“This was not my burden to carry, and I would be crushed no more.”
—Chris Williams, Let It Go: A True Story of Tragedy and Forgiveness
Near the beginning of Haymitch St. Stephen’s book, Friend of the Devil, a heartbreaking scene unfolds that made me think of Johnny Cash’s cover of the Nine Inch Nail song, “Hurt.”
“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real.”
In the book, the main character, Cameron, a friend of Haymitch’s, is trying to cut his wrists on the jagged ends of a chainlink fence following a terrible drunk driving accident with Chris Williams and his family.
I won’t spoil the scene or the story that unfolds—Haymitch describes it in painful and poignant detail. But the essence of what brought together for me, Cameron, Chris Williams, and Johnny Cash is the redemptive healing power of Christ’s hurt for us. Cash even changed one line in the original lyrics to point to that fact:
“I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar’s chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair”
It is this sense of despair we feel when we have caused harm that we cannot repair. I have felt such despair in my life in those times I have hurt others I love deeply. When sincere apologies and better behavior are not enough to undo or erase such harm we long for the suffering to have never happened. For us or someone else to have never caused the hurt. This haunting song concludes with such a wish:
“If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way”
While it is natural to want to erase experiences that cause pain to ourselves or others, such erasure would remove the growth and glory of overcoming such errors. And it would deprive ourselves and others of expanding our capacity to experience and express the kind of love that Christ inhabited.
Chris Williams, who lost his pregnant wife and two other children due to Cameron, and who felt impressed to forgive and befriend him, said this:
“I am grateful that God allows tragedies and trials to occur in our lives, not because they’re easy or desired, but because they help us love.”
Jesus did not erase the scars of his suffering. His wrists and body continue to bear witness of a love born from unimaginable pain and empathy. A love that allows forgiveness of self and others to seed and flourish. According to scripture, the unfortunate experiences that Jesus endured were critical to his being able to empathize with our suffering and know how to heal us. In that sense, they became fortunate experiences—for Jesus, for us, and for those we have harmed or who have hurt us. The whole story of Les Mis hangs on this central idea.
Of course, there are also stories where it may not be advisable to engage with the person who harmed us. Or it may take much longer to reach reconciliation and some degree of forgiveness. I am not prescribing. I am simply pointing to something and someone that I and millions of diverse people have found helpful for thousands of years. In our current political climate such an empathetic “man of sorrows” is needed more than ever to heal our wounds.
May we seek to have the good fortune of experiencing the transformative love of Jesus in our misfortunes.
