Forgiving Her Son's Killer

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May 23, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

If someone gives you negative energy, you give back positive, affirmative energy -- such as forgiveness. [...] This is the giving within for-give-ness.

- Michael Bernard Beckwith -

Forgiving Her Son's Killer

It would be easy for Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel to be enemies -- he killed Johnson's only son. But their first face-to-face conversation took a remarkable turn. "You were not that 16-year-old. You were a grown man. I shared with you about my son." At the end of their meeting at the prison, Johnson was overcome by emotion. "The initial thing to do was just try and hold you up as best I can," Israel says, "just hug you like I would my own mother." Johnson says, "After you left the room, I began to say, 'I just hugged the man that murdered my son.' And I instantly knew that all that anger and the animosity, all the stuff I had in my heart for 12 years for you -- I knew it was over, that I had totally forgiven you." A touching NPR story. { read more }