The Lyrics She Lived Before They Were Written

In 2002, a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge crossed the center line and killed two young women — one of them Meagan Napier, just twenty years old. Meagan's mother, Renee, had every reason to spend the rest of her life consumed by grief and rage. Most people would have understood.

Instead, Renee did something almost incomprehensible. She visited Eric in prison. She forgave him. And then — this is where the story becomes almost too much to believe — she advocated for his early release, on the condition that they would travel together, speaking to young people about the consequences of drunk driving.

When songwriter Matthew West heard Renee's story, he wrote the song Forgiveness about it. But what strikes me is that Renee didn't wait for a song to tell her what to do. She had already lived the lyrics before they were written. She forgave not because it was easy, but because she understood that unforgiveness would become a second prison — one she would build for herself.

God does not command forgiveness because the offense wasn't real. Meagan was real. The grief was real. But the Almighty also knows that the one who refuses to forgive drinks the poison meant for someone else.