20 Sep Foundations of a Real Friendship by Mariam Simisani Mokgethi
1. Trust
Since the beginning of the month of August, I have been spending a lot of time with someone I didn’t know whether to qualify as a friend of an acquaintance. Someone I have known for the past four years but always and difficulty defining our friendship. See the thing is she is not a very open person and she is not the easiest person to relate to. From the time I knew her, I couldn’t really read her and couldn’t really understand the kind of person she is. Some of those who know her described her as moody, anti-social and even harsh, some thought of her as a tough person, a no nonsense person. Like I said she is very difficult to read and you’d have to be very close to her to understand her. I think after all these years I am beginning to understand why she is the person she is and why she relates to people the way she does. This past Sunday as we were walking to church, she raised a very important yet overlooked issue; TRUST AND HONESTY.
She said to me, I cannot trust completely, because when that person discloses what I tell them in confidence then I will not be so disappointed because I would be expecting it to happen.
You can imagine my shock, then I realized, she is not wrong nor is she misdirected, she has just been disappointed by friends too many times. One of the most important pillars of friendship is mutual trust and honesty. It reminded me of Jesus, he was close to all his disciples, but the levels of trust differed, there were 12, then there were the 3, the ones with whom he shared his most personal thoughts and feelings. In this day and era, confidence is a fading concept because we just do not know how not to talk about other people when they are not present. And it is such a disheartening thing because it not only breaks friendships, it breaks fellowship and hinders growth, workmanship and companionship. Instead of trusting we always doubt, when we doubt we birth sabotage and lack of cooperation, where all those a present love can hardly prosper.
Trust is one of the factors or characteristics of love and is also a foundation for a real friendship. The kind of friendship that God modeled when He say I dont consider you servants but I have called you Friends. Trust is essential for someone to fully confide in another person, one can only wonder how many lives would be saved and would be changed if they had just fully trusted and more importantly if one of us could have shown them that they can fully trust us with whatever they are going through. Trust such an essential tool, remember love always trusts, a friendship built on trust and honesty is one marked with wisdom and godliness.
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Mariam Mokgethi is from Botswana, a mother and attends college full time.
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