I Buried The Man Who Shot At Me

Published Feb 23, 2024, 10:34 PM

For our “Shop Talk” series, Coach Bill Courtney shares one of the most vulnerable stories of his life.

Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney. Welcome to an army of normal folks. We are adding to our library, and on occasional fridays and hopefully more often than not, we are going to start doing shop Talk. And what shop Talk is is normal takes on hot topics, not going to have a guest. They're only going to be about ten minutes long, and hopefully they're food for thought on different things that are going on in society, maybe even dive into some of these issues our politicians argue of, or maybe just discussing basic fundamentals and tenants. But we wanted to add to the library. We wanted to give everybody something new and fresh to think about in addition to our amazing guests. And so welcome to one of one of shop Talk. And today we're going to talk about forgiveness in a very personal way. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, welcome back everybody to shop Talk. Some of you, if you've listened to all the episodes, read my book, heard me in a speech, watched Undefeated, any of it, I've probably heard me talk about how fatherlessness really affected my life. My fourth datty one night after drinking about a half gallon of us or Scotch took out a thirty eight caliber pistol and shot up her house, and in the middle of it, he shot at me down a hallway. And if you've ever you've never been in this situation to hear a bullet flying by you. But oddly, a bullet when it's passing you has an interesting sound. It sounds like like something spinning real fast, but you can't hear it if it's close enough. And I did, and I remember the hangers in the closet behind me as the bullet passed me. The hanger's clanking because the bullet went through the closet door and hit the hangers and they clanked. I dove out a window, ran to a neighbor, called the cops. Cops got there pretty quick, and when they came in, my mom was cowered in a corner in the attic and he was reloading. House was destroyed, bullet ols everywhere. Pretty traumatic stuff. And I was in my late teens at the time, and so i'd left. I was four. Mam was buried divorced five times. This was Daddy number four, and it was just one more episode of really dysfunction and trauma that affected me well into life as a husband and a father, and it affected the way I interacted with my wife and my kids. But we're talking about forgiveness today, and what I've learned about grace is it is so much more important for the forgive error than the forgiven. When you hold things that have happened to you, or things that have upset you, or wrongs that have been done against you, and you covet those and you don't forgive the perpetrator of those actions that hurt you, it will eat you up from the inside. And with regard to my father, with regard to a lot of things that went out in my life as a child, and with regard to this specific incident, that's what was happening to me. I never could release myself from the anger, the fear, the trauma, and the desperation of that night. And it affected me. It affected me as a father, affected me as a business owner and a boss, That affected me as a father and husband. That just affected me. And to be perfectly candid, one of the worst days in my family's existence was Father's Day because it brought up, you know, all of this stuff, and I never understood that it wasn't about me celebrating the men of my life who never stepped up and became a father, but the deliciousness of the opportunity I had as a man with my four beautiful children. And I regret that. So one day, about ten years ago, I got a phone call and it was from a man who said that he was in the prayer group in a Sunday school with my mom's ex husband who shot up the house, and that that guy would like to see me, and I said okay. I don't even know why I said okay, maybe more out of curiosity than anything, but I did say okay, And I expected I was going to go to a Piccadilly or something, but I was told to go to Saint Francis Hospital and the room and I went, and I found him laying in bed, a shell of his former self, sick, and he told me all that was going on in his life around that time. He'd lost his job, he'd had a quadruple bop ass, he had cancer. He was fifteen years older than my mom, and my mom at the time was beautiful, and he was still he was kind of falling apart, and he turned to alcohol to mascus pain, and he got drunk run night and let all of the trauma from his life from a kid and a young adult and into where he was feeling lost and hopeless and like a failure because his body and his health wouldn't let him work anymore. And he had the worst night of his life, just like I did. And he had for fifteen years carried with him enormous guilt, and had it not been for his Sunday school class and his men's prayer group, he doesn't know how he would deal with himself. And that he wanted to see me simply to explain all of that, not as an excuse, and then to beg me for my forgiveness. And he told me that he thought I was an amazing young man, I'd grown into a fantastic father and adult, and that he did not want to pass this earth without at least telling me how sorry he was and how important it was that I forgive him. And he looked me dead eyes and he said, and I'm telling you what I've learned ten years my life, is you need to forgive me, not for me, but for you. I left the hospital room that night, confused and frustrated, thought about it, talked with Lisa about it, prayed about it. I went back the next day and with tears flowing down my face, told him I forgave him and that I was sorry his life was where it was, and that that it was over, and thanked him for helping me unload that burden. Three days later, I got a call from the same man who asked me to come visit him, and I was told he passed. He had no money, he was destitute, and he grew up in a really small town in Arkansas, and he wanted to be cremated, and so they had him cremated, and these men in the prayer group literally built about a shoebox sized pine box and they put his remains in it. And they called me about a week later and they said they, you know, they he hadn't didn't have a burial plot or anything, but that they called a man who owned a small cemetery in his home in Arkansas and they were going to go over there and figure out how to bury him. And asked if I want to go, and I said sure. So I met him over there, and we met the caretaker of the cemetery and he showed us a very little plot, literally a three foot by three foot area in the corner by a fence. They said, you can have the spot. And the minister prayer group had a very simple seven by nine not even a headstone, just a piece of granite to lay in the grass that simply said his name, the day was born, in the day died. And I took a shovel and I dug the hole, and I put his remains in the hole, and I filled it up, and I put the marker on top of it, and we said a prayer and we left. So I literally buried the man with forgiveness and love that tried to shoot me and kill me one night, And the only way I was able to do it was through grace and forgiveness. And I speak about it now not with anxiety and anger and frustration, but I speak about that night now actually with humility and thankfulness, because it taught me that no matter what happens in your life, if you can carry grace and forgiveness into situations, you can emerge better from them, and it serves those in your life around you. Because after that I was able to let so much of my fatherlessness issues go and be so much of a better father to my own kids, and a better husband to my wife, and really a better person to the people in my orbit because I was no longer carrying all this anger and anxiety in me that affected the way I interacted with other people who had nothing to do with the people or incidents that affected me in the first place. And then the last thing is a very very broken man who did a very very very bad thing was able to pass with forgiveness and grace in his heart because he reached out to me to ask my forgiveness. So as you think about the story, I hope you'll think about the things that you're harboring inside your life, and I hope you'll think about those who wronged you and look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, have I forgiven? Is it a burden to me? Am I allowing something that's happened in my past to affect my relationships with people that have nothing to do with it. Have I understood? Grace and forgiveness? I challenge you to think about that, because it will make you better, and it will make those around you feel better, and it will unburden you with things that cause you and those in your life issues. So that's one of one of Shop Talk think about forgiveness this weekend. We'll see you next week.