Abby and Eason,
Sometimes things just hurt, and sometimes someone really close to you will be the person that hurt you. This happened to me this week, and I want to talk to you about it so that you will know how to handle it when it happens to you. Because sadly, it will. No one on this earth knows how to love you perfectly. Only God, who is the author of love, can do that.
Here is what happened.
I have a friend who has known me for 22 years. She is someone I love deeply, and I consider her family.
Over the past 22 years, I have been brutally honest with her and as transparent as I know how to be, even if it made me look bad. She has loved me unconditionally.
Two nights ago she asked me a question that made me feel like she didn’t know me at all. Before the words even finished leaving her mouth, I felt a level of pain that words can’t really describe.
Immediately, I felt like she had not seen me for the past 22 years. The fact that she could even wonder the question she asked made me feel like she had no understanding of the levels of honesty I have given her. Or, worse yet, if she did understand I was being honest with her then I must be a really horrible person, even more than I knew of myself.
At that moment, I felt like I had lost my friend. I felt like, based on the question she asked, sin had won and I would never be able to be seen past the sin. I felt a complete loss of hope and a loss of my friend. I felt like I would never live beyond my past problems if the person who knew me most saw me as such a horrible person. All of these thoughts occurred in my head within seconds of the question leaving her mouth.
Then my body responded. I had a pop in my head and an immediate headache that had me on the ground screaming in pain. I thought I was having a brain aneurysm because the pain was far beyond any migraine I have had. (And we all know I have had bad migraines). I called 911. My pain must have been enough to convince medical professionals I was in bad shape because they whisked me away in an ambulance with sirens on.
The pain manifesting in my head was actually just emotional pain. The doctors inspected me, and it was obvious that I simply had more pain in my mind and body than I knew how to manage.
My friend and I talked today. She was going through a hard time that was causing her to question everything. She asked the question because she was processing things in her life, and confusion in her own life caused her to question me.
The lesson is this. What I felt like I had lost when my friend questioned me was someone who knew me for 22 years. I felt like she didn’t understand me at all; and, despite me revealing who I am in the most transparent way I knew how. I felt like she saw me as a horrible person that I am not. But, even in that moment, I knew who I was. What didn’t change was ME knowing who I was. My devastation was around the fact that SHE didn’t know who I was.
When my friend asked me to forgive her, I faced a choice. I could do what she did to me – forget who she was over the past 22 years and accuse her of trying to hurt me, or I could remember that I know who she is. She is someone who has chosen to love me deeply for 22 years. She is a child of God who loves Him with her whole heart. She is family.
She needed me to give her what the question she asked took from me – She needed to hear me tell her that I knew she loved me, and that I wasn’t going to let one mistake, no matter how bad it hurt, change the way I viewed her. She wasn’t a mean friend who asked a horrible question. She wasn’t someone who didn’t know me. She was and is exactly who she was before the question. She loves me, knows me, and has been an unconditional friend for 22 years.
Forgiveness sometimes requires that we focus on what we know, not what happened. I know my friend loves me. That moment doesn’t get the power to redefine our friendship. She made a mistake. Even though that mistake devastated me in ways that I couldn’t handle, it was just a mistake. She still loves me, and I still love her.
I know this is a long letter, but I can’t end it without turning your focus back to Jesus, because without Him forgiveness doesn’t exist.
When Jesus died, He faced the devastation of sin. For three days sin won and Jesus was separated from God. Never once had Jesus been separated from God – they are one in the same. In that moment He felt crushing devastation from both our sins and the separation He experienced.
Jesus also took on something He was not. He took on our sins when He had no sin.
I can’t imagine the pain Jesus felt. The pain I felt from one friend was greater than I knew how to handle. So great that I honestly thought I was dying of a brain aneurysm. Jesus felt this for all of us. We can’t begin to imagine His pain.
Abby and Eason, when you say you are a child of God. You are saying that you are loved by someone who hurt for you. Someone who loved you enough to forgive you even though our sins caused Him pain beyond what we can imagine. That is forgiveness.
Jesus knew what mattered – it was you. It wasn’t the pain He went through that mattered. What mattered to Him was that He give His life to make sure you and God could be reunited and spend eternity together. The love and forgiveness He offers us is something we can’t imagine.
I love you both,
Mom