Betrayed by a Friend

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What would be more heartbreaking than being betrayed by someone you regularly had coffee with? Let’s take that one step further and say it was someone you were so close to you that you frequently had them over for a meal or just hung out together. Then to have someone like that say bitter words against you or even show cruelty in one way or another would be quite devastating. My heart clenched this morning when I read that is exactly what happened to a dear friend of mine.

My friend knew it was coming but didn’t get vindictive or rude. In fact, he forgave him but I still feel bad about it. My friend’s name is Jesus. Have you heard of him? He was betrayed to the authorities for a crime he was not guilty of by a friend, a friend!  I hope I never do something like that.  Mark 12:20

Who Will Help Us With Our Problems?

It was a super-nice day and a Sunday afternoon, besides, which meant time to do something fun and relaxing. What should it be? Both hubby and I agreed that it would be great to take a walk in the park, so what if the city was 45 km. away.

 Now I have this real special dog. Some of you will remember Kasa as a cute small white puppy however she did some growing since then, but of course I wanted her along. With the help of a nice blue tarp for the back of the vehicle, she happily came for the ride.

 Right from the beginning things didn’t go quite as expected. First of all Kasa, who is an overgrown puppy is used to our boring country roads and would walk sedately enough, but these new trails with wonderful strangers to greet and especially all those dogs to make friends with, oh boy oh boy, was she ever excited! I quickly handed the leash over to Stephen, this super enthused ‘pal’ was a lot more than I could handle.

Diversion number two: A friend we hadn’t visited with much for several years because he lived elsewhere, stepped up to us. “Can I walk with you?” Sure, of course.

 Problem number two. The first one was a too rambunctious dog, you got that, right? Well now it was two men that had strong long strides that I could hardly keep up with. I was panting slightly on the inclines, but didn’t say much because my inherited blood pressure problem could use a workout, right. Right? Just as a side note, my B.P. had dropped to the normal range by the next morning. Yippee! Even my pills hadn’t coaxed it to do that.

 Hmm, problems weren’t over, though. On the way home, the car sputtered and died. My better half filled the rad with water but that didn’t help for long. So there we sat with the hood up, wondering what to do. Pretty soon a friend came cruising along with his family on the way to evening church. Sure, he would give us a ride home. There was even a place for the mutt behind the back seat of that roomy SUV. We joked about her sitting on the laps of the teenage girls on the back seat who were all dressed up in their Sunday best.

We got home in time to listen to the inspiring service over the phone and just as the last song was being sung a neighbour called.

  “Was that your car I saw beside the road?” Well, to make a long story short that friendly neighbour helped to haul it home.

  So did you read between the lines? Who will help us with our problems? God will. He doesn’t always give us such immediate or fun solutions, but often enough that we know He is in control so I’m gonna just keep trusting Him.  

So Who's the Victim?

I’m finding it very hard to write this exact post, maybe it’s because I haven’t been completely reconciled with my past or something.

Okay, I know I am going to confuse some of you because earlier I leaped back into my eleventh year to bring out some Memory Files and this was after sharing what happened when I was a young teenager. Now I’m back into my teen years, got it?

Do you remember me telling you about being ‘kidnapped’ by a couple of uncles?

Well, here we are, a new life is before us. Now we are living in a proper home once again, one with running water, lights, and all that good stuff we were used to in this modern day and age. I assume Mom’s brothers and church family were instrumental in having that happen though it is a piece of the puzzle I never actually searched for.

We were given a warm welcome: I remember the girls my age, a couple of them which were my cousins, putting on a party which included presenting me with a homemade scrapbook where they had each added a page or two.  It was a very nice gesture.

But somehow, what lingers most warmly in my mind is going to school on that first day of grade ten. Just inside the glass doors of the big school were two girls waiting for me. They became my best friends.

  Okay, I guess I need to venture into what’s really hurting, can’t skirt it any longer.  Mom had gone home to her people but she wasn’t ‘one of them’ in spirit, if you catch the drift.

I’ve always shielded myself from this fact because it hurt too much. It was easier to say that Mom was depressed because of all the pain she had gone through, but the truth was I, we, were hurting and she wasn’t there for us. 

The silent disapproval I had already felt as a child remained, and I found her quite unapproachable.  Once, maybe a year or so after we got there, she shared her heart with me. It was a heady experience for a fifteen or sixteen year old, but I was too young to really help her. 

So what did I do? I turned to writing and finished my first novel while in my teens but later threw it out. I also wrote poetry that expressed my anguish and other moods. 

I still quote these lines from one of the poems from time to time: ‘Chains of darkness flung around me binding me with fear’, hmm, the rest of the words are escaping me. What were they? I wrote about the ‘echoes from the past’ meaning the sexual abuse that had such a damaging effect on my ego.

Teenage years can be tumultuous even for those from a stable home, and mine wasn’t easy. I had such extreme mood swings that on one occasion I took way too many aspirin in a desperate attempt to end it all. Did I have side effects? Not really. Did Mom know? Shrug.

But was God there? Yes, He most definitely was, and although at times I couldn’t feel Him, looking back I realized that what I thought were stumbling blocks were really stepping tones that shone like jewels on my way towards Heaven.

Better Than a Fairy Tale? It's Getting Closer

Do you want to hear more of my life story? Tell me if you have any questions or comments.

So what makes something a highlight in our life? How do we decide that this is worth writing about but not that? I, or rather we, started attending an entirely new school in a new part of the province but I missed a lot because, as mentioned earlier, I became ill.

Somehow word got out that we were living in unsavory circumstances and Mom persuaded her brother and brother-in-law to come and get us. When they arrived they asked us if we would like to come along with them.  We were more than willing, but one of the uncles said he had always felt bad about not talking to my father first, but he hadn’t been home.

Without a doubt there would have been a huge row if they had, and we would have ended up staying put.

While reminiscing years later, Mom’s brother commented that I would fearfully look back from time to time, but no, we weren’t being followed.

So now is it better than a fairy tale? Not yet, not, yet, but just hang on. I soon made some dear friends and felt secure in the love of relatives and in the church we were attending, but this ole girl was carrying a lot of baggage with her that caused her to stumble more than once. 

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The Mysterious Disease

He held his head high, he was one of the elite, no one would ever find out his secret. His robe was as luxurious, gleaming white as the best. His locks shining like a dark resplendent crown upon his intelligent brow.  As he laughed, joked or discoursed learnedly according to the occasion, his eyes twinkled with life; even they did not give away his deep dark secret.

Eternal Friendship