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A Heart to Forgive
By Ginger Shepherd
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With God's grace she learned to cope--and accept the loss--as well as why and how to forgive. Since the accident, Falade has written His Beauty for My Ashes, recounting the experience and hard-won lessons.
Although she had been a devout Christian for many years, Falade's spiritual lesson of forgiveness and grace began on April 1, 1986. She and her family--husband Johnny, 8-year-old son Temple, 2-1/2-year-old twins Ejima and Tosan--were returning to their home in Lincoln, Neb., after an impromptu trip to Fayetteville, Ark. They were on Highway 29 near Platte City, Mo., in a construction zone when a drunk driver hit them from behind; the crash ignited their car in flames. Falade was the only one to get out; her narrow escape can be attributed to two mystery men that knocked on the window and told her to get out, she wrote in the book.
Standing outside the car, Falade looked on helplessly as she heard her daughter Ejima cry. That became the young mother's last memory of her daughter. In her book, she wrote that it was first a sound that haunted her dreams, but that God later turned that cry into a "sweet memory of the last cry I heard from my daughter, teaching me that with God all things are possible."
In order to get to this point, Falade turned to a powerful toolbox of faith.
"The grace of God was my anchor," Falade said. "Take away God's grace and I would have gone berserk. The grace of God gave me the main key that brought comfort, hope, and peace. The key is faith in God."
Through faith, she said she knows that God is in control and He is aware of everything. God, she said, was there providing comfort and solace to her heart.
"Without my relationship with God I would find myself coping with the grief alone. Yes, people were there to encourage me but no one could understand my pain and loneliness. It was like I was in this narrow funnel that had no room for [any] other person but me. But God was there with me," Falade said.
But unlocking that faith, that grace, is not an automatic action; there are keys. Two keys that Falade found on the journey were praise and meditation.
"It was as I praised God with my twin sister, in the morning of the funeral day, that the Lord gave me a vision of my husband and three children worshipping God in heaven," Falade said, adding that meditating on God's Word was one of the biggest things that got her through this tough time.
Through the healing process, Falade became very familiar with another key to faith and grace: forgiveness. She explained that forgiveness is a concept from scripture: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us (Luke 11:4)." Scripture is what helped Falade make an important decision.
For Falade, it was more than just saying she forgave the young man. In the book, she talks about how the first couple of days after the accident, she would have told anyone that asked that she had forgiven the young man. But that would have been a hollow answer.
"For about four days following the accident, I wrestled with the decision to forgive this unknown man who plunged my family to an early grace," Falade said. But then she learned the young man had been drinking and driving.
"This is when I became not just angry but irate and furious. How could a man's drinking problem deny me of my husband and my children? It was his drinking problem that forced me to see the casket of my children," she said. "But as I was fuming with rage, the Lord spoke to my heart, and His exact words to me were, 'You must but forgive.'"
That day, Falade told the Lord that she would forgive the young man...but that forgiveness did not happen immediately. It happened when she was studying theology at ORU. She began working with Beverley Jones, a fellow theology student studying Christian counseling, who wanted to work with Falade and the grief she was carrying.
Through the counseling sessions, Falade learned that saying someone is forgiven doesn't mean that they really have been. She said Jones taught her that since she still had "negative words" about the young man, that she hadn't really forgiven him.
"Jesus said that the mouth speaks out of the abundance or thoughts of the heart," Falade said.
For Falade forgiveness came one day during a session at Jones' apartment: "I found myself pacing up and down her apartment, repeating the phrase, 'I forgive you, James. I forgive you for killing my husband. I release and I let you go in Jesus' name.' I repeated this for each of the children. After doing this, I felt a heavy burden lifted off me. The freedom I experienced cannot be quantified in words."
It has been more than 10 years since Falade went through the forgiveness exercise, wrote the book, and graduated from ORU. She started her own publishing company and continues to write about God and forgiveness; she has more than 25 books to her credit. Recently, she said, she received a review that said His Beauty for My Ashes could help Hurricane Katrina victims. Since the review, she is making an e-book available free of charge. Those interested can make a request at info@triumphpublishing.net. Her books can be found at www.triumphchristianministries.com.
