When You Forgive You’re Giving Yourself The Gift of Freedom and Peace

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
Lewis B. Smedes

For four months, I lived in the Brooklyn halfway house (the halfway point between prison and freedom).

I carried a backpack everywhere I went.

I did this because I, along with every other inmate, was smuggling my iPhone in and out of the facility. Phones with cameras and internet access weren’t allowed.

In time my backpack grew heavier and heavier as I added more and more things to it. It was weighing me down.

My backpack served as a metaphor.

What else am I carrying? Not physically, but mentally and emotionally?

Where am I not free?

With this thought, I was transported to the day I self-surrendered to federal prison:

I’m going through medical processing in the catacombs of a medium-security prison.

The physicians assistant explains what’s about to happen,

“You’ll be injected with a sterile solution containing tuberculin that will form a lump under your skin. Report back in three days. If the lump is present, you have TB.”