Healing After Hate

She lost her mother to the Charleston church shooter. Would she lose her faith too?

- Rev. Sharon Risher

I MADE THE TRIP FROM CHARLOTTE to Charleston, South Carolina, full of dread. I didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to sit through the trial of the man who’d killed my mother at the church she loved, didn’t want to be in the same room with him. She’d gone to church for the Wednesday night Bible study, as always, and been gunned down along with eight other innocent souls. We’d waited a year and a half, and now, just before Christmas, the trial would begin. Justice would be served—or so I hoped. I’ve got to keep myself together, I told myself. For Momma.

The courtroom was small. There was room only for the victims’ immediate families. The prosecution team had talked to us beforehand, telling us what to expect, giving us a crash course in courtroom decorum. No outbursts. No running out mid-proceeding. But how could anything prepare me for what I knew I would have to see and hear, reliving those terrifying final moments of Momma’s life?

She was the last person shot, the last one to die that day, June 17, 2015, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church—or Mother Emanuel as we called it. She had witnessed all the violence, then been gunned down by the white supremacist killer. Anger surged through me at the thought of it.

A chaplain prayed with us. I didn’t envy his job. I’m a minister myself. I worked as a hospital chaplain, helping people deal with the trauma of illness, accidents, gun violence. Now the prayers would be for me. I didn’t want to be overcome by hate in the wake of a hate crime. I wanted to hold on to my faith, hold fast to God, but it was so hard. Especially now.