We met in church, ironically. Our brothers were in the same Sunday School class. They took to each other, and then your brother invited my brother to a birthday party and my mother and I came to drop him off. But you took a shining to me. Well, I guess I can say that we took a shining to each other. You were kind of quirky and silly and you pulled me out of myself and got me to laugh… a lot. We started playing together at church, then sometimes I would come over after the service to eat lunch and play word games-- your favorite. We were young, and our friendship was only beginning. But I was so naïve.
It started early. And at first it was only little things. Like making fun of the fact that I loved to read. The fact that I did a lot of chores at home, while you barely cleaned the dishes. For some reason, you constantly pointed out the fact that I was about an inch shorter than you. I ignored it all, thinking that you were just teasing me in jest and it was never meant to hurt me. But then, as months turned into years it only began to get worse. You became the center of everyone’s attention and you demanded all of the attention. You were more important than anyone else, even me, your supposed “best friend.” I noticed how you criticized people, literally looking down on them. If people weren’t as slender as you, you would call them fat and lazy. Inside, I cringed. How could you be so judgmental toward someone you didn't even know? I often wondered why we were still friends.
Ten years into our friendship, I decided to take a stand. I had had enough of your teasing and tormenting, criticizing and critiquing, until I felt like I was worthless. Nothing. When I told you this, you said, “Your opinion means nothing. You are worthless.” I was crushed. My heart felt literally broken because it became hard for me to breath. How could you call yourself my best friend and then tell me that I was worthless? But I began to believe it and tell myself everyday that you were right. My best friend wouldn’t lie to me, right?
After a year of feeling the lowest I had ever felt, I decided that I was believing a lie and that I had been for the ten years that we were friends. I looked down on myself for being an avid reader because you said that only idiots read books. I felt silly for my love of writing because you said that writing was pointless. I always was sensitive about my height because you constantly pointed out to me that I was shorter than you. I hardly spoke because I believed that my opinions didn’t matter because you had told me that my opinions were obsolete. I cried out to God to tell me the truth. Was my best friend right about me? Was she even ever really a friend?
Then I discovered the truth—what God had been saying about me all along—that I was His. I am His child (John 1:12, 13). I am His friend (John 15:12-17). I have been bought with a price and I belong to Him (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). I am a saint (Ephesians 1:1). I am complete in Him (Colossians 2:9,10). And what really hit me was that I realized that I am significant (1 Corinthians 3:9; 4:1, 2). I am important to God and He is the only one who matters. Because I belong to Him, His opinions of me are the ones that matter. His truths about me are what I believe about myself.
So because of you, the friend who called me worthless, I discovered the truth. I found out who I really am. I no longer need to look to people to define who I am or find my value. I have learned that it is OK to expect respect from friends, because true friends do respect each other. I have learned to forgive because holding on to bitterness only makes me a very angry and hardened person. And I hope that, even though your words have left scars, you have discovered the truth about yourself—that God loves you just as much as he loves me.
