The Joy of Forgiveness

By Gene Greeson

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669875987

Gene Greeson

Gene Greeson became a Christian at the age of 22 in 1970. Over the 52+ years since, he has seen God provide in countless ways countless times. He and Dori have been involved in prison ministry since 2005 and have been on seventeen short-term mission trips to Africa, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, Bolivia, and Jamaica. They reside in Largo, Florida and both live to share the good news that Jesus died for all mankind and gives eternal life as a gift to all who believe Him for it.

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Copyright © 2023 by Gene Greeson.

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Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Rev. date: 05/16/2023

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CONTENTS

Introduction

PART 1

The Story

Chapter 1Receiving Eternal Forgiveness From God

Chapter 2Who Was Robby Mast?

Chapter 3Our Lives Without Robby At Home

Chapter 4The Memorial Service

Chapter 5The Joy We Have Received By Forgiving Lindsay

Chapter 6Correspondence With Lindsay

Chapter 7Our Initial Trip To Montana

Chapter 8Lindsay’s Story

Chapter 9The Phone Calls Begin

Chapter 10Our Second Trip To Montana Women’s Prison

Chapter 11Dori’s Reflections Three Years After Robby’s Death

Chapter 12Our Third Trip To Montana Women’s Prison

Chapter 13Lindsay’s Gospel Tract

Chapter 14Our Message Heard Around The World

Chapter 15Victorious Living Magazine

Chapter 16Comments From Lindsay And Other Inmates

PART 2

The Study

Chapter 17Forgiveness Of Sins And The Gift Of Eternal Life

Chapter 18The Joy Of Receiving Temporal Forgiveness From God

Chapter 19The Joy Of Receiving Forgiveness From Others

Chapter 20The Joy Of Receiving Forgiveness From Yourself

Chapter 21The Joy Of Forgiving Others

Chapter 22What To Do When It Seems Impossible To Forgive

Chapter 23The Joy Of Realizing God Does Not Need Our Forgiveness

Chapter 24The Joy Of Living The Christian Life

Chapter 25Why Don’t All Believers Look Like Christians?

Chapter 26Closing Thoughts On Forgiveness

Conclusion

Appendix AFeedback and Communication Regarding the Netflix, I am a Killer Episode

Appendix BThis is a continuation of correspondence between Dori, Lindsay, and me

Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

This book is about forgiveness. Since late 2015 my wife, Dori, and I have had many public opportunities to share the story of our relationship with Lindsay, the woman who murdered our son. How we have handled this experience has encouraged many others to become FORGIVERS. It is our hope that it will help you also.

After writing this book, I sent printed manuscripts to friends of mine for their comments. One friend asked me, Whose story is this? He mentioned that he thought it was going to be a story about Lindsay, then wondered if it was Dori’s story, my story, or Robby’s, or a textbook. I responded that I consider it God’s story. After his question and comments, however, I pretty much started over and made countless changes. As a result, this book is divided into two main segments: the story and the study. The story is about how we came to FORGIVE and develop a love relationship with the person who murdered our son. The study is about how we all need FORGIVENESS and how we can both receive it and give it. You will miss out greatly if you read only one of these two segments.

On September 17, 2015, Dori was notified by phone that the younger of her two sons, Robby, was dead. It would be at least two more hours before she would learn that he had been murdered almost two full days before. Just moments before being notified, she had been praying for Robby—something she often did throughout her day.

While returning to her office from a business luncheon, Dori was sitting in her car in the drive-thru lane of a Starbucks when Kate, a friend of Robby’s, called and informed her that Robby was dead. Kate, who was in Pennsylvania, had just been notified by a policeman in Billings, Montana. She had no other details.

Dori’s first two attempts to reach me at home by phone were unsuccessful. I was on an international call and did not even notice she was trying to reach me. She realized that remaining in the parking lot would not be good, as she needed to get back to her nearby office. She drove the couple of miles back to her office, screaming for Robby and pounding on the steering wheel as she drove. She parked and just sat in the front seat and screamed to and for Robby so loudly that she thought she had seriously damaged her vocal cords.

Upon entering her unoccupied office, Dori screamed again and began crying uncontrollably, attracting the attention of those in the adjoining business office. She called my number again and, upon reaching me, attempted to get the words out while still crying, Gene, Robby is dead! Can you come?

Of course, I said that I would be there as quickly as possible and left within a minute to make the twenty to-twenty-five-minute drive to her office. She was in great anguish, as one might imagine.

Once she was alone inside her office, a lady from the adjoining business rushed over to see what she was screaming and crying about. She feared that Dori was being attacked. When I arrived, the lady was still with Dori, determined to stay until I was there to comfort her.

As I rushed to be with Dori, I called at least four or five friends, including our pastor, and asked for prayer, especially for Dori. Each time, after telling them that Robby was dead, they replied, What? I would then attempt to repeat those words, but could hardly do so. The emotion was so difficult to deal with, especially as I thought about how much Dori was hurting.

As I parked in front of her office, I knew I wanted to change her focus as quickly as possible from what had happened to where Robby now is! The Bible tells us to set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth. We are also told that, for the believer in Jesus, it is even better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.

I was convinced that, regardless of the circumstances surrounding Robby’s death, he was already in heaven, and this was where our focus should be. We could have that confidence because he had indicated to us many times that his trust was in Jesus as his Savior.

The only fact we possessed at that moment was that he was dead. It would be two more hours before we would learn that he was murdered. This had occurred two days before on September 15, 2015.

Dori and I have forgiven the person who murdered our son. At the time when we forgave her, we did not know her, or any facts regarding how they had met or what had precipitated Robby’s death. All we knew was that Robby was dead, and Lindsay April Haugen was accepting responsibility for his death. The newspaper report informed us that she told the police that Robby was depressed and wanted to die. She had strangled him. They had met less than a month before, and she was giving Robby a ride from Washington to North Dakota where he, or they, planned to work with the sugar beet harvest—something he did each fall.

Mere words cannot describe the pain we felt by our loss and mere words cannot describe the joy we have received from forgiving Lindsay. In many ways, forgiving Lindsay was relatively easy for me, and I find it difficult to understand why what we have done warrants such amazement and encouragement in others. Dori, too, forgave Lindsay within three days after learning of Robby’s death, but at the time, her doing so was primarily an act of obedience. It would be some time before she would have true feelings for Lindsay, although she did feel pain for her and her family almost immediately. Neither of us could imagine the relationship that would develop between us.

An additional benefit has been the great number of people who have learned of our story and who, consequently, have decided to also become forgivers. God seems to be using our story in an amazing way. I decided to write this book to greatly widen the parameters of its effectiveness.

JOY OF FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness—what is it, why do we need it, and why must we give it? Those are some of the questions I hope to answer within the pages of this book. Additionally, I hope to show that forgiveness brings joy no matter what side of the equation you are on.

Back in 1977, I determined that my purpose for living was to give others a vision for the person they can become. This purpose is consistent with my purpose for writing this book. I have tasted life without the receiving and giving of forgiveness, and I’ve tasted life with forgiveness. I want for you the same joy that forgiveness has given us.

What you will read in this book might amaze you, and perhaps even change your life. This story has changed Dori’s and mine, as well as that of many others we’ve met along the way. Not only does everyone need forgiveness, which I will discuss in the first chapter, but we all need to become a forgiver, as we have all been hurt by others. It was more than fifty-two years ago that Dori and I individually received God’s forgiveness, and this played a huge role in our being able to forgive Lindsay just days after learning of Robby’s death.

What we could not have foreseen then, however, is the joy that would result from our simple act of obedience to forgive, a joy that continues to confound us and others to this day. Our forgiving Lindsay April Haugen in September 2015 has brought us to a point where I now consider her as a daughter, and I don’t believe I could love her more than I already do. She has become like a cherished daughter to me and a dear, precious friend to Dori. The result is that this is God’s story, and we are grateful to be a part of it. We continue to miss Robby greatly, but I feel that while we’ve lost a son, we’ve gained a daughter. You will understand how this could happen long before you complete this book. (Dori is sensitive to the mother title since Robby’s biological father left her when Robby was two and both he and his second wife attempted to supplant her as Robby’s mother.)

I will begin with the best news I ever learned. I can be forgiven now by God for every sin I have ever committed and for every sin I will commit in the future. This is a forgiveness that we all need. Sadly, many ignore this great need and step into eternity without a Savior and without forgiveness! You would be unwise to skip this part of the book and jump to a later section. It is what you will learn in this first section that gave us the ability to forgive Lindsay and will give you the ability to be a forgiver to those who have also hurt you. Without this knowledge, you may never become the forgiver you should be. You may never learn the joy of forgiveness. Therefore, I encourage you to be patient and read the book in the order I have written it.

PART 1

The Story

CHAPTER ONE

Receiving Eternal

Forgiveness From God

My first encounter with true forgiveness occurred during the early morning hours of June 7, 1970. I remember that day like no other, for it was the day that my life completely changed for the better! I had turned twenty-two a month earlier, and although I had experienced numerous happy times, I would characterize my life prior to that day as one filled with deep depression and little hope, if any, for a happy future.

Certainly, at the time, I did not know how badly I needed forgiveness. Looking back, however, it was perhaps the greatest need I had in my life. I needed to be forgiven by a God Who I wasn’t sure even existed. I needed a relationship with Him and did not know that was even possible.

MY NEED FOR FORGIVENESS

Growing up, and a few years into manhood, I was not truly aware of how badly I needed forgiveness from a loving and just God. Oh, I was aware that I was far less than perfect, and yet I did not know if this really mattered in life’s big picture. I could easily compare myself to many and think, If there is a God and if He grades on a curve, I should be okay.

You see, I was like most others in that I could not see my own sins as easily as I could see others’ sins. I knew that I had lied, stolen, been consumed by lust, and spent a lot of time upset with God. I felt He had been so unfair to me compared to many I knew. I was downright selfish in my desires at times. I was not a churchgoer. I had attended a few times but had determined that church was of no value to me or to anyone else (including God).

I was not like many who go through life ignoring the fact that they will one day encounter death and will step into an unknown eternity. I was very aware that I would be dying someday, and often I wished that would happen soon. In fact, I had wrestled countless times with my desire to die. Yet I possessed some fear about that as I had only questions and no answers.

I think I was about as suicidal as any teenager could be. As a matter of fact, I seriously considered it hundreds of times even before I was eighteen years old. Few, if any, would ever have guessed this. I portrayed myself as a fun-loving teen who enjoyed life to the fullest, playing sports and joking around a lot. I participated and lettered in four high school sports (baseball, basketball, cross-country, and wrestling) and was very active in 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America). I won numerous awards across the board.

As a teenager, I was quite the risk-taker. Having been so fearful as a young boy, I quickly learned to conquer my fears by meeting them head-on, even with the knowledge that I could die in the process. Besides, I have always liked a good challenge! I climbed high-voltage towers to overcome my fear of heights, waded in snake-infested waters to deal with my fear of snakes, drove 90 mph on hilly gravel roads to confront my fear of death, and waded in deep ponds (even though I could not swim and had earlier almost drowned twice) to face my fear of drowning. Ultimately, I joined the US Army with an intense desire to go off to war in hopes of dying there for a purpose—I would be remembered as one who sacrificially gave his life for his country.

Behind it all, or perhaps underneath it all, I felt I was far below average. I knew I excelled in math and was perhaps average in the rest of my classes, but I felt I was inferior in appearance and talent. I didn’t like my appearance or size and recognized that most of the boys in my small class were better than I was in baseball and basketball. I did shine in cross-country and wrestling, as those were individual sports where I did not have to impress a coach to get to play.

Perhaps what I hated about myself most of all was that I was shy around any girl I might have a crush on. Oh, I could joke around with all the others, even carry on a conversation, but when it came to the one I really wanted to be with, I was almost afraid to open my mouth. I was an outright coward, so afraid of rejection that I never had a single date during all of my high school years. I did go to the high school prom my junior year but only to be kind to a nice girl who wanted me to ask her. Otherwise, she would not be going.

I’ve no doubt some of my shyness stemmed from being sexually abused for a lengthy period during my younger years, ages six to nine. My parents divorced when I was three, and when I was six, my mother remarried. My stepfather’s disabled brother moved in with us, and soon thereafter, the sexual abuse began. My mother and my stepfather both worked days, and we were often left alone with this man.

Note: I don’t know that my younger brother was ever sexually abused, but he might have been. He died in 2007 at the age of fifty-seven and therefore, I cannot now ask him. If he was abused, hopefully, he was able to block any remembrance of it most of the time as I have been able to do. My mother never learned of this sexual abuse until she read a single line about it in a book I published when I was forty-four years old. Both she and my natural father were obviously shocked.

Early on, I never had the courage to tell my mother about the abuse, and, lacking any real relationship with my stepfather, I wasn’t about to tell him at the time. I do believe it was this that made me feel so worthless and cowardly. Finally, there came a time when I was about ten, that I mustered enough courage to tell my mother that my brother and I were being treated wrongly by this man. Thankfully, she simply took me at my word and demanded that he move on.

Looking back, I don’t know that I blamed myself for the abuse, but I certainly blamed myself for my cowardice to reveal the nature of the abuse. Sometimes my hatred for myself regarding this aspect of my life drove me to great lengths to risk losing my life. Oddly, however, I also had a fear of dying. The overwhelming question in the back of my mind was always, What is death going to be like? Many a night during my three tours of duty in Vietnam, I sat behind sandbags facing out into the darkness while on guard duty for hours at a time, knowing my life could end at any moment. Only then would I find out what death is really like. Prior to June 7, 1970 (the day I became a believer in Jesus as my Savior), I didn’t believe any answers even existed.

Did I need forgiveness for the wrongdoings in my life? I felt that there was a pretty good chance that I did. At that time, if God were to grade on a scale, I knew at the very least that I didn’t measure up to my Christian friends (Terry Bright or Mike Dougherty), who I figured might be the standard by which to measure true godliness. Ignorantly, I did not realize that even they couldn’t measure up to the righteous standards of God by their efforts alone. I finally grew to understand that the perfect standard was God Himself through His Son Jesus Christ. We need to be as righteous as Jesus, and we can become that righteous only by believing and having His righteousness imputed (or credited) to us.

I did not know that the Bible teaches that we all fall short of His perfect standard and that we are all condemned and in need of a Savior. I did not know that from God’s perspective, according to James 2:10, anyone who has broken the law in part is guilty of breaking all of it! I did not realize that none of us can ever be good enough to deserve heaven based upon our own righteousness. Heaven can only be received as a gift.

When I was twenty-two, this was all unknown to me. When I was asked if I knew where I was going when I died, I answered rather light-heartedly that I would probably go to hell to be with my friends. The girl who asked me that question responded that she knew she was going to heaven. That statement shocked me. I had never heard anyone say such a thing!

How can you know that? I asked.

She floundered around a bit, attempting to provide an answer, and finally exclaimed, Well, it’s hard to explain.

I knew right then and there that if it was possible to know for sure, I wanted to find out the answer! I prayed, How can anyone be assured of heaven when he dies?

Well, God answered that prayer. The next morning, not long after awaking, I read a small pamphlet called a gospel tract entitled Am I Going to Heaven? It began with an itemized checklist of things that some folks believe are necessary to earn their way into heaven—things like doing good works, keeping the Ten Commandments, obeying the golden rule, living a good life, tithing, giving to a church, water baptism, and a few others. I quickly learned by reading the Bible verses listed that although these various good works have merit, none of these things could save me from my sins and guarantee my entry into heaven when I died! Before checking any of the boxes, I quickly read the Bible verses that answered the question. There were verses to read, depending on which boxes I had checked. Because I was cheating, I read all the Bible verses and learned that none of those things could save me!

After reading those Bible verses, I also read a paragraph that began something like, None of these things can save you. Jesus is the only one who can save you and it is only by believing in Him (trusting Him for eternal life) that you can be saved. After reading that paragraph and believing it, I literally felt the burden of all my sins lifted off me. I knew I was forgiven by a God Who loved me unconditionally and had sacrificed Himself for me! A Bible passage that soon became one of my favorites is Acts 13:38-39:

Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.

This next passage, which includes John 3:16, a verse I now refer to as the most quoted and least understood verse in the Bible, is John 3:14–18:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

That gospel tract also included two more verses that soon became favorites of mine, Ephesians 2:8–9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Mere words cannot adequately express the joy I felt the instant I believed the gospel message! Based upon God’s promise, to know without doubt that I was forgiven and heaven-bound was just so exhilarating! This was then, and continues to be to this day, the best news I have ever heard.

It was a Sunday morning, and I drove from my rented place on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, about thirty miles to a park called Kelly Park containing Rock Springs. I parked my car and strolled along the river, just basking in God’s love and in the great news that I was forgiven and ultimately headed for heaven! How could any news ever be better than that?

Yes, I was on a mountaintop. Over the years, I’ve never really come down off that high, but I have had other mountains to climb. Also, I most certainly have experienced my share of valleys along the way. In fact, later, at the age of forty-six, when I climbed my first real mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, I learned that one spends almost as much time going down as he does going up when he climbs a mountain.

When I received eternal life that day by trusting Jesus, I received much more than the knowledge that my sins had been forgiven and that my ultimate destination of heaven is secured—I received my true purpose in life. I knew immediately that such good news needed to be shared with others. There are literally hundreds of millions of persons out there who have never understood that forgiveness and heaven are freely given by Jesus, not something to be earned or deserved! Many people have religion, but they don’t have 100 percent forgiveness for every one of their wrongdoings (sin). They are certainly not heaven-bound regardless of what they may think. If one doesn’t receive Jesus as his Savior, he doesn’t go to heaven, plain and simple. The Bible is very clear about this.

I’ve since come to believe that understanding this is a key factor in being able to freely forgive. When a person thinks that he somehow must earn or deserve God’s forgiveness either by his attitude toward God or his actions, he can just as easily believe that another person must earn his forgiveness the same way. Many, for example, proclaim, I am not going to forgive that person until he at least apologizes and expresses sorrow for what he has done!

Dori’s story is similar to mine in that she, too, went many years lacking any assurance that God had forgiven her. The following story, in her own words, tells how she came to receive God’s gift of forgiveness.

DORI’S STORY

When I was a young girl, I struggled in my spiritual life. My family went to church every time the doors were open. I liked being at church.

The hard part for me was knowing I needed to be right with God and being so unsure that I was. I heard messages and sang hymns that caused me to think I had to earn a place in heaven. I walked the aisle a number of times, hoping that I was getting saved from going to hell. The pastor gave a walk the aisle invitation every Sunday morning and night. He would say something like, If anyone wants to be saved today, please come forward, confess your sins, turn from your sins, ask Jesus into your heart, commit your life to God, and lay all your sins on the altar.

I listened carefully because I so desperately wanted to be saved. I wanted to understand how in the world I could do what the pastor was asking me to do. With tears, I would go forward thinking maybe this time, I was truly getting saved. The reason I was able to go forward as many times as I did was because the invitation also included anyone who wanted to just pray. My parents might have thought I was just going forward to pray. I was so confused. In our Sunday school classes, the teachers would tell us we needed to be telling people about Jesus and how to be saved. I wasn’t doing that. I didn’t know how. How was I to tell others that they could be saved if they would just commit their life, turn from their sins, etc., especially when I was not sure how to do that? What did that even mean? How could anyone know he or she were saved if that was what needed to be done?

I would lie in bed at night, fearful that if I died in my sleep, there was a possibility that I might go to hell. I would hear in my head the words of the preacher saying, If you were to get hit by a Mack truck and be killed on the spot, do you know you will be in heaven? Have you turned from your sins? Is your life committed to God? Or might you be going to hell?

I was also confused by a childhood prayer I would utter every night. It goes like this:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

That prayer actually scared me. If I had to ask the Lord to take my soul, might that mean He might not take my soul? Often, I would cry myself to sleep, thinking I just might end up in hell. Sometimes I would go into the living room where my mom was still up, just to sit with her. She would hold me and ask why I was crying. I would just say I was scared as I didn’t want to tell her I was afraid I might go to hell. I didn’t want her to feel bad. Of course, if I would have told her why I was crying, she could have been able to help me and save me many nights of great concern.

My brother David had been attending a Bible study at a place called the Tampa Youth Ranch. David had met Hank Lindstrom, the Bible teacher, at his high school. Hank would go there every week and teach the good news to many kids who attended his class.

So, my brother invited my sister Donna and me to the Bible study. That Thursday night, I finally understood I could have the full assurance of going to heaven instead of hell because of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. I vividly remember how great I felt when I heard the truth about salvation. Jesus paid the complete price for all our sins. Hank used four verses to help me understand.

I had never heard the message of salvation so clearly, even though many evangelists had come to my church and held weeklong revivals.

As Hank was reading and quoting the four verses, he would insert a different phrase in place of the word believe in the verse. For example:

John 3:16

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever repents of his sins should not perish but have everlasting life."

When Hank inserted the wrong phrase in place of the word believe, many kids all around me would yell out the actual word, believe! Hank would then respond to the correction by saying something like, Oh, did I get that wrong? Here, let me try that again. And he would read it again: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever commits his life to God should not perish but have everlasting life."

Again, the same response would come from the kids around me. Hank reread that passage a number of times, each time inserting phrases that I had heard many times from the pulpit at my church—phrases like

whosoever turns from their sins

whosoever asks Christ into their heart, and

whosoever lays everything on the altar.

Hank then added a few phrases I hadn’t heard from my church, like

whosoever helps old ladies cross the street,

whosoever goes to church,

whosoever gets baptized, and

whosoever does his best.

After hearing the kids around me yelling the word believe every time Hank inserted the wrong phrase in its place, I was beginning to understand. He really had my attention, and I liked what I was hearing.

Next, he explained Romans 6:23. Again, Hank’s approach that particular night was to insert well-known phrases in place of what the verse actually said. For this verse, which says, For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Hank would read it like this:

"For the wages of sin is good deeds."

Guess what the kids around me blurted out? They yelled out the correct word: Death! The wages of sin is death. Hank did the same thing with this verse as he did with John 3:16. He said something like these:

The wages of sin is turning from sin.

The wages of sin is committing your life to Christ.

The wages of sin is asking Christ into your heart.

The wages of sin is being baptized.

I was gaining a clearer understanding still.

The next passage was Ephesians 2:8–9.

For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.

With this passage, Hank pointed out that we have nothing to boast about because our salvation is God’s gift to us and not earned by our works.

Then came the clincher verse for me, 1 John 5:13.

These things I have written unto you who believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe on the name of the Son of God.

Hank inserted those same phrases as before in the place of the word believe, and in the place of the word know he inserted the words hope, wish, and think—all while the kids around were yelling out the word know!

He also added that the reason we can know we have eternal life when we believe Jesus is because we, at the moment of our believing, are sealed with His Holy Spirit, and we receive Jesus’ righteousness.

After making this presentation, Hank had us all close our eyes. He said he would like to pray for any of us who were, for the first time, believing Jesus for our eternal destiny in heaven. He asked us if we wanted him to pray for us, to indicate this by raising our hands. I think my hand had to be the first hand to spring up into the air. I was so excited! Finally, I knew without a doubt I was saved! Ever since that moment that I trusted in Jesus Christ alone to be my Savior, I have never been fearful of the possibility of going to hell. Jesus Christ has paid the price for me! I am secure in Him. Thank you, God!

Another exciting thing was that I also finally knew how to tell someone else the good news. Actually, what I knew before wasn’t good news. I was really looking forward to going to school and telling my classmates about what Jesus had done for us.

The next day, I was in my biology class. I just excitedly blurted out something like this to the girl I sat next to in class:

I learned I can know I am going to heaven, and I know I’m going to heaven and you can know it too! I know I’m going to heaven because Jesus paid for all my sins, and I believe Him to be my Savior. He paid for all of your sins, too, and if you trust Him to be your Savior, He will! It’s His gift to us. We can’t earn it because it is too great a price, but Jesus paid the price and wants to give eternal life to us as a gift. I don’t deserve to go to heaven, but Jesus loves me and paid the price for me so I can go. I am not going to heaven because I am better than you or anyone else. I am going to heaven because Jesus paid for my sins, and I am trusting Him to take me to heaven. You can know it too. It’s a free gift. He really loves you.

I know I rambled but I was so excited I just wanted to make it clear. I think I was also so excited that I actually knew what to say to someone.

That was what started my witnessing to others. As I continued to share, I learned additional ways to do so. I learned to listen more. I wanted to be able to influence people to trust in Jesus, and this caused me to want to have a good testimony and to grow in Him. After more than fifty years, I’m still excited about sharing.

Yes, that was Dori’s story. For each of us, the ability to forgive Lindsay has come as a result of being assured that God has forgiven us. I believe it is because we know we didn’t deserve forgiveness that we can forgive others without demanding or requiring them to be deserving of our forgiveness.

As you continue to read this book, I believe you will see just how important it is to have this issue of receiving God’s forgiveness settled in your own life.

To learn much more about receiving this gift of forgiveness and assurance of eternal life, I’ll encourage you to read chapter 17. It seems to me that very few really understand the good news and, therefore, lack solid assurance that they are eternally forgiven.

CHAPTER TWO

Who Was Robby Mast?

Robby Glenn Mast was born May 1, 1990, to Robert Lowell and Doraine Gail (Stephens) Mast. He was their second-born son as his brother, Benjamin, had arrived on January 8, 1988. The two boys became best friends and were inseparable until Ben left home in January 2006.

When Robby died, he was twenty-five. He had been on his own since his eighteenth birthday, the day he left home. That day was a very sad day for us, and I suspect, while he wouldn’t admit it, it was for him also. He was simply fulfilling a decision he had made more than two years before. His brother, Ben, had left home soon after turning eighteen, and he was determined to do the same.

The day he left, I told him that I wasn’t excited about his leaving and didn’t want him to leave, but what I did want was for him to get out there and allow the world to slap him around until he realized that whatever it was offering him could not compare with the life that God had for him. I think he had convinced himself that the world was calling him with a promise of freedom to do whatever he might want without consequences. The lure was simply too great to resist.

Let me step back in time to when I first met Robby. I want to provide you with a brief overview of his life. You see, I was his stepfather. He and I met on March 7, 1995, almost two months before his fifth birthday. I was living in Missouri then but had traveled to Florida to set up a computer system I was giving to Dori. I had known her since 1973 when she first began attending Florida Bible College, where I was also attending. Her brother, David, and her father, Marion, had been good friends of mine for more than twenty-two years by 1995, and I had long considered Dori as a younger sister.

Dori and I hadn’t talked much during all those years after I left college, and only three times after she had married Robby’s dad in 1984. I had last seen her in 1990, just before Robby was born when she and her husband spent a night or two at my and Saundra’s home in Orlando. In 1992, she called me to inform me that her dad was about to have open-heart surgery, and the other time had been just a month before our meeting in 1995 when I called her at her dad’s request to assist with a computer issue. Her husband, Bob (Robby’s biological father), had divorced her in 1993 and married his second wife, Mindy, eight days later. My wife, Saundra, had also divorced me in the summer of 1993. Neither Dori nor I had wanted our divorces.

Our first phone conversation lasted three hours a few days before I flew to Florida to set up the computer I had shipped to her. We had a lot to talk about and much in common since we had both been divorced by our spouses. When I arrived in Tampa a few days later, her dad picked me up at the airport and drove me to Largo where she and the boys lived. I was excited to see her again. I could never have imagined that day that Dori and I would marry less than fifteen months later on May 25, 1996.

Much happened during my twenty-plus visits to Florida over the next fifteen months, and I got to know both Ben and Robby pretty well before marrying their mother. Most of my visits lasted about a week, and after staying in a motel for the first two visits, I spent my nights across the street from Dori’s place at the Dummars’, who were good friends of Dori and the boys. They would put their son to bed and, after he fell asleep, move him to their daughter’s bedroom, making his bed available for me to sleep on. I had a key to their house and would often slide into bed after midnight and return to Dori’s once the boys were awake and ready for breakfast. Thus, we would spend about eighteen hours together each day, and by the time I would leave to fly back to St. Louis, she would be exhausted. When Dori and I weren’t together, we spent hundreds of hours talking on the phone. I was able to receive buddy passes from TWA employees who were my customers, and therefore I could fly to Florida anytime or fly her to Missouri.

During the summer of 1995, I drove down and picked up Dori and the boys to return to Missouri with them for the boys’ three-week vacation with their mom. (Bob and Dori each had the boys for a three-week period each summer—one of the few times each year when the boys weren’t being switched back and forth between them during each week.) I wanted to give them a vacation they would remember the rest of their lives.

Later that summer, when the boys were with their dad for his three-week vacation with them, I flew Dori up to Missouri so we could have ten days with just the two of us. I put her up in a bed-and-breakfast place that was really nice, and we enjoyed some great days together then also.

I knew I wasn’t just preparing to marry Dori, I was also accepting the responsibility of being Ben and Robby’s stepfather. During our wedding, I had them come onto the stage so that I could also pledge myself to them as the leader of our home and made it clear that I wasn’t replacing their father, as he was still alive and clearly active in their lives.

Once Dori and I were married, I was Robby’s stepfather for almost twelve years before he left home on May 1, 2008. Since Ben and Robby were with us only half the time each week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and every other weekend), our family life together was not as complete as it could have been since they were always shuffling between two homes.

While we had shared custody of Robby and Ben for about ten of those twelve years, with each of us having the boys fifty percent of the time, we had some great times and some difficult times. I have many good memories of fun times, especially during Robby’s preteen years. He was a boy who loved to have fun, and he and I got along great! He became more aloof toward Dori during his teen years, but he and I always had good communication. Things were a bit strained at home due to the conflict between the boys’ dad and me, but Robby didn’t blame me for it. Once, when Dori was getting on me for something I said about their dad, Robby spoke up and said, Mom, leave Gene alone. He’s right! (His dad did many things that provoked me during those years, and my displeasure with him was often evident.)

From the first day I met Ben and Robby, they seemed quite accepting of me. We had a lot of fun playing games, and he loved having me read stories to both him and Ben. It was easy to make him laugh. He and Ben both seemed to thoroughly enjoy my telling them fictitious stories about my experiences during the Civil War and the War of 1812. (Of course, I told them that the reason they had never read about me in the history books was that I worked undercover, using aliases, and never seeking any notoriety.)

I recall many a night when Dori and I would each play FreeCell on our individual computers. We would have races to see who could complete a particular numbered game first. One of the boys would be on Dori’s team, standing beside her, and the other would sit on my shoulders cheering me on. (This was when they were ten and twelve years old.) Because we had them only half the time, we did almost everything together when they were with us.

Dori and I were protective of both Ben and Robby and attempted to keep them from things and people that would influence them negatively. For example, we didn’t watch television. In fact, the only time we watched TV together was on the night Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2004. (I went out and purchased an antenna so they could watch the last period of the game.) We would have watched it all together, but we had a John Birch meeting at our house that night, and it wasn’t over until just before the third period began.

Regarding their schooling, we were disappointed that because their dad was a teacher and had been put in charge of making the decision of where they attended school, he had them in the public school system for their high school years, and we couldn’t do anything about that. Prior to high school, he had them in the school where he taught fifth grade.

As I mentioned, each summer both Dori and Bob would get a three-week period for vacation. We would so look forward to having them for a whole three weeks without switching back and forth each week. We would always try to do something special and memorable during those three weeks. When Robby was fourteen and Ben sixteen, we took them on a mission trip with us to Mozambique, Africa. It was so exciting to get to spend that time so far away, without telephones or anything at all interfering with our time together. It gave them a memory I was sure they would remember for the rest of their lives. This was an experience that most people never get.

It was when we returned from that trip that the boys learned that Bob and their stepmother, Mindy, had split up and their second home, the one they had lived in during the days they were with their dad, wasn’t their home any longer. That came as a big shock to both Ben and Robby. Bob was forced