When Forgiveness Became a Song

In 2002, Renee Napier received the phone call every parent dreads. Her daughter Meagan, just twenty years old, had been killed by a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge. The grief was unbearable. But what Renee did next stunned everyone who knew her.

She forgave him.

Not just privately, in the quiet of her own prayers. Renee visited Eric in prison, looked into the eyes of the man who had killed her daughter, and told him she forgave him. Then she went further — she petitioned the court for his early release, standing before a judge to advocate for the very man who had shattered her world.

When songwriter Matthew West heard Renee's story, he turned it into the song Forgiveness. In it, he captures the impossible weight of what forgiveness actually costs: "It'll clear the bitterness away, it can even set a prisoner free... forgiveness."

What strikes me about this story is that Renee didn't wait until forgiveness felt easy. She chose it while the wound was still raw, while every instinct screamed to hold on to her anger. She understood what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32).

Forgiveness is rarely a feeling we fall into. It is a song we choose to sing — sometimes through tears, sometimes through clenched teeth — trusting that the God who forgave us will give us the grace to do the same.