Finding Forgiveness

Enduring the unthinkable as a child, Elizabeth McGuire, 42 and a native of Elwood, Kansas, is free from bitterness and shame, and she is committed to giving God all the glory.

“Growing up, life was great,” McGuire says. “I was a big daddy’s girl. He taught me how to hunt and fish and shoot and all that stuff.”

McGuire and her twin brother were the youngest of seven children, all of whom were half-siblings. She says that she “never had much of a relationship with her mother.”

When McGuire was 7, her father went into a deep depression and started struggling with alcohol use.

“Our relationship drastically changed,” McGuire says.

That was when a family member who was almost 20 came to live with her family.

Soon after he moved in, he started behaving inappropriately, and as time went by, it just got worse, McGuire says. She recalls that there were times she came close to death.

McGuire was defenseless and things were so bad that she often hid a knife in her bed for fear her attacker would show up during the night.

McGuire says when she was 11 years old, her father and the family member “got into a big fight,” and he stopped coming to the house.

Although the threat of harm ended and her physical wounds healed, McGuire had suffered emotional trauma that only God could heal.

“Going into high school, I did what I could to mask the disgust that I felt and the shame that I had toward myself,” McGuire says. “I began hanging around with the wrong crowd, partying, drinking, and all that stuff. At times, I would [hurt] myself to physically hide the emotional pain I was feeling.”

Her senior year in high school, McGuire met Bill. The two started dating and “hanging out every possible minute that they could.”

“I realized that Bill always went to church on Sunday mornings and was adamant about not missing,” McGuire says. “I couldn’t figure out why.”

McGuire had occasionally attended church with her grandfather as a child but saw it only as a history lesson about a man named Jesus who “once was but is no more.”

Deciding to see for herself why he was so determined to attend church, McGuire tagged along with Bill one Sunday.

“The first thing I noticed was how welcoming the ladies were,” McGuire says. “Some of them took me under their wing, and I quickly learned that this Jesus who I thought once was, actually still is and always will be.”

McGuire soon accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior, and she and Bill were married and started a family.

Yet torments of McGuire’s past continued to secretly haunt her.

“The guilt that came over me was indescribable; it was overwhelming,” McGuire says. “I knew that God was a God of love, but I prayed several times for him not to love me. I was too ashamed, too guilty, and too unworthy of his love.”

McGuire maintained that mindset for the next 16 years until she became convicted of the bitterness and unforgiveness that were entrenched in her heart.

In 2012, McGuire and her family moved to Norfolk, Nebraska, and started attending Victory Road Assembly of God, pastored by Mark Rose.

Eventually managing the courage to knock on her pastor’s door, McGuire asked if he “had a minute.”

Rose listened, as for the first time, McGuire started releasing the secrets she had guarded for so many years.

“That have-you-got-a-minute conversation turned into an hour and then two hours and then many more conversations,” McGuire says. “He would always listen and pray for me, and he convinced me to talk to my husband and tell him all the things from my past because I had never even told him.”

Total freedom would come a year later when Victory Road held a special week of prayer meetings, and the Lord nudged McGuire to pray about her traumatic past.

“At first, I ignored it, but he kept prompting me to get up and pray. Eventually, I said, ‘Okay Father, if this is you, I’ll do it,’” McGuire says. “I started praying for my husband and kids, but then all the memories of my childhood came flooding back, and I knew immediately that he wanted me to pray about that certain thing.”

She says she felt Jesus impress on her heart that she was His daughter and was loved. “To have him [remind] me that he loved me amidst my shame and my guilt that I was feeling and accept me as I was, was incredible.”

Although she still has memories of her past, McGuire no longer allows the pain to define who she is. All she has for those in her past are prayers and the hope she will see them in Heaven one day.

“I’ve been able to forgive,” McGuire says, and wants nothing more than to meet them in eternity.

Amy Lynn Smith

Amy Lynn Smith lives in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, with her pastor husband, W. Kevin Smith and the two youngest of their six children. She has served in various aspects of ministry with the Assemblies of God for 27 years, including worship leader, deacon, and youth pastor. She is currently office manager at Radcliff First Assembly.