Two days ago, I had a Skype conversation with my Best Friend. We’ve known each other for four years now and our conversations have shifted in a sense. Whenever I would talk to her in our earlier years, she would normally talk about how good God is in her life and how she’s so happy and all these other things while I would be the one who would be so negative and be all “Why God, why?” because of the situations in my life. However, since joining SFC and being involved in the Mission Volunteer Program, my life and and what I say in my conversations with her have completely gone 180.
What’s interesting now is that the tables have turned on her end. I won’t go into details about what we talked about. All you need to know is that she is currently in a situation right now which has made her revisit issues and emotions she encountered that really hurt her years before. It was so bad for her that she admitted she was angry with God, and she never has been and never wanted to be. She expressed how happy she is for me but feels so bad for herself and how she finds it so difficult to love God and to love this person who causes her so much pain.
Listening to her recount how much she was hurting, how deeply affected she is by her situation made me come back to the Second Reading last Sunday in Paul’s letter to the Romans:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:38-39
And I truly believe this. Kuya Noli Manuel said that, “Our God is a God that cannot be outdone in generosity.” Gelo said that, “God will not put us in a situation where He cannot bless us.” I told her two stories that greatly affected me in my life in terms of loving someone who it seemed impossible to love – the day I found out my dad was cheating on my mom (I’ll save this for another post another day), and the phone call I received from one of the new members in my Household.
When I was younger, I wrote a blog post on an epiphany that I encountered. A brother in the community decided it was funny to take the post that I wrote and point out all the errors I made and to speak negatively on the ideas that I presented in it. I harboured a lot of anger and hate towards this particular individual – I unfriended him on Facebook, spoke bad about him behind his back, and completely distanced myself from him. When I found out that he was being placed in my Household, I complained to my HHH and expressed that I wanted him moved to a different Household. He of course told me to pray about it and when I did, I was able to figure out that the Lord was calling me to love him more. So I included him our group conversations, acknowledged him and caught up with him whenever we saw each other, even mentioned things about him that he never told me about. After TNC, he gave me a phone call and apologized to me for any of the hurts that he caused me. All I was able to say was, “You’re in my Household bro. I am called to love you. The past is past. Let’s work on the now and the future.”
I advised my Best Friend that God continues to put us in situations where He will bless us tremendously if we allow him to do so, that we should conduct ourselves in the same way Paul professes, that nothing in this world can ever separate us from the love of God, that in her situation right now God desires to love her so much more then what she sees lacking in her life right now. After telling her these stories and pointing out this passage to her, she expressed her desire to punch me because I was right, yet she had more than a week to do so while she was here in Vancouver for TNC. I am forever grateful that the Lord blessed me with our friendship and that we are able to not only grow with each other that we are also able to bless one another.