In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. - 1 Thess. 5:18.
As has happened to other parents, I had a son taken in violence. Many parents have gone through this terrible tragedy and it is never easy.
I was living in California and my son lived in Oklahoma. I had talked to him on the phone, and he told me he was coming to see me in a couple of weeks. It was the last time I talked to him. The next I heard he was gone. It hit me harder than anything I have ever experienced and, worse, I was inactive in the Church and did not have the hope of seeing him again.
My grief turned first to disbelief, then shock and then hate. I hated so much I wanted the person responsibile for my son's death to die. I felt I could have killed him myself. I was so full of hate I was miserable, and I suffered in my grief for 18 years.
After so many years of misery, finally, one day I read this scripture and almost immedidately the hate was gone. For the first time since my son was killed I felt free from my hate and I felt wonderful. Hate is like a cancer and it will destroy you.
I know now I will be with my son again if I live the commandments of our Father in Heaven. I am now active in the Church and I try to go to the temple at least once a month.
I pray that all parents who have lost a child in violence will be able to forgive, as I have been blessed to do. I could not do it on my own. Only with the Lord's help.
