evangelical 360°
A timely and relevant new podcast that dives into the contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life and witness around the world. Guests include leaders, writers, and influencers, all exploring faith from different perspectives and persuasions. Inviting lively discussion and asking tough questions, evangelical 360° is hosted by Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance. Our hope is that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and inspired!
evangelical 360°
Ep. 26 / The Journey to Impossible Forgiveness ► Wilma Derksen
What happens when a parent's worst nightmare becomes reality? When Wilma Derksen's 13-year-old daughter Candace didn't return home from school one November day in 1984, it sparked one of Winnipeg's largest manhunts and began a journey through grief, justice systems, and ultimately, forgiveness that would span decades.
The discovery of Candace's body seven weeks later devastated her family, yet that very night, Wilma and her husband made an unexpected choice: "We're going to forgive." This seemingly impossible decision became their anchor through 22 years of uncertainty, not knowing who had taken their daughter's life, and the eventual court trials, convictions, appeals, and absence of closure.
Wilma's approach to forgiveness shatters conventional understanding. Rather than a single act or emotion, she reveals it as a complex, multi-dimensional process that engages the whole person: body, mind, heart, spirit, and community. Her framework, which she calls "Forgiveness to the Power of 5," offers a roadmap for anyone struggling with seemingly unforgivable circumstances.
Most powerfully, Wilma's journey led her into prisons where she shared her story with inmates – creating moments of "beautiful harmony" as both victims and offenders recognized their shared need for forgiveness. Through this radical path, she discovered that "love is more powerful than murder" and that choosing forgiveness allowed Candace's memory to flourish rather than be defined by tragedy.
Malcolm Gladwell featured Wilma's story in his book "David and Goliath," recognizing the counterintuitive strength that emerged from her approach to overwhelming loss. Now, in her forthcoming book "Impossible Forgiveness to the Power of 5," Wilma offers her hard-won wisdom to anyone seeking to break free from resentment and find healing through forgiveness.
Whether you're facing your own seemingly impossible situation or simply seeking to understand the transformative power of forgiveness, Wilma's story demonstrates how choosing to "let go of the negative and step into the positive" can become not just a decision but a way of life.
You can learn more with Wilma through her writing and website.
And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online!
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Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, changemakers and influencers having an impact on Christian life around the world. Having an impact on Christian life around the world. We'd love for you to be a part of the podcast by sharing this episode using hashtag Evangelical360 and by joining the conversation on YouTube in the comments below.
Brian Stiller:My guest today is Wilma Derksen. Her story of losing her daughter and then having to live through court's hearings is a parent's worst nightmare. Yet in her forthcoming book Impossible Forgiveness to the Power of 5, she leads us into a radical and redemptive journey in which forgiveness becomes a way of life. I'm pleased to introduce to you this remarkable person, a writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who has been walking a path many thought impossible. Wilma, thank you so much for being with us today.
Wilma Derksen:Thank you, Brian. It's good to be here.
Brian Stiller:Wilma, your story is like none other that I've ever heard. So to help people understand the context in which these lessons were learned, it would be good to have you give a capsule of what happened in the loss of Candace and the ensuing story in your own life.
Wilma Derksen:It was in November 30th 1984 that everything changed. We were an ordinary family. Candace was 13, Woody was nine and Cyrus was two years old. And Candace called me from school and asked me to come pick her up and I was busy. So I said, oh, why don't you just walk home? It's a warm November day? And so she said, yes, mom. She never came home. She just, and immediately I knew that something was wrong. I knew that she was expecting her best friend to come in the next day, so we just called everybody, I called all her friends, we went to pick the cliff, we went, we just went. I panicked, I absolutely panicked, and she didn't come home.
Wilma Derksen:For seven weeks she didn't come home and we looked for her and it sparked one of Winnipeg's largest manhunts ever. And we all knew that something was wrong with her. And it was just a. It was a panic, it was. It was the worst nightmare of any mother that could we could experience. And then on January 17th, seven weeks later, her body was found in a shack not that far from our place. Her hands and her, her feet had been tied and she died. She froze to death that night when the plunging temperatures of a Winnipeg winter just plunged that night, and so it was then declared a murder site. And so then we had to deal with the murder. It was just the horror of it, the exposure of it, the climax of it and even the ending of it was just horrible. It was a threat.
Brian Stiller:How did you survive those initial days?
Wilma Derksen:I pled with God. I really did. And you know what he told me. You know I'm a parent of a murdered child. You see, I think before anyone else knew about it, I knew that somebody had taken her and she was probably dying or dead. I just knew that because I just felt it. I think we have as mothers, we have that instinct. So then when I talked to God, I said God, just help her, just don't make her suffer too much. You know, I just had this horrible feeling. And so then God told me that he too was a parent of a murdered child. He understood it. So he was there with me. It was horrible, just horrible.
Wilma Derksen:I could cry right now,
Brian Stiller:Out of all of this, you have advocated forgiveness. But that notion was that fairly immediate, or was it something that took you some time to understand and to accept and embrace?
Wilma Derksen:Well then, the day her body was found, of course we went to identify her body. And then we came home and the whole search committee came and joined us that day to be in our house, and we went up and down the roller coaster of of the relief of finding Candace and then the horror of not you know, realizing what had happened to her. And then they all left at 10 o'clock that night, leaving one couple to stay with me. Us all left at 10 o'clock that night, leaving one couple to stay with me us. And so then we were talking at the kitchen table and then there was a knock on the door and there's a parent of a murdered child. He came as a stranger. He says I've come to tell you what to expect. So we invited him to the kitchen table and there for two hours he told us what had happened to him. He told us how the murder of his daughter had destroyed his ability to think, ability to work, ability to have a good relationship with his family. It had just totally destroyed his life. And he pulled out all the books from the trial and it was just like a whole kind of show and tell of what would lay ahead of us and he said this is what you could expect. And he says I've even lost the memory of my daughter.
Wilma Derksen:Cliff and I went to bed that night. We were just horrified and we got ready for bed and then we went. You know, we were going to climb into bed. All of a sudden we couldn't. The trauma presence that that man had talked about lay on our bed. We could not climb into bed, but yet we didn't have any place to go. We were exhausted, just absolutely exhausted. So then we both said almost immediately we're going to forgive. And that's the strangest thing, why did we choose that? I don't, you know. I still look back and I still don't quite understand what happened that moment. But we chose the words we're going to forgive and then the presence left and we climbed into bed and we actually slept. It was a miracle, an absolute miracle. So that's kind of where we chose okay, we're going to forgive. It was a God-given word at the moment that we really needed it.
Brian Stiller:Malcolm Gladwell. In his book David and Goliath, the Art of Battling Giants tells about him going to Winnipeg and meeting with you, and that for him was a bit of a game changer. What happened when Malcolm Gladwell came to visit you?
Wilma Derksen:Oh, my goodness, that was a visit like no other. He is a wonderful person and he came in and he asked me all kinds of questions that were just remarkable. He even asked he'd read my books. He had read everything about me, he had studied me like no other and he said where was your father standing when he went and bought the newspapers? He had read my books so distinctly and so I told him. And then he interviewed me, he interrogated me and I think he knew my heart, he knew that something had happened, the miracle of forgiveness had happened that night. And then we kind of just know that, no matter what anybody said, we always said we're going to forgive, we're going to forgive. We just, we just pressed on on that path and he, I saw the miracle of what forgiveness did in our lives. It was just wonderful to share that with him.
Brian Stiller:So you and Cliff, you're standing by the bed that night and the idea of forgiveness becomes common to both of you. But how does that work its way through, Does it? Obviously there's a bit of a roller coaster on that theme, isn't there? And how did you engage with prisoners at the penitentiary in Manitoba, and what did that mean on understanding and working through this idea of forgiveness?
Wilma Derksen:Well, it didn't stop there. That was the beginning. You know, we chose it and that is really just the beginning of it. And then it presented itself over and over and over again. And then at the press conference they asked us what we would do with the murderer. And Cliff and I were just still in such a daze we weren't even thinking clearly. We said, oh, we're going to forgive. And it worked once, so it would work with them, with the reporters as well, and that became a headline, so we became known for it. And actually Malcolm asked me. He said, if you hadn't gone public with it, if it hadn't gone public, would you still be as dedicated to the word? And so I don't know. I think we were held publicly accountable. We were held emotionally accountable and we also were held, you know, together. We were held accountable because we did it together and um, and so we just sought it. We just sought it every time, and every time something would come up we'd say we would forgive.
Wilma Derksen:Then I met a man who was a, was a lifer, and he was just the worst criminal alive. And then we, we just pursued it. Where did you meet him? We were at a restorative justice conference and they had invited him to come and speak. And they invited me to come speak.
Wilma Derksen:He was supposed to be the offender, I was supposed to be the victim, representing our groups, and so I went to listen to him and he went and talked to all these young peoples and he just described his life of crime, the heists that he had done, the, his violence, and they said he went into prison. And then he changed and I wasn't convinced he'd changed. And here he was going and telling all these kids and talking about violence and glorifying it and dramatizing it. So I got upset and so I had breakfast with him and I really, you know, interrogated him. Forgiveness doesn't mean we just accept things. We, we have to search them out, we have to do it responsibly. So I think that whole kind of to me to be authentically forgiving took me into areas that I'd never expected. And then we worked together and then started to realize the importance of going into it, working with surrogate offenders, working through the issues. So it was a remarkable journey.
Brian Stiller:Was forgiveness kind of an instrument that you used to lift the burden and the sorrow of the loss of Candace?
Wilma Derksen:think in some ways it felt almost like a magic wand that we would just say we're going to forgive, we're going to forgive, and then we would follow that feeling of forgiveness and it was kind of it's hard to explain because we had such an introduction to it. That is a powerful thing. Then, you know, as I got into it more and more, I was just so confused and panicking about it, like I didn't understand it myself. I really didn't. We followed it. We said it all the time. It was a goal, but how to do it we did not know. It was always something new for us.
Brian Stiller:So it wasn't something just to relieve your sorrow, but it was larger than that. Did it give you a sense of the pursuit of justice? Did it make it more difficult or easier to pursue justice?
Wilma Derksen:And this is when I really it's taken me this long to understand exactly what we were doing. We were working at it instinctively, we were working at it as the events came up and we didn't understand and not a lot of people understood it either Like when we talked about it to people, we said, well, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And they didn't understand because for them it only meant justice and we didn't have anybody. We didn't know who did it for 22 years, so we were working in a vacuum most of the time. And yet they were saying forgiveness means that you forgive the murderer, or we didn't know who the murderer was. So we were just kind of exploring this, this forgiveness idea and concept that kept freeing us. That was really important, and we didn't understand it ourselves, and neither did anyone else
Brian Stiller:I think it it's important to tell the rest of this story Wilma, at some point they found a person that they charged.
Brian Stiller:Tell us a bit about that
Wilma Derksen:22 years later they found the man and they arrested him and we went to trial and he was convicted of second-degree murder. It was horrible Trial is horrendous because we were minimized. Convicted of second degree murder. It was a horrible trial. It's horrendous because we were minimized. We went through all the re-victimization of going through a trial and yet it brought us so many answers. We found out that she had been hogtied, we found out the sexuality of it, we found out who he was like and all that kind of thing. So the truth was and there's a lot of forgiving to do in that Constant, constant forgiving, constant letting go of the negative, just letting go and letting God that was my definition by this time letting go of the negativity and just pushing into the positive, the goodness, the love of it.
Brian Stiller:And did that give you a sense of justice on the issue? Did that bring closure at that?
Wilma Derksen:moment. We've never had closure, no reconciliation. We have had resolution and, yes, there is that, but it's never felt complete. No, but that isn't what forgiveness is all about. Forgiveness is about the healing, the moving on. I remember asking God okay, god, how do I do this? And he gave me the verse in Isaiah where it says I'm going to be walking beside you, you would just move along, you just go along, and I'm going to be the voice behind you saying go this way, go that way. And that's kind of how I dealt with the forgiveness was just moving along. I was in search of forgiveness, never really understanding. I was feeling okay, this is another issue, this is another issue. And just realizing the complexity of forgiveness would make it too simple. I just realized how big it is.
Brian Stiller:But that's not the end of the story either, because after the conviction, then what happened?
Wilma Derksen:Well then he went to appeals and then went to the Supreme Court of Canada and then eventually he was acquitted and he's now suing the government for wrongful conviction. So it's still not over. It doesn't end.
Brian Stiller:Now, Wilma, you and Cliff were raised in a Christian, evangelical Mennonite home, and to what degree did that the understanding of God and creation and humanity? How did that affect your understanding of your own lives and this idea of forgiveness as it's become such a central part of your life?
Wilma Derksen:I think it was huge. Now, in looking back on it, I didn't think it's so at the moment. You know, then it seemed it was all immediate. You know, it wasn't as if I was doing it the Mennonnonite way because I don't know what the mennonite way is really but it was kind of a cultural understanding that forgiveness was important and that if we don't forgive, unforgiveness, even though we didn't understand what trauma was at that point, was a way of saying they're, they're traumatized, so. So unforgiveness is a way of destroying life, it's an emotional suicide. And we were just moving on and embracing forgiveness, whatever that meant. We didn't understand it, we didn't have any formulas for it, but we were just moving along and so it was just a long journey of forgiving constantly.
Wilma Derksen:And my daughter says this 490 times, and it really was, because every issue would come up. Cliff and I would be having an anniversary celebration and the maitre d' says how many children do you have? I said two and Cliff said three. He was mad at me, he's just furious. He says how can you, at this important time in our lives, when we're having an anniversary, how can you say we have two children and we had three? You're denying Candace, you know, could cry, and so I had to say OK, you know, every moment was just, was OK. Now let's forgive this, let's move on, let's not, let's not divorce each other right now.
Brian Stiller:Let's realize this and let go of all those feelings and move into good and hope and love again. But this forgiveness wasn't just forgiving the person who had done this to Candace, but also it ended up you having to forgive yourself.
Wilma Derksen:Oh, it's forgiving everything forgiving the police for not going and finding Candace, forgiving all our friends for saying all those wrong things. And then, of course, the anniversary of her, of my not picking her up just visited me and it just crippled me and I realized that if I had picked her up, none of this would have happened. So it was really my fault. And then really going back to the cross and saying, okay, God forgive me.
Brian Stiller:But memory in our lives is so powerful. How do you relate forgiving with forgetting?
Wilma Derksen:Well, I don't believe in forgetting. We belong to a group and they said we're not going to forgive, forget, because this is the only memory we have of our children, right, so we're going to remember, but there is a kind of forgetting that happens in forgiveness. It's a long process, by the way. It's taking what has happened to us, organizing it into the past memory and then letting it go. There's a present memory and there's a past memory. If everything stays in the present memory, we can't learn, we can't do anything. So we have to process things, forgive it, and then it goes into the past memory, where we do keep it in boxes and we love it. I'll never forget candles.
Brian Stiller:How does forgiveness relate to the wrong? Do you excuse the wrong? How does that work?
Wilma Derksen:No, there needs to be justice, and I think that we have the Ten Commandments, we have all of that, and Jesus even goes ahead and says you know what I want even more? I don't only want just, I want you to have the attitude of justice. So forgiveness doesn't negate justice. It doesn't negate, it doesn't say anything was okay, like this is what people thought, that we were saying, that we exonerated the murderer. But really it's saying no, we, we live to a higher standard.
Wilma Derksen:But the difference is is that, rather than adhering to the rule of justice, I still think God loves the people. There's love and justice. Justice without love is abuse and love without justice is permissive. But in the priorities of it, we love first and then do justice. I had to really come to understanding that God really loved the murderer who took our child and then to realize that everybody I've met is really built in the image of God and God loves everybody and he aches for us when we do something wrong and when we experience. You know the cruelty of life, but he says no, you're important and so is the other person that's doing it to us is important. That's the hard part of it, and forgiving is moving towards compassion for everyone, yet upholding justice
Brian Stiller:but all these years later, Wilma, there still isn't accountability, there still isn't justice.
Brian Stiller:So you forgive without bringing resolution to the accountability or to the justice factor.
Wilma Derksen:Well, it doesn't look that way from here, you know, like he wanted to justice. No, the murderer wanted to kill Candace, right? Or the murderer wanted to kill Candace, but she's more alive than even my other children. There is other kinds of living, so there has been a kind of justice. There is other kinds of living, so there has been a kind of justice. In hindsight I can see how God has really used this to create more and more beautiful things out of her murder than if she had lived. She has a Candace house in her name. People are still being inspired by her. We just had a 40th high tea where everybody came. We just honored Candace. This is 40 years later and she is still a memory. She has not been diminished by murder. She has been living through the act of forgiveness and love. Love is more powerful than murder, so we need to step into that and live it other than exact justice and live it other than exact justice.
Brian Stiller:You've just written a new book called Impossible Forgiveness to the Power of 5. What brought you to this thesis? Something that was different to the other books that you've written?
Wilma Derksen:Well, I think I've always been. I've had a hard time explaining this Like even now I'm struggling to explain it to you, right? And so I finally decided I've got to, I've got to figure this out. So I've had to figure out the concept of five, of concept of forgiveness. I didn't understand until I realized that it's the concept of five. We have to. There's five parts of us the body, body, a mind, heart, spirit and collective. We have to forgive on all those levels and it's going to look different than every one of those levels. So I had to look at the concept of forgiveness and I really had to organize it for myself, not for anybody else, but for myself. Then I had to look at the choice of forgiveness, the five choices of forgiveness, and then I also had to look at the culture of forgiveness. What does it look like?
Brian Stiller:Let's work our way through those five steps of forgiveness. The first one you say is leap into choice.
Wilma Derksen:Yes, Our body doesn't understand things. It needs to leap, it needs to just make that decision. Just like when we saw the presence on the bed, we said we're going to forgive. That was our body saying we're going to forgive. And then what it does is it gives it to the mind. Then, after that, I wrote about three books on the mind, trying to understand it, identifying the issues of murder, going through it and then going through some of the processes and then the heart, yeah. So then I had to learn. Okay, first of all we leap into forgiveness, then we learn, learn, learn, learn.
Brian Stiller:So learn, learn, learn is your second step of forgiveness. What does that have to do with forgiveness?
Wilma Derksen:My simple definition of forgiveness is to let go, let go of the negative and step into the positive. Let go and let God, and so we just have all this negativity. So in order to even learn, it means that you have to let go of t he trauma. We can't learn if we're traumatized. We have to let go of the trauma, we have to let go of the anger. We have to let go of all of that and learn about it in order to even forgive. So it's a lot of work. Forgiveness is a lot of work.
Wilma Derksen:Forgiving is just a lot of work.
Brian Stiller:Love your enemy.
Wilma Derksen:Love, love, love. Yes, to realize that you know, god loves everybody. God has chosen everybody and God loves everybody. And so, even though we might have to have boundaries, we might have to work at some very practical issues about this, we still have to realize God loves everybody and that's how he can still love us and we can step into that love.
Wilma Derksen:I have met many prisoners, and I think the big one was when I went into prison with two other storytellers and we went into prison and I believe it's in storytelling. I believe that we need to cross these boundaries. We can't live in isolation, we cannot defend ourselves. We have to go and meet them and greet them and love them. And so we went into prison and I told my story, and then the next storyteller, and then it all worked out. And then one man got up and he said you know what? You victims here, your parents are murdered children. You look awful, you look like you're carrying dead monkeys. Wow, there's a hundred inmates and three of us.
Wilma Derksen:Well, one of the women got up and she was so mad she said I'm not going to ever forgive. She says Wilma does forgive, but I don't forgive. And the room was electric, absolutely electric. I thought here we're going to have a riot. And then the kingpin, the one that had killed the most people, stood up and says you guys, listen, we're here because we don't forgive, we need to forgive too. And so that word forgiveness on our side, our struggle with it and their struggle with it brought us together in a beautiful harmony, absolutely beautiful. So to see the miracle of it. So there was no resolution, but there was beautiful harmony in that we realized how important we were to each other.
Wilma Derksen:So to me, that's kind of the working of it, I think, in order for us to. This is the spirit, the human spirit, not the Holy Spirit. This is the human spirit that is in us and we need to find our reasons for it happening. We have to find our purpose. Like all things work together for good. That doesn't sound very fun when we're in it, but what good can come out of it and that was the hardest part for me was to let go of all the negativity and say, okay, Candace died, now what good could come out of it? And she had been actually promised that as well. If we die prematurely and we give our death to God and our murder to God, then God is going to make something beautiful come out of it, and so that's what we did with that. We purposed in our hearts that we were going to make something good come out of Candace's death, and something very beautiful came out of it. Lots of beautiful things come out of it. She doesn't die. She's still not murdered, really.
Brian Stiller:Then the fifth one is leave it behind. I suppose it's something that I could say easily, but for you you've lived with it for 40 years how do you leave it behind?
Wilma Derksen:You know, there's been no resolution, there's been no reconciliation. So it was a very deliberate thing for it not to control us, right, right, we had to say okay, we've done the best we can and we're going to leave it and we're going to concentrate on our lives. It's kind of like I always think of Sodom and Gomorrah, how Lot's wife turned around and looked at Sodom. Right, she turned around and she says don't turn around, just keep moving. And so we have to let. At some point we have to say, okay, it's not going to be reconciled, it's not going to be reconciled, it's not going to be resolved, we're just going to keep moving into life and start living our life again as we need to.
Brian Stiller:Through that period of time and I understand that, Cliff, your husband has passed away recently. How did your marriage survive, or did it thrive at all, during this time of the two of you holding on to forgiveness?
Wilma Derksen:Well, it was good. I had a good relationship. We had a fun relationship to begin with and we were very much the same. We were creative both of us. So we had a good base.
Wilma Derksen:But it was hard. Of course it was hard. And you know, he never once blamed me for not paying Candace up. He knew that would have destroyed me, that would have destroyed our marriage, and I never blamed him for those kinds of things. So we knew that there were certain things that we couldn't do to each other. We respected and loved each other. It was grounded very deeply.
Wilma Derksen:And then you know what Cliff loved church. The church never paid much attention to him and he would have loved to be a pastor, he would have loved to be a leader, but the church never paid much attention to him. But he would always go to church and I don't like church much myself, but we always went to church. Every Sunday when we could, we went to church and could love going to church. And now, looking back on it, I'm sensing that, just that tradition of going to church all the time, loving it and letting God work through the church. Even though church was boring sometimes and they were singing off key, everything was happening.
Wilma Derksen:That was wrong. There was something about going to church, and did you know that church is the most sexual place there is? They're doing research and they're showing that it's a very place of highly sensitive intimacy. It promotes it and encourages it, and I don't think we've realized it. So now I'm looking back, I think that there's a lot of tough stuff in our marriage. It promotes it and encourages it, and I don't think we've realized it. So now I'm looking back, I think that there's a lot of tough stuff in our marriage. We always believe that we don't go to bed angry. We never did, except one time. I think we did. That's not bad. That's not bad when you think of 52 years of marriage. I can count the times when we were that angry with each other. We just refused to get angry with each other. Count the times when we were that angry with each other. We just refused to get angry with each other. And this is where the real reality of forgiveness happens.
Wilma Derksen:This is where it's really tested. In these kind of intimate conversations, relationships,
Brian Stiller:every one of us we have people that we haven't forgiven or we have reasons that we at least construct in our mind, is why we don't forgive. But when I even say that, I realize how small, minuscule that is in relationship to what you have faced. So what would you say to those who are living in the angst of anger and fear and are unwilling to forgive? What would you say? What advice, counsel would you have?
Wilma Derksen:I think I've realized that some forgivenesses are more harder to forgive and I would say that we can forgive on certain levels, but when it comes to really the deep stuff, we need to lean into God and God will teach us and help us. We need to lean into God and God will teach us and help us. We need to lean into God and he'll then bring us along the road to forgiveness and just constantly say I forgive, I forgive, I'm going to forgive. I don't know how right now, but I'm going to forgive. And then following the path of learning, loving lighting, just working at it, just constantly working at it and realizing that we fail and we have to forgive ourselves for failing. That's the beautiful part about forgiving you can't even forgive yourself for failing. You forgive forgiveness for not working. You forgive everyone for not working, realizing we just God loves us and God wants to. He loves the people around us and when we don't love them, we cut ourselves off from that love.
Brian Stiller:You use that phrase lean into God. What does that mean in practical, daily ways?
Wilma Derksen:Well, I think that's kind of putting my hand in God all the time, just saying, okay, god, where are you? Tell me, I've got to know this about something Just a constant conversation with him, not always asking for forgiveness, not asking him to judge and not treating him like a fairy godmother. Everything that I have studied it says that there's 80% negativity in this world. There's a negativity bias of 80%, so we can expect 80% of the day to go wrong, but keep moving into the 20% of goodness and love, and so it's a constant letting go, letting go, letting God, letting go, letting God. And that's kind of leaning into all the time, knowing that we can't do it by ourselves in any way.
Brian Stiller:When you let go and let God, as you say. What's your understanding of God, given that your daughter, Candace, was taken from you?
Wilma Derksen:Oh, you know what, Brian? I have a terrible, terrible theology and in my book what I do is I do a romp, I do a theological romp, I do a theological romp, I do a psychological romp, I do a spiritual romp, I do a culture, I do romps. And Cliff and I never agreed on theology, but I had this awful theology. No, it's fun, no, it's important, I guess, and I don't know if I can explain it here, but I do have a theology where people often think that God is the total control and in my theology I go with Kushner why do bad things happen to good people? He was the one that opened this door for me and saying you know what? There is chaos. There was chaos before that. God created this world and we chose chaos. God didn't create choice.
Brian Stiller:How do you rely on God, then, in the midst of that chaos, the chaos that you've known so well?
Wilma Derksen:Because God is all powerful. God can. If we give God the reins and if we give God the control, he can turn the chaos. He's more powerful than the chaos. It's only when we choose the chaos that we don't have the power, but when we choose God, he's all powerful, he is everything that we want. He's omniscient, he's all of that, but he will not. He's not. He's all powerful, he is everything that we want. He's omniscient, he's, he's all of that, but he will not, he's not, he's not evil, he can't, he doesn't. We're.
Wilma Derksen:We have evil in us, we have chaos in us, we have all of that in us. But if we give our lives to him, like Candace did, and then then he can work wonderful, he can work miracles, he can work miracles. I've seen him work miracles. Our lives are full of miracles. My life is full of miracles, of where I gave God saying God, you help me, I can't do this. I'm full of chaos, I'm full of evil, everybody around me is evil. Come and you work and show us goodness, goodness and light, and you take over. You take over.
Brian Stiller:Wilma, I'm sure people will want to follow up, learn more about your story and how you came to understand forgiveness as a way to live, and so your book Impossible Forgiveness to the Power of 5. That's a book that people will want to access want to access and for your time today, Wilma, thank you for your story, for the story that has been so beneficial to people over the years and to joining us today on Evangelical 360. Thank you so much. Thanks, Wilma, for joining us today and for sharing your remarkable and life-changing story, and thank you for being a part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode using hashtag Evangelical360 and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes for links and info, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, please go to brianstillercom. Thanks again. Until next time.
Brian Stiller:Don't miss the next interview. Be sure to subscribe to Evangelical 360 on YouTube.
Brian Stiller:See you there.