In the fall of 2000, a large Methodist church in Florida invited me to address their divorce-recovery group. Finally, after years of writing and praying and hoping, here it was: the opportunity to serve. Yes! I’m delighted to do it! Tuesday night? Yes! I’m available. 7pm? Yes! I’ll be there. Everything was arranged except the topic. Didn’t matter to me. Pick a subject, any subject; I have a hundred prayers, one for every inch of the journey. The group leader said he’d call in a few days. He did. The topic would be forgiveness.

Forgiveness? Out of all the possibilities, it had to be forgiveness? How about the gut wrench of Betrayal? What about helping people slog through the swamps of Pain or the ambushes of War? Couldn’t we talk about the alarming revelations in Illusion, or the glorious process of letting go in Surrender? And what about Choice? There are so many critical choices to be made and I have prayers for all of them.

Forgiveness? Off the top of my head, I wasn’t even sure I had a good prayer on forgiveness! Frantic, I rifled through the manuscript looking for something appropriate. I decided to open with the “Happy Family Fantasy,” not because it is a prayer of forgiveness—it isn’t—but because it is the perfect introduction to the universal story of divorce and the power of personal prayer. Then, I would read “In The Name Of.” That is definitely about forgiveness, but not forgiving the other; it’s about forgiving the self. Now what? “The Way Through” isn’t totally about forgiveness but forgiveness is in there, so I added it to the list. That’s it. End of readings on forgiveness. Uh, oh.

Despite the fact that I had only three prayers to read, the evening went beautifully. I shared stories. I showed them journal pages where prayers showed up. I read from some of my favorite sacred texts. I encouraged their active participation in sacred journaling. I answered questions, lots of questions. When I was finished they didn’t want to leave; they crowded ‘round for more information on sacred journaling and personal prayer.

Three months later the church invited me back to address the next divorce- recovery group. The topic this time? Forgiveness. Forgiveness! “I need a little help here, God. I don’t have enough material on forgiveness and You know it!” Well, ask and ye shall receive, and boy, did I receive. The lesson at church the following Sunday? Forgiveness. The subject of a singer-songwriter concert? Forgiveness, of course. The theme of the novel my book group selected? Duh, forgiveness. Songs on the radio, articles in magazines, conversations with friends: forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. I was swimming in a sea of forgiveness. I had more information than I could possibly cram into an evening. I had great fun writing a rich workshop on forgiveness.

The second divorce-recovery group was thrilled with the evening and I certainly enjoyed their feedback and praise, but deep inside—way deep inside—I knew there was more work to be done on forgiveness. I just didn’t want to do it. There’s the truth. A part of me—the not-so-gracious part of me—wanted to lock my ex-husband into his role as the “bad guy.” A part of me rather enjoyed being an ex-wife “saint-in-the-making.” But I had asked God for help with forgiveness and information was suddenly all around me. I knew this bounty wasn’t just to help me prepare a good class. It was something more, something I needed to do, something missing in my book. With that thought stewing in my head, I went to church on March 25, 2001. The lesson was, “A Little Love.” The reading was from Luke 7:47:

The moment I heard this verse, I knew what I had to do. I had to forgive my ex-husband, finally and completely. Forgive him and move on. So he could love again. So I could love more. I wanted to love more and, at long last, I wanted him to be free to love and be loved, too. Yes, I was finally, really, truly, and completely ready to forgive, and God was telling me how.

An amazing thing happened the Sunday I wrote this prayer. At 5:00 P.M., I drove to the McDonald’s where the court had mandated my ex and I exchange our son. When my ex-husband pulled up, he got out of the truck and headed straight to my car. I panicked momentarily, because that’s how several 911 incidents had started, but it was too late to reach for my cell phone, so I took a deep breath and lowered the car door four inches. He thrust his fist in the opening. “Here,” he said and dropped a check. On my lap was a check for $38.00. “That’s for the dentist,” he mumbled as he walked back to the truck.

Now, thirty-eight bucks may not seem like much to you, but for us this was right up there with the parting of the Red Sea. I had asked for half of our son’s medical expenses for the previous four years. My ex-husband owed me thousands of dollars and had not paid a dime. He had sneered at me every time I told him of a new expense and several times had said he’d never pay. So, why did he suddenly pay half of our son’s last checkup? I got my answer the next morning when I opened my journal and saw that I had written my prayer of total and complete forgiveness the day before, just hours before my ex wrote that check. There it was: instantaneous proof of the power of forgiveness. I didn’t understand how it worked, but I knew that by forgiving him I had somehow released him from energetic bonds that had kept him tied up in anger and hate toward me.

But that was only the first miracle—a small harbinger of bigger miracles to come.

A year later, when our son told his dad he would no longer go to his home for visitation, I invited my ex-husband to come to ours. My family was furious with me and my friends thought I’d lost my mind. But, I had completely and totally forgiven him and, because I had, I was able to do what I thought was right: invite him back into my home so he could see his son. For the next fifteen months, my son and his father slowly and tentatively reconnected over dinner on Thursdays and Sundays.

On October 6, 2003, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, my ex-husband died of a massive stroke. I stepped in to close his business and handle his affairs. Sitting on the floor in his office, going through file drawer after file drawer, I came across a thick manila folder marked “life insurance.” Turning the pages, I discovered that the same month I invited my ex-husband to start coming to our home, he started fighting with his insurance company to reinstate his lapsed policy. Over the next six months he not only reinstated it, he increased it, and named me beneficiary.

When I received that stunning check, I knew I was holding tangible proof of the power of forgiveness. I realized that my spiritual pilgrimage had not only transformed me, it had released him as well. That check was evidence of perhaps the most amazing truth of Spiritual Geography: the work of one can release two. Even though my ex-husband never had a day of therapy (despite seven court orders) and, as far as I know, didn’t do any deep, transformative spiritual work, he, too, had found his way to the Country of Peace.