What is our part when people do us dirty?

As I said in my previous blog, I’ve had a long term issue of friends taking advantage of me, and treating me badly.  I tried my best to be a good friend, and to practice the Golden Rule.  I tried to be the friend that I felt Christ would have me to be; patient, long suffering, giving, helpful, kind, sympathetic, and supportive.  It was quite hurtful and discouraging to pour so much into a friend’s life, more than once, and then have them turn around and betray me, or start hating on me for a superfluous reason.  I know there are many of you out there in the same boat.  I am not the only one this is happening to.  You are mystified, wondering what you’ve done to deserve being treated so nastily, especially when you tried to do everything right.

I think that the biggest trap we fall into as Christians is in hearing Biblical teachings that have been taken out of context or presented in an incomplete fashion.  For instance, a perfect example is male despots using Ephesians 5:22 as license to dictate every move and heap abuse upon their wives “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as unto the Lord”.

They conveniently leave off the part of the verse that says “as unto the Lord”, and they also conveniently leave off the rest of the topic matter, including verse 25, which says “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”.  

These guys aren’t giving up anything when they rule their homes with a dictatorial fist of iron. They are using one portion of one verse in the Bible to give themselves a spiritual right to terrorize the woman living in their home.  Jesus cringes every time He sees this take place. Guess who will end up paying dearly for this sin!  I’ll give you a clue, it’s not the wife.  This subject, if delved into, would require pages and pages of commentary, so I will stop it here .

We hear a lot of so-called Christian teaching that insinuates that we are to tolerate anything and everything.  We are taught that Jesus was MEEK, which many teachers translate as WEAK. We are taught to turn our other cheek to allow anyone who chooses to do so to abuse us TWICE.  We are also taught that forgiveness means mending fences and reconciling your relationship with a person.   This is completely erroneous!  God loves us, therefore He expects us to love ourselves.  We are to be patient and understanding, yes, but we are not to tolerate repeated abuse.  Tolerating repeated abuse is not loving ourselves as God loves us.  Tolerating repeated abuse is actually disrespecting ourselves, which is not within God’s will at all!!

Let me get back to what God showed me regarding this friend who chose to cut dead my relationship with her when I finally called her out, in a very firm fashion, on some unexcuseable behavior she’d displayed toward me.  I tolerated a lot of craziness from her over the course of 3 or so years, but she'd finally crossed the line. 

Let's set the scenario.  She was extremely jealous and competitive where I was concerned, and would often try to humiliate or put me down in public, just to draw attention to herself, or to convince the people we mutually knew to believe she was a more desirable person than I was.  She continually corrected my grammar, criticized my clothes, and made hateful remarks about  my hair. Being a non-competitive, non-jealous person, I tolerated this behavior from her.  Not only did I tolerate it, I made it easy for her by not responding in kind.  Lest I sound "uber-spiritual" here, I will admit right now that I often became HIGHLY irritated by her behavior.  HIGHLY.  Sometimes I would steam for days over the hateful things she'd do.

I am a more laid back, low-key, quiet sort of person, especially in a public setting.  Therefore, it was easy for her to steal the show because she was always loud, proud, and boisterous.  She had the tact and diplomacy of a Mac truck navigating a miniature golf course at high speed.   I excused her public outbursts and put-downs as being due to her own pain and insecurity, and decided that the Christian thing for me to do was to overlook it, to love her and continue being her friend in spite of her orneriness. Therefore, I kept quiet about her shenanigans, for the most part.  Only a very few times, she seemed to realize how ugly she was being, and would provide a half hearted apology.

I loaned her money, and I helped her with multiple household issues.  I supported her through her divorce, and also went to her divorce arbitration with her, where she lost control so severely that her arbitrator asked me to represent her for a major part of the meeting instead.  I prayed over her and with her more times than I could count.  I went over to help clean her house before she moved in, and spent many days cleaning up the most unspeakable grunge, including carpets soaked in dog waste, when my own home sorely needed attention.  I should have gotten a clue as I was sweating out on her patio in Texas August, scrubbing a refrigerator that was infested top to bottom with black mold, when she strolled out onto the patio, dressed to the nines and floating on a cloud of powder and perfume, telling me she was feeling a little stressed, and going out to a “support meeting” and dinner for the evening. 

Are you getting the picture here?  She was Christian, and I was Christian, and I thought I was doing the GODLY thing by helping her out, being her friend, and tolerating all of her nonsense. Echoing in my head continually was the misapplied "turn the other cheek" rule.   Right about now, you are probably thinking that I needed to have my head examined for not walking away from her craziness after the first incident. You probably wonder why I tolerated that insanity for three years.  Honestly, I was too close to it, and did not grasp what I was doing wrong!! I thought that I could "love her into loving me", if that makes sense.  I am also a person who will tolerate lot, but even I have my limits.  

I got angry one time and one time only, after years of her abusing our relationship, and after years of people believing negative things about me that were untrue, due to her jealous innuendos regarding my character.  When she finally crossed my line, which really took some doing, as you might imagine,  I called her on her behavior, and told her that it was inexcusable, selfish, and irresponsible.  I know she must have been shocked, as I had never before said such things to her regarding her ugly behaviors.  Her response to me was that she no longer wanted to associate with me or speak to me, and that she’d NEVER ask me for anything again!  (Can anybody say “Thank you Jesus” to that??)

I was very angry with her.  I don’t mean to say by sharing all of this that she never blessed me in any way, because she did.  We had some really good times, when she was on good behavior.  We helped one another through some really difficult days.  I was there for her through her messy divorce, and she was one of the VERY FEW FRIENDS (who could have been counted on my thumbs) who was actually there for me after my husband died.  She’s like the little girl in the nursery rhyme with the curl…..”When she was good, she was very good, when she was bad….she was HORRIBLE!”

I actually cared a lot about her, and believe it or not, I still do.  I understood why she did some of the things she did, because I knew some of the hurts that were hidden in her heart.  That is the type of thing that  happens when you carry unhealed hurts in your own heart.  You hurt others.   I believe she genuinely cared about me as well, she just was not able to overcome her own selfishness and angst when it came to our relationship.  I miss her a lot, and I wish we could still be friends, but we can’t.  

My friend is simply a scorpion.  I know you all have heard the story of the scorpion who asked if he could ride on the frog’s back across the stream.  The frog told him no, that he was a scorpion, and would sting him, and they’d both drown.  The scorpion fervently promised that he would do no such thing, that it would be crazy to do that and drown them both.  Thus, the frog was convinced, and gave the scorpion a ride across the stream.  In the middle of the stream, the frog felt the paralyzing stinger pierce his back, and as they both sank, the poor frog gasped “You promised not to sting me, now we both will die!”  

The scorpion replied “You should have known I’d sting you, I am a scorpion, that is WHAT I DO!”

Anyway, the Lord showed me this very clearly on the Saturday I took the time to work through this issue.  I was very upset, so I was up at 5 am.  I started praying, journaling, and reading my Bible.  I was asking God to help me understand, and to help me forgive her, because I did not want to harbor unforgiveness, which I knew would turn to bitterness, which I knew would affect my walk with the Lord.  After journaling for a few hours, I briefly dozed off and had a vivid dream.

I dreamed I was walking down dirt road, on a beautiful, silvery, moon lit night.  Beside the road was a very tall, rock wall, about 20 feet.  It was covered with ivy.  I could smell flowers and a nice breeze was blowing.  It was the perfect summer night from right out of the pages of a romantic novel. 

I heard the sound of thundering  hoof beats in the distance.  I stepped off the road, just as a huge, black battle horse in full regalia thundered past me.  On its back was a ferocious, helmeted rider, in full metal body armor, carrying a huge spiked ball on a chain, along with many other weapons.  I saw a break in the wall up ahead.  I watched as this fearsome destroyer thundered through the break in the wall.  I followed them through the break, noticing that there was actually a well-worn pathway underfoot, where the fallen stones of the wall had been trodden deep into the ground by the horse's heavy hooves.  Apparently, the warrior traveled this route regularly.

As I stepped through the break, I saw down below a picturesque village, full of beautiful little cottages.  The moonlight gilded the roof tops with silver, and mullioned windows reflected the starlight.  I watched the warrior thunder down into the village, and suddenly, I was transported down there as well.  The warrior fiercely swept through the dark, quiet streets, violently swinging his mace in all directions.  (Picture Mel Gibson in the movie "Braveheart", riding into his enemy's bedroom on his battle horse, and crushing his enemy's head with his swinging mace as the man lay on his bed, and you get the picture!)  The spiked iron ball smashed through beautiful, mullioned windows, splintered wooden doors, and crushed stone flower pots resting on patio walls.  The warrior wrought havoc and destruction throughout the village.  Terrified people looked out their windows, but did not venture outside.  Dogs ran out from yards and began to bark.  They were cruelly kicked aside by the pounding hooves of the battle horse.  After spending several minutes accomplishing his tirade of destruction, the warrior rode his battle horse out of town and through the wall, the same way he’d come.

As the warrior rode back through the break in the wall, he pulled the metal battle helmet off his head to enjoy the balmy summer night.  When the helmet came off, I saw the warrior’s face.  It was the face of my friend.  

After a little while, day broke, and people started coming out of their houses to clean up the mess.  They swept up piles of broken glass, dirt, and crushed flowers, and bandaged their injured, whimpering dogs.  As the people cleaned up the mess, neighbors were angrily talking to one another over their honeysuckle hedges.  “Why doesn’t the mayor do something about this?  It happens nearly every time the moon is full, and he knows it.  Our mayor is completely useless, he is not fit to be mayor of this town!  He offers us no safety or protection whatsoever!  All he needs to do to keep this from happening to us is fix that broken wall, and he just won’t do it!”

As I stood there, listening and watching, I heard this voice, which I knew was God, say to me ”Twyla, you are the mayor!  This is your city.  YOU need to secure your broken walls!”

Then I woke up.  I immediately knew that God had given me the dream, and I knew exactly what it meant.  It was very clear to me that my friend was abusing me because I was allowing her to wreak destruction in my life, and I needed to repair my walls to stop her.  I didn’t need to try to make peace with the fierce, angry warrior.  I needed to repair the breech in my wall so the warrior would be unable to return to the inner city that was me, unable do further damage.  The warrior was a destroyer, and like the scorpion, destroying was its purpose, destroying was simply what it did.  Period.  I love my destroyer friend, but I’ve said my final goodbye.  Our relationship will never be what it was.  I will be polite when I see her, but it will never go beyond that.  I wish her well, and I hope she will allow the Lord to heal her from her hangups, but there is nothing I am capable of helping her with.  Her brokenness goes far beyond anything I can affect.  She is undergoing some very tough circumstances right now, but I know it is not my place to intervene.  God has got her situation.  She belongs to him.

I know that some Christians out there might disagree with me, saying I should reconcile with her.  However, that is not what God told me.  I knew this friend very well.  And, I know as well as I know my own name that if I allow her into my life again, she won’t be able to prevent herself riding her battle horse down those old, established pathways of jealousy and competition, and  swinging her mace of rampant destruction when it comes my feelings and my sensibilities.  I have a Christian responsibility to HER as a friend…..and that is to not allow her to increase her sin debt by causing further damage to my soul.  Even though He forgives us of our sins, God usually allows negative circumstances to befall us when we deliberately sin, when we deliberately disobey, and when we deliberately cause hurt and damage to others.   

God loves her, and God loves me.  From now on, though, He will love us from different sides of the pond.  I have a responsibility to follow through on what God taught me.  When God led me to that book that very evening at the bookstore “Safe People: How to find relationships that are good for you and avoid those that aren’t” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, and I read through it the next day, I recognized my part.  I saw very clearly my personal tendency to ignore the warning signs of “unsafe people”, and my tendency to tolerate their bad behaviors, thus allowing them into my life to crush and wound my soul.  This was my responsibility.  This was something I needed to change about myself.  Yes, others sinned against me, but I sinned against them and against myself by allowing it. 


Unsafe people often ARE Christian people.  Just because someone loves the Lord, it does not mean that they are not treacherous, horribly messed up, and embroiled in sin!!!  Just because they are Christian, it does not mean they will be a good friend to you.  You must be responsible, and learn to protect yourself from such people!!  I felt somewhat ashamed for not having recognized something so clear, but we start from the point where God gives us new beginnings.  We can’t change the past……but with God’s help, we CAN change the future!

Bless all of you………and if any of you are continually being hurt, again, I stress to you, buy that book.  It’s the best $14 you will spend this year!!!  I could reiterate their points on how to avoid unsafe people, but why do that, it’s all there in the book!!  If any of you read it, and decide to make some changes, I’d sure love to hear your stories!!