When Stephen Owens told his story in freshman Bible class that day in 2005, he hadn’t seen his mother since he testified against her at her trial when he was 13 years old. Our son was in the classroom when Owens recounted the story of how his mom had hired someone to kill his dad. At that point she was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in 189 years.
There was another teacher in the classroom that day, who later stopped Owens in the hallway and said, “You’re Stephen Owens, and your mom is Gaile Owens?” Owens answered yes. This teacher, Steve Wilson, spent most Friday nights preaching at the Tennessee Prison for Women. Gaile Owens had been coming to his Sunday night services for more than a decade at the prison. Wilson said he wanted to facilitate getting Stephen into the prison to see his mother. But Stephen had no interest in seeing her or having any kind of relationship with her. Based on what he understood about what happened 20 years earlier, he never wanted to see his mother again.
In his new book, Set Free: Discover Forgiveness amidst Murder and Betrayal, Stephen tells the story of how this hallway conversation got a ball rolling in his life—a ball that rolled very slowly, leading him down a pathway that changed him from a bitter young man with deep resentment for all his mom had taken away in having his dad killed, to a forgiving son joining the fight to keep her from being put to death. Just as Stephen began a relationship with his mother, her execution date was set. And just as he began to introduce his young sons to their imprisoned grandmother through cards and letters, he began to wonder if he’d eventually have to explain her death to them.
Providence and Forgiveness
Having followed Gaile Owens’s case in the newspapers all the way through to the commutation of her sentence by the governor of Tennessee in 2010, I expected the book to shed more light on the abuse she experienced that drove her to want her husband dead. But it isn’t really in there—perhaps because Set Free isn’t so much her story but her son’s. And while the book purports to be all about forgiveness, it seemed to me to be just as much about providence.
Set Free: Discover Forgiveness amidst Murder and Betrayal
Stephen Owens
As I read Set Free, I couldn’t help but think of the biblical book of Ruth. The author of Ruth writes that Ruth “happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz,” and later when Boaz sat at the city gate that “the redeemer, of whom Boaz had spoken, came by”—as if by coincidence. But really the writer seems to be shouting to us between the lines: this is no coincidence at all! Ruth didn’t just happen to glean in Boaz’s field, and the closer kinsman-redeemer didn’t just happen to come by the city gate as Boaz sat there. We are meant to see the providence of God at work in an otherwise desperate situation.
Reading Set Free, one cannot help but see the same God of providence at work in a similarly desperate situation—bringing Stephen to Nashville near where his mother was in prison; opening up a job for him at the Christian school where Wilson, who’d been ministering to her for more than a decade, also worked; and making Wilson the kind of guy who refused to give up easily but continued for four years to gently prod his colleague and brother in Christ to go to the prison to visit his mom.
The book of Ruth is also the story of Naomi and the bitterness she felt defined her. Naomi came home from Moab with an empty stomach, slept in an empty bed, and all she could see in her future was unbearable emptiness. But God was at work. The same God who filled the emptiness at creation with light and life filled Naomi’s stomach with the grain of the barley harvest. He filled her arms with a child who would be the heir of her family’s inheritance so their name wouldn’t be blotted out in Israel. More than that, he filled her life with the hope of a future descendant who would be the source of blessing to all the families of the earth.
For many years Stephen Owens was defined by bitterness. All of the important events of his life—his athletic events, the day he got married, the birth of his son—were all punctuated by the painful emptiness he felt in not being able to share those events with the dad he idolized. But God met him in his emptiness and filled it with the joy of reconciliation and the joy that flows from obedience.
Story of Redemption
Of course the book of Ruth is primarily the story of a redeemer—a redeemer who demonstrates in shadow form the redemption that will be accomplished by a greater Redeemer to come. Set Free is also a beautiful story of redemption accomplished by the Redeemer. My favorite moment in the book is when Stephen writes: “I want to be a Christ-centered man for my children. I don’t want my boys to grow up and see me as a man full of anger and resentment. I want them to see firsthand the healing power of Christ. I want to tell them that the Bible is true. He is our Savior, and you really can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.” In fact, if I had a criticism of the book, it would be that I wish there’d been more of these moments of Stephen expressing his desire to please Christ and his need for Christ to empower his forgiveness.
The beautiful conclusion of Set Free is Stephen’s recognition that his mother wasn’t the only member of his family who was imprisoned for more than a quarter of a century. “I was equally as bound and shackled by my bitterness, anger, and the broken trust that decimated my life that night in 1985 when I found my dying father,” he admits. “I thank God every day that my mother has been set free, from prison and from the past. And I thank God that I have been set free as well.”
We’re thankful too, Stephen. Soli Deo Gloria!