Beth Nimmo, 63, can’t remember exactly what she prayed for on the morning of April 20, 1999, except that her beloved 17 year-old daughter, Rachel Scott, was upstairs in the bathroom using her makeup before heading off to Colombine High on that fateful day. It would be the last day of life as they knew it – and the commencement of a long journey to forgiveness.

The Daily Mail is reporting on an exclusive interview given by Beth on the eve of the release of a movie based on the life and death of her daughter, Rachel. Titled, “I’m Not Ashamed,” it stars Duck Dynasty stars Korie and Sadie Robertson. The title references Rachel’s defense of her Christian beliefs which was found in one of her journals after her death in the worst school shooting in the nation’s history.

According to a classmate, Richard Castaldo, who witnessed Rachel’s death by Colombine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, she was sitting outside on the grass having lunch with a friend when she was shot three times. The shooters moved on, but when they realized she was still alive Harris returned, lifted her head by the hair and asked, “Do you still believe in God?”

Rachel answered, “You know I do.”

“Then go be with him,” Harris said and killed her with a bullet to the temple.

Later, when the Harris family discovered video tapes in which the boys filmed themselves plotting the murders, it was discovered that Rachel was chosen in advance to die by the boys who referred to her as a “Godly whore.”

But her mother, the daughter of a pastor, says she found comfort in the fact that her daughter died for the faith she loved.

“I believe Rachel had peace when she faced the gun and faced her killer. I can’t prove it but I choose to believe that Rachel had peace and that she went from the presence of evil to the presence of the Lord in that split second.”

It was only the family’s faith that carried them through those first awful weeks after the shooting, beginning with the moment they received the call from the coroner at 11 p.m. on the day of the shooting who confirmed that Rachel was among the 21 people who died during the shooting.

“It was just a state of disbelief, falling apart. You just kind of lose it,” Beth said.

In addition to the loss of their daughter, their son, Craig, now 33, was also caught up in the violence that day and only survived by playing dead. He had been in the library where ten students were killed, two of whom were right beside him. Craig was left traumatized by the experience of laying between the two, drenched in their blood, as he feigned death in order to survive.

Somehow, the family got through the funeral which was broadcast live on CNN and drew the highest viewership in the network’s history up to that point, even more than for Princess Diana’s funeral.

“We went through the motions,” Beth recalled. “We were just in a state of fog. I don’t have a real clear memory of those days. There was intense pain when it did hit – just intense pain, crying out in pain, asking God what’s happened, what’s going on?’”

And then she received the letter – a heartfelt note written by Susan Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene of the crime. Susan wrote a note to the parents of each victim, and it struck a chord in Beth’s heart. In the note she learned that Susan had no idea what her son was plotting and only found out after the killings by reading through his writings.

“I raised five children,” Beth said. “I know that kids do stuff and that you have no idea of what’s going on. Do I wish that they had intervened? Do I wish that they had been able to discover what was in the hearts and minds [of these boys]? Of course. She does more than I do even probably because they’ve had the stigma of being the parents of the shooters, the bad guys.”

Beth got to celebrate for the life of Rachel but the killers’ parents were ostracized and hated for what happened.

“But they lost a son that day too,” Beth said. 

Susan reached out and Beth reciprocated by agreeing to a meeting that was planned for just two weeks after the massacre. But the media caught wind of the plan and they decided to postpone it rather than turn the event into a media circus.

A few months later, in secret, the two finally met.

“She was just as fearful of meeting me as I was of her,” Beth said about that first encounter. “I didn’t know what I was going to say to her. This was the mother of one of the boys who shot my daughter. I asked the Lord what would you have me say to this woman? I have no idea.”

But the minute she met Susan, it all became clear. “What I felt prompted to ask was, ‘Sue will you tell me who your little boy was before April 20, 1999?’ Tears just rolled down her face and she started telling me about this precious little blond, curly haired boy that they loved and cherished just as much as I loved and cherished my little Rachel.”

Sue Klebold released a book earlier this year, with all profits donated to research and charities dealing with mental health issues, but Beth hasn’t brought herself to read it just yet.

She and Susan have had several conversations since then. “We’re acquaintances and we respect one another. She’s very lovely and I think they got blindsided as to what was in the heart of their son. I think they knew something wasn’t right but nobody had seen a Columbine before so how do you put the pieces together to prevent something that didn’t even exist at that point in time?”

Beth said she is often asked about whether or not she forgives the boys who murdered her daughter in cold blood, left her son traumatized and her family devastated.

“Yes,” she says at once. “We did make a conscious choice to forgive. Forgiveness is a process of healing. It doesn’t matter to the boys if we practice forgiveness. But if you aren’t able to forgive it creates a life sentence for you. It locks you down to that moment in time when you were violated, when you were hurt.

“For Rachel it was a life sentence. It was over. I choose not to make it my life sentence by letting go of those boys. Forgiveness is me saying, ‘what you did to me is not okay but I choose to forgive you because I’m not going to live in the pain of that for the rest of my life. You’re not going to control me because I’m not going to let what you did to me define me for the rest of my days’.

“So I can sit here and I can feel anger but I’m going to let that anger go and say again, ‘Eric and Dylan I forgive you. You hurt me bad but I have a good life, I choose to love, I choose to be happy, I choose not to be in the prison you would put me in. That’s what forgiveness does. It gives me permission to move away from that pain and to move away from the evil that you purposefully committed.”‘

I’m Not Ashamed opens in theaters on October 21.

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