Author Archive: directorifi
Teen Sends a Forgiveness Message a Year After Her Death
Fox 13, Springville, Utah – In October 2011, Reesa Kammerman tried to commit suicide–four times. She was 14 years old.
Reesa went through more turbulence in life than most teenagers. In addition to trying to take her own life, and after revelations of rape and molestation, her father got her into therapy. She came back with a smiling face, and once again began doing the things she loved, like playing guitar, but her sunshine was short-lived.
Reesa was killed in a single rollover car crash on July 28, 2013. She was revived three times. Showing her will to survive, the then-16 year old hung on to life for 16 days, in a coma, before finally slipping away.
Her heartbroken father, Michael, had lost his daughter and then nearly a year after her death, he discovered a video of daddy’s little girl, spilling her secrets.
“My mom left when I was 9 for me to raise my 4 little brothers,” Reesa writes on a notepad in the video. “I was raped three times!” she continues.
“I hated my life,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to live anymore.”
But then, somehow, from the depths of darkness, a young woman found her light and a delivered a message she perhaps wanted to share with the world.
“I have a million reasons to live,” Reesa goes on to say. “I love my family.”
“Forgive!”
“Forgive anyone who has ever hurt you.”
“Forgive that one person who wasn’t there when you needed them the most!”
“Most importantly…forgive yourself!”
Michael decided to post the video on the Internet because “I felt that this is a message that needs to be shared. If it even helps one person, Reesa would be happy.”
Read the full story: Teen girl’s message of forgiveness surfaces after her death. Watch the full “Reesa’s Legacy Video.”
Road Tragedy Leads to Forgiveness and New Road Safety Group
702 ABC Sydney, Australia – Sarah Frazer was like any 22 year old woman. Dreams, aspirations and excitement. On a sunny February day, while on her way to Wagga Wagga to start college, her car broke down on the Hume Highway in the Southern Highlands. She called roadside assistance and a tow truck arrived some time later. Driver Geoff Clark began loading the car.
Some 10 minutes later, both would be dead. Hit by a truck.
Months later, Sarah’s father Peter Frazer travels the countryside speaking about the importance of road safety and treating everyone on the road like they’re family. “You never hear about what happens after an accident. What I’m doing is about standing beside the people and acknowledging their loss.”
Frazer also noted the healing process of forgiveness.
“When Kaine’s case was adjourned, my daughter Rebecca comforted his girlfriend,” Frazer said of Kaine Barnett who was driving the truck. “I saw Kaine banging his head, weeping. I hugged him, and said we forgave him.”
Frazer and his family intend to visit Barnett while he serves his 3 year sentence for manslaughter.
This week (May 4-10) is Road Safety Week and the SARAH (Safer Australian Roads and Highways) Group is asking motorists to tie a yellow ribbon to their car in memory of the 1,200 killed and 30,000 injured on Australian roads last year.
Read the full report: “Father says forgiveness was key to healing after accident.”
Beyond Right & Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness
It’s been 20 years since the Genocide in Rwanda claimed the lives of more than 800,000 people. You can hear survivors’ stories in their own words by watching Beyond Right & Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness.
Beyond Right & Wrong presents the stories of people who have experienced loss and the stories of people who have caused that loss. From the Rwandan Genocide to the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, people from different sides of the violence have entrusted all of us with their stories—their anger or remorse, their pain, their paths to recovery.
In the stillness after conflict, after the blood dries and the screams fade, the memory of violence transforms survivors into prisoners of their own pain. How do whole societies recover from devastating conflict? Can survivors live—converse, smile, and even laugh—beside someone who blinded them, killed their parents, or murdered their children? Can victims and perpetrators work together to rebuild their lives? This life-changing documentary explores the intersections of justice and forgiveness as survivors heal from these tragedies.
With a climate of forgiveness, is it going to be easier for some people to continue to cause offences when they know other people may simply forgive again?
Forgiveness should take place alongside the quest for justice. Therefore, upon forgiving it is important for the one offended, now with anger reduced because of the forgiveness, to ask for fairness from the other. This should prevent the offender from incorrectly assuming that he or she can take advantage of the one originally offended.
How I Forgave the Unforgivable
KOCO.com, Oklahoma City, OK – Kathy Sanders has titled her new book “Now You See Me: How I Forgave the Unforgivable.” The book details her relentless pursuit of the truth following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. The blast killed her grandchildren–Chase, 3, and Colton, 2.
“Now You See Me” is a book, Sanders says, she did not plan on writing, about a life she would have rather ended at one point.
“After the bombing I wanted to die,” said Sanders. “I didn’t want to live in a world filled with so much pain. I didn’t know how I was going to cope and if I was going to survive.”
To help her cope with the heartbreak, Sanders launched her own investigation into the bombing. She wanted to know every person who may have known about the bombing and what the government might be hiding. Her questions led to a decades-long journey and ultimately she met face-to-face with Terry Nichols (a convicted accomplice in the Oklahoma City Bombing along with Timothy McVeigh).
Her book reveals letters, phone calls and visits with Nichols and his family. Their exchanges turned to friendship and finally, through her Christian faith, forgiveness.
“I didn’t set out ever intending to forgive Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh or anyone else involved in this crime, but learning to forgive was a gift I gave myself,” said Sanders.
She’s aware that forgiving the unforgivable may appall others who lived through April 19, yet insists it is the only way she could move on and focus now on happy memories made with two precious little boys.
“What I have today is peace from learning how to forgive,” said Sanders. “I’ve got a song in my heart and a smile on my face.”
Read the full story: “19 years after Murrah bombing, grandmother shares story of loss, forgiveness.”
