A heart convicted.
Just recently, or at least a couple of weeks past, I was convicted whilst reading a text on womanhood that I should forgive this friend over an incident that happened many years ago. He is someone who was in the same class as I was during my first semester in Year Seven (or Form 1, as Malaysians call it).
The said incident took place in the year when I was turning thirteen, right before Chinese New Year. He had given everyone, and even the new people in the class a greeting card from his father's company, but not I! Initially, out of curiosity, I tracked down his steps to know what he would do, and then realised that he had done it deliberately....!
In my mind, I was filled with a kind of unsaid anger that I never would realise would take years to go away. No one might know, but it was totally mortifying to be the only one excluded from the list... and even more embarrassing when even newcomers receive it but not someone who is in the class.
Yet although it's been more than a decade, and the 'HATRED' totally irrational, I realised that I had never actually forgotten the incident. This so called "friend" was not really a "friend" per se, but just an acquaintance from high school. To rationalise it, I always told myself that it's not like we actually had a conversation in school, or that he even knew of it to start with.
Eventhough I knew in my heart I should forgive him, I had always put this issue at the backburner, pretending that it didn't exist. Yet God had to wrestle with me on this issue. It was a heartbreaking weekend in Toowoomba when I went back for my graduation convocation that God finally dealt with this issue. That I could finally release this problem back to Him, not without tears streaming down mine. To have the peace that came with the confession.
Somehow recently, I found him (or rather, he found me) on Facebook. Thinking back, I realised that he had not signed up on Facebook a couple of months back when a childhood friend of mine, Lai Ching had decided to drop by Sydney for a visit. As this person is now currently working in Melbourne, perhaps if he had met up with her, I wouldn't have known what my reaction would be.
Perhaps God has his reasons to prepare me to be reconciled with this mate of mine. Perhaps God had wanted to work with my heart, to get rid of the bitterness that was there in all those years. Only time will tell.
The said incident took place in the year when I was turning thirteen, right before Chinese New Year. He had given everyone, and even the new people in the class a greeting card from his father's company, but not I! Initially, out of curiosity, I tracked down his steps to know what he would do, and then realised that he had done it deliberately....!
In my mind, I was filled with a kind of unsaid anger that I never would realise would take years to go away. No one might know, but it was totally mortifying to be the only one excluded from the list... and even more embarrassing when even newcomers receive it but not someone who is in the class.
Yet although it's been more than a decade, and the 'HATRED' totally irrational, I realised that I had never actually forgotten the incident. This so called "friend" was not really a "friend" per se, but just an acquaintance from high school. To rationalise it, I always told myself that it's not like we actually had a conversation in school, or that he even knew of it to start with.
Eventhough I knew in my heart I should forgive him, I had always put this issue at the backburner, pretending that it didn't exist. Yet God had to wrestle with me on this issue. It was a heartbreaking weekend in Toowoomba when I went back for my graduation convocation that God finally dealt with this issue. That I could finally release this problem back to Him, not without tears streaming down mine. To have the peace that came with the confession.
Somehow recently, I found him (or rather, he found me) on Facebook. Thinking back, I realised that he had not signed up on Facebook a couple of months back when a childhood friend of mine, Lai Ching had decided to drop by Sydney for a visit. As this person is now currently working in Melbourne, perhaps if he had met up with her, I wouldn't have known what my reaction would be.
Perhaps God has his reasons to prepare me to be reconciled with this mate of mine. Perhaps God had wanted to work with my heart, to get rid of the bitterness that was there in all those years. Only time will tell.
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