By Wilma Derksen

IT WAS Christmas Eve.

“I feel free,” my husband Cliff said as we prepared for bed.

I agreed. It had been a bold step, but now we were free.

When I was little girl, our family tradition was to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve.

We would attend a children’s program at the church and receive a little brown bag of candies, peanuts and a mandarin orange. We would then drive slowly home and take a picture of the family in front of the tree.

Then my father would read the Christmas story in German. After this, we would kneel down beside our chairs and, starting with dad as the oldest, pray oldest to youngest.

It always felt like the most sacred moment of the entire year, kneeling together as a family, humbly groping for words, as we eyed the presents under the tree. Only after the prayer were we allowed to open our gifts.

This year, we continued the same kind of Christmas Eve ritual in an upper room – the fourth floor apartment of our daughter-in-law Natasha and son Syras in Saskatoon. It was a moment filled with the same sacred anticipation of gifts, love and generosity.

Except that before we opened the gifts, I felt the need to address a prayer request. It has been 25 years now since Candace, our oldest daughter, was murdered.

One and a half years ago, a person by the name of Mark Edward Grant was charged with first degree murder. He hasn’t been convicted yet, so we still don’t know for certain who snatched Candace off a Winnipeg street on November 30, 1984, took her to a shack and left her to die in the freezing cold.

But knowing that someone has been charged has made a huge difference in our lives. There was immediate relief to know that there was now at least a theory, and the hope of some answers.

Twenty-five years ago, Cliff and I resolved to move in grace. We chose the word ‘forgiveness’ to guide us.

But somehow, after the arrest, it wasn’t enough. Forgiveness – the process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger against another person for a perceived offence, difference or injustice – didn’t free me as it had years ago. I needed something stronger to give my soul freedom.

This time the words ‘prayer’ and ‘love’ gave me freedom. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that the only way to be free of those who want to hurt us or have hurt us is to love them and pray for them.

This time, I knew I needed to nurture compassionate feelings to sustain our willingness to forgive. Prayer promises to pave the way to genuine freedom.

I have been trying to pray for Mark. But I must admit my prayers have been quite superficial, quite compulsory, without much feeling and not reaching much higher than the ceiling.

Continue article >>

I’ve mostly just ignored it all. Denial isn’t always bad.

The ability to be tough like Teflon is a way to be resilient at times. With a preliminary hearing scheduled, Teflon wasn’t going to be good enough. I knew we needed to deal with the issues and prepare ourselves.

What would it look like if on Christmas Eve, our sacred time as a family, we would actually pray for the man charged with Candace’s murder?

Could we do it? Would it ruin our Christmas? Would it ruin our sacred moment? Would the harmony I was feeling in our family at the moment survive such a discussion?

I decided to risk it. But even before I could formulate the words, I began to cry.

Every time I think of trying to love the man who killed our daughter, or the man who is charged with her murder, every time I try to pray for him, I cry. I am crying now as I’m writing this.

Why do I cry? Why is it still so hard?

Finally, after many kleenexes, I got the words out. I was able to formulate the request.

My children and their wonderful spouses were understanding and completely supportive. We knelt down and prayed for the person who murdered our daughter, whoever that was.

And we prayed for Mark, the suspect charged. Whether he murdered Candace or not doesn’t matter right now; he is part of our story. He has become someone related to us in a strange and awkward way.

We expect that he is sitting in an institution on Christmas Eve while we are together as a family. That can’t be easy. We also know that someone who is happy, fulfilled and filled with love would not have the criminal record he has acquired over the years.

The message of Christmas is that God loves everyone. The Christmas challenge is for us to live in generosity and compassion, and to share with everyone our goodwill in the gift of a prayer.

So we prayed. Everyone prayed, from the oldest to the youngest, and it led to a new unity, a new understanding, a deeper sense of family. It was all good.

The best part was to hear my husband at bedtime say, “I feel free.”

What freedom there is when we can pray for everyone in our lives without reservation, without malice, to honestly pray that they will feel that ultimate touch of peace and love that can only come from our God.

Wilma L. Derksen is author of Have You Seen Candace? and works with Victim’s Voice, an agency of Mennonite Central Committee Canada. This article is adapted from a blog posted January 7, 2009 at mylemonade.org. The trial of Mark Edward Grant is now scheduled to begin in January 2011.

December 2010