Who Are We?

Hello, my name is Don Searles.  I am the founder of Forgiveness-Road.Org.  I am a Christian, a husband for 50 years, a father of four adult children, a grandfather to seven, as well as a business owner.  You can click here to see my business Internet site.  I live in Mattoon, Illinois, a city of 19,000 in east central Illinois, 200 miles south of Chicago.

For many years, I have been studying forgiveness.  My studies have included the Bible and many books for which you can find references on this site.

What is forgiveness?  Forgiveness is: A willingness to abandon one’s right to resentment, negative judgment, and indifference to one who unjustly injured you, while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and love toward him or her.

Why is forgiveness needed?  As the title to Desmund Tutu’s book so aptly states, No Future Without Forgiveness.  In his book, he points out that the country and people of South Africa had no future unless there was forgiveness between black and white people for the atrocities that resulted from apartheid.  It was the result of Archbishop Tutu’s leadership, that reconciliation and forgiveness took place between the races and avoided great suffering and bloodshed.  Forgiveness is needed to heal the wounds of war, divorce, child abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, and racial abuse, to name a few.

I hope you will think of this web site as a family of wounded people that are moving forward along The Forgiveness Road.

It is my prayer that this web site will help many people be able to forgive and find happiness and peace of mind.

If you have a story about how you have been able to forgive, please send it to us.  We will put it in our encouragement section so it will be a help to others.  Your name and personal information will be kept confidential.

Thanks to my daughter, Julie, who is the web developer of this site and my wife, Norma, who does all the proof reading.