I’ve also seen enough people consumed by anger, animosity or hate stemming from some consequential wrong which resulted in serious harm, be it a physical injury, the loss of a loved one, serious abuse of some kind or some other significant affliction, that I truly believe that forgiveness is the only way to move beyond such an offense. I’ve just never been one for holding grudges. Forgiving others has never really been one of my struggles. In part, I marvel at Ronald and Jennifer’s shared story of forgiveness, understanding and love because I can’t help but wonder how I would have responded were I Ronald and faced with such a situation. More often than not, people nurture their resentments for solace and let the wrongs committed against them continue to eat at their own souls. And Ronald, rather than lose himself in bitterness over all that was taken from him, found freedom in forgiving Jennifer, herself a victim, as well as the man that had actually committed the crime and left Ronald to take the blame, noting that “letting go of my anger toward him was hard, but staying free in my heart was a choice only I could make.” In a world that revels in retribution, vengeance and hate, absolution like this is almost unheard of. Struggling to forgive herself for a mistake which cost an innocent man more than a decade of his life and left a guilty man free to attack others, Jennifer found herself able to heal because of Ronald’s forgiveness. The tragedy, however, unexpectedly forged a close bond and friendship between the two. A DNA test conducted in 1995 exonerated Ronald for the heinous act, leading to his release and a full pardon, but it simultaneously threw Jennifer’s life into disarray.
Ronald is a man who spent 10 1/2 years in prison for a crime he did not commit based primarily on testimony given by Jennifer, a woman who had mistakenly picked him out of a line-up as the man who had raped her. The essay was delivered by two people, Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson-Cannino. Part of NPR’s on-going series of personal essays called This I Believe, the segment illustrated for me the meaning of true forgiveness as perfectly as anything I’ve ever heard.
Thursday night I heard a short piece on the radio that brought me close to tears.
0 kommentar(er)
