What Dolly Taught Me about Forgiveness
I started writing this post while on a lunchtime break at Switchyards. I was celebrating the fact that I had successfully dodged all the Advent devotionals and ministry guides and six-week-long women’s Bible studies and podcast episode emergencies that have been threatening to beat me up for the last month or so.¹
Turns out that Three Job Sarah does not do a good job at writing for leisure. I’m sorry that I didn’t sit still this September, which then bled into my October. Maybe we can try again for November?
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But let’s set the scene. It was a hot Tuesday afternoon, and I was lying on my office couch (since I do not have an office desk—somebody call for a real grown-up, please!) when I heard what happened. Dolly’s account had just posted a video of a man (🫣) in front of a bleak black background. This couldn’t mean anything positive for the world or her estate. “Cristopher! Get in here!” I shouted to my husband, who was somewhere on the other side of the house, just minding his own business.
I wasn’t 100% certain of what exactly was going on, but it was for sure an announcement I couldn’t be alone for. And in response to this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news, Cristopher offered to hold me in consolation.
I think the devastation of these sad tidings is something that all of Nashville—if not the whole state or perhaps the whole South???—is collectively grieving. Three days after her passing, my friends and I were at a Publix in 30A when the kind checkout ladies asked where we were visiting from. When Kate and Natalie told them we’d traveled down from Music City, they immediately assumed a somber posture, with hands on their hearts, commiserating, “Oh. Dolly.”
Now I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind when people think about Dolly isn’t how good of a forgiver she was. However, it is the refrain that’s played in my head on repeat for weeks and weeks now.
Because one thing about me is that I am not a very gifted forgiver. I mean, I can do it—kinda. But it takes me a while to get there. It’s one of those things I really have to sit still for.
I’ve drafted up long, drawn-out posts about the art of forgiveness but have never felt qualified to launch into such diatribes. I still don’t think I’m necessarily good for it even today, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent time thinking about it.
In a lot of ways, forgiveness feels like loser behavior to me—something weak that I could always choose to avoid. I promise I understand how messed up of a thought that is. Being pardoned is literally the basis of the whole gospel that I’ve hitched my life, love, and professional endeavors upon. If there’s no forgiveness, then there’s no Jesus—which, for me, means no certainty or hope or any way forward from any of my messes.
But I do at least recognize that honest-to-God forgiveness can be a process and that some hurts may require our full surrender as we limp on toward the finish line of eternity, I guess.²
As irony would have it, I married a very generous forgiver (and I really hope our future children receive those tender-hearted genes from him instead of whatever it is that’s going on with me). Cristopher’s default is to grant forgiveness—and he doesn’t even have to think that hard about it at all. Not me, though. I always need to go sit in the dark about it first.
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When the news about Dolly first hit, I spent the next few days listening to Jad Abumrad’s Dolly Parton’s America podcast, and I learned a lot more about our beloved queen’s cultural legacy, staying/slaying power, and ability to unify people across every possible divide. She made it a lot more fun for girls like me to be twangy and take up space and be unapologetically ourselves. She gave us so much throughout her decades in the music industry and in the limelight of our greater culture beyond. But something Jad covered in episode 2 of his show is what has stuck with me the most.³
There was no way for the podcast to skip past the legendary conflict between Mrs. Dolly Parton and a certain Mr. Porter Wagoner. Nobody really knows the full extent of the tangled-up mess that took place between the two as they merged their art and platforms and talents and time to create music that’s still getting streams to this day.4 It was a sticky situation, considering Porter was twice her age and had locked her into some pretty steep contracts when he’d scooped her up and chosen her to sing on his show back in the ‘60s. He had no way of knowing how much of a powerhouse she would become—or that she couldn’t be pinned down (🦋) in the ways he might’ve liked.
Her choice to finally part ways with Porter meant she’d owe him a substantial amount of money, much more than she could afford to pay, even despite how successful she was already becoming. And he’d gone on to talk trash about her and all the ways she’d blocked him from achieving the success he felt he deserved. He was the bad guy in this scenario yet chose to frame her as the villain.
In Jad and Dolly’s mic’d-up, heartfelt conversation for the podcast, they discussed how she’d felt God leading her to walk away from all her dealings with Porter—and later, to step back in and bail him out in his time of need, decades later:
Jad: I have a theory that one of the reasons that you can have the crazy broad appeal that you have into so many different communities that normally hate each other is because of those acts of forgiveness. Does that vibe with you? Dolly: Yeah, forgiveness? Forgiveness is all there is.⁵
I think this five-word, three-second snippet from Dolly might actually be her biggest legacy for me. Maybe I’ll cross-stitch it and hang it on the wall or tattoo it on my pointer finger that so enjoys pointing out others’ blame.
Because listen: I’ve played the Porter Wagoner role in a situation or two myself—but never with millions of dollars on the line. Like Dolly’s former duet partner/business manager/producer/greatest opp, I’ve been too hurt to process my feelings in healthy ways, more apt to go on character defamation sprees than to channel them into anything constructive. And definitely not skilled enough to turn any of it into art.⁶
No diss tracks came out of all this mess—just a few very mature bangers worthy of all their millions and millions of streams. (Catch me blaring “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” with the windows down and tears in my eyes as my husband and I make the drive out to East Tennessee today.)
Dolly is the kind of forgiver I want to be. It’s not that she was a saint—though she did play an angel in her Christmas on the Square Netflix holiday musical!!! When The Christian Post interviewed her about forgiveness as one of the major themes of the movie, she said,
There’s a lot to be said about forgiveness; it cleans you for other good stuff to come in. If you go around with a bunch of hate and anger and bottled up stuff in you, you can’t blossom, as a person, you’re not doing yourself any favors or anyone else. It’s just so much better to forgive.⁷
I can’t stop thinking about how the people who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her Jesus still wanted something to do with her. As Jad pointed out, that’s the power of forgiveness. It’s the only thing that’s stuck with me long enough to write about over the last month-and-a-half of absolutely not sitting still.
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My favorite forgiveness passage is found at the end of Luke 7, as a certain woman about town hunts Jesus down after finding out where he’d be for dinner that night. She was altogether deeply unconcerned about walking into a Pharisee’s home uninvited because she knew what it was she was after. And as she worshiped at His feet in such a lavish display of awestruck humility, the churchiest—synagogue-iest?—ones in the room scoffed: If Jesus were really a prophet, He’d know exactly who this woman is and just how big of a sinner she is. But Jesus could read the man’s mind just as well as He could see the woman’s heart.
And of course, He launched into a story about a generous creditor who has two men on the hook for not repaying what they borrowed. Between the one who owed 50 denarii and the one who owed 500⁸, Jesus explains that the one who owed more to their lavishly forgiving creditor would love the man more than the other one would.
Then He brought the room back to the situation at hand: “‘Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.’ Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’” (Luke 7:47–48, CSB)
Faith was what saved the woman from her sins and—or so I like to think—her ostracism, too. He stood up for her before sending her away with His peace. And as the all-knowing, blameless, divinely sovereign God of the universe, He had the right to really lay her condemnation on thick, but that wasn’t what He was there to do. He came to rescue, not condemn (John 3:17).
I hold these words from Scripture as truth. And I personally really love being forgiven. But I’m still learning to love being a forgiver.
For Dolly, it didn’t matter if it was her loving husband Carl Dean or if it was her archnemesis who’d probably hurt her more than anyone else in the world: “Forgiveness is all there is.” And on this side of the cross, it’s meant to be the same for us, too.
Not hostility. Not brooding. Not making sly comments to mutual friends till Christ returns.
But emptying ourselves, with humility, and choosing to walk the path that leads to life everlasting.
And because He hasn’t forgiven or loved us little, we can love and forgive a lot.
¹ Somebody remind me how much I love being a resources girlie next time you hear me complain about any of this!!! The grind is beautiful—I’ve just said yes to too many things in too short a timeframe.
² These are the hard sanctification convos that were conveniently left out of all the ABCs-of-salvation songs of our youth.
³ I actually thought this was one of the latter episodes of the season because it stuck with me so hard! But naur, it was the second one: “I Will Always Leave You.”
⁴ Four out of five of his top-streamed tracks on Spotify are Dolly duets, and he has more than 385,000 monthly listeners. Major slay.
⁵ Dolly Parton’s America. “I Will Always Leave You.” Episode 2. Podcast. Timestamp 46:43–47:06.
⁶ Dolly could easily write content for Sit Still, Sarah Stayton, but I could never in a million lifetimes write anything as gut-wrenchingly beautiful as “I Will Always Love You.”
⁷ Leah MarieAnn Klett, “Dolly Parton Discusses Biblical Themes in Netflix Film ‘Christmas on the Square,’” The Christian Post, November 14, 2020, https://www.christianpost.com/news/dolly-parton-on-biblical-themes-in-christmas-on-the-square.html.
⁸ Testament Press equates it to something like owing someone $2,175 versus owing ‘em $21,750. Either way, it’s like zoinks, Scoob.
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