The World Press Photo of the Year and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for 1973 was of a naked 9 year old girl, Kim Phúc, who was napalmed and running down the street. It was the most vivid image from the Viet Nam War. Her burns were so severe it was thought she would not survive. But not all pain is physical.
The emotional and spiritual pain on top of constant physical pain led her to consider suicide. Wandering in a library, she found a New Testament. She became a Christian which led her to forgive those who dropped the bombs on her village. She eventually escaped the communist regime and received political asylum in Canada. In 1997 she established the Kim Phúc Foundation in the U.S. with the aim of providing medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war.
She credits her Christian faith with healing the psychological trauma of living over forty years being known to the world as "Napalm Girl." "My faith in Jesus Christ is what has enabled me to forgive those who had wronged me," she wrote, "no matter how severe those wrongs were."
Rev. Curtis Ehrgott