In middle school and part of high school, I had my best buddy. We pretty much did everything together. Even cooler was that we had names that rhymed. (Dork alert!) We swapped sleeping over at each other’s house, shared clothes, watched movies together while eating ice cream, cruised around in our cars once we got them, talked boys, and just enjoyed each other’s company. Though we were two peas in a pod, we were different in many ways. She was the pretty blonde who caught boys’ eyes. I was the shyer brunette. She played sax, I was a trumpet player. I liked Kansas State University, while she was a fan of my rival. We had gotten to that place in friendship where you are just happy to be around each other, even if nothing is going on.
Then a fateful night happened. We were out at a concert with some guy friends and we got into a fight. I won’t go into details, mostly because that’s not the point of the story. I was so fumed about how things went down that night that I vowed in my heart that I would never forgive her. The next day, she showed up at my work and apologized and asked for my forgiveness. Regretfully…I refused. My heart was like a lump of cold hard stone and I let her walk away. Sounds like a bad break-up doesn’t it? Well, it was. After that day, we went our separate ways.
All that friendship down the tubes because I was “gonna show her.” The sin that I struggle with the most is pride and pride soon became my best friend. She was gone, pride had stepped in to take her place. There were so many times I wanted to go back and forgive her, but I didn’t. Again the pride thing. Ugh.
Time moved forward and we graduated, went off to college, got married, had kids, and none of this was shared with the other. In the back of my mind, I always wondered how she was and what she was up to, but there was no reaching out.
Over time, I realized I had to forgive her even if we never became friends again, because it was eating me up. I think back to that night and how stupid that fight was–stupid, stupid, stupid. It wasn’t worth all this separation and bitterness that I had caused. I finally came to see that while she may have done some dumb things that night to me, it was me that committed the bigger sin against her. My pride had told me that she didn’t deserve my forgiveness, that she didn’t deserve my “wonderful” friendship. Can you believe that? My wonderful friendship–sheesh. Her wrong against me lasted a few minutes. My wrong against her lasted years. It stripped us of sharing wonderful life moments with each other. It stripped me of having her there when I was going through some terrible things with boyfriends. All that time I had fooled myself into thinking that I was being the righteous one, yet in all actuality, I was being the worst friend ever.
We are all going to get hurt in some way by the ones we love. It’s just one of the facts of life. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to try not to, but in our weaknesses we mess up and do stupid, hurtful things. To be sure, there are people that hurt us over and over and over again and those are people that we may just need to remove from our lives for good. However, there are times when our loved ones just mess up and have a bad day. It’s usually pretty easy to tell whether a person is a habitual abuser or a person who just made a bad decision and regrets it. No matter what, we need to forgive both.
After many years, my friend and I did reconnect, thankfully. (Thank you, Facebook). I know that she will probably read this and I want her to know that I wish I could go back and accept her apology. I wanted to accept it the moment that she came up to my work, but I chose poorly. I’ve regretted my decision ever since. I can’t go back and change my decision, but I use this experience constantly to show my kids what not forgiving does to you. Withholding forgiveness never makes you feel better, it never solves a problem, and it never works out in your favor. In fact, it always adds additional pain. Sometimes, forgiveness is difficult to do, but when we don’t it imprisons us and robs us of joy. It is not noble or righteous to withhold forgiveness. In fact, every person I’ve ever met that can’t forgive someone, wrestles with bitterness, sorrow, and, in some cases, hatred–myself included. These things aren’t good for our souls.
If there is someone that you need to forgive, realize that forgiveness creates freedom and healing. Forgiveness isn’t to be confused with condoning behavior, but it is showing mercy. We all need mercy shown to us at different times in our lives. I, also, know that some people want to wait to forgive until they forget the pain of the hurt inflicted. This is never gonna happen. As humans, we aren’t going to have memories erased like that and we will be waiting till the very end if we are waiting to forget. The best thing we can do is pray for the strength to forgive and the wisdom to know how to carry on after we do.
To my friend: I’m so sorry my pride got in the way. I pray that I have found forgiveness with you.
