MARYVILLE, Ill. (ABP) — The widow of slain Baptist pastor Fred Winters says she harbors no anger toward her husband's alleged murderer.
"I do not have any hatred or even hard feelings toward him," Cindy Winters said March 16 on the CBS Early Show. "We have been praying for him."
She said one of the first things her daughter said after the attack was that she hoped the accused gunman, 27-year-old Terry Sedlacek, would somehow come to "love Jesus" because of the experience.
"We are not angry at all," Winters said.
She said she does not have any opinion about what should happen to Sedlacek in the legal system but she hopes that he "finds peace with God."
"I hope that he understands that God loves him in spite of his sin, and he can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ."
Winters said she and her daughters are holding up well under the circumstances. "I think I'm a great example that prayer works," she said.
Winters said she did not know Sedlacek and had never seen him before, but now she would like to reach out to his parents.
"In some way we have been united through this crisis, and when they are ready I have a desire to meet them and let them know personally that I love them and in some way I feel their pain. I feel like we're united together in our pain."
"The way I was comforted by others, I have a desire to comfort them."
Winters said she is grateful that neither she nor either of her daughters was in the early service March 8 during the attack. She said she attends the second of the church's three regular morning worship services and had not yet left home. Her older daughter was at church, but helping out in the nursery.
"None of us, fortunately, were in the service to experience what happened, and I am so grateful to God for that," she said.
She also said she knows that coping with her loss is going to be a long process. "I know that the same way God got me through last Sunday, he's going to get me through the next week and he is going to get me through the next 10 years," she said.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.