had to stop the cycle and let it all go. I couldn’t live my life hating someone who was deeply loved by his daughter and by my heavenly Father. He was no different from me in God’s eyes. Our sins held equal weight, no matter how I felt about it. God gave his Son for this man the same way he gave his Son for me. I knew, right then and there, that I had to forgive the one person in my life that I had promised myself I would hold a grudge against forever. In an effort to do right by his daughter and to somehow be an example of a godly woman for her, even if she never saw it, I forgave her dad.
“I forgive you. I don’t hate you anymore, and I will never spend another day of my life hating you.”
He simply said, “I’m sorry,” as tears rolled down his face.
I hadn’t realized that it was now pouring rain. I was soaked and so was he. His face was soaked in tears and mine in raindrops.
God had washed us both clean and it was over. It was time to move on and let it go.