Rebecca has always had a higher sense of morality than me. She loved everything about Bob Jones University—the atmosphere, the arts, the standard of excellence, the learning and the reading, being with thousands of young adults who seemed passionate about doing good. Her private school and church, like mine, revered Bob Jones University as the best of the best. Yet when she heard what had happened to me, her perspective of the school shifted. While she appreciated the formal education, the friendships, and other aspects of Bob Jones, she also clearly saw the systemic problems and failings of schools like it. Rebecca had never considered not being with me based on the No Interracial Dating Policy. She absolutely thought the policy was wrong. She knew how her dad had been treated as someone of mixed race in the South. Because of his Native American and Black roots, he wasn’t allowed to go to white schools. As a teenager at the movie theater, he would be required to sit with the non-whites up in the balcony. Becca was upset about the injustice of being mistreated simply because you looked different than others or were from a different culture.
She would later tell me the situation I was living in at the school made things clearer to her that I was the one: “The way I saw you deal with the racially charged situation caused me to respect and want to be with you even more.”
The very rule that was to keep me from white women helped Becca know that I was the one for her.
We would make the best out of the awkward “group dates” that year with either Doug or with one of Becca’s friends.
Eventually, I’d get called into the Dean of Men’s office again. Someone had reported our dating. I was told explicitly that I needed someone to sit in between us if we got together again. Later, when other students noticed that Rebecca and I were seeing each other regularly, the administration called me into the office again and ultimately said that we had to stop the group dating. Watchful eyes were reporting us as being too “serious.”
And we were. Forbidden to speak to one another, Rebecca and I resorted to writing letters every day to one another. That’s all we could do. I would gently tuck her letters in their envelope to preserve the perfume she sprayed on them. Then carefully place her letters under my pillow. In our absurd, unjust situation, those notes every day were like my daily bread. Rebecca even made me this beautiful black and purple (my favorite color) blanket. It may sound a bit sentimental for a big football player but I wrapped myself in it thinking of her every day. I was in love.
After my mom died, I carried around a gaping unhealed wound. The emptiness never really goes away when you lose a loved one, but Becca’s companionship and her comforting presence helped to fill the void. Rebecca made me a better person and brought a joy to my life that had been missing. It was remarkable how she just relaxed me. When I met her mom, I realized Rebecca was like her in that way. These days, I always tell Becca: “You and your mom have the best gift. When I’m with either of you, you two somehow by your very presence can put me to sleep.” We laugh. The cadence and sound of their voices are so soothing. I know initially it doesn’t sound like it, but that’s a compliment. A restful, calming presence is their special gift.
Rebecca was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Her mother, with her very fair skin and short curly hair, reminded me of a proper Englishwoman: nose small and slightly upturned, her posture always impeccable. Being the older sister, Becca knew how to take the lead and get things done and in an orderly fashion. She would sit up straight to listen. Becca took after her mother with her femininity and love of reading, but was also like her father and grandfather, who loved building houses and riding tractors. To this day, I ask Becca to take care of the spiders in our house. It’s not odd to see her lifting heavy objects, taking a chainsaw to cut down some trees, or doing what many would consider a man’s job. As she enjoys pointing out, my hands look better than hers.
Rebecca’s father died when she was only ten. He left behind Becca’s mom, two sons, and a daughter. She is very alert to others’ observations. She wasn’t able to cry the day of her father’s funeral because she felt everybody’s eyes were on her, watching her and her brother’s reactions. Her sensitivity to others’ views modulates the ways she behaves or shows emotions. Becca and I may respond differently to pain, but this racial prejudice we experienced at Bob Jones united us. At that time, it felt like all eyes were on us. The university was closely monitoring our interactions. The restrictions placed on us only fueled our love for each other and surprisingly for even those who were against us.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Forgiving Dad
In the still darkness of night, as I walked across a soccer field at my university, I heard God’s voice in my mind.
Dave, you need to forgive your dad.
Wait. That couldn’t be God. But knowing what I know about God, I knew it was unimistakably Him.
The words were as clear as the canvas of stars flickering above me. I felt without a doubt that this was God speaking to me. The words came at a random time, when I wasn’t even thinking about my father. It had been a year since my mom passed away, and I wasn’t even in contact with Dad. I had no desire to forgive him, so it was strange that such a strong idea would have suddenly captured my attention. I kept walking briskly across the dimly lit field, wrestling with the idea of forgiving my father.
I liked to walk around the campus at night. I had discovered that the night air cleared my head and helped me focus. The brightly colored leaves had fallen, and the frigid air had started to blow across campus. Most of the students were inside their dorm rooms or at the library studying. A few dedicated athletes were running around the track. The stadium lights were off, so there were only the streetlamps and some light from campus buildings in the distance.
Nothing about the idea of forgiving my father made sense. The pure counterintuitiveness of forgiving my dad was difficult for me to get my head around. My immediate response was a resounding “No.” Forgiveness, especially if you’ve been wronged or are the victim of injustice, feels contrary to our instinct to fight back, or to at least demand some form of justice.
Forgiveness is a lofty idea, but this situation with my dad and his wife, Carolyn, was different. Besides, I thought I had forgiven them; I just didn’t make any attempts to reconcile or stay in touch with them. I had no desire to do so. In my mind, I had forgiven him in my own way. I knew the more I thought about it, forgiveness was not just something abstractly experienced in my head. Forgiveness expresses itself in some verbal form, and even a possible physical action.
The thought of forgiving Dad in an active, physical way shook me. And frankly, it bothered me. It still didn’t feel right to let the injustice go. I felt that Mom wasn’t around anymore in part because of what he did. She wouldn’t have been out that night and gotten killed if he’d still been with her. It was only after they’d divorced that Mom started to go to bars again. I blamed him and not Mom. I knew my mom had a choice in these matters, too, and that my dad didn’t directly cause her death, but I still believed my dad was the culpable party. Not just Dad, but also Carolyn, the woman he’d had an affair with. Her role in this was even more despicable to me. It was hard for me to see her as a human.
My response to God was so immediate that I didn’t hesitate to honestly say to Him:
“I have no feelings for my dad. I don’t feel like forgiving him. It would be inauthentic. I’d be faking it.”
An equally quick response gently returned:
Do you think Jesus felt like going to the cross?
The voice wasn’t loud or angry or trying to shame me; it was a tender voice. It objectively asked me a question, like a wise sage, prompting me to process my thinking carefully. A question inviting me to wonder, to truly ask myself whether Jesus felt like dying on a cross. He wasn’t giving me an answer, yet the answer became obvious through the form of a riveting question.
Ouch. I knew from what I read in Scripture that Jesus didn’t want to take the path of suffering, but here I was suddenly immersed into the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was sweating drops of blood because he was under such duress. Jesus prayed all night, too agonized to sleep, knowing soon he would be in the hands of angry men beating him, and nailing him to the cross. The whole gory scene went through my mind in a few seconds.
I was struck by the reality that so much of life is doing what you don’t want to or feel like doing, for the sake of love. Love being transcendent over what may seem reasonable or fair or justifiable. A mother doesn’t feel like waking up at 2 a.m. to feed her baby, but she does it because of love.
It’s a choice to love.
My thoughts pivoted to my dad and Carolyn. Since fourth grade, I had been taught that we were to separate from those who are choosing to live in a pattern of sin or actions God clearly opposes. People from church had told me that I should part ways from my dad, because technically according to the Bible, he was living in adultery. I was encouraged to stay away from my father until he repented from his harmful choices. As for Carolyn, his new wife and coconspirator against our family, I had no desire to learn anything more about her. It was too painful even to consider her as part of us. The few times she’d called me, I abruptly stopped her, either hanging up on her or even, once, calling her an “adulteress,” which is an archaic term. It sounds so extraordinarily insensitive now but that was my impulsive, angry, and self-righteous teenage self blowing off steam.
However, something in my gut said this wasn’t the way of God. Separate yourself from your father to show you really love him? That didn’t even make sense. This vision of Jesus agonizing in the Garden was very different from what I’d seen in the ecosystem of the religious community I grew up in. When a church or an individual separated from someone, the goal was to help that person come back to God, but it seemed Jesus did the opposite when humanity sinned. He came and dwelled among us. And stayed. Suffered and died for us.
Often Jesus chose not to separate from those others scrutinized as sinful or unclean, but drew closer to them in love in order for them to be resuscitated back to life. He reached out and touched lepers to heal them. He held the hands of the dead and brought them back to life. He protected a woman caught in the very act of intimacy with someone who was not her husband and he forgave her. He protected her from the religiously “righteous” men ready to stone her to death. And then challenged them to examine their own sins. This Jesus took forgiveness to a new level. Love would triumph over judgment. Love was chosen to supersede any law or tradition. Love in action—not a love in some abstract form in my head or love defined as separating myself from the very ones who desperately needed to experience love. All these truths taught to me since I was a child were filling my mind, breaking my heart of stone.
I paused for a moment and looked all around me. The wide and unobstructed view of the campus field I stood on reminded me of the large expanses in Arizona. I remembered our family of five arriving in Phoenix as one close and loving unit. Then I pictured my dad’s blue eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder what my mom thought about Carolyn now that she was in heaven with a perfected mind. What was she thinking about this “adulteress” now?
What a random question. And what a surprising answer.
Mom would love Carolyn. And she’d want me to love Carolyn, too.
In that moment, I knew what I had to do.
Back in my dormitory room, I lay in my bunk bed. I contemplated what I felt I’d heard from God. I thought about my broken relationship with my dad and how my mom’s wishes were for me to still have a relationship with my father despite how he had betrayed her. I determined that no matter how my father responded, I needed to do my part. Even though I was the younger one, the less mature one in the relationship, I had to make the move. Who was I to judge? I was guessing there was so much I didn’t know between my mom and dad. Things unspoken and hidden from me that I might never understand.
I picked up the dark brown phone we had attached to the wall in our room and dialed his number. A moment later, I heard his voice on the line. He always sounded formal when he first picked up the phone.
“Hello, Gary speaking.”
“Dad, it’s Dave.”
The pause told me he was stunned.
“Son, how are you?” You could hear the surprise in his voice.
