Brock Heasley

The Other Side of Fear Brock Heasley

There's only one word to describe your dad getting shot a dozen times: cool. I was twelve. The cost of terrible violence was more than just unknown to me-it was negligible. I never doubted Dad would live. He could put footballs into orbit, just like Superman. Only good things came from the shooting: my sixth grade popularity profile went way up and, bonus, my family got on national television. That was the peak. The comedown was finding out Dad was human after all-fallible. He saw the world simply. Matters of faith were matters of fact to him. It frustrated us both that I so desperately sought a deeper, seemingly elusive understanding of things. Then, when I was nineteen and serving as a missionary, Dad was killed. I've never been as distraught or learned so much about faith and forgiveness as I did during the week that followed.