A story of forgiveness

Lorenzo Brown rattles off dates of his life events without thinking twice. On June 26, 1994, at age 17, he was shot below the chin by a lifelong classmate in Marion, Alabama. The bullet hit his spinal cord, and immediately he was paralyzed from the chest down. 

Following a hospital stay, he spent two years, three months and five days in a nursing home in Tuskegee, where he developed sores due to neglect. During that time, not a single family member or friend visited him. 

“I had so much anger and hatred in my heart toward my family,” Brown said. “I felt so thrown away, so unloved.”

In the summer of 1996, he attended the trial of the man who shot him and his accomplice only to learn they were never convicted.

But it’s the next set of dates — after he had become a Christian — that the Homewood resident wants to share with people in his new book, Moving Beyond the Offense.

At Christmas of 1998, he went back to Marion to visit family when he saw the man who drove the car from which he was shot. Brown walked up to him and told him, “I want you to know I love you and forgive you.” He then gave him a hug.

In the summer of 1999, the man who shot Brown walked out of the gas station in Marion where Brown had stopped. Brown approached him, looked him in the eyes and told him the same words of love and forgiveness.

“It set me free,” Brown said. “And the day I looked in their eyes, it set them free in a way the justice system never could.”

Brown’s story of forgiveness involves more dates, too. At Christmas 2000, he went to see his mom, a drug addict and alcoholic who had abandoned caring for him after he was shot.

“All of a sudden my hatred and anger changed that day,” he said. “I asked her to come back to Birmingham.”

He forgave her too, and the following spring, she stopped drinking and smoking. Today she drives to Brown’s house every morning to bathe and dress him. He later forgave his father, too, who died in 2008.

Amid these dates, Brown started a Christian ministry inspired by his own life events. 

In the summer of 1998, he was living in a rehab facility on Lakeshore after his time in a nursing home. He and a friend, David Bailey, also a quadriplegic, were both in a deep depression and discussing ways that they as quadriplegics could commit suicide. As the conversation evolved, they got more depressed because they realized it was nearly impossible. Later that day they were at a swimming pool at an apartment complex next door when the idea dawned on them that they could wheel their chairs into the pool and drown themselves, and that’s what they resolved to do.

The next morning, however, the duo started to discuss why there had been no resources to help them, when Brown suggested they start something themselves. 

In that moment, Brown’s desire to live was restored. 

So instead of going to the swimming pool, they passed by it on their way to the library to get paperwork to start a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 

The name of the organization he would start takes the “d” off of disabled: Is-Able. A few years later Brown would become ordained and turn the organization into a faith-based ministry. 

Since the release of his book, Brown has begun a new teaching series based on it and is scheduling speaking engagements. He hopes to share his message with churches, small groups, schools and youth programs. But ultimately, he wanted to share his story of “freedom from bondage” because he knows so many struggle with unforgiveness. 

 “This message of forgiveness is vital,” he said. “It will touch the hearts of people and restore lives and decrease crime.”

Brown and his wife, April, live in Homewood, and their twin sons Isaac and Isaiah started kindergarten at Shades Cahaba Elementary this fall. 

Moving Beyond the Offense is available for purchase on isable.org or Amazon for $9.99.