Editor’s note: First in a series of articles about lives changed through Triad’s first Life Action Summit revival conference.

Janise Hurley walked into the store where her husband Todd once worked and did something that seems to defy logic given the circumstances: She forgave the man who fired him.

And not just that, but the man who had once written him up for bleeding 10 feet beyond the store’s doors after being stabbed multiple times protecting one of his employees. And the same man who let him go three years later and 10 days before surgery to repair knees injured by another assailant.

“God use the Summit services to renew me,” Janise says. “God spoke to me with the voice of truth reminding me who He is and who I am not and to get off His throne and rest and trust in him.

“I was bitter, and I thought I could take care of this problem in my own strength. I was wrong: The bitterness owned me! So I stepped out in obedience confessed, sobbed, and endeavored to say to the Lord, ‘I am nothing, and I will obey your Word.’ ”

The result was a trip back to her husband’s former business where she found Todd’s boss and apologized.

“I said, ‘I’m Janise Hurley, I have wished evil on your life for several years, and I am sorry! I will pray for you instead of wishing evil on you.’ ”

The former boss’s mouth fell open, and he asked Janise what he’d done and if he could make it right. “I told him nothing needed to be done, it had already been made right, and I would be praying for him, I was wrong, and to have a great day,” Janise recalled. Then she patted his arm, and walked out the doors.

“Bitterness owned me,” she says, “but now I'm free and have peace again!”

A day like any other Sunday

Her journey to bitterness and back began Oct. 14, 2007. It started like any other Sunday: Todd headed to work, and she took the family to church. When she returned home, the phone rang shortly after lunch: Busy and tough day, Todd said, and they prayed a quick prayer together over the phone.

About an hour later the phone rang and caller ID showed the name of Todd’s business. But this time it wasn’t Todd. It was someone from his store telling her he had been stabbed repeatedly, and an ambulance had taken him to a hospital.

“They didn’t tell me where and hung up,” Janise says. “I had no idea where I was going, if Todd was alive, what I was to tell my two small children and so on.”

Caught stealing, a man went after a loss prevention manager and Todd put himself in front of her in protection and suffered multiple stab wounds. “The Lord’s provision that day is amazing,” says Janise, thinking back to the day. “I still stand in awe of what He did!”

About 80 days after this attack, Todd was written up for bleeding 10 feet beyond the store’s doors — the first negative review he’d ever had in a work record that began at age 16. “That was the beginning of my bitterness,” Janise admits.

The bitterness grew again when another thief injured Todd’s knees in an Oct. 30, 2008 attack and the manager fired him July 22, 2010, 10 days before the knee replacement surgery to fix the damage.

“I had not struggled to forgive the thieves because I knew they were living life for self and doing whatever seemed right at the moment,” Janise says.

‘I have peace’

“But I could not understand how someone who could see my husband’s personnel file, and who saw his commitment to the job could do something so inexcusable. My thought life took control, and it was not a thought life that pleased the Lord.”

While the court battle still rages, and Todd still walks with a limp, Janise says she finally has peace.

“I have peace because I was obedient to Him. I now pray for Todd’s former boss often and beg of God and cry to Jesus that I may never become so wrapped up in self again that I allow any sin to have dominion over my life. God used the Life Action Summit meetings to complete a work He’d started long ago.

“I am thankful for God’s faithfulness, and that he uses man to move us to repentance,” Janise says. “Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!”