Chapter 5- My Biggest Mistake

This chapter still bums me out…

I’ve made mistakes—a lot of mistakes. If we were to sit together and compare a list of the worst choices we’ve made, I’m pretty sure I would win, or at least raise your eyebrows and make you reconsider being in the same room with me without a witness present.

Most of my mistakes you will never know, and I am thankful for that. There is one mistake that I am the most ashamed of. In fact, if I could reverse one choice in my life, this is the one I would pick. I hope that we are still friends after I tell you this story.

I had a friend named Jamie. (I am lying. Her name wasn’t Jamie. I would be a dirty rat for spilling all the beans and giving you her real name, come on now.) Jamie and I had become great friends in a very short amount of time. It would be fair to say that she was my best friend, and I was hers.

As friends do, we shared parts of our stories that we usually kept hidden. I shared my deepest fears: dark silence and the mystery under the bed. I know it sounds like I’m kidding, but I am truly terrified of the space underneath the bed. I think it is one of those things that most kids are afraid of, but the fear dissolves as we mature. Maybe I’m not mature enough yet. Whatever—it freaks me out.

Jamie shared things with me; some were lighthearted, and some were not. There was one thing that she shared. It was her deepest and darkest. I was the second person she had ever shared this thing with. (No, I’m not gonna tell you what it was. Man, you guys are so nosey!) And rightly so. This was a big thing. This thing scared me. I felt because I loved Jamie, I really needed to share this thing with someone else, because this already big thing could easily become a HUGE thing, and that would have been horrible.

So I found someone we both trusted and loved, and I shared my best friend’s deepest, darkest secret. This third party was kind and wanted to help too. So this person—let’s call her Sarah (this is also a lie; I just really like the name Sarah)—went to Jamie and asked her about the secret. I don’t know what Jamie’s response was. My guess is that it was one of anger, or fear, or resentment, or a cocktail of all of these emotions.

Even still, this is not the part of the story that I regret with my whole heart. It’s coming….

After the conversation between Jamie and Sarah, Jamie came to me, looked me in the eye, and asked if I had shared the secret. I returned her eye-ball-to-eyeball stare, and with confidence in my voice told her, “No. I didn’t tell anyone.”

That’s it, my biggest regret. I had a great friend who trusted me with everything. She trusted me with a secret that she had kept with her for a long time. This secret had held her captive, as secrets tend to do. Telling me about it had the potential to release her from that captivity. To begin healing and growing. But then I ruined it. Not by sharing the secret, because sometimes secrets need to become public to set people free; they can hurt more if allowed to grow and fester in the darkness. But I lied. I looked Jamie in the face—my best friend who had trusted me with so much—and lied.

Have you ever made a mistake, and then your pride jumped into the mix to convince you that it would be a horrible, life threatening thing for you to admit you were wrong, and that you should do whatever it takes to save face? Yeah, that happened to me too.

Then I acted like I hadn’t done anything wrong in any direction. Things escalated, and I hurt Jamie more than I’ve ever hurt anyone. Even now, I am ashamed of the girl I was. I eventually apologized and moved on after our horrible fall out, probably still clinging to some aspects of my pride and wanting to think it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

Until it happened to me.

I have a friend, Mia. (Dang, I am such a liar. I promise that the rest of this book is totally true. But I am lying up a storm in this chapter. I hope you forgive me.) Mia and I also became very close. I shared my super-secret with her. The only time I’d ever shared this before was when I was dating my husband and it was getting serious. This secret is so big that I thought he should know before he made a lifelong commitment to me, because this might be a deal breaker. (And I was terrified of commitment, and I was 80% sure that he would hear this and run for the hills. He didn’t, praise the Lord.)

Mia told my secret! Can you believe it? How could someone who was supposed to be my friend do something like this?… Oh wait; this is what it feels like? It was like someone had ripped my heart out. It didn’t matter to me what Mia’s motivations were, or how much she was justified in sharing my dirties with the person that she did. I trusted her, and she spit on that trust. (That was how it felt in my mind at that time. I do not feel that way anymore.)

My first rational thought, after the blind rage subsided, was: Jamie. This was how she felt. I didn’t fully comprehend the emotional impact of what I had done by betraying my friend’s trust until it happened to me. Because of what had gone down previously with Jamie and me, I was able to repair things with Mia before it got to that same level.

I received a gift that day—a gift of empathy. I don’t ever want to be that friend again. The worst kind of friend is the one who breaks the trust of another. The amazing part of this story is that Jamie eventually forgave me. I repented to her and to the Lord. She is an incredibly gracious woman. I am thankful that she is in my life, and she is an example to me in many ways. But even now, when I see her I still feel a twinge of guilt or shame. I feel nothing, no anger or resentment, when I see Mia. The position of the trust breaker is a far worse place to be in than the one whose trust gets broken.

We need each other. We were designed to live in community. We can’t function at optimum performance levels if we aren’t journeying with people who can share in our burdens and in our triumphs. The rough part of community is that if we aren’t trustworthy, we won’t have access. No one will want to share burdens with you if you are infamous for blabbing people’s business. Are you the kind of person others go to when they need a listening ear?

Psalm 133:1 says, How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! (NIV). The word for unity is also translated as “togetherness.” We gotta do this together. I need you, and you need me. We could operate as lone wolves, but why would we want to? What benefit would we gain by living apart from other believers, or by not letting people into our lives? With real talk, you can get burned. Others could do to you what I did to Jamie or what Mia did to me. But growth and laughter and opportunities to be united abound, and the times when people do us dirty are miniscule in comparison.

If the creator of the universe operates in community (Father, Son, Holy Spirit—undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory), then how crazy is it for us to think that we would be fine if we lived sans community? We need each other.

I need you. Others in your life need you. Let’s work together to do kingdom business. Be real with others, even at the risk of being hurt. God is much big- ger than any hurt we could experience here. We have work to do. Let’s do it together.

I have a couple qualifications. First, choose your closest confidants carefully. Not everyone is ready to know all about you, to know things that you may not want the whole world to know. In time they could be, but while you are journeying with others, use wisdom and discernment as you choose those you will share your super-secrets with.

Helpful hint: if they gossip with you about others, there is a high probability that they will gossip with others about you. Make sure you don’t fit into this group. It’s not fun to be lumped with this bunch.

Second, if a person shares a secret that she has (or might in the future) hurt herself or someone else, you cannot keep this to yourself. Best-case scenario is to tell the friend that this is something that she needs help with. Then go with her as she tells a responsible party about what’s going on, maybe a counselor or pastor.

Not all secrets need to be kept secret, especially if someone isn’t safe.

Questions for Reflection:

• Are you the kind of person who lets people in? Why or why not?

• Do you keep the confidences of others?

• What are some Scripture verses about the value of community?

• Share or journal about a time when someone betrayed your trust. If you are brave

enough, maybe even share or journal about a time when you were the one doing the

betraying.

• Has the body of Christ ever stood up and carried you through a difficult time, even if

it was just one person representing the body?