From the article Terror in Paradise (PDF),
Just before midnight, July 25, 1986, a noise outside the house awakened Darrell Beebe.
...As he checked the back door to make sure it was locked, a man suddenly pushed his way inside, hitting Darrell in the face with a beer bottle. Two more men broke through the front door. They attacked Darrell viciously, stabbing him in the side. Darrell kept fighting to protect his family until an attacker swung a shotgun like a baseball bat, striking Darrell in the head and knocking him to the floor.
...Two attackers went upstairs where Sherri had taken 11-year-old Jadie and 12-year-old Jeremy. One of them grabbed Sherri by the hair, threw her to the floor and kicked her repeatedly. Then he began tearing off her clothing. “Not in front of my kids!” Sherri pleaded. He blindfolded her, took her out of the house and down the gravel road, and raped her.
...When the man brought Sherri back to the house still blindfolded, she heard the other two men abusing Jadie. “She’s a baby!” Sherri shouted. “Leave her alone — take me!”
The four family members physically survived the attack but were, quite understandably, mentally scarred (11 year-old Jadie, for example, temporarily reverted to behaving like a 4 year-old). Their attackers were captured and, eventually, brought to trial. At about the time the Beebe's were to appear to testify, the most violent of the attackers escaped and was killed in a shootout with police. The prosecutor telephoned Darrell Beebe to inform him of the perpetrator's death. Instead of feeling a vindictive sense of justice, at the perpetrator's death, Darrell (and Sherri) responded quite differently. From the article,
“The prosecutor told me that he thought we would want to know that the worst perpetrator was dead,” Darrell remembers. “I went back to the car and told Sherri, ‘It’s really sad that man is dead. The one message he needed was of God’s forgiveness, and he didn’t get to hear it.’ To my amazement she replied, ‘But, Darrell, he did get to hear it. I told him.’ Sherri had witnessed to that man in the bunker — so he went into eternity knowing how to be forgiven.”
How does a Christian respond, after such a savagely vicious event? How should a Christian respond? What does it really mean to forgive? Absolution? Freedom? Release?
All four of the Beebes testify that forgiveness was the greatest challenge.
Jadie says, “What we have learned is that forgiveness is definitely a process. It does not mean the offense that was done to you was acceptable or that forgiveness in any way diminishes or lessens the offense. The enemy tried to keep me in a state of unforgiveness — convincing me that if I would just hate those people, I would be in control of my life. I would have power over them, and they couldn’t hurt me anymore. But instead it became like a noose around my neck until I listened to God’s voice to love and forgive. Forgiveness releases us from Satan’s hold and from the attachment of reliving the pain of a memory again and again.”
Read the entire article to see how the power of God makes the impossible possible. I cannot say how I would respond, were what happened to the Beebes to happen to me and my family. It would only be through the power and glory of God almighty that I could even begin to consider that which God most certainly desires.
