If we choose revenge, our lives will be consumed by anger. When vengeance is served, it leaves one empty. Anger is a hard urge to satisfy and can become habitual. But forgiveness allows us to move on. There is also a more compelling reason to forgive.
Forgiveness is a gift - it is mercy.
It is a gift that I have received and also given away. In both cases, it has been completely satisfying. But many more of the hundreds gathered outside the prison were there to cheer her death. Inside the prison, however, a man named Ron Carlson was praying for Karla - not in the witness room for her victims' families, where he could have been, but in the one set aside for the family of the murderer. It was my father.