Today is my turn

Kim Phuc Phan Thi taught me great lessons this morning. She said that everyone has a story, but that today was her turn to tell her story. While this got a chuckle from the audience, it was not missed that there are times when everyone’s story deserves to be told.

Her other lesson was about forgiveness, true forgiveness.

Phan Thi’s Vietnam village was in terror in 1972 when the “horrible fire fell from the sky” and U.S. planes dropped napalm bombs, one of which severely burned her body. She was abandoned and left to die in the morgue, until her parents found her and she was transferred to a burn center. 17 operations later and a long and difficult recovery with painful exercises left her with outer and inner scars.

Years later Phan Thi was accepted to medical school in Saigon, until the Vietnam government interrupted her studies in order to make her a poster child for the war. “Why did this happen to me?” she asked herself over and over again. In a moment of despair, Phan Thi comes across the Bible and finds peace. She is sent to Cuba with many questions about why her life is being so controlled when she meets her husband. While on her honeymoon in Moscow Phan Thi decides to defect to Canada.

Through Phan Thi’s journey, she searches for forgiveness and a way out of victimhood. Finding forgiveness wasn’t easy, but she learned to stop asking “Why me?,” she learned to trust, and she learned to be thankful for her blessings. With a golden smile she tells us that she still has her beautiful face, and that we are also the benefactors of her beauty!

Kim Phuc Phan Thi encourages us to find the beauty in life. Thank you, Ms. Kim for schooling me on one of life’s most precious lessons, Forgiveness is a choice.