DeVon Franklin
Releasing the Burden
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
While DeVon Franklin has become a hugely successful producer, preacher, bestselling author, and motivational speaker, he, too, has struggled with learning and understanding the process of forgiveness. He has had to forgive family and friends along the way. Above all, changing his perspective on his troubled relationship with his father has helped him come out the other side stronger than ever before.
His journey with forgiveness began when his father, who struggled with alcoholism, passed away when DeVon was just nine years old. He grew up with a lot of anger toward his father for a variety of reasons, but primarily because, in most memories he has of his father, he was intoxicated. While his father was never physically abusive toward him, DeVon recalls him being an aggressive drunk. His heavy drinking and unhealthy lifestyle contributed to his sudden heart attack at thirty-six years old, and his absence left DeVon with a deep sense of emptiness. He felt as though his dad didn’t “prepare him for life,” which filled him with anger.
Unable to process this rage, DeVon channeled it toward the remaining authority figure in his life: his mother. When she wouldn’t attend basketball games or school events, he would become even angrier. It was only later that he came to understand that his mother was missing those events because she was working to provide for her family as a single mother. “I used to really have a lot of resentment about that, and it wasn’t until college when I began to realize that she did the best she could—and even my father did the best he could. Sometimes forgiveness can work that way, where you’re holding a grudge against somebody and they may not even know what they did. And so, with my mother, she never did anything wrong, but in my adolescence I never understood the sacrifice of what she was doing.” It was only later, when he realized why his mother had been absent, that he was able to forgive her and release the resentment he’d felt toward her. He was also able to let go of the anger he’d felt toward his father—an anger that he recognized was not serving him. As DeVon told me, “No matter how angry I may be, no matter how upset, reality is, he’s gone. I’m still here.”
The awareness that he needed to release his anger toward both his mother and father allowed DeVon to begin to heal. He didn’t want the bitterness he felt toward his father to fill him with hate or push him toward becoming an alcoholic himself. “That really required me to offer forgiveness and say, ‘I just got to let it go. Let me find something I can be grateful for.’ I am grateful for him giving me life. I’m grateful that I at least have some memories of him.” It was shifting his perspective and realizing what he was grateful for that allowed him to release the anger he’d been holding toward his father. Recognizing all the sacrifices his mother had made for him enabled DeVon to release that resentment as well, and has allowed them to have a close relationship today. “Today we have an incredible relationship, yet that all came because I had to alleviate the burden that I was carrying. And it wasn’t easy, because sometimes we can find comfort in our anger, our frustration, our bitterness that comes from unforgiveness. Being able to process that and forgive and say, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ She did the best she could and, as a matter of fact, he did the best he could. That revelation for me was very cathartic—it was very powerful and it was very liberating.”
DeVon’s healing process began when he realized that he was maintaining a distance that was preventing him from getting everything he wanted out of his relationships because he feared vulnerability. He would allow himself to get close to someone, but only to a certain degree. Losing his father at a young age had taught him the survival tactic of cutting off his emotions and his ability to feel vulnerable. The sadness he felt when he lost his father was something he never wanted to feel again, so he closed himself off from true intimacy. It wasn’t until he met his future wife that he would allow himself to release his anger and become vulnerable in order to make the relationship work. “I think sometimes there’s this misunderstanding of forgiveness. Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, okay. You know what? I forgive—and all of a sudden that wound is magically healed.’ Well, it’s not. So I forgave my father, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t closed off. That didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. There was still a residual impact of that forgiveness that I still had to process and work through.”
Being able to humanize his father during his healing process also helped DeVon ensure that he wouldn’t continue to carry his anger forward. Discovering that his father’s alcoholism may have stemmed from the fact that his father’s father, mother, and siblings all struggled with alcoholism, too, allowed DeVon to put things into perspective and have empathy for his father’s addiction.
While DeVon has forgiven his father for his weaknesses, he will never forget. “When something traumatic has happened to us, we may be able to forgive the person or the circumstance, but we never forget it. We never forget it. Why? Because it always stays with us.” Being able to acknowledge the hurt is the first and most important step, but not forgetting is just as important. “I think the power of forgiveness can be found in not forgetting what has happened, but not allowing it to have a negative, long-term impact in our life, as much as we can control that.” While some injuries might resonate more than others, the challenge is to make sure you carry a positive message moving forward.
Allowing ourselves the time we need to process the hurt is also critical; we need to be gentle on ourselves. DeVon explains, “No one should feel pressured to forgive prior to being ready to do so.” He notes that, in certain communities, there is an expectation that after an incident occurs you should quickly move toward the forgiveness process. That may be unhealthy when you are still deeply feeling the hurt that you just experienced. He uses the analogy of getting hit by a car and someone telling you to stand up and walk already—but you can’t do what you aren’t ready to do. Taking the time you need to get to that process is vital. “It doesn’t mean it should linger, however; too often I feel like we are not sympathetic enough to the person who needs to forgive. If I’ve been offended, it’s for me to give the forgiveness; it’s for me to feel ready to forgive. And it’s okay sometimes to not be ready. It’s okay to say, ‘You know what? I’m still resentful. I’m still a little upset. And I know I gotta work through it, but for the moment I’m just gonna own how I feel.’ Everyone has to feel ready in their spirit when they’re ready to offer forgiveness.” We often forget about the importance of being kind to ourselves—and others—during the healing process. The goal is to achieve forgiveness, but “it’s important to not put a time constraint or to put pressure on someone if they just aren’t there yet.”
Whether we like it or not, it is often the fact that the person who has hurt us has moved on with their life that causes us to realize that we have not. “The challenge about not offering forgiveness,” DeVon says, “is that many times the person who has offended has moved on with their life, for better or worse. But the one who is offended holds on to the pain in ways that can be severely detrimental to the entire course of their life.” One of the most harmful consequences of holding on to pain is that we now carry the responsibility and burden with us, until we get to a place where we can alleviate it. “One of the challenges of forgiveness is that when I hold on to resentment, I am the one who bears the weight of it. So, while no one should be rushed to forgive, it’s highly important to forgive as soon as you possibly can.”
Time and experience have given DeVon a greater understanding of forgiveness. “If I forgive, that means that I have to be vulnerable, because I have to admit that something offended me. Everyone has a process. Forgiveness is complicated. It takes time. However, it doesn’t stop me from encouraging people to do it—but it does stop me from judging if they don’t.”
Forgiveness is a process that can’t be rushed. There have been times in my own life when I’ve forgiven too quickly, trying to sweep a painful incident under the rug. These incidents always left a bitter taste in my mouth, showing me that I wasn’t yet ready to forgive. The concept of forgiving and not forgetting might sound negative—as if you haven’t really moved on. But keeping a memory of whatever you granted forgiveness for is actually a great way to learn from your past, with the hope that you can then prevent whatever happened from repeating in your future.
By being patient with himself and forgiving his father fully, DeVon was able to break a generations-old cycle of addiction and neglect. As he so beautifully articulated, getting to a place of forgiveness takes work—often painful work, work we wish we could avoid. But if we don’t take the time to confront our pain, we’ll never be free of it.