Forgiveness is what enables a person to become whole again rather than to live broken. It is perhaps a moment when we choose or, by seeming coincidence meet choice along life’s path between neurotic preoccupation with the pain of life and spiritual growth; a moment when the spirit guides the flesh.

I forgive someone who has hurt me.

  A middle-aged man came to place his child in one of my classes, but I realized I had no room at all. I looked at this man and immediately knew. This was the guard who had beaten me nine years before.
A spirit caught me. I understood that I had to find space for his boy. I could not repeat the harm that had been done to me. I asked him, “Do you know me?” He said, “No.” I asked him if he remembered a night in July of 1956. Just then, the man looked at my face and started crying. He began to walk away, but I stopped him, saying, “Wait, I’ll take the child. I have carried scars for years, but I have forgiven you all those things.” That man might have left me permanently disabled, but in allowing me to help his boy, he made me feel fulfilled in what I wanted to do for young people.

Recounted by Joel Kinagwi, from The Meaning of Life