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Don't you think that as a Christian you at least owe it to yourself and God to attempt to forgive these people that err?

From another issue of Compassion, an interview with the same woman who wrote the letter I posted earlier:

(Ms. Lane’s seven year old daughter was kidnapped and murdered. She worked toward forgiveness
of her childs killer and has visited prisons speaking about her experience and offering inspiring words
to those she sees. She is on the board of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation.)

How were you able to arrive at forgiveness?
My struggle to come to forgiveness was indeed very difficult; it took daily, diligent discipline. I’d have to say that my foremost motivation was wanting to live out my Catholic Christian faith with integrity, and to do that meant that I was accountable to God to practice forgiveness. But we are human beings, creatures of time and space, and it takes time and space to heal, so forgiveness did not happen overnight. I had to start with giving God
permission to change my heart because I couldn’t do it by myself and I believe in a God who never violates the
gift of free will. Then I had to cooperate in all the ways I could — by reminding myself daily that my faith tells
me that the kidnapper of my daughter was just as precious to God as she was, by speaking of him with respectful and not derogatory terms, and praying for him daily, genuinely trying to want him to experience God loving and blessing him.

How do you explain your philosophy to other murder victim family members?

I often speak to murder victim families and I always start by telling them that in the beginning I wanted to kill
the kidnapper myself, but, although I struggled with it, the bottom line for me was what my faith called me
to (forgiveness) and my own knowledge that hatred was not healthy. I also tell them that in the 25-plus years
I’ve been working with folks like them, I’ve seen repeatedly that people who retain a vindictive mindset,
however justified they feel, only end up giving the offender another victim – themselves. Healing only comes
with letting go of the rage and desire for revenge. But, I also tell them that forgiveness takes time and that God
will be faithful to them if they start to work towards it. God was willing to wait a million years for the dinosaurs
to finish eating the leaves off the trees before he ever brought us humans on the scene; he has patience
aplenty to wait for and work with us if we’re trying to do what’s right and life-giving, for victim and offender
alike.

How do you feel about those who are wrongly convicted on death row?

I find it terribly difficult to think about the inconsolate angst of wrongly-convicted death-row prisoners. I
know the helplessness I felt. I, through my daughter’s horrible death, was victimized by a person; they are
victimized by the “system”. Years of their lives have been stolen from them and just as I will never see my
daughter again in this world, they will never regain those years taken from them. I can certainly understand
their anger and bitterness; I’ve known those feelings too. And, just as it seems that the kidnapper had control
over me, so, too, does it seem that the “system” has control over them. But it can never own their souls,
their hearts, their spirits, the place where we can always be free, whatever our external circumstances, if they
do not let “them” fill their very beings with hate. If they do, the system will have won; the system’s treatment
of them will have determined their response. But if they choose not to have their feelings determined by
others’ behavior, if they choose not to have their psychic energy drained from them by negative feelings, and
instead use their free will to choose for themselves what will be most life-giving to them – faith, hope, civility,
moral behavior and forgiveness, they will retain their own inmost power and they will survive with human
hearts still capable of friendship, trust, love, understanding and compassion. They will be mentors, mediators, life-givers and life-savers in the cruel, mean, and brutal barbed-wire existence of prison.

What message of hope can you give death row prisoners?

Also, as a woman a faith, I would be remiss if I did not remind that God is crazy about each and every one
of us, no matter who we are or what we’ve ever done, and that if we call out to God, He will hear our prayer
and be faithful to come to our aid in ways we might never have realized. Our spirits, the place where the Divine
Life dwells within us, will triumph and God will be our recompense. We will find that we will have gained far
more than we have lost. That is my own inexorable experience; that is what God wants to do for all of us! But
God needs our genuine faith in the God we need in order to be the God we need. Not that God can’t be totally,
all-powerful God, but again, God will not renege on the freedom all creation is given as a free gift. God gives
us the right to choose; our faith is the key to the reality we seek. We need to believe in a God we cannot feel,
we cannot hear, we cannot understand. We need to believe, not in a God who’s “out to get us if we’re bad”
but in a God who’s grieving with us and for us, a God who wants joy and gladness and blessing for us, no
matter what seems to be happening to us. That is what faith is. It’s a tough order, but we will not be
disappointed. But – all of this takes discipline, daily diligent discipline and prayer, too. In that sense, in a
perverse sort of way, persons on Death Row are blessed. They have the time to practice that discipline, and
pray those prayers. And, God will not fail them or forsake them! Many of us on the outside work constantly
to abolish capital punishment, but even if their physical lives are taken from them, as horrible and scandalous
as that is, their spirits will live for all eternity, in a place of peace, joy and freedom.

Interview with Marietta Jaeger Lane