How Forgiveness Leads to Finding Redemptive Love in a Prison Cell | Tac Buchanan | 70 Times 7

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[00:00:12]I walked into that room. I know you see me out of the corner of his eye, but he won't look [music] directly at me. And the warden says, "Do you have a final statement?" And he said, "Yes, sir, I do."

[00:00:21]He says, "I pray to God, the Lord Almighty, that like he did for me, he [music] will reach out and help you. I just pray that the Lord takes away your bitterness.

[00:00:29]There's [music] so much hurt that I've caused you all. I am sorry for what I've done."

[00:00:35]>> [music] >> And then he turned his head and he looked me dead in the eye, and he said, "Can you forgive me?"

[00:00:40]>> [music] >> And I nodded my head, yes. And he looked up, and he said, "I'm ready."

[00:00:45]And I watched that man go to heaven.

[00:00:51]And I know in the depths of my soul that I will spend eternity because of his repentance and my forgiveness.

[00:01:11]>> [music] >> My name is Tack Buchanan. I'm the regional coordinator for the Bridges to Life program here in the Texas Panhandle from Amarillo. Lived here in my whole life.

[00:01:30]You know, I had a loving mother and a pretty wealthy dad here in Amarillo. My dad was a building contractor.

[00:01:38]And back in the '80s, I guess he decided he didn't want to work as hard, so he sold his building contractor business and he bought a bar. And my dad being at his bar all the time pretty quickly led to my parents getting a divorce.

[00:01:51]So, [music] at a pretty young age, I uh walked out of the church and started hanging out with my dad in his bars. So, I took on a very worldly lifestyle. And my dad, he instilled it in me in a very young age that you suck it up, boy. Men don't cry. And I'll be honest with you, that's the biggest lie that Satan's ever told because when men don't cry, we bottle that up. We turn to alcoholism.

[00:02:15]We turn to drug addiction. We turn to just internalizing everything cuz we don't know how to grieve in a healthy way. And then we wind up acting out with, like I said, alcoholism or drug addiction or wind up in prison or being abusive to the ones that we love, our family members, cuz we don't know how to deal with that anger.

[00:02:37]When I was a young child, I went to a Baptist church here in Amarillo with my mother. And then after my parents divorced, my dad, he did want to spend time with me and my brother, so the day that he chose was Sunday. So, we started going to hang out with my dad at his bar instead of going to church. So, at a very young age, I turned my back on the Lord for a very worldly lifestyle.

[00:03:00]>> [music] >> I met my wife and she was a bartender.

[00:03:03]She came to work with my dad in his bar, and we started dating and we eventually got married. [music] And my father, this whole time, he was an alcoholic. He died of a cirrhosis of the [music] liver at 56 years old. So, after watching my dad die of that of alcoholism, I told my wife that we need to straighten up cuz we both worked in bars, we both drank, we both partied.

[00:03:25]So, we decided that we did need to straighten our lives up and start being a parent for the first time to our daughter. So, we quit working in bars and got real jobs for the first time in our lives.

[00:03:40]After we started straightening our lives up, we gave it our first shot to live a a good life. And my wife was supposed to give me a ride to work the next day and drop me off and come back and pick me up at lunch, and then I was going to drop her off at work. Well, she never showed up.

[00:03:56]>> [music] >> I was actually getting angry, you know, calling her lazy and not going to come pick me up. Now, I'm not going to get to eat my lunch. It was very I was very selfish back then. So, I caught a ride with my boss that he was just going to take me to my mother's house and drop me off and get my Harley and come back to work. Well, I couldn't get in my mother's house cuz it was locked and my key to my mom's was on my truck key ring that she had. So, I took off walking to the place that she was supposed to be working at.

[00:04:30]And when I walked in, the young lady that was working the morning shift was shaking and crying. And [music] she told me that my house just burned down and that my wife was inside.

[00:04:42]>> [music] >> She gave me the keys to her car. And I took off across Amarillo, Texas driving 100 miles an hour just trying to get to my house to find out what was going on.

[00:04:51]And when I got there, I had to park about three blocks away from all the fire trucks and the ambulances and police cars that were everywhere. And I got out and I'm running towards my house. And those police officers, three firemen that are putting the fire out and about four officers behind them.

[00:05:06][music] And whenever I yelled, "This is my house!" and I was running straight at them, they turned around and looked directly at me. And they went into, you know, full-blown linebacker mode and body slammed me. They've got me pinned to the ground. And they handcuffed me and they stand me up and they take me back to a police car and they put me in the trunk. And two officers, they're asking me questions, you know, "Who are you? Where'd you come from?" I said, "This is my house. I came from work."

[00:05:31]And I started asking them questions. I said, "Was there someone inside?" And they said, "Yeah, there was a young lady inside." I said, "What happened?" And they said, "We don't know."

[00:05:40]>> [music] >> And the next thing you know, two detectives came up and they placed me under arrest for suspicion [music] of murder.

[00:05:49]And they took me to the police station in downtown Amarillo and they handcuffed me to a chair. And they would come in and, you know, one one officer would scream and yell at me, you know, "Why did you do this? We know you did this.

[00:06:00]Just tell us why you did it." And then the other officer would come in and say, "We'll go a lot easier on you if you just tell us why you did this." They were doing the whole good cop, bad cop thing. And I kept telling them, "I did not do this."

[00:06:15]After being handcuffed in that interrogation room for hours, I told these officers that I needed to go to the restroom. So, they handcuffed me and they put ankle shackles on me. And two detectives took me to the bathroom, which is on the other side of the waiting [music] room at the police station in Amarillo. When they opened the door to that waiting room, I saw my daughter, I saw my mother, and I saw a woman that I don't know. My mother started crying when she saw me. And my daughter started screaming, "Daddy! Daddy!" And all that I wanted to do was pick my daughter up and tell her that everything's going to be okay. But I couldn't do that because I was [music] chained like an animal.

[00:06:54]I dropped to my knees and my daughter is running at me screaming, "Daddy!" and I'm saying, "It's going to be all right, baby. It's going to be all right." And that other woman that I didn't know who she was was a CPS officer. And she runs over and scoops up my daughter. And I'm watching this 9-year-old girl try to fight a grown woman to get to me. And there's [music] nothing I could do about it but sit there in chains like an animal. And that is the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life. I was in a car wreck that left me in the hospital for over a year.

[00:07:26]I saw my one of my dearest [music] friends die in that same car wreck. I watched my dad die of alcoholism. And my wife had been murdered just a few hours earlier and I was getting the blame for it. And none of that hurt me as bad as when I wanted to reach out to my daughter and pick her up and say everything's going to be okay.

[00:07:45]>> [music] >> Probably another hour later, my boss shows up with a video with the timestamp on it, security video saying he was at work. He did not do this. They had a He said there's 20 other employees that will vouch for him. There is no [music] way he could have done this. I gave him a ride to his mom's. So, they came in and they took my handcuffs off and they said, "You're free to go."

[00:08:13]After I was released, and I was released to a world that I couldn't handle, I started drinking way too [music] much.

[00:08:20]And a few days later, we went to the funeral home to make a funeral arrangements. And the funeral director told me that her body had just got back from autopsy. And I said, "I want to see her." And he told me, "No, you don't."

[00:08:34]And I said, "Yes, I want to see my wife.

[00:08:36]I want to tell her bye."

[00:08:38]At that time, I still didn't know how my wife died. I just knew that she was gone. And they pulled that drawer out of the wall and the funeral director started showing me her eyes were swollen shut from being beaten. Her nose was broke. He started showing me bruises on her neck where she'd been choked to death.

[00:08:56]And uh all of her hair was burned off from the fire. She looked like a piece of barbecue chicken you leave on the grill too long. It It was not my beautiful wife that was sitting there. And it it made me sick. I threw up in the in the morgue. And I turned around and I I walked out. I had to leave. So, I went straight back to what I what I do. You know, I've covered up my whole life from that car wreck, from my dad dying, that I just started drinking to self-medicate. And after seeing that, I started uh drinking way way too much. I started having nightmares after I saw saw what I saw in that morgue. And those nightmares got so bad that I got to a point where I was suicidal.

[00:09:37]>> [music] >> After about 3 months of uh just really struggling and self-medicating, they they finally caught this kid. And since I'm no longer the main suspect, they can start telling me what really happened. He was living in a park in Amarillo Texas homeless. So, he went and knocked on my door thinking looking for an empty house to rob. And she didn't answer the door because she was in the shower. So, he went around to the back and broke out the window. [music] In his confession, he said that he was in my house for over half an hour and she never even knew it. He was watching her through the crack of the door and he decided that he wanted to rape her. So, she came he came out and his confession he was saying that she said "Please don't hurt me. I have a you know, child.

[00:10:27]Take whatever you want. Just don't hurt me." And he decided he wanted to rape her and she fought him. So, he beat her.

[00:10:33]That's why her eyes were swollen shut and her nose was broken. And he said that he just sat there beating her until she laid there whimpering. And after he did that, he tried to rape her again and she still tried to crawl away from him.

[00:10:47]So, he picked up my belt and he put it around her neck and he choked her to death and then he raped her body [music] after she was dead and then he burned my house down.

[00:10:58]After they told me what really happened, I I took a real dark turn and I was doing a lot of drugs. I was not in my right mind and they had him at the Potter County Jail and I decided the only way I can stand up for her, the only way I can you know, get back for what you did to me, you took everything from me is I'm going to take everything from you. And I got myself thrown in jail on purpose with the full [music] intentions of ending this man's life.

[00:11:27]They put me in a eight-man tank and I shared what he did to her with seven other men. I got them just as mad as I am. I was going to kill this guy and now I had back up to get it done.

[00:11:38]>> [music] >> We actually found out what pod he was in and we started planning an attack and thank God I didn't pull it off or I'd still be sitting in prison. I think they figured out who I was and they they actually moved me to another county jail. They said you cannot be in the same facility as this man. So, [snorts] they moved me to Randall County and I got out and I went to court and I got four years deferred probation on a drug charge. That's what I did on purpose to go to jail. And he went to court and the state of Texas sentenced him to death for what he did. [music] And I thought that would make me feel better. But whenever it came down, it didn't change anything. It didn't bring her back. It didn't take my anger away.

[00:12:18]Nothing changed. So, I just kept doing what I was doing. I started failing UAs at probation and eventually I got pulled over and they found a another bag of meth in my pocket and that revoked my probation and they put me in prison.

[00:12:32]They sentenced me to a SAFE P unit, which that stands for Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility. And the way SAFE P works, they give you a sentence, you do their one-year TDCJ rehab program and if you complete it, you get out and you do the rest of your time on probation. And if you mess up at any time, you get your original sentence, >> [music] >> which my original sentence was 10 years.

[00:12:55]So, I got put in the SAFE P program and when I get there, they tell you you have to write an autobiography about your life and that way the counselors can read it and they can come up with a plan on how to counsel you and and how to go about making a program for you to go through. Well, my first day in prison, they tell me to write this autobiography and I did. You know, I wrote about my dad. I wrote about that car wreck and then when I started writing about my wife getting murdered, I went into detail what he did to her.

[00:13:26]And I said the state of Texas sentenced him to death and I wrote "5 minutes later, I'll be dead too so I can follow him to hell and spend my eternity killing him." And I wrote "Killing him again and again and again" for three pages. And I turned that in to a counselor and the very next morning, they came and arrested me. They said that they shackled me from head to toe with chains and belts and they said the sergeant wants to see you. So, I went to the sergeant's office and she had that biography and she said, "Is everything you wrote true?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am, it is." She said, "Well, we're a little concerned you may be a threat to the other inmates." I said, "If he was in here, I'd be a big threat to him. But I'm not a threat to any of these other guys." So, eventually she took all my chains off and I told her I said, "I can't do the SAFE P program." I said, "Cuz I don't want to go to counseling. I don't want to talk about my dead wife getting raped. I don't want I'm just going to bottle this stuff up like I always have. I don't want to share any of this." And she said, "Well, what's going to happen is they're going to come arrest you and they're going to take you to the Montford Unit in Lubbock, Texas, which is a psychiatric ward and you're going to do your whole 10-year sentence.

[00:14:33]Or you can suck it up and do this one-year SAFE P program and move on with life and do the rest of your time on probation." So, with after you get faced with a choice like that, I decided I'll do the SAFE P program >> [music] >> and then she told me she said, "I want you to see the unit chaplain."

[00:14:50]And there's a lot of people that tried to lead me to the Lord after my wife got murdered and I just couldn't wrap my head around that. People would tell me "God's there when you need him" and I would say "Where was your loving God when my dead wife was getting raped?" I said, "Your God's a fantasy and you're an idiot for believing in this stuff."

[00:15:07]And that's how I treated people that tried to lead me to the Lord. Now this sergeant in prison is telling me I have to see the chaplain. So, I can't treat them the same way I have all these people in the world. I have to do what I'm told. So, I go talk to this unit chaplain and he says, "What can I do for you, son?" And I had that biography and I threw it at him. I said, "Read this."

[00:15:28]And >> [music] >> he pointed at that sergeant and said, "That's their stuff." He said, "What can I do for you?" I looked at the ground and I just started telling him this story and um I wasn't saved. Every third word started with F. I was in prison. I was just puking hatred on this man's desk and I looked up at him after I'm done telling my story and he's crying.

[00:15:51]You know, I bottled this up for years and years and never shed a tear and I'm looking at this chaplain and he's crying. He's taking my pain for me.

[00:15:59][music] And he looked at me and he said, "Can I pray for you?" And I said, "You know what, man? It felt good to get this off my chest. Thanks for listening to me.

[00:16:08]But I don't have anything for your blankety God."

[00:16:13]I was so full of hate and so full of anger. When I looked in the mirror, I saw angry drug addict, hate-filled alcoholic, bad dad, any of these things looking at me in the mirror. This chaplain saw Christ in me and he did not give up. I cussed him and I cussed his God and he called for me every day until it finally touched my heart and I said, "My whole life has been messed up. Maybe I'll give this Jesus thing a chance."

[00:16:39]And I went to his church service. I gave my life to Christ that day. That does not make me perfect. I still had a long way to go. But I was pointed in the right direction for the first time.

[00:16:56]And I started working with this chaplain and he started talking to me about forgiveness.

[00:17:01]He said, "You got to forgive your dad."

[00:17:03]Cuz even after I got locked up, I was blaming my dad. I would have known Christ my whole life if my dad wouldn't have pulled me out of church to hang out in bars. And I forgave my dad. I forgave my brother who was driving that car that we were in that wreck.

[00:17:16]He said "You got to forgive yourself."

[00:17:19]And I couldn't forgive myself.

[00:17:21]And it was another inmate that helped me forgive myself. I was talking to this inmate and he said, "You can't forgive yourself?" I said, "No, man. I've caused too much pain." He said, "What are you talking about?" You know, I talked earlier about the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life was when I wanted to reach out to my daughter and tell her it's going to be okay and I couldn't do it cuz I was chained.

[00:17:41]That whole interaction took 15 seconds.

[00:17:45]And did it hurt? Yes, it hurt very bad.

[00:17:48]But then when my daughter needed me the most, her mother got murdered and I chose drugs and I chose alcohol and I chose prison. How could I forgive myself of that? How could I forgive myself of all the pain that I caused my daughter when she needed me most? This inmate looks at me and he said, "You believe that man's forgiven?" I said, "Yeah, man. If he gets saved and repents, then sure he is." "You believe this man's forgiven?"

[00:18:13]"Yeah, if he gets saved and repents, then sure he is. But you can't forgive yourself." I said, "No, man. I've caused too much pain." He said, "You know what you're doing? You're looking up at the cross at Jesus Christ saying, 'Jesus, you did enough for him and Jesus, you did enough for him. But you didn't do enough for me. So, why don't you get a hammer and pull those nails out and you'll do a couple of more miracles just so little tackle have enough faith to believe what your word says.'" So, I'll tell anybody that's out there struggling forgiving yourself, think about that all night long and you'll wake up with a whole new attitude. And I said, "You know what, man? You're right." And [music] I forgave myself. That's when I could be a husband again. I could be a father again, a brother, anything that Satan says I couldn't be, I can whenever I restored that relationship with Christ because I forgave myself, [music] which was keeping me separated from him.

[00:19:10]I was talking to the chaplain again about forgiveness and he said that you have to forgive the man that murdered your wife.

[00:19:15]>> [music] >> And I said, "I can't do it." I actually said to him "Jesus wouldn't even forgive him." And he never pressured me. He said, "All right. Let's keep praying.

[00:19:22]Let's keep working through this. You know, here's a book to read. Here's some scriptures to read." And I started studying about forgiveness and I came to the conclusion forgiveness doesn't mean it's all right. Forgiveness doesn't mean it's all right you murdered and raped my wife. Forgiveness means I'm not going to carry this burden anymore. I'm not going to be full of hate. I'm not going to be full of anger. I'm not going to be addicted cuz somebody else has control over my life because I refused to forgive and live my life in anger. And I forgave the man that murdered my wife. I let all that go.

[00:19:54]>> [music] [music] >> I got out of prison, and everything's going great. And >> [music] >> back in 2008, I got that phone call. It was the state of Texas and said that we're fixing to execute the man that murdered your wife.

[00:20:13]>> [music] >> Do you want to come?

[00:20:15]And you know, I really started battling in my head. If I've truly accepted Christ, is it all right for me to condone the [music] state of Texas taking somebody else's life? And I started counseling. I started praying about it. I started spending a whole lot of time with the Lord. And I decided I do want to go to this execution, but I went with the heart of forgiveness, not a heart of [music] vengeance. I had pastors praying for him. I had my family all over America praying that this man would come to know the Lord before they executed him. And I went to his execution.

[00:20:49]>> [music] >> I walked into that room. I know I know that he can see me. I know he can see me out of the corner of his eye, but he won't look directly at me. And the warden says, "Do you have a final statement?" And he said, "Yes, sir, I do." He says, "First of all, I want to thank God.

[00:21:04]I want to thank God for the love from the family and friends that I have.

[00:21:08]To God I give the glory through the years. I love and care about the Lord.

[00:21:12]The Lord knows that I prayed for the victim's family. I know you all probably have bitterness and hate for what I did.

[00:21:18]There's not a day goes by that I've not prayed for Ronny Don Buchanan and her daughter who was left behind.

[00:21:25]I pray to God, the Lord Almighty, that like he did for me, he will reach out and help you.

[00:21:30]I just pray that the Lord takes away your bitterness. There's so much hurt that I've caused you all.

[00:21:35]God help me to forgive myself and move on. I just pray that someday you will find forgiveness in your heart. Know that your loved one is in a good place.

[00:21:45]I am sorry for what I've done." And then he turned his head, and he looked me dead in the [music] eye. And he said, "Can you forgive me?"

[00:21:54]>> [music] >> And I nodded my head yes. And he looked up, and he said, "I'm ready."

[00:22:00]And I watched that man go to heaven.

[00:22:03]>> [clears throat] >> And I know in the depths of my soul [music] that I will spend eternity with the man that raped and murdered my wife because of his repentance and my forgiveness and the repentance of my own sins. I had a lot of things to repent [music] from, too.

[00:22:21]You know, I lived most of my uh young adult life working in bars, in and out of bars.

[00:22:27]Just turmoil relationships. You know, me and my wife didn't have the best relationship. It's it's horrible, terrible what happened to her, but I can't stand here and say we had a good marriage. We both worked in bars.

[00:22:38]We fought all the time. It was just not good. She Nobody deserved to go through what she went through. And the pain that that caused us was detrimental on my family and on my daughter.

[00:22:49]But I never had peace even back then, especially after she got killed. The peace was the furthest thing from >> [snorts] >> my mind. It was just constant turmoil and hatred and anger and addiction.

[00:23:02]>> [music] >> And after I got saved, I have peace now.

[00:23:05]I don't walk around mad all the time.

[00:23:07]I'm not addicted anymore.

[00:23:09]I get to come celebrate the Lord, and life is good.

[00:23:16]>> [music] >> When I talk in the prisons to these guys at Bridge to Life, I like to share Matthew 18:21, which is the parable of the unforgiving servant. And that's when the the man that owed the king a bunch of money went and begged for mercy, and the king forgave him his entire debt. And then he went to a man that owed him a little bit of money, and he choked him and had him thrown into prison. And when the king found out about this, the king said, "You're a wicked servant." And had him arrested and thrown in prison.

[00:23:46][music] But the scripture said handed over to the torturers to be tortured. [music] And he was handed over to be tortured, and I realized Jesus wasn't talking about physical torture. In my mind, I thought he meant being whipped or flogged, but he was talking about spiritual torture. And I found that out because when I was in Potter County Jail, I was having the torture that Christ was talking about for unforgiveness. I started thinking things like, "I might be wearing the same clothes as the man that murdered my wife. I might be eating off the same fork as the man that murdered my wife."

[00:24:20]I was handed over to that spiritual torture because [music] I refused to forgive.

[00:24:26]And when I forgave the man that murdered my wife, all that went away. I wasn't angry anymore. I didn't have that [music] spiritual torture anymore. I wasn't having those nightmares anymore.

[00:24:37]I didn't have to be on suicide watch anymore. So, my forgiveness [music] of him let all of that go.

[00:24:46]>> [music] >> After I I got out of prison, after I walked that road to forgiveness and started walking with Christ, God restored everything to me that I lost. I got a nice house again. God gave me another beautiful wife that is the love of my life. We get to share this relationship with Christ together. And it all happened when I forgave because unforgiveness will [music] keep you separated from Christ. It doesn't matter how small it is or how big it is. If you're harboring unforgiveness, that will keep you separated from the Lord more than anything. Just like the scripture said, "How will God forgive you of your sins when you refuse to forgive others of their sins?"

[00:25:31]>> [music] [music] [music]