Growing up I did not have much of a social life (for a variety of reasons) so I did not form many experiences in regard to dealing with people, deep friendships, and relationships. I had a lot of friends but I did not get close to anybody so I did not experience the ins and outs of relationships and friendships. As I got into my teens I started forming my own ideas about life–what is right and wrong, and how things should be done—because I needed some type of guidance in life. My mother used to always tell me that I have to learn from life, but I found myself constantly frustrated by what little I learned from experiences and my ideas about life. Not because I learned little but because I, as a person, changed constantly and so my ideas changed too and they changed quite quickly! This made me think, “If what I believed in 4 months ago is now obsolete, then how do I know what I believe in now won’t be obsolete in few months from now?â€
I found myself growing and my ideas growing but they were not reaching a point of knowing. There was no truth—there were simply my preferences at the time which were held as right and wrong to me at the time. Then at the age of 16 I accepted Jesus Christ into my life and slowly I started to know God’s Word and life became more stable because my ideas became grounded in God’s Word. Suddenly I knew, more or less, what was right and wrong and that right and wrong did not change because the author of what is right and wrong, God, does not change. This made me ignore my experiences in life because I thought that all I needed was God’s Word to respond to circumstances, and so I thought that my experiences, and what I learned from them, were of no value. However, something happened:
Letting Go by Fadi
In 2007 a very dear friend to me (my best friend of 5 years) ended her friendship with me. That experience made me feel rejected, fooled, angry, upset, bitter, and sad. Because this was no ordinary experience, I could not just ignore this experience because it was too costly emotionally, time wise, and financially. So I struggled with how to make sense of this experience, what does it mean to me and my life, and how to consolidate it with God’s Word.
Not knowing how to deal with this experience I had to analyse the situation: How do people feel in similar situations? How do I feel? And what does God’s Word say? How do people react to similar situations? How does God want me to react? And how will I react? Why do people react the way they do? So in my analysis I focused on my friend (the one who ended her friendship with me) and I asked three questions:
1) Why did she treat me this way?
The answer was simple: she loved a man few years prior who rejected her, so she rejected me. He belittled her so she belittled me. He took her love lightly so she took my love lightly. He did not esteem her so she did not esteem me. He did not love her, so she did not love me. He used her, so she used me.
2) How did she feel?
She felt rejected, angry, bitter, lost, unlike herself, she was often depressed, wanted to get even and lost faith in love.
3) How did she react?
She took all the hurt he inflicted on her and projected it on me. It was not personal toward me: she would have done the same to any other man who came into her life—it was just God’s will that it was me and not someone else.
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