I have a coach. Do you have a coach? Or a mentor? My coach’s name is Alan. Alan has worked with the Gates Foundation, Amazon Prime, someone in the White House, and now someone in the United Nations. He’s pretty good, and I am unbelievably blessed. He coached me for free for five years, every other week for an hour. Do you know why?

Thirty-five years ago I signed up for a course, a human potential movement, personal growth, self-actualization kind of a course. But my employer sent me back out to sea early (I worked on fishing boats in Alaska), so I cancelled my registration. Months later, I signed up again. The same thing happened, and I bailed again. The next year, I signed up for a third time, but the next day, I was offered the fishing boat job of a lifetime for a young man, and so I called to cancel my registration for the third time. Alan answered the phone.

He said, “Buck, do you do this?” I said, “do what?,” a little irritated. He said, “you know, not follow through, make a commitment and then break it, give your word to something and then not keep it?” That was the beginning of one of the most impactful conversations of my life, and it changed me forever.

A month later, Alan challenged me again. He has a way of kicking your butt hard but having you feel deeply loved and amazingly empowered by the butt kicking. He asked me, “what do you want to get out of this course?” I had some cloudy nebulous answer of “becoming a better person.” He worked patiently with me, digging in, making me think and struggle, pissing me off, scaring me, but in a way that opened new possibilities, until it crystalized for me: what I really wanted as a 25-year-old young man with no direction in life was to overcome my fear of women, find my soul mate, quit adventuring, and settle down with a life partner.

That was April of 1985. In August of 1985 I met Joy, and we were married in November. As you can see, Alan is a pretty good coach.

He helped me change myself and my life in many good and profound ways for two more years, until the “next level” job he got me in 1987 took me and Joy from Seattle to the east coast. We said goodbye to Alan.

What does all this have to do with forgiveness and miracles? Read on.

As many of you know, in 2013 Joy and I lost Jessie, our only child, our bright and talented daughter. Jess was raped and strangled to death by a friend. The outpouring of incredible love from our friends, families, and the whole community rewired my broken heart and brain. They were still broken, but rewired now. I forgave Dan. I didn’t excuse him, didn’t release him from accountability; never. I just forgave him. I was in the presence of a magic I did not yet understand. But I felt it.

OK, back to 1987 and our move to my new “next level” job on the east coast that Alan got for me. Well, it didn’t go so well. My boss wasn’t Alan. She didn’t have his heart and talent for kicking your butt hard, but in a way where you felt cherished and fueled. She just had the kicking your butt hard part of that. After two years, I quit, and the career of my dreams, where I would help people like Alan did, went up in smoke.

Now, in the year following Jessie’s murder, I was in this impossible to explain place where both pain beyond words and deep peace co-existed, magnified one hundred times the intensity that I had ever felt them before. I saw the Darkness in this world, yet also an even deeper and more powerful Light. Forgiveness and Love were living breathing presences for me.

It occurred to me one day that year that I had forgiven my daughter’s killer, and I was on a mission, a new Life Calling, to bring Forgiveness to everyone everywhere, and thus change culture and end violence against women, but there was still someone in my life I had not forgiven. I had forgotten all about her, and the grudge I held against her all the years from then until now; my boss on the east coast in 1987, the one who wasn’t Alan, the one who blew up my dream career.

So, twenty-seven years later, I searched for her on Facebook and reached out. I was a little surprised when she accepted my friend request. We messaged back and forth a bit. I apologized for my judgments and I also forgave her. She said she was sorry, she lacked compassion back then. Well, me too. And just like that, a twenty-seven-year grudge that I had held in my mind and heart evaporated and blew away with the wind. I realized that I saw people in a fixed way, but people change, people grow, and when I forgive them, I can actually see their growth, and mine, and old feelings disappear, and the slate is clean, and I feel lighter and freer, and so do they, and then miracles happen.

What miracles you ask?

Well, Alan, who I had also lost track of twenty-seven years earlier, was Facebook friends with my old boss. They worked for the same company, the one he got me my dream job with, the one me and Joy moved to the east coast for. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow he saw me on Facebook. He reached out to me after twenty-seven years and said, “I see what happened to your daughter, I see what you are doing about it with her legacy project, and I want to coach you, for free.” I could not believe he even remembered me. I mean this guy coached hundreds of thousands of people in countries all over the world for decades. That is how I landed one of the best coaches on the planet. He landed me. When Alan miraculously re-appeared in my life, right after we started a project to turn darkness to Light, transform culture, and change the world, when Jessie’s project attracted a coach of that caliber from across the country, someone who had impacted my life more than anyone ever, but who I hadn’t seen for twenty-seven years, well it was then that it really dawned on me that anything is possible, and that the sky is the limit for what we might achieve.

Forgiveness did that. Forgiveness opened that door. Reaching out to my old boss just to forgive a twenty-seven-year grudge that didn’t even matter anymore, in order to set myself right and pure, triggered a series of fortunate events. Forgiveness opened a door, and somehow a little miracle walked through it.

Alan was so excited yesterday about what he called a “new little miracle” in his own life that he had to share it with me. He was reading the NY Times last week when he came across another name he recognized from his past. It was a woman who did one of his courses ten years ago. She told him back then that she felt a strong calling to help bring peace to the Middle East. She was Palestinian. Alan is Jewish. She vowed to somehow use this course work to achieve her vision, but she was afraid. See, she needed a PhD, and she lacked the confidence and belief that she could get one. Alan worked with her to overcome her fear. Ten years later her name appears in the NY Times; she works for the United Nations, and she is at the center of the current efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. She never reached out to him because she did not feel worthy, but he reached out to her, and now she hired Alan to coach her, also fulfilling his lifelong dream to play a role in bringing peace to the Middle East. Who knows if Alan and his new client will have any success in this incredible mission, but if they do, I suspect that Forgiveness will be at the heart of it all.

Then I have another mentor, John, who is also my friend and my pastor. John dragged me kicking and screaming to coffee three years ago, not literally, but you know what I mean. I didn’t need another weekly meeting. I didn’t want another commitment. Now, coffee at 7:00AM every Thursday with John and Rick is my highlight of the week. We vision together, we have each other’s backs, we create new programming for our church, Men Doing Life, Life Groups, the Equine Healing Center where horses heal people, etc. I’ve never felt so locally useful.

John called me this morning, all excited. He just had to tell me. He did a funeral yesterday. Funerals have become a ministry for John. He does funerals most pastors will not do, you know for non-church-members, for non-Christians, for homeless people. John has a forgiving heart, and he will do a funeral for anyone. At the funeral, to their mutual surprise, was an old friend, one of his best old friends. They had a falling out six years ago, and they had not talked since. When they saw each other, the old friend kind of had a reaction. But John gave him a big smile and said “it’s great to see you.” The old friend melted. He said “I wish I had the ****s to call you.” Now they are reconnected, and a six-year grudge evaporated in one sentence. Like magic.

How blessed am I to have two high performers like these in my life, men whose high performance is not for themselves but for others? How blessed am I that I am someone they call when they have a little miracle that they want to tell someone about? How am I so fulfilled and joyful as I still carry the pain of my daughter’s murder? I’ll tell you how. Forgiveness.

It was my forgiveness of Dan which drew both of these dear friends/mentors to me. Apparently, many people consider Forgiveness an extraordinary thing. Well, I don’t want to live in a world where Forgiveness is extraordinary. I want to live in a world where Forgiveness is commonplace. Don’t you?

I want to live in a world where people understand that when you genuinely forgive the unforgivable, you free not only the offender but yourself. Every single one of us has had or will have someone who brings unspeakable hurt into our lives. When they do, we have a choice: we can choose to resent, or we can choose to forgive. Resentment will take your hurt and grow it into hate. Forgiveness will take your hurt and grow it into love, peace, and joy.

Now, when you forgive someone, it may or may not change them. But it will change you. When you forgive your offender in a genuine effort to free them, it is actually you who will be freed. When I was so moved to forgive the unforgiveable, to forgive Dan, the friend who killed Jessie, little did I foresee the chain of events, the series of little ongoing miracles that would be unleashed in my life. Little did I understand the true power of Forgiveness.

And little do you. What will be unleashed in your life that you cannot see from here, when you forgive the unforgiveable?

LOVE>hate always, and Forgiveness is greatest of all.