Have you ever stopped to think about how our lives, our actions, our choices affect others?
We are all connected. It’s easy to forget this. At the end of last year before my graduation I was faced with a choice. I was given an opportunity to allow someone back into my life that had caused me great hurt. They were never who they originally portrayed themselves to be…a true friend.
Whenever I needed this friend the most, too many times, even after a major surgery, their absence said it all. Their silence was a stinging reminder that my friendship to them was of no value. It was shocking to me, especially after my surgery when I thought at least they will come through on the help I had asked for before which I truly needed.
Nonetheless, I learned the painful lesson that actions or rather lack of action and silence truly reveal what’s in another’s heart. It took some time to try to understand this person and I finally came to the point that I never will. There was great peace in that realization.
And through it all I continued to pray daily for this person and there is great healing, love and forgiveness in that. And when this old connection chose to resurface in my life late last year many months after an unexplainable abandonment. I chose to hope. I hoped in the words of this person, I trusted that this old friend was baring their heart honestly and had changed. I believed their story and not even a full three months later their old pattern had unraveled again. But this time was different. There was no longer the deep pain, or sense of loss that I had formerly experienced. God had also allowed me to clearly see how amazing our choices can be. How through our reconnection, which was only possible by my choice to forgive. God allowed me to be an instrument to open a door of opportunity for them. They were able to begin a new path. This caused great wonder and contemplation in my mind and heart.
I pondered on how if I had chosen bitterness or unforgiveness this person may still be in a very unhappy place. But through our connection, and through my actions God worked and still works through prayer. I am grateful for all the lessons learned. I’m still trying to understand what God is teaching me. And although I’ll never understand why some people will say one thing and so quickly do another I understand that most people come into our lives for only a season. It is the people who are there for you in good times and bad, who help you the best they can maybe when your struggling financially or even when your sick those are the true friends, the rare people whose loyalty is priceless. Those are the people you hold onto.
Who have you been able to bless? Maybe you’ve been a blessing even at times when you didn’t realize your connection to someone had such an impact. Reflect on some of the closest relationships in your life. In hindsight it’s often very clear who God has blessed through you or ponder on who has given you hope in the darkest times…I’ll never cease to be amazed at all the surprises God has for each of us in the divinely orchestrated details of our lives.
Remember we are all connected and our actions either help or hurt others. What will your actions do?
My heart needs to write… it is an outlet, often times pain is the fuel that gives me cause to write. It’s as if heartache is a propellant to inspire and to give me words…from ashes comes beauty. I know from pain comes wisdom, perspective and even out of it comes hope. Hope for that which is real, true and lasting. This world fosters such a shallowness in relationships today, how so many it seems are self centered and confused. Loyalty seems to be a thing of the past or maybe just for old souls… I’ve not understood nor wanted to feel the days pass that magnify how easily dear friends can become strangers. I’ve experienced losses of those whom I cherished and coldness of hearts that has given me pause to desire to lose hope at times…. hope in all types of relationships and a desire to fall into isolation. As solitude seems to be a safe place, a place of peace, a place where ones heart is not vulnerable to the flaws of humanity which inflict pain upon one another.
