Polly Sheppard
Trusting in God’s House
“When we don’t forgive, we’re not hurting the other person. We’re not hurting the company that did us wrong. . . . We’re only hurting ourselves.”
—Joel Osteen
On the evening of June 17, 2015, Polly Sheppard attended her regularly scheduled Bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Toward the end of the session, her group rose for the benediction. As they all stood in prayer, eyes closed, a newcomer to their group that day, Dylann Roof, opened fire with a gun, taking the lives of nine church members. Polly’s life was spared, but her close friends were not as lucky.
The shooting was senseless, motivated by a single, hateful fact: the shooter was white, and the victims were African American. Living through a mass shooting and losing close friends would leave most people filled with rage, but Polly Sheppard reflects back on lessons from the Bible to help her move forward and live in a state of forgiveness. “The Bible says if you want forgiveness for yourself, you have to forgive others. Christ died on the cross for that forgiveness. He forgave the people who hung him on the cross. He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” For Polly, the overwhelming sadness of losing so many of her fellow church members was the greatest challenge. “You have to go through some stages to get to that forgiveness. I just know it comes to you, sometimes in the still of the night, when you’re listening to that small voice who’ll talk to you and lead you through what you’re going through.”
That “small voice” comes from her deep-rooted faith and her close relationship with God. Whenever Polly feels moments of sadness or times when her forgiveness is wavering, it’s the soft voice of God that guides her forward. When she feels her faith being tested, she chooses to pray for others and for herself, asking for the wisdom to come out the other side stronger. For Polly, the stage of sadness in the immediate wake of the horrific event was her only time of unforgiveness. But when she saw a close friend coping with the loss of her son and embracing forgiveness, she realized that she, too, could move forward. Inspired by her friend’s compassion, she understood that she needed to forgive Roof in order to heal.
Polly recognized that forgiving Dylann Roof was the key to her own salvation. But this realization wasn’t immediate. It came to her after “sitting here with all this unforgiveness in me toward him. Who am I hurting? I’m just hurting myself.” She knew that Roof had no remorse and didn’t dwell on the horrible actions he had committed. Roof was able to move forward, unburdened by his crime, while Polly was holding on to sadness, frozen in grief. If she nurtured her grief, she knew that she would only be hurting herself. So she relied upon the lessons learned growing up in a large churchgoing family, lessons that guided her inevitably toward an embrace of forgiveness. Polly was confident that her faith in God would allow her to overcome any and all challenges that lay before her.
As Polly told me, there were times in her past when she did not forgive so quickly, times when she held on to anger. She sees this reluctance to release anger as a natural part of the process of healing: “Forgiveness comes to us in stages, and feeling that forgiveness is impossible is one of those stages.” Keeping the anger alive can be a person’s way of coping in the early stages. But when you allow yourself to talk about the situation, you may discover that forgiving is the better option.
Polly recalls once having a conversation with an older Jewish man who told her that he was unable to get along with his children. He complained that his children were all disappointments—none of them liked to work—and then he began to rail against Hitler for his unforgivable acts. Polly could see the man was locked in a cycle of bitterness, so she told him, “Well, Hitler is dead. Worms have eaten his body by now. Are you gonna go around letting this dead man control your freedom and thoughts? Eventually, you have to forgive him.” The man was startled by Polly’s frank response, seeing for the first time how the tragic events of long ago had shaped his thinking. The man told her that he was going to call his children and forgive them. As for Hitler, however, he wasn’t able to forgive. When it comes to forgiveness, Polly said, “We come to it in different stages. Everybody doesn’t forgive the same way, and some people may never forgive. That’s just their way of coping.”
For Polly, forgiving Dylann Roof took about three weeks. She doesn’t look at him with anger in her heart the way most might think she does. She says, “I just think he’s a lost soul. Sometimes I wish I could talk to him and see what’s actually in his mind. He said why he was doing it, but I just wish I could sit down and talk to him.” She remembers hearing that when Dylann was interviewed by the FBI, he told them he’d almost abandoned his murderous plot because of how kind the church members were to him. Polly remembers, “When he got to me, he told me to shut up and that he wasn’t going to shoot me. He was gonna leave me to tell his story.” She used to wonder why she was spared while so many others were killed. During the court hearings, Polly finally got her answer. Dylann told the court, “She was looking at me, so I couldn’t shoot her.”
Today, Polly lives her life free of the burden of bitterness, and thinks of Roof with empathy and compassion. “I felt sorry for the young man, ’cause he’s twenty-one and he’s a lost soul. He needs to accept Christ and repent for what he’s done. And if God forgives him, he’s good. Actually, he’ll make it to the other side.” Polly believes that, given the opportunity, she could help Dylann recognize their common humanity. As she says, “If I sat across the table from him, I could help him think a different way.” She hopes that he would be able to listen to her, and she hopes that one day he might be able to say that he is sorry for the lives he took in that church. Speaking of her choice to follow the path of forgiveness, Polly notes, “You think you’re letting someone else off the hook, but you’re letting yourself off the hook. Because if you don’t have that forgiveness, you’re not gonna heal.”
That day, Polly lost close friends—friends who felt like family. She could have fallen into bitterness, but instead she looked to her faith to understand Dylann Roof. Many of us who grew up in houses of worship learn about the importance of forgiveness, but this doesn’t guarantee we’ll be able to abandon hatred, especially after such a horrific incident. But Polly’s faith is deep and firm, and it allowed her to have compassion for the shooter, despite all that he took from her.
Polly’s story shows the power of compassion, even in the face of blind hatred. She could have matched hate for hate and carried her bitterness to the end. No one would have blamed her. Instead, her heart has remained open. I was particularly moved when Polly said that she wished she could talk with Dylann. Even after everything he had done, that she would still want to have a conversation with him showed me that looking past the unimaginable—perhaps even unforgivable—actions of an individual to lend a helping hand or a listening ear can make all the difference in the world to someone in pain. Though Polly wasn’t in a position to do so before the tragedy at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that day, living each day with an open heart and compassion for others is what’s important, whether we find the strength to do so through our faith or by some other means.