By Gavin Boyle
After recalling a shameful act of revenge against his father, Terry Crews explained how he realized that forgiveness was the only way to receive the freedom he desired.
“My father is on the ground, bleeding, and I’m sitting on his bed, and I’m watching him,” Crews told TBN’s audience. “I’m like, ‘This is a man I want to honor,’ and I’m hitting him. And it wasn’t right. All that revenge, all that get-back stuff was an attempt to control things I could never control. What I thought was going to work was the beat down. But what really worked was forgiveness and a hug. And now, no matter what decision [my father] makes — ’cause that’s not what I can control, but what I can control is the fact that I am free.”
Crews’ bitterness towards his father came from seeing him abuse his mom all throughout his childhood. Even when he was as young as 5 years old, he had a desire to protect his mom, causing him to begin focusing on building up his body. In 2000, he finally confronted his dad, taking revenge for how he treated his mom.
“I remember driving back to Flint,” Crews recalled. “I told [his wife] Rebecca, I said, ‘get everybody out of the house and just leave us.’ Let me tell you, I beat that man within an inch of his life and it was horrible. There was no satisfaction there.”
“This is the thing,” Crews added in a conversation with Bear Grylls, “I thought it would feel good. And he’s on the ground, bleeding, crying, and I didn’t feel one bit better. It left me with nothing.”
Years later, after Crews began to take his faith seriously, he attended therapy with the goal of finding a way to forgive his father. He was able to do so and has since been able to move forward in his relationship with his dad and find healing.
“We hugged, he cried. Man, all I wanted was for us to be a family and for him to love my mother as much as we loved her,” Crews told Grylls. “And then at that moment, I knew we had transcended.”
Related: Revenge Didn’t Satisfy Terry Crews, So He Forgave Instead
“By me forgiving him, by me finding one thing to compliment him and be thankful for, I was able to transcend that moment and we were able to transcend it and, and get past it,” he continued. “And I find there’s a lot of things that you just have to cut your losses on. Move on, and reevaluate the situation as it exists today. And now, I have been able to move on.”
Crews’ story is an amazing testament to the power of forgiveness, especially given that he attempted to get even with his father first. However, finding no peace in that, it was only through forgiveness that he has been able to move forward.
Read Next: How Terry Crews Discovered the Power of Forgiveness
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