In a new His Grace video, a woman named Katie shares her experience of finding healing after her father, who was also her best friend and hero, was charged with misconduct. Her father, a high school teacher, had a relationship with a student.
“I felt a lot of shame in the beginning because it was all over the news,” she says. “And I somehow felt like his actions were a reflection of me. It’s really hard to put into words the shame that you feel.”
As she searched for ways to reconcile the person she knew as her father and the person who had done this terrible thing, she chose to focus on the man she knew as her father. In doing that, she found that she could still appreciate memories of her childhood.
“I can get back this family vacation, and I can get back this performance that I was in that you came to, I can get back this time I sang with you in church, and I can get back this book that we talked about—I can get back all of the good and not focus on the bad because that was miserable.”
She chose to rely on the Savior and to actively seek the ability to forgive her father.
“I worked at it. I worked really hard by calling him, by visiting him, by not completely severing that tie, praying a lot, by turning to my Savior asking for strength, asking for comfort, asking to just get through the day sometimes. I would pray to see the good and to recognize what I was grateful for.”
In the end, she found that forgiveness because she was looking for it.
Watch the full video here.
Lead Image: YouTube screenshot