COEUR d’ALENE — Cara Kernodle doesn’t “hate” Bryan Kohberger, the man who took the life of her daughter, Xana, in November of 2022.  

Kohberger, like herself, was “still made in God’s image,” Kernodle said.  

She even went as far as to publicly forgive him during his July 23 sentencing.  

“I do not fear you or let you have space in my head anymore,” she had said in part.  

But, as Kernodle shared during Saturday night’s “Journey of Forgiveness” event at Altar Church, the path to finding the courage to forgive had been long and difficult.  

Shortly after the death of her daughter, Kernodle was in the throes of active addiction and violated her probation, resulting in 10 months of incarceration.  

In her search for a way forward, she attended a Bible study while incarcerated — looking back, she sees that decision as a turning point.  

“After, I felt this overwhelming joy that I couldn’t explain,” Kernodle recalled.  

From then on, her healing journey began in faith. Now, nearly three years after Xana’s death, she has found peace through forgiveness — and sobriety, after using drugs on and off for 30 years.  

“You are fearfully and wonderfully made,” Pastor Tim Remington told Kernodle after she shared her story with the packed church. “This is your time.”  

Kernodle hopes sharing her story will lead others to Christ and toward the forgiveness they may need to find within themselves  

“This is a good starting point,” she said.  

Kernodle shared both her tears and her laughter with fellow panelist Sara Weaver, who also knows a thing or two about unimaginable loss — and the power of forgiveness.  

Weaver lost her mother, Vicki, and her brother, Sam, in the 1992 federal siege of Ruby Ridge.  

After their deaths, she spent the next 10 years “half alive,” she said.  

A battle with post-partum depression drug Weaver into the deepest parts of her anger and grief. Though she was raised in a religious household, she had turned away from her faith, leaving her without direction.  

“I believed religion was the reason I had lost my family,” Weaver said.  

During the darkest days of her depression, she asked a longtime friend why she chose to believe in God.  

“She just looked at me and said, ‘I know Jesus Christ is my savior,’” she recalled.  

In a moment of desperation, Weaver pulled out her old Sunday school Bible and turned to the one verse she remembered: John 3:16-17.  

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” the passage reads. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  

These words drew her back into the Christian church and, like Kernodle, onto a path of forgiveness.  

Now, 22 years into her faith, she has come to learn that forgiveness is not a feeling, but a choice.  

“It was a choice I had to make over and over again ... until I felt it,” Weaver said.  

And through forgiveness, Weaver has made peace with her grief.  

“I will see my mom and Sam again one day,” she said. “Death is not the winner, Jesus is.”  

Remington, who has long been open with his own walk to forgiveness, closed out the night with his own address to the audience.  

Remington was shot six times by Kyle Odom in the Altar Church parking lot in 2016.  

“The worst part was not my forgiving him for what he did to me ... but what he did to my family,” he said.  

Forgiveness came in part from the realization that Odom was in “spiritual bondage.”  

“I am free,” Remington said.  

The pastor has even built a relationship with Odom and visits him in prison for games of chess.  

Remington believes God still has a plan for Odom — just as He does for everyone else.  

“I really believe God has a plan for us (up here),” he said. “Not just us, all of you.” 

    Pastor Tim Remington speaks in front of a packed Altar Church during “Journey of Forgiveness” on Saturday night.
  

    Cara Kernodle wipes her eyes as she shares memories of her late daughter, Xana.
  

    The “Journey of Forgiveness” panel and the audience watch in silence as Cara Kernodle’s public statement of forgiveness to Bryan Kohberger plays.