Five years ago, Charlie Roberts, a disturbed young man, stormed an Amish school here and took lots of kids hostage. You probably read about the Nickel Mines Amish school shooting. Roberts shot ten Amish schoolgirls, execution style. Five of those girls survived and five didn’t.

A few years before that, Charlie was working for a local overhead door firm, installing doors on a new factory we were building. As I walked the project and chatted with workers, I never considered the possibility that one of them would soon be a mass murderer.

I offer no insight into why Charlie did that terrible crime or even what folks should do to try to prevent future crazy acts. I simply have no idea.

A recent news story about the response of Charlie’s Mom touched me, though. Terri Roberts lost a son the day of the Nickel Mines shooting, as well as her sense of peace that life somehow makes sense. She can’t bring her son back, or those that perished. What Terri did do, though, inspires and amazes me.

Several months after the shooting, Terri and her husband were visiting some of the Amish victims. As was widely reported, the Amish families forgave Charlie and his family almost immediately, not holding a grudge for an act that was impossible to understand. As Terri talked with the families, she learned of Rosanna King, one of the wounded girls who can’t walk, talk or eat, but is aware of her surroundings.

Terri began a weekly visit to Rosanna. The Huffington Post article describes it so well:

Almost every Thursday evening since, Terri has visited the Kings for several hours, singing to Rosanna, cleaning her bedclothes, bathing her limp body and reading her Bible stories.

After the first few visits, Terri cried all the way home. “Lord, I can’t do this,” she said. But she went back the next week, and the next.

“She’s got to be an awful strong woman to be able to do that,” said Rosanna’s father, Christ King. “Some of the evenings that Terri is there, Rosanna has a rough time or cries a lot. You can’t help but think about what happened and why she is like she is. I don’t know that I’d be that strong.”

I share this redemption story to inspire you and me. Let’s try to live as our best selves today. Let’s do the hard work that we discover in our path.