Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Friend Dumped




35 Jesus wept.
John 11:35 (ESV)

Ever had a friend just decide that they don't want to be friends anymore?  They may blow up at you, they may tell you they don't have time for you, or just fade away out of your life and start ignoring you.  I looked for verses in the Bible that dealt with this, and one was the "shortest verse in the Bible".  Jesus wept.

At first I was like, that doesn't apply.  He was crying because Lazarus was dead.  He was grieving over the loss of a friend who had died.  And yet, he knew what he was going to do.  He knew that Lazarus would be alive again.  Yet he still wept.  He still grieved.  And so the lesson to me here was, even when it seems silly - even when it seems like a pointless gesture - sometimes you have to grieve, because that is how you feel.  Jesus wasn't crying because he would never see his friend again.  He was crying because he was sad.  He had suffered a loss.

Sometimes, you just gotta grieve.

Every time someone walks out of my life, it is intensely painful to me.  I do not handle rejection well.  I always internalize it and endlessly examine what I might have done wrong to make someone not want to be my friend anymore.  One of the things I have learned through swing dancing is that rejection is not about you - it's about them.  There can be a lot of reasons for rejection.  Whatever the issue - it's not yours.

If a relationship is worth saving, someone will go through the effort of explaining their issue with you and resolving it.  If they aren't willing to put in the effort, then they're not the friend you thought they were.  That doesn't mean they're not worth the effort though.

Our society puts a lot of emphasis on cutting and running when things get tough.  Movies tell us everything should have a happy ending.  TV shows tell us that if a relationship is bumpy, it's better to break up - if a marriage isn't working, get a divorce.  Any relationship takes two people.  If one is done, there is nothing you can do.

So you must move on.  And weep.


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