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YFriday, April 08, 2005
anyway syf is in four days !! scary~ but don't worry ok. we will just go and do our best and show them how happy we are doing the thing that we love-playing music together. play with passion. feel the music. we'll touch the judges and the audience. we're in the final lap of our race and once we recieve our shiny trophy, no matter how exhausted you feel, you'll be proud that you persevered and won the race.
ms leong scolded us all today during assembly. whatever she said was very true. bah. her speeches and wise words are a part of me already. everything she says makes so much sense. in a way, she has helped me grow as a person and i really look up to her. despite the fact that she probably doesn't know me, i know i'll remember her for the rest of my life.
i read this story on the net recently and it really touched me. i asked myself ' could i do the same thing in their shoes ??' maybe you should read it for yourself to get a clearer picture. here goes:
Forgiving my daughter's killer
In a YTV/Discovery programme for UK's Channel 4 TV, directed by David Wright and produced by Sheldon Himelfarb, Marietta Jaeger was filmed talking to the Homicide Support Group in Fairfax, Virginia. (Her story is also referred to in Johann Christoph Arnold’s The Lost Art of Forgiving, pp 68-70.)
In 1973 Bill and Marietta took their five children camping in Montana. In the early hours of June 27th their seven-year old daughter Susie was kidnapped from her tent. The family stayed on in Montana for over a month, while the area, including the river, were searched. Nothing was found.
The other children were being torn apart by the uncertainty. Marietta says,
"I reached a point where I admitted I was seething. I was filled with hatred and desire for revenge. Even if the kidnapper were to bring Susie back alive and well, I could kill him for what he had done to my family … But no sooner had I uttered these words, that I somehow knew – heard – within me that that’s not how I should feel."
Marietta wrestled all night with God and her conscience:
"In the end I knew I would have to comply with what my conscience was calling me to do – and yet I couldn’t say ‘I forgive him’ because I didn’t. Those were not the feelings that I had. So I said what I could say: ‘OK, I will be willing to forgive this man’."
A suspect was detained but eventually released. Nothing more was heard, until Marietta received a phone call on the first anniversary of the abduction – timed to the minute. "Is this Susie’s mom? … I’m the guy who took her …" Marietta recalls,
"Even though he was calling to taunt me, all that I had committed myself to came to fruition in me, and I was filled with genuine feelings of concern and compassion for him."
Marietta and Bill taped the phone conversation, and the caller’s voice clearly changes, softening and breaking. Marietta asks, "What can I do to help you?" He replies, "I wish I knew the answer to that … I wish the burden could be lifted off me."
Following the call, the earlier suspect, David Meirhofer, was arrested. Shortly after, he confessed to four other murders, and Marietta says she realised then that he had killed Susie as well. Yet she urged the authorities to spare Meirhofer the death sentence.
"I felt that I would better honour Susie’s life and Susie’s spirit by having an attitude of concern and compassion towards the man who took Susie away from me, than by wanting to have him killed in her name. That would be a violation of all the beauty and goodness and sweetness that was in her."
Meirhofer committed suicide in jail before he could be brought to trial. But Marietta befriended his mother, saying, "I think that David’s family were victims too. I hope that it helps his mother, in knowing I have forgiven David." Meirhofer’s mother says: "I felt amazed too – that she could want to do that, to bring a bouquet of flowers to my son’s grave."
Some years later, visiting the ramshackle little ranch where Susie was held and killed, Marietta said,
"I’d like to think he was good to her while she was alive. That’s what I want to think, and from what I’ve heard about him there was that part of him that would have been good to her - but there was that other part of him that was sick and distorted, and ended up taking her life."
YFriday, April 01, 2005