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He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Mercer University, a Master of Divinity from Emory University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in New Testament and ancient Christian origins from Yale University. He has taught at Yale Divinity School, Berry College, and the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies, in Washington, D.C.

On January 6, 2008, Allen entered the Catholic Church. This transition represented the culmination of a fifteen-year journey, which was encouraged by a group of Dominican sisters who began praying for him in 1992. Allen chronicled much of his journey in his powerful book, Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor: How I Discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church, published by Beacon Publishing.

As a speaker, Allen inspires “everyday” Catholics to more fully recognize the genius of Catholicism, the role it’s meant to play in their lives, and how to share that genius with others.

Allen partners with Matthew Kelly as a Senior Advisor at Dynamic Catholic. The Dynamic Catholic team is dedicated to reenergizing the Catholic Church in the United States by developing world-class resources that inspire people to rediscover the genius of Catholicism.

Allen and his wife, Anita, live in Atlanta. For more information on him and his work, please visit DrAllenHunt.com and DynamicCatholic.com.

Millie had made an awful mistake, and she wanted to come home. She desired no more, and she could accept no less.

Married at age eighteen, Millie grew restless ten years later. With three kids to care for, and all the weight of adulthood bearing down on her shoulders, she soon found excitement in the arms of another man. For four months, she met this man clandestinely, and their passionate love affair gripped her entire life, both body and spirit.

After four months of meeting her lover in motels and parked cars, Millie left her husband and three children. She moved in with her paramour. They set up house in the same town, just a few miles away from her husband and kids. Millie’s husband was devastated, but he refused to give up on her, their vows, and their family. He wrote her notes. He left her messages. On one occasion, he physically picked her up and took her to church to meet with their pastor. But Millie rejected all of his efforts, even going as far as telling the pastor, “I don’t need you. I don’t want this. I am finished with all of you.”

For nearly a year, Millie reveled in her newfound freedom. No kids. No responsibilities. Just the passion and thrill of being in love with someone new. Or so she thought.

On a Wednesday morning, Millie woke up, in more ways than one. That morning, reality sank in. Millie’s mind focused, and she thought, “What in the world have I done?” She knew. She was making the biggest mistake of her life. All the decisions of the past year collapsed around her. She had taken a man who loved her unconditionally, and the children they had created together, and ditched that on the side of the road like a used cigarette butt. The crushing wave of what she had chosen washed over her. And she decided, “I am going home.”

Millie had no expectation that her husband would forgive her. She hoped he would at least welcome her. She merely wanted to come home. That was all. To be back in the orbit where she belonged. Whether she could set things right or not did not matter, because at least she would be home.

Millie pulled into the driveway and went to the front door. She heard the kids playing in the backyard and stood there on the doorstep for a very long time. It was Wednesday night, right before her husband and children would leave to attend church. After what felt like a decade, Millie knocked on the door. Her husband opened the front door and she could not look up at him. She was shaking and ashamed.

Her husband took the first step. He placed his hands on Millie’s face and held her chin up. Looking into her face, he said, “Welcome home.”

They prayed. Millie cried. He cried. They went to church that night. And their pastor, whom Millie had verbally dismissed and rejected those months before, threw open his arms and said, “Welcome home, Millie. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Those were only the first welcomes Millie received. Open arms soon came from her parents-in-law, as well as from other members of the church.

A week later, Millie discovered that she was pregnant. The news meant one obvious thing: She was carrying the child of her lover. Adultery. Illegitimate child. Husband. Three children depending on her. Needless to say, Millie was broken by the news. The gravity of her mistake crushed her world. One week home, one week of moving toward making things right, and now this. An unexpected and fully unwanted pregnancy with a child who could be a permanent reminder of the biggest mistake Millie had ever made and the very real and deep pain she had inflicted on her family. She knew what she wanted to do: end the pregnancy.

Like he had done on the doorstep of their home a week before, he looked her in the eye and said, “This is going to be all right.” Millie shared that she did not believe that she could go through with the pregnancy. The pain of the living reminder of her adultery was simply too great to bear. He told her that they would make something wonderful from the pain and raise the baby together.

Fortunately, the paramour did not want anything to do with the child, and Millie and her husband now have another lovely daughter. Her in-laws and closest friends, the handful of people who knew the complete story, welcomed the baby just as they had welcomed Millie home upon her return.

Some of the people in town know, and they ask Millie’s husband, “How could you have taken her back? How could you have forgiven her?” He replies the same way each time: “You know, with all that Christ did to forgive me, how could I look at my wife, the woman He gave me to love, and say, ‘You know, you’ve done something so horrible that I can’t forgive you’?”

Her husband’s generous forgiveness brought Millie home again, this time to stay. His forgiveness brought a baby from death to life, a full-time mother back to her children, his soul mate back to him, and a future to everyone involved. Through forgiveness, Millie’s husband created a future of memories that will include grandchildren not yet born and mountaintops not yet reached.

In her words, as she shared with me on my radio show, “It’s something that I still struggle with. A few months into the relationship with the other man, I felt I couldn’t go back home. I felt like I had gone so far beyond, I’d done too much, and I couldn’t go back. I was too bad. I didn’t deserve my husband, and the whole time he had made it known that he was waiting for me. He had left me messages. He had left me notes, saying, ‘I’m not giving up on us. This is not where you belong and this is not who you are.’ It was just so overwhelming.”

When did she feel forgiven by her husband? “The moment I showed up on the doorstep and said, ‘I want to come home.’ It was instantaneous. I knew it. I could see it in his face. I could see it in his eyes.”

Millie assumed it would take a long time to build up trust and to do all of the repair work on her relationship. “I felt like it was going to be a long road, and it really wasn’t. From the beginning, I would call him if I thought I was going to be late at work, and I would let him know where I was. But I never felt doubted, and he never threw it up in my face. There was never any of that. The hard part was forgiving myself.”

When did she feel forgiven by God? “I knew. I knew when I asked. I think because of him. I knew when I went home. I saw that grace. I saw that mercy. It only comes from God. As humans, we do not come by that naturally. I don’t think I could do that either. It’s horrible to say now, but if the situation were reversed, I do not think I could do that. I don’t think I have that in me. It was so devastating, and it was the most horrible, horrible thing. But my husband is now the baby’s father. Yes. He is.”

Millie found herself locked out of her own life, imprisoned by the tragedy of her decisions. Only forgiveness could provide the key out of that dark prison of pain. Everybody needs to forgive somebody. While a husband needed to forgive his wife, Millie also needed to forgive herself. Her husband’s forgiveness, inspired by the forgiveness of God, opened the door and a path to a restored relationship and a unified future together as a family. His forgiveness did not make him forget Millie’s mistake; his forgiveness allowed him to move past it.

1. Have you ever done something so painful that you find it impossible to forgive yourself? In what part of your life do you feel trapped?

2. Are you embarrassed by a mistake you made? Millie came home. What does it mean to you to “come home”? What would it take to get there?

Create a forgiveness journal. Begin to list the names of people you have hurt and need to ask for forgiveness. On the next page, you can list people who have hurt you whom you need to forgive. This is not a grudge list. It is a forgiveness list. Spend a moment each day writing down the areas of your life in which you need forgiveness to spring forth. Keeping a journal will also help center your soul each day around the idea of forgiveness so that you can make progress. This journal will also come in handy as you make your way through this book and learn what to do with the items you list in your journal.

Can you imagine how Peter must have felt? Once the proud leader of the disciples of Jesus, he surely must have been reduced to a huddled pile of human rubble. After all, he had not once but three times denied even knowing Jesus after proudly boasting at the Last Supper that he was willing to go to the death with Him. More embarrassingly, the Sacred Scriptures show Peter as MIA at the cross as Jesus died. He was nowhere to be found. A coward, Peter likely had hidden from the scene out of fear for his own life. Moreover, he had even fallen asleep three times while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, in spite of the fact that Jesus’ only instructions to him were to stay awake.

What does it feel like to know you have failed on such a grand scale? You were the leader, yet you denied the Lord. You were the go-to guy, yet you failed to carry out Jesus’ instructions to stay awake. You were the chosen head, yet you failed to show up at the most crucial moment in the life of Jesus, at the cross.

Surely Peter felt humiliated, perhaps more so than any other human in history. It must have been difficult even to go out in public or to face his fellow disciples in the wake of such epic failure.

In a sense, Peter found himself locked in the prison of his own failure and disappointment. Dejected. Hangdog. The weight of his mistakes would have felt like he was carrying a boulder on his back as he sought to scale Everest. Peter likely felt there was no way through the locked door he found himself behind.

And yet when the day of Pentecost dawned in Jerusalem, there Peter stood preaching to the masses. The Holy Spirit descended like tongues ablaze, Peter proclaimed, and three thousand people came to believe. Peter, aided by the Holy Spirit, birthed the Church that day.

How does that kind of transformation occur? From huddled human rubble of failure to bold, triumphant leader and proclaimer of the Truth? What is the catalyst for that?

The truth is plain: Peter, the tragic denier and coward, somehow morphed into the most successful failure of all time. He became Peter, the rock of the Church. He grew into St. Peter. He emerged as the first pope. Peter finished as inspiration for the faith. From zero to hero. How does that happen?

What was Jesus thinking? No human resources office of any company on earth would ever hire Peter. In fact, they probably would not even give him a second thought. His personality tests and résumé show little of merit. Yet Jesus chose him and said, “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church.”

Peter was shortsighted, myopic. When Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on the mountain and was transfigured before them, Peter dreamed up the bright idea of building cabins there. He wanted to stay on top of that mountain with his close friends, and with Jesus, Elijah, and Moses. Peter had no sense of Jesus’ larger mission and purpose beyond that mountain. Myopic.