Over the New Year there were many declarations of gratitude for ‘true friends’, this led me to mull over what that really means…
This is a really hard issue to write about, as during last year my husband and I found ourselves deemed ‘untrue’ friends following a misunderstanding.
My husband and I made a decision that our very dear friend considered to be against her.
It is such a tangled mess of emotion, situation and reaction that I don’t want to pour out the whole sorry tale, the bottom line is that sadly we both received devastating news on the same day, she received a cancer diagnosis and we went through an ectopic pregnancy. Whilst we were both dealing with our situations and across 3,500 miles we lost sight of where the other was up too.
From our point of view a decision made enabled us to deal with a situation that was adding to our grief, while from her perspective we lent support to an enemy.
Had we not been grieving we would not have made the decision we did. Now we are dealing with the loss of a friendship and the sadness that our actions caused somebody else pain. There is also a touch of disappointment that we were not allowed to make a decision in light of where we were at, in this instance acting in our own best interests, helping us to heal as a couple.
We are sorry for the pain our decision caused her.
My feeling is that ‘true friendship’ is in the eye of the receiver; it makes a person feel good about themselves, they are protected, treasured, that all is well in their world. We all need that.
On reflecting on this sad, sad situation I truly believe that it is important we take care that we don’t cast out good friends in the instances when they don’t live up to our expectations.
I pray that one day forgiveness will bring wholeness to our friendship.
lifefromthestart 