Forgiving the Really Big Things // Forgive and Forget, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 02/13/2026
Forgiving the Really Big Things // Forgive and Forget, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
You have a son. He’s out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine. This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical healing is to our bodies. But every now and then in life a tsunami hits, something so incredibly overwhelming that we could have never predicted it or imagined how we would cope. I always thought...
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Forgiving Brings Healing // Forgive and Forget, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don’t hurt anymore. Well, today, we’re going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell. These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing. On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent of them were asked to participate in some workshops on forgiveness. The psychologists who conducted the research concluded that the forgiveness resulted in dramatically reduced anxiety and...
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When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We all know that we need to forgive people. That’s the theory, But let’s now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God’s forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us? Really? Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can’t have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion. Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and...
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Forgiving is Accepting // Forgive and Forget, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what’s the secret of having a great relationship anyway? It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don’t, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know what I mean. It seems that different people just come out of different moulds. We have different likes and dislikes, different strengths and weaknesses. And as much as those differences make life...
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Forgiving is Forgetting // Forgive and Forget, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it’s easy to say, “I forgive you”. But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like? In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental health experts are subjecting forgiveness to the microscope of scientific scrutiny with no apologies. It goes on to tell of 2 psychologists, Drs. Robert Enright and Suzanne Freedman, working...
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The Year of the Lord's Favour // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes, life gets so rough and rocky and we think to ourselves, surely, surely it must get better soon. But some people give up hope completely, and just live their lives in a constant state of despair. When we think about God, whoever that is, it’s easy to get a distorted picture. The older we are the more we tend to think of Him as being judgmental, and the younger we are well, younger people, how do they see God? I saw an article published recently that reported younger peoples’ views of God, it was based on a survey that had been conducted nationally in Australia with young people,...
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Let the Oppressed Go Free // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We tend to think of oppression in global geo-political terms. But normal, everyday people experience all sorts of oppression – sometimes, in the most unexpected of ways. Oppression is just a fact of life in this world, we tend to think of it in political and in social terms, on a national or international scale, and it is huge. But oppression happens right at home too, oppression isn’t about nations, it’s about individuals like you and me. To be oppressed means to be down trodden. A husband can oppress his wife, a mother can oppress her child, a boss can oppress their employees, and...
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Sight for the Blind // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Imagine just for a moment that you’re blind and all of a sudden, your sight is restored. What would that be like? How would it feel? As a young man I used to have 20/20 vision but like just about everyone else, when you get to your late 30s and early 40s the old vision gets a bit blurred, and I needed glasses. These days I wouldn’t even think of driving a car or reading a book without the old multifocals. When you think about it, little by little without us even noticing, our vision becomes distorted. It’s like that with glaucoma too, little by little people lose their sight and by the...
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Release to the Captives // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It must be an amazing feeling for a prisoner to be set free after years of incarceration. I wonder when they step out of the prison – what that freedom looks like, tastes like, smells like. I’m not sure if you every saw that movie in the mid 90’s called The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman. But it’s about two men essentially who find themselves in jail, one played by Morgan Freeman is there because he committed murder, the other one is there because he’s been framed. Anyhow there’s a scene in the movie where the Morgan Freeman character finally gets parole after decades,...
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Good News for the Poor // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Most of us like to watch the news, or listen to it on the radio, or read the newspaper. But really, there’s precious little good news these days. It all seems to be bad news, especially for the poor. But Jesus said that He had good news for the poor. So what did He mean? One of the little rituals that I love to perform every night is to watch the evening news on television. It’s just, I don’t know, my way of unwinding for the day and I guess it’s my way of finding out what’s been going on at home and around the world. But have you noticed whether you watch it on TV or listen to it on...
info_outlineYou have a son. He’s out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine.
This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical healing is to our bodies. But every now and then in life a tsunami hits, something so incredibly overwhelming that we could have never predicted it or imagined how we would cope.
I always thought that the most incredibly difficult thing would be to bury your own child. To stand by the graveside and look at that wooden box and think, "It should be the other way around."
What if someone killed your child? How would we get on and live life?
I'm joined again today with Lorraine Watson who's going to take us through exactly that, Lorraine, welcome.
Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here, Bernie.
Berni Dymet: So Lorraine, your son died recently. How long ago was that?
Lorraine Watson: Just over 18 months.
Berni Dymet: That's pretty close; it's not that far.
Lorraine Watson: No, it isn't.
Berni Dymet: How did that happen? What happened?
Lorraine Watson: Well, my son was running across a motorway where he shouldn't have been running in the middle of the night and the car hit him. The man left the accident without stopping and left him lying on the ground.
Subsequently some minutes later another big BMW hit him and killed him.
Berni Dymet: Can you remember when you got the phone call when they told you?
Lorraine Watson: Yes, we got the phone call from his wife and I can still remember the absolute horror in her voice as she kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" as if it was her fault. When we heard the news it was the worst thing that you could imagine.
Berni Dymet: Yes, it must be a tough thing to try and even get your mind around that.
Lorraine Watson: Well, for quite a period of time we couldn't move, we just sat. It is almost impossible to imagine. He was our eldest son.
Berni Dymet: He had kids himself?
Lorraine Watson: He had two little boys that he left behind.
Berni Dymet: How did they cope?
Lorraine Watson: It was very difficult for them. They were four and five and the little boy particularly, the four year old was very, very angry and he kept saying, "I'm sick of this, I just want my daddy back!"
So that was really hard. And because they look very like him it's very hard to see them as well at that time.
Berni Dymet: What's his name?
Lorraine Watson: Chris.
Berni Dymet: Tell us about him. What was he like?
Lorraine Watson: Chris was a very active person. He was a runner and just enjoyed life really. He was a businessman and a very successful one and he just liked doing all sorts of different things really.
Berni Dymet: So did they catch the guy that knocked him down? What happened there?
Lorraine Watson: Well, the first guy took his car and hid it at a people's place and they saw the crime watch program that featured the accident. They knew that this car had done the damage so they rang into the police.
So he was found almost immediately, but he denied it. And for 12 months we had court case after court case trying to determine what had actually happened.
Berni Dymet: And the outcome has been?
Lorraine Watson: He admitted it at the last moment that he had used the car.
Berni Dymet: So justice has taken its course presumably.
Lorraine Watson: Well, he only got some hours, community service and $10,000 to his children because they couldn't, in fact they didn't prove that he killed him because he didn't. Because the second car actually did that.
Berni Dymet: Wow, how does that feel?
Lorraine Watson: It was really horrific. I think the worst part during it all was the thought of Chris lying on the road in the dark on his own alive waiting.
Berni Dymet: So just the simple act of him having stopped and pulled Chris off the motorway would have saved his life.
Lorraine Watson: The coroner said it was quite within the realms of possibility.
Berni Dymet: Were you angry?
Lorraine Watson: At the time, dreadfully angry. It was a needless sort of a thing for me. And if he had stopped, then he would not have been even charged. And if he could have reached out to us in any way, we would have been very happy to let that incident go. But he couldn't do either of these things.
Berni Dymet: So how do you move on from that? I mean, how do you stay on the track? You obviously have been through a horrendous ride with your husband and your family. Have you done anything to move on from that?
Lorraine Watson: Well, one of the first things we determined was that we were going to grieve loud and long, as we needed to do. And Allan and I both did that.
In the process I thought I would go mad. It was just as if insanity was just a heartbeat away. If I hadn't chosen, I could have just flipped over. And it was a real temptation, I might say.
I forgot all the rest of the children; it was only this darkness in my life really. And then what I talked about on yesterday's program came back to mind. How God had healed me through forgiveness and how He had forgiven on the cross. And it was like a light turned on for me and I knew that I needed to forgive this man, Jeremy. And so I also knew that I could not do that in my own strength.
Berni Dymet: It's a big ask, isn't it?
Lorraine Watson: It was huge and so I just had to ask God and the Holy Spirit to give me that forgiveness for him. And He did. And it was such a release; such a freedom came in my spirit, when I could not worry about that man's sentence or lack of sentence. That man Jeremy; he's not that man to me anymore. He's Jeremy.
That I could see the pain that he was in and the fear that was in him. And so I said to God, "I would like this man as a son to replace the son that has been taken, in a spiritual sense, not in a physical sense because we have no contact with him. He does not want that.
And so I pray for him and I believe the Lord will save him and bring him into the family really.
Berni Dymet: There was something that you said, that when you forgave him you no longer were worrying about the sentence that he got. It's interesting to me that as we forgive someone our sense of justice, our sense of this person should be punished for leaving my son on the road to be killed by someone else. We do have a deep sense of justice, don't we? It's probably one of the biggest pains you went through; I hear you saying.
Lorraine Watson: Yes, it definitely was.
Berni Dymet: And yet this act of forgiveness takes away our need for retribution.
Lorraine Watson: It's true. And that surprises me too. It still surprises me that I don't have that need to keep poking around and complaining about and pulling this man down really.
Berni Dymet: If you could say anything to Jeremy today, what would you say to him?
Lorraine Watson: I would say to him, "I care about you. I care about your life and I will go on praying for you until such time as you find the peace that you need. “
Berni Dymet: Wow! Do you think praying for Jeremy has changed you?
Lorraine Watson: I think so, because when I pray now it's with a sense of almost anticipation and an excitement that God will do something that I can't possibly do. And that leads me on to a sense of victory over something that I couldn't possibly have managed myself.
And the scripture that has always been mine is that "All things work together for good." And God has proved himself yet again.
Berni Dymet: Amen. Lorraine thank you so much for sharing that with me; it can't have been easy. It's only 18 months ago but it's a testimony to the amazing healing that God brings when we let go of something and we just open our hearts to this whole thing of forgiveness. As we forgive others the way that Christ forgave us on the cross.
Lorraine thank you so much.
Lorraine Watson: Thanks Berni.