“In the aftermath, my sisters and I were adopted by my maternal grandparents, and in the face of that great tragedy, we did what any family would do—we circled the wagons, we bonded over our grief. A significant portion of that bonding came through our shared hatred of not just the evil things my dad did, but of my dad himself.”

Telling your story can be strange thing, especially in this format, where complete strangers are likely the primary readers. Frederick Buechner once said that publicly telling your story is “like showing [your] baby pictures to strangers.” In other words, all babies look pretty much alike, unless you know the baby, and the same might be said of the stories we share.

I tell my story anyway because it is an opportunity to share something about the nature of God and the depth of his grace, mercy, and love.

So here’s (some of) my story.

How It All Began

When I was 6 years old, my father murdered my mother.

In one thoughtless, terrible act, he put a violent end to years of physical and emotional abuse to my mother, my two sisters, and me. In just a few squeezes of a trigger, my dad took from three kids their mother, from my grandparents their firstborn daughter, from my aunt and uncle a sister. He took away a beautiful, creative, talented, vibrant young woman a few weeks shy of her 31st birthday. What’s more, none of this was particularly surprising to those who knew our family. After all, my dad was an unstable, volatile man addicted to drugs and alcohol, and gripped by a severe mental illness that went undiagnosed and untreated until after the murder.

He was convicted of murder in 1981 and sentenced to die in Georgia’s electric chair. His appeal reduced his sentence to life in prison.

In the aftermath, my sisters and I were adopted by my maternal grandparents, and in the face of that great tragedy, we did what any family would do—we circled the wagons, we bonded over our grief. A significant portion of that bonding came through our shared hatred of not just the evil things my dad did, but of my dad himself. So I grew up hating him, and 23 years without contact only increased the distance, fear, and disdain that defined our “relationship.”

Honor Thy Father

In 2004, when I was 29 and married to Melissa for all of a month, I was listening to a sermon about the Ten Commandments. At that point in my life, I had read the Ten Commandments countless times. I had read commentaries, written papers and sermons about them—yet somehow it had never occurred to me that the fifth and sixth commandments speak directly to my personal story.

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

You shall not murder. (Ex. 20:12-13)

The question that began pounding in my head and heart was, “How am I supposed to keep the command to honor my father when all I really know of him is that he hurts people to the point of shattering the very next command about murder?” Right there in the pew I asked God to show me how I could honor my dad.

In a matter of seconds, God gave me a new understanding of what it meant to honor my father. What God laid on my heart in that moment was the phrase, “Look him in the eye.” To begin honoring him, I needed to look my dad in the eye, which meant, at the very least, I needed to visit him in prison.

A few weeks later, Melissa and I packed some bags and headed from our home in St. Louis down to Central State Prison in Macon, Georgia.

Eye to Eye

Melissa and I checked into the prison and were led by an armed guard through gates and checkpoints to an unadorned 8’ by 8’ cinderblock room with three folding chairs. The guard left, assuring us that she was just around the corner if we needed anything. I placed two chairs facing the door for me and Melissa, the remaining chair for my dad. After a few moments of silence, I heard the shuffle of shackled footsteps and knew that in a matter of seconds I would be face-to-face with my dad for the first time since I was 6 years old.

I decided that I would look my dad in the eye, stick my hand out, shake his hand, and then sit down quickly, so that he would be likely to follow suit and we could minimize the awkwardness.

My dad entered the room and, just as I’d planned, I looked him in the eye. Yet, for all my resolve to be a man in front of my dad, to shake his hand and to be tough, to stare him down if I had to, the actual result of our first moment together in more than 23 years caught me completely off guard.

When our eyes met, my dad was immediately overcome with emotion. His eyes instantly filled with tears. His head jerked downward, and his body shook, almost like a convulsion. He was literally taken aback by looking at his son after all those years.

Within seconds of meeting my dad, I learned the first of many grace-filled lessons that God is still teaching me about that encounter. I believe God wanted me to look my dad in the eye, not so that I could assert my manhood in front of him, not so that I could show myself to be strong, but so that I could see clearly that my dad is a sinful, broken, frail human being in desperate need of restoration.

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