It was a cold, stormy day. The rain fell as if God had pulled the plug on a lake in heaven, rendering the windshield of my truck opaque. I was idling at the light, preparing to turn left onto Loudon Avenue, when I noticed a small Latino man across the intersection. He was pushing a bicycle, drenched with more than just rain—he looked soaked through with life’s cares.

It was pouring so hard that he was struggling just to walk his bike toward the homeless shelter known as the Hope Center. I turned onto Loudon and pulled over.

“Hey, my man,” I called out. “You want a ride?”

The man, clearly disoriented, looked at me and nodded. I jumped from the truck, hustled to grab his bike, threw it in the bed, and ran back to the driver’s seat. He climbed in slowly, the heavy scent of cheap vodka instantly filling the cabin.

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“Past the center,” he said, his voice heavy with a Spanish accent.

“Where?”

“Up there.”

I found it odd, given the weather, but I began to drive slowly up the street. The traffic ahead was moving at a snail’s pace. The man began to talk, stumbling through his words. His slurred, broken English was difficult to decipher, but the gist of it stuck with me. If you happen to read this, my friend, know that I did my best to hear you.

“You need to give forgiveness,” he said. “My family. They want me to send the money. But I no have the money to give. My son, he is back in Mexico. They are mad. So mad. But I forgive them.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, listening as closely as I could.

“Yes, yes. I give forgiveness.”

He began to mumble under his breath. Trying to be polite, I nodded and interjected with the occasional “hmmm” and “oh,” but mostly I was trying to concentrate on the road. I didn’t want to miss his destination, and the rain seemed to intensify the more he spoke. As we neared the Hope Center, I had to interrupt.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go here? And get out of this rain?”

“No, no,” he insisted. “Keep going.”

He pointed forward until we reached a small drainage ditch on Loudon, just past the feed distributor. I looked across the road and saw torn tents and shopping carts—a small, makeshift village tucked away from the city’s gaze.

As the rain hammered the roof, I asked him one last time if he was sure. He said yes. I pulled a tight U-turn and jumped out to retrieve his bike. I walked it to the passenger door and opened it for him. He sat there for a moment before rolling out of the truck; it was almost like talking had completely tuckered him out. I felt a pang of guilt leaving him there, but it was what he asked for.

As I handed him the handlebars, he started talking about forgiveness again—mumbled, slurred fragments. We stood on the side of the road, miraculously clear of traffic. I nodded along, understanding little, until this diminutive, Yoda-like man made direct eye contact with me.

The slur vanished. His voice became clear.

“You have to forgive yourself.”

He grabbed his bike and stood there, staring at me. I was lost in thought for a second before I realized I was getting soaked. I jumped back in the truck. As I drove off, I checked the rearview mirror. He hadn’t moved. He was staring right through me, watching my truck disappear into the distance. The scene was eerie, quiet, and profound.

His words hit me like a load of bricks.

I was coming out of the tail end of a supernatural depression. I had grown incredibly during that time, but what he said was exactly what I needed to hear.

It often feels easier to forgive others. We give them the benefit of the doubt. We tell ourselves they acted out of ignorance, or because of how they were raised, or that they just weren’t aware. We forgive because we know we’ve been forgiven before. We accept that nobody is perfect.

But when it comes to ourselves, we are brutal. We beat ourselves up. We obsess over what we did wrong. We dwell on missed opportunities, loves lost, friendships undone.

Forgiving yourself can feel like a cop-out. It feels like letting yourself off the hook. But the truth is, you are letting yourself off the hook—and that is a good thing.

By not forgiving yourself, you are insisting that you don’t deserve grace. You are saying you don’t deserve a second opportunity to get it right. That is a tough way to live. To offer grace to everyone around you but deny it to yourself makes moving forward impossible. It’s like trying to run a marathon while holding six hundred pounds of stones.

Forgiving yourself releases the shackles so that you may progress. It grants you access to self-grace, which is the proof of self-love. It is hard to truly love others until you learn to love yourself. Likewise, it is hard to forgive others until you first learn to forgive yourself.

So, in the words of the singer-songwriter Neace Robinson:

1, 2, 1, 2, 3… Release ’Em.