Since I began to take time to reflect on the experiences of each day, this reflection has become a very important part of my daily life, and I have gradually become able to hear the words of my heart.
Furthermore, opportunities for fellowship with friends who will listen to those words have been given to me. This fellowship is fellowship with heart-friends. I realize that in writing these articles I have shared things that are based on experiences I have had in the context of fellowship with heart friends. The experiences of becoming the friend of one’s own heart and of discovering heart-friends seem to be deeply related.
Sometimes recalling and reflecting on the past can bring great pain. One person who has been reading these articles wrote me the following response. ‘There are so many things in my past that I wish had not happened. When I recall those past experiences, I get depressed and so I don’t want to do it.’ I sent this person the following quote from Henri Nouwen’s book, HERE AND NOW.
When we look back at all that has happened to us, we easily divide our lives into good things to be grateful for and bad things to forget. . . It is hard to keep bringing all of our past under the light of gratitude. There are so many things about which we feel guilt and shame, so many things we simply wish had never happened. But each time we have the courage to look at ‘the all of it’ and to look at it as God looks at it, our guilt becomes a happy guilt and our shame a happy shame because they have brought us to a deeper recognition of God’s mercy, a stronger conviction of God’s guidance, and a more radical commitment to a life in God’s service. (pp. 81-82)
The problem is how does one go about getting to a place where one can ‘have the courage’ and ‘look at it as God looks at it.’
This is where the wonderful fellowship with heart-friends comes in. We don’t have to face the past all alone, we don’t stop at just listening to what our hearts are saying to us, but we can speak these words to friends who will listen and receive our words into their hearts.
If we try to reflect on our past in isolation, we might wind up reproaching ourselves and be overwhelmed by feelings of remorse. Or we might blame others and be caught up in bitterness toward them. But if we open our hearts to a friend who will listen without judging or analyzing, without exhorting or trying to teach us something, a friend who will give us a response from his/her own heart, then we will be protected from these dangers. Not only this, but we will be given the strength to face our past and to see things the way God looks at them through fellowship with our heart-friends.
The person I mentioned earlier who did not want to recall the past has recently experienced a restoration of fellowship with an old friend he had not heard from for many years. They have begun to meet frequently for fellowship and even to take holidays together. I am hoping that this friendship will become an instrument of grace in helping them to see things the way God looks at them.
How can we have this kind of fellowship with heart-friends? How are we to go about finding a friend that we could call a spiritual companion? Many people long to have such a friend, but they feel there is no one near them who could be such a friend, and they give up hope of finding one.
It is true that we cannot ‘make’ such a friend. But we can seek for, search for such a friend. If we believe that all good gifts are given to us from our Father in heaven who created light, and if we believe that He desires to give good gifts to his children; if we believe he is waiting for us to seek, then we can seek this good gift.
Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7
A little while I go I received a letter from a person I had not seen for decades. He wrote, ‘I desire to deepen my friendship with you. It would make me very happy to have some time to fellowship with you. How about it?’ I was deeply impressed by his invitation. He also wrote in his letter the reasons he desired to have this fellowship with me as a friend and after reading his letter, I responded to it immediately. We have begun to meet together regularly and I am eager to see how our friendship will grow.