Not taking the easy way out

Hello friends. I am going through a very very tough time in my personal life right now. This is why I have not been able to produce a blog. My friendship, and my ability to return friendship, all in all let me just say the longevity of my friendship, is being challenged to the max.

So how can relate this to describing and adding to what friendship is all about? Prayer is important. And we know that Jesus taught that persevering in prayer is important. Jesus gave us hope that if our prayers do not get answered right away, if we continue to ask, God may decide to grant us our request at some later date. (Luke 18:1-8)

Then again, what if you have a friend, and you're watching the whole world seem to turn against this person? You love this person, and you want to step in and help. But you are frightened. Stepping in means making a deeper commitment than you have ever made in your whole life. This, my friends, is what has now occurred in my life, and it's very very hard.

All this time as a true friend I have despised people who didn't have the courage to separate from the crowd in order to do what is right. For the first time, I am seeing how terribly difficult it can be.

In my previous blog, In the Position of Friend, I wrote a number of blogs about abstinence. I want to share a personal experience I had where choosing abstinence was a challenge. I was living in an apartment building where each floor had two apartments across from one another. For many months, the tenant of the apartment across from me was rarely there. Then, after she moved out, a young gentleman moved into the apartment. After a few nights, I suddenly became very sexually aroused. I had not met him, but for some reason that I didn't even understand, I was strongly aroused. Tempted. Very very tempted. This is how I finally got control of it: I told myself "Raya, you are being tempted to do something that is against everything you stand for. If you truly believe in what you say you believe, then you cannot consider sex with this man" When I told myself this, I was able to ignore all that my body was saying and get control of it.

This I shared now, because once again now, I am faced with a situation (though much different in a lot of ways) where I have to conduct myself according to what I believe in, and not what comes naturally.

A friend, and actually a relative needs my help very badly, and in order to be of help more is involved than just good advice or saying I love you. I have to produce a legal document, and I'm very scared.

So since I introduced today's blog by talking about prayer, at this point I want to ask for your prayers. Today I felt totally overwhelmed by the task before me. But it's something I want to do, and am required to do.

musical selection: Hair Broadway Musical: Easy to Be Hard

A Friend In Deed

Well well well ...if you found your way back to this blog, congratulations! And if you're coming across this blog for the first time, congratulations as well. My posts are sometimes more frequent, sometimes less. And for the past few weeks I've been in a whirlwind, if you know what I mean. Lots of issues and feelings unsettled. But I did have the inspiration to revamp my setup on here, and I changed slightly the URL. I felt as though wonderfulstayingfriends was kind of corny, so now, Always Your Friend is at thewonderoffriendship.blogspot.com.

And so, I have a topic I've been planning to write about, so why don't I dive right in? About 3 weeks ago, my phone charger busted because I was careless with it. I was trying to make my phone do things that an old, humble little phone is not set up to do, and I overdid it for three straight nights. Afterwards, my charger gave out, and my phone also, I could tell, was in jeopardy of not holding up too much longer. And so, I ordered a charger from Amazon, but when it came, it virtually didn't work as soon as I got it. So I spent days and days not being able to do any of the things I enjoy doing so much by going online with my little device. And every time I asked someone for help, I was either given an excuse, or by using the chargers various people loaned me, the condition of my phone worsened. Until, I ran into the Director of Respiratory here, and he showed compassion for me. It was so awesome! I went past his office, and so, I thought, it couldn't hurt to ask him for help. So I asked, and he checked to see if his charger would work with my phone. It did work. So I left my phone with him in his office, and after an hour or two he brought my phone back. FULLY CHARGED! I was so relieved. And so, the following day, I asked him, and once again, he said alright. When he had to leave, he said he thought he might have another one like it at home that he could give me to keep. My friends, that charger is what I'm using now. I can't tell you how relieved and how grateful I felt. And the interesting thing about all of this, is that this man fit exactly into the pattern laid out by Jesus Christ as he explained what is meant by "neighbor". It is the parable known as "The Good Samaritan".

Briefly, this is the story:
     A Jew was walking down the road, and some thieves came and beat him up and took all that he had. And left him laying on the road, wounded and bleeding. As he lay there, a Pharisee walked by, and he called out to him for help. But the Pharisee walked on the other side of the road and ignored him. A little while later, another walked down the road, and when the injured man cried out for help, he ignored him, and walked on the other side of the road. Then, a third person walked down the same road, but this man was a Samaritan, and at the time, Samaritans and Jews had no dealings with one another. Although this Samaritan had every reason to just keep walking, he had mercy on the man laying bleeding on the road. He went up to him, bound up his wounds, and even took him to the nearest Inn and arranged for him to stay there.

After Jesus told this parable he asked the crowd, "which one of these men was his neighbor to the man laying there?" They answered: the one who had mercy on him.

I want to point out why this parable comes to mind when thinking of our respiratory director. In times past, I had sort of given this man a hard time. I had said that I did not like the way he ran the respiratory department, and made some unfair accusations. It was kind of surprising that of all the people I asked for help, the one with the least reason to owe me anything, showed me compassion. And he showed it thoroughly, as the good Samaritan is described. Like the Samaritan took the man out of the road and walked him to an Inn, this man provided me with a charger I could have for myself. He didn't only handle the immediate problem, he took care of the future. And even, like it says it the parable that the Good Samaritan returned to the Inn after a couple days to make sure things were alright, and so John Jensen, that's his name, stopped in after a couple days to make sure the charger was still working.

And so, I was alone! There was no one to help! And someone went beyond what the crowd was doing, beyond what most people nowadays think is enough to do to be a good person. I really have to wonder what some people think entails being a good person. But sometimes you have to be careful because many people if they feel that something has caused them to fail at being a good person, they totally give up on it. Whatever the case, this is an example of me not giving up on finding help, and someone else that thinks of himself as here to do more than merely what is expected.

♬Voices of Praise: He Looked Beyond My Fault

Forgiving when it's hard

Well, I have been facing a number of rather huge difficulties lately. Let's just say a number of people who are very important to me have let me down in a big way. But as you see, from the title of this blog, I consider it my responsibility as A True Friend to wholeheartedly forgive.

Let me tell you about an amusing experience I had many years ago. If you ever travel public transportation, you may be aware that if you chitchat with a fellow passenger, sometimes the subject of religion comes up. And so, one day when I was on a paratransit van, the driver and I began conversing. I, at that period of my life was not a believer in Jesus Christ, as I am now, and I told him so. He said to me, "Well you know what the Bible says 'every knee shall bow and every tongue confess'". He cracked up at my response: "Well why don't you worry about your knees and your tongue, and I will worry about my knees and my tongue".

This is what I am doing today. I am taking concern for my knees and my tongue. And I realize that as a Christian, I am called upon to let go of even the most horrific disappointments that I experience in people. I am here with you now, trying to do that.

My mother was an intelligent women, and very well read, and she had committed to memory a very very significant piece of writing and a life changing writing for all who respect it. Talking about Rudyard Kipling's poem "If". And I bring to mind now the second line:

      If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
      Yet make allowance for their doubting too.

You have to be generous of heart, to make that allowance for the doubting others feel about you. Even more, you have to be very strong, to at the same time, continue to retain that faith in yourself and the things you stand for.

And so, set yourself free today! Stop waiting for the approval of those who may never be capable of giving it. Forgive them, and just let it go. Continue to live for what you believe is right, whether others agree or not.

Corey Hart: Never Surrender

                                                                                 

An unlikely place for Love

Probably some of you know that I am living in slightly unfortunate circumstances. I live in an assisted living residence, which is a euphemism for a nursing home. The folks that work with us here are not under pressure to provide us with sophisticated care. However, I have lived here for over ten years, and I have bonded strongly with a good number of the workers. I have a boyfriend here as well, but this writing is not about him. I want to talk about something I experienced yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning, after I ate breakfast, I went to recline the back of my bed down from a sitting position, and it would not recline. I thought it was something simple to fix, because it had happened before. Make a long story short, the part that handles the recline of my bed was broken. I am paralyzed from the waist down, therefore I had to sit in one spot, till it could be fixed.

Turned out no one on the premises could fix it, and the on-call maintenance person had to be contacted. I knew their approach to handling my problems, and I knew it would be a long wait. But I was ready.

I was ready to "fight the good fight of faith". The workers would create the illusion that no one cared about my pain, my tears meant nothing to people, that it was funny to see a cripple trying to win control over something that in reality they had no control over. From their point of view, it was an opportunity to, as a song by Stevie Nicks says, "make me cry, make me break down, shatter my illusions of love". But, I too, was ready. You see, to live the Christian life properly, a person needs to develop a high pain tolerance. And I have learned that a good method of tolerating pain is to anticipate ahead of time exactly what it will feel like.

So the morning hours went by, and no fuss from me about, "Why hasn't maintenance arrived yet?" See, I took responsibility for my own conduct, as well as the conduct of others. By not griping, I prevented all of us from going lower into our sinfulness and low self-esteem. Though others were not prepared to be friendly, my acceptance and forgiveness compensated for their lack.

I have talked to women who had complicated child delivery. They told me that they virtually ignored the pain because their concern was about the safety of their child. Firefighters sacrifice their lives in the process of rescuing others. It is all in the category of selflessness. A good friend is more concerned about others than about.him or her self.

Trace Balin: We Need Each Other

Have I told you lately

This thing called love --is it a thing, or is it a friend?

Hi! I have here an excellent recording of a song by Ringo Starr about substance abuse, and I want to talk about addictions. Looking at addictions, I have been enslaved by an addiction 3 times in the past. The addiction that lasted the longest, not surprisingly, was to cigarettes. I also was addicted to marijuana, and I'm including my hangup on a no-good guy as an addiction, for a total of three. All three of these, by the mercy and grace of God, are a thing of the past.

How did I do it? The first step was admitting within my heart that it was wrong, and admitting that in best possible circumstances, I would like to quit. Actually, before I could even get that far, at times it becomes necessary to pray "God, if this is wrong, show me."

But I want to talk about what a spouse, or a family member should do when they see someone they love going down because of an addiction, whether it be chemical or emotional. I'm sure most of you by now have learned or been advised: Do not nag. The worst thing you can do is to make a victim of addiction feel that you are more stressed and upset about their problem than they are. This only expounds the weight of the burden. A person with an addiction is usually using the substance to hide behind. He or she might be unhappy with themselves or with their lives, and they distract themselves and others from their misery by engaging in an unwise habit.

I want to share how my parents dealt with me in a very magical way when I was a delinquent teenager who only wanted to quit school and hang out with her friends and get high. At first, every day, my parents would yell at me and say "What are you going to do with your life?" But the more they pressured me, the more preoccupied I became with just impressing my friends and fitting in with a bad group of kids. Finally, the differences between my parents and I became so great, that I ran away from home. They found me after a couple of days. But that was a turning point. After I returned home, they became perfectly silent about their desires for me to choose a career. Instead, they supported me as much as they could in what I seemed to like. I remember clearly that I would come home from the place I hung out with my friends at, and often it was very very late at night. When I came in, they always had the refrigerator stocked with all the things I needed to make my favorite sandwich (ham and cheese special). In a short time, my boyfriend and I broke up, and I went to spend the weekend with a close friend. I returned from the weekend with an announcement for my parents: "I want to go to college, and I want to major in Art".

This way in which my parents operated with me, I call "letting it go to keep it". It is actually based on a verse in the Bible,"He who seeks to save his life shall lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake shall find it". Happens to be the verse I first believed. Accept the thought that how you are approaching getting what you want could be wrong. Get on the other side of it. Genuinely try to understand the opposite point of view. If you do this, from my perspective, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Ringo Starr: The No No Song

When the friend cupboard looks empty

Hi! I'm kind of excited because I've got a little bit of a new topic relevant to friendship to get into. When it comes to sharing about handling  relationships, sometimes it's best to relate things to an experience. So I am going to begin with what is going on for me right now on my facebook page. For about the past week on my facebook page, I have gotten no response to anything at all which I have posted. I think I have about 30 friends, give or take, and there are pages too, that I have liked. But nothing I have shared, be way of comment, post, or even private note, has elicited any response.

What would you do? There are a number of options as to how to try and relieve the pain. I only want to share about one natural tendency which has the potential of adding to the damage. It's very tempting, when the indication is that nobody likes you, to look for someone in the crowd, and recruit that someone to prove that YES! you do have someone who loves you! Going back now to what is currently happening to me, other than delete my facebook account which is out of the question, I could look for one special friend (someone who has been particularly nice to me) to squeeze some words out of, therefore proving that I do have a soul in this world who cares. Is that something I would consider doing?

NO!!! Let me take apart what is going on when I choose a reaction like that to my problem: I am selecting one individual, and putting all my confidence in him or her to rescue me. One human being... not at all unlike most human beings, and yet I am asking this person to separate themselves from the crowd and take on the label of My Hero. A role they have no information about, and have no idea at all what the consequences of taking it would be. And if the person refuses to get involved, it is implied that my relationship with him or her would be over.

All of this, my dear, dear friends, can be described as simply this putting someone's back against the wall. Very very hazardous to a friendship! I have been going steady with Andre for 11 years, and in all this time I have never done that. And you have to realize in 11 years those types of situations have come up. You know something, now Andre creates his own opportunities to show undying friendship, and to show how much he loves me.

What to do at those times when it looks like nobody cares? Just simply wait it out friends. Wait it out along with everybody else. They're waiting to see what you're going to do? Join them! Enjoy the mystery of seeing what's going to happen, how is all of it going to play out?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: I Won't Back Down