Is This the Most Amazing Forgiveness Story Ever?

I listened to a call with Debra Poneman, and she shared one of the most astonishing and moving stories I’ve ever heard.

During the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa following the fall of the apartheid government, an elderly South African woman listened to a soldier confess the brutal murder of her husband and son. The jude asked her what she wanted from this man, and she had three requests.

1. To take her to the murder site to gather some ashes and give it a proper burial

2. To “become her family”: to be her surrogate son and absorb some of the love she still had, by visiting her every two weeks

3. To accept her complete forgiveness for him, starting with the powerful hug she wanted to give him right then and there.

If this woman can find the strength of love in her heart to not just forgive her enemy but to make him a part of her family, is there anything the rest of us have experienced that could not be forgiven? I took this to heart—and when Debra led us on a forgiveness exercise after recounting this story, I took on a deep challenge: forgiving the stranger who had grabbed me off the streets of my West Bronx neighborhood and raped me when I was about 11 years old.

This was not easy for me. I don’t know if I fully succeeded. But I definitely got through at least some of my “stuff” about this man, who I never saw before or since. And quite frankly, I felt better afterward. I was reminded that forgiveness is not for the benefit of the person who transgressed; we forgive, and we heal ourselves.