Long road to forgiveness
I was still in primary school when I was driving with my dad back home to Luderitz. Luderitz is a beautiful town in Southern Namibia where we stayed throughout my schooling years. Then we stopped on instruction of a traffic cop. He then came over and told my dad the car was swerving on the road, and he needs to test it. He was driving behind us for a few kilometers.
So he got in, and found that upon breaking the car would swerve to one side of the road. It was a truck which still had brake pads on all wheels, before the days of disc brakes. The cop then went to fetch his writing pad to issue a ticket, and my dad became agitated and locked the car from inside. Big mistake! Then a heated argument ensued until he threatened to lock my dad up!
I then panicked, wondering what would happen if he does that. I was about 10. After a lot of pleading, he issued the ticket and left us to drive on. I didn’t realize the devastating effect that event left on me until many years later when I started working and had to interact with people from all races.
I was in my early twenties and got into a heated argument with a white guy. We had an angry exchange of words, but I didn’t let him run over me, so I told him what I wanted. Apartheid was just obliterated from the law, so I didn’t allow him to belittle me. Then several other small incidents happened where I would lash out at white people, until I sat down and analyzed this thing. Why did I have so much hatred in me towards white people?
I became a born again Christian at age 17, and hatred should not be part of any Christian. All men are equal before God, and I’m supposed to love, not hate. At around 30 I went to the UK on a business trip, and there my journey to discovery began. I went into a Christian bookshop, and found a book called, “How to pray for inner healing”.
As I worked through this book and some prayers it prescribed, I traced back the hatred for whites to that single fateful event many years ago. The event in my primary school years with my dad and the traffic cop was the trigger. I prayed a prayer of forgiveness and since then my journey to healing and acceptance started.
The thing that astounded me was that I took many years to link a behavior to a specific event. I also had a lot of resentment, and apartheid made its own marks on me. We were almost persuaded to believe we were less than white people. So God took me on a journey to discovery, and I’m free of any such feelings today.
I discovered that it took many prayers and willful action to leave the past behind and look ahead. It’s not worth carrying any feelings of resentment. It wears you down and will eventually destroy you. There is so much joy in living in peace and without any resentment. Peace is precious and is an asset to be appreciated and embraced.
