Shawn Hufff was the most "famous" Sterling College student of his generation. When he came on campus in 1991 he had just been named one of President George Bush's "1000 Points of Light,"--people who had faced severe challenges in their past and had either overcome these difficulties or were facing them with courage and grace. The news media picked up on Shawn's story of past abuse and present struggle, but seemed to repeat the same few facts about Shawn in every story. I did not have Shawn as a student until his last semester of college, Spring term 1995. We got to know each other and I asked him early in the semester whether anyone had written a longer account of his life. I was surprised when he said that no one had. Thus was born the idea for a biography of his life. During Spring term 1995 we would meet on a weekly basis for two hours and I would record our interviews. In addition, I called on many of Shawn's old teachers and counselors, obtained his early medical records and began to tell a more complete story of his life than had been presented in the media. I finished the book during the summer of 1995 and gave copies of it to Shawn and his family. A few publishers we approached with the story were not interested in publishing it; it remains, I believe, a stirring story of responding in faith to monumental physical and mental anguish as a youth.

The excerpt below is from chapter 2, "Shawn's Story and Our Story." The book is entitled Out of Darkness: The Story of Shawn Huff (1995).

"When Shawn and I first began to speak about the possiblity of writing his story, I posed a question to him. It was one that I had to resolve before deciding whether to write this book. 'Why do you think,' I asked, 'that your story deserves this kind of attention? There are lots of people who have suffered greatly, have overcome their suffering and don't want, need or feel that there ought to be a book about them. What is so special about YOUR case, Shawn? In addition, we are not used to reading biographies of men in their early twenties. Many people feel that wisdom and lessons for living emerge sometime later in life, after one has had the chance to really look around and live. Why is this the right time for your story?' I sent Shawn away for a week before I let him give me his answers.

He returned prepared. He had found a few verses in the letter to the Romans from the New Testament that summed it up for him. Paul writes, "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us (Rom 5:3-5)." Later in the letter, Paul continues, "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (8:28)."

Shawn began to speak. "I know that many others have experienced deep losses. I grieve with them when I hear about their stories. One of the effects of my having endured so much is that I so deeply feel the pain of others that sometimes I think i cannot stand to live any longer. I feel their pain because I know what pain is like."

"I feel my story needs telling for three reasons. First, I need to tell the extreme nature of my past abuse. The mental agony, continuous physical pain, the depression, anger, struggle to accept myself, the mental games that people played with me and the continuing loss that I feel are all realities that I need to tell. The amount and extent of the abuse would have crushed most people and certainly came near to crushing me. And I still live with the results of that treatment--both in the physical marks on my body, my handicaps [Shawn is blind in one eye as a result of a beating he experienced as a young boy; he also is deaf in one ear from other such beatings], and the negativity that I have to fight to overcome. I was walled in; I lived in a maze. I need to tell about that."

"Second, I want to tell the story of how love reached down to save me. I should be in jail or dead by now. I shouldn't be graduating from college and making a life for myself. I really contributed nothing to the abuse and, in some ways, I feel that my healing has also been at the hands of others. So, I want to express my gratitude to people who have given me a chance, to those who have acted as the arms and hands of God, who kept believing in me even though I lived self-destructively because of the abuse. I want, above all, to express my gratitude to God, whom I knew only in a shadowy way for so many years, who now means so much to me."

"Third, I believe that through my story other people can regain their hope. The most gratifying thing in the world for me is to tell my story and then have someone say that my story has encouraged them--to keep on loving, to try to overcome the effects of their past, to live well today. I remember a group of foster parents that I spoke to not long ago. I detailed my treatment at the hands of three foster families in the 1970s in Texas. I was not judgmental. I just told my experience. I did not have to say anything other than my story. I don't consider myself an eloquent speaker. But after I finished my story, the room was hushed and subdued. Many were weeping. Many said that my story had touched them deeply and that it would be on their minds as they tried to be good foster families in the 1990s.

"I believe that people want depth and recognize depth in other people. They don't want to be told that everything is well and that recovery is easy. They are too smart for that. They know that they need to make the best of their circumstances in life. They need and want encouragement to persevere. They want to know that it is possible to survive, even when it seems as if the whole world is conspiring to wipe you out.

"My story is a story of hope, a story that says that if you make use of what you have and realize that there is another one there for you, God, that you can overcome the darkness. As Helen Keller says in her poem, 'I do not know the meaning of the darkness, but I have learned the overcoming of it.'"

[Return to Home]