A Surprise Friendship

Ok, I'm going to go out on a limb here and share a story with you; a true story that is very dear to me …

This is a story about a girl I went to school with called Nikki and she’s given me permission to share this online. If I had to choose, I would say that Nikki was perhaps the girl at my school who I would have considered I had the least in common with in the whole year group (which is a nice way of saying, we didn’t really like each other).

I came from an intensely religious family, who lived out of a philosophy of embracing poverty and simplicity as a way of life, and as a spiritual discipline. I would describe my Dad, at least during those years, as being a socialist, anti-establishment, radical Christian. These ideologies influenced my development greatly.

What I didn’t know in High school, was that Nikki’s Dad had come to Australia as a refugee from Bosnia, after his parents had been submitted to forced labour during the War. Coming from a German refugee camp, Nikki’s Dad arrived in Australia with nothing, and through sheer hard work and determination, worked his way to fortune. He was determined to give his daughters the best start in life that he could.

Not knowing these things, Nikki and I constantly found each other to be on opposite sides of nearly every argument, every debate and the social structures in our school. I think Nikki thought I was a naïve religious freak. And I, although I’m not proud to admit it, thought she was a privileged, precious little princess.

But then during Year 12, this weird thing happened … and the best way I can describe it, is that at some point, for some reason, I decided to just get over myself. I started to form a friendship with Nikki and began to realise that a lot of my preconceived ideas about her, just weren’t true.

At the last day of Year 12, this even weirder thing happened. Knowing that we probably wouldn’t see much of each other after school, we went to give each other a casual hug goodbye, and then suddenly we started to cry. Then we started to cry a little bit more. Then we started to cry a lot!! Both of us were pretty shocked I think, at the sudden realisation that our friendship was more significant than either of us had thought. It was a Jacob and Rachel at the well moment (without the romance); a moment of unexpected grace, a moment of love.

So, were we just being tired, emotional teenagers that day?

No.

To this day we are friends and to this day, if sudden tragedy were to hit my life and I needed someone to lean on, I know I would run to her. The girl who I didn’t really like, who definitely didn’t like me, became my truest companion.

I believe the most significant learnings in our school years and beyond, start with those moments, when we decide to ‘get over ourselves’ and we give someone a second chance. When we put down what we’ve previously thought and what we’ve known, long enough to embrace a new possibility; when we become prepared to change our minds, and we let some of the old neural pathways in our brains drop away, and allow new ones to form … these are neural pathways with names on them and emotions attached that catch us by surprise. These are called love. And without them, we can have all the knowledge, all the resilience and all the ingenuity in the world, but in the end, without love … we really have nothing.

I wonder, when has love surprised you?

When have you changed your mind about someone, or given them a second chance? When have you embraced a new idea that you had previously disregarded? Or given yourself a second chance? When have you loved, I mean really loved? And whose names have been written on your heart?

And one final question … is God’s name written on your heart?

If not, is it because you think that people who believe in that are fundamentally different to you, or that God belongs to another ideology, another sexuality, or another time and place?

In my experience, a true encounter with God’s love always starts with a decision to give Him a second chance.

That’s when people find themselves crying in the arms of the most unexpected friend. That’s when we discover a love that has probably been there all along, but was simply underestimated.

I shared this story with the graduating class of 2017, at Shelford Girls' Grammar.