• I am not the person I once was.
• I can make a difference in the world.
• I can make a difference in my community.
• I can change my future.
• I am stronger than I was yesterday, last week, last year, 5 years ago and surely than I was 10 years ago.
• I am loved.
• I am cherished.
• I am not alone.
• I am not perfect and it doesn’t matter because God gave me all the skills and tools I need to complete what I need to do today and every day, especially when I am asking for and relying on His guidance and strength.
• Words can hurt me.
• Words can hurt others.
• I can’t control what others say or do.
• I can control my attitude.
• I can control my reaction to my circumstances even though I can’t control my circumstances or even the events leading up to how I got to that point.
• Tomorrow is a new day, pregnant with new opportunities’ to learn new things and to serve others, but it is not a given.
• I must focus on today’s challenges and take advantage of all the open doors and people I can love and serve in case I don’t get the chance to face a new tomorrow.
• I am not superwoman, my physical weaknesses are there to remind me to take a break and renew my mind and spirit. Take advantage of this time!!
These are things I have learned and am continuing to learn but also that I need to remember. This past week we have had to experience something that no one should ever have to. The details are unimportant at this point. What matters to me now is how I cope with the hurt that was done to me. Words were spoken to me that caused me to be betrayed and even afraid. You may think that that sounds trivial, they were just words. I keep trying to wish away the memories and the feelings I had at that moment and the days after word that those words caused, and I can’t.
A person I cared for deeply, someone I took into my home and loved betrayed me in a very big way. I used to tell him when he did or said something wrong, “Faisal you disappointed me†This was something far more than that. Because of this, Faisal has since been deported and is on his way home to Saudi Arabia.
So while I am coping with the hurt that was done to me, we as a family are grieving the loss of our brother. Our house is missing our dearest Faisal. I keep expecting him to walk through the door. Despite the incredible pain I am bearing, I still love him and wish things could have been different. Our children will miss their “big brother†who played soccer with them. I will miss the one person who always complimented my cooking. I will miss the sounds of his language as he tried to teach us how to speak it. I will miss the smell of him in the hallway. I will miss his smile. I will miss our conversations about his family, my family, about our day and just getting to know each other or everyday things.
He touched our lives as we touched his; we know that we made an impact on him just by some of the words he spoke to me on that day. I believe that some of those things he said did bear the truth, sadly those very words were part of what ended up hurting me the most later.
I don’t know why we are enduring this pain at this season in our life, but we know that God has been with us throughout it and will continue to work in us. We also are praying that the seeds we planted in Faisal will not go untended even though he is no longer with us. He made a mistake and I am going to do my best to try to find it in my heart to work through the process of forgiving him and moving on.
It seems like I had just finally started opening up and been more willing to trust people to have access to my heart and now I feel like this betrayal is going to make it even harder for me to do so again. But I also know that our God is a healer and He can heal my broken heart so please be patient with me as I work through this grieving process and try to work on learning to trust others again as I have been betrayed in an unimaginable way.
So please forgive me if you see me and I’m teary or may not be very talkative, I am trying to do my best to not let him take away any more from me, but this has been hard for me.
I also apologize as I’ve heard that my previous Facebook updates made you all worry about me, I did not intend to. I was just venting some of the pain and trying to process some of the things but it was very hard to do so and filter my words at the same time. In the future I think I will just not update at all during these kinds of situations. We do appreciate your concern, but know that we are now ok and that I am sorry if even now you don’t completely understand the situation.
