“Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.”
~ George Eliot
In a previous post, I asked the question, what constitutes a true friend? I thought the responses were great. They were so good I’d encourage you to read them all.
As promised, I’m going to answer the question also.
Let me first say that friendship is paramount to me. I cherish my friends, and I’m always open for God to forge new friendships in my life. For me, friendship is one of the most treasured things in life.
I can’t prove this, but I have a notion that I haven’t yet met the people who will end up being some of my closest friends.
Jesus once said to His disciples:
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
So what makes a true friend?
According to Aristotle, there are three kinds of friendships: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good. I think these categories work, but I’m going to put Aristotle’s ideas in my own language.
Three Types of Friendships
- Friendships of Usefulness: I have friends who I never hear from except when they need something. Usually it’s once a year. I’ll get an email from them asking me to endorse or promote their new book. That’s about as deep as it goes. They are “friends of usefulness.” I’ll admit, I sometimes find such annual requests irritating as I’d like to be better friends with some of these people. But it is what it is. Business partners, coworkers on the job, and classmates often fit into this category.
- Friendships of Mutual Interest: The glue of this kind of friendship is a particular kind of shared enjoyment. Think of fishing buddies, or exercise buddies, or golf buddies. You and your friend share a common interest or pleasure, and that’s where your friendship is rooted. If you lose interest in that common pleasure, the friendship ends.
- Friendships of Virtue. The glue that holds this sort of friendship together is the mutual respect you have for one another. Such respect may even rise to admiration. You value one another as people, and you enjoy one another’s company. You are their friend, not for how they can benefit you or how they can bring you pleasure, but simply because you like them. This is the highest form of friendship.
Going beyond Aristotle’s three categories, there’s a fourth kind of friendship. It’s what I call a “close” friendship. Others would use the word “true” friendship to describe it. Though I don’t think the kinds of friendship listed above are “false.” Not all friendships of virtue are close friendships. But all close friendships are also friendships of virtue.
Five Characteristics of a Close (True) Friend
- A close friend rejoices in your joys and sorrows over your pains. A true friend is not just sympathetic, they are empathetic. They share your feelings, weeping with you when you weep and rejoicing with you when you rejoice.
- A close friend won’t defriend you if you disagree. Friendships are tested when there is a disagreement. But true friends don’t cut you off because of it. They may tell you what they think you need to hear and vice versa. But they will do it in such a way where you can receive it. The reason is because you know they love you unconditionally more than they love their views.
- A close friend stays in regular contact with you. I have friends who contact me from time to time and vice versa (once or twice a year). We regard each other as good friends. But a close friend this doth not make. Close friends communicate fairly regularly.
- A close friend is someone whom you trust implicitly. They have earned your trust. Consequently, you don’t doubt that they have your back. And you don’t fear that they will stab you in the back. You trust them enough to confide in them about highly private and confidential matters. Close friendship brings with it disclosure (John 15:15).
- A close friend will stand by you, defend you, even take a bullet for you when you’re under attack. To my mind, this is perhaps the highest measure of friendship or one of the rock-bottom “tests.” The posture of a true friend is, “If you hurt my friend, you’ve hurt me.” It is never, “Well, that person never did anything to hurt me, so it’s not my issue.” This attitude is what separates goats from black sheep. 🙂 True friends stand with and stand up for each other. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
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Great post!
Thank you,
Gary
Southern NH, USA
Thanks so much for all of your wonderful posts, Mr. Viola. I enjoy them on a daily basis. I especially love the podcasts. I listen to them on my way to work in the mornings and share with my friends. Keep up the wonderful work! God bless you!
These are wonderful comments and admonitions especially for men, and quintessentially for Christian men. I know of several men in our church who do not have close men friends. It can be one of the things that serious dilutes the effectiveness of a whole church body if the men of a church are not in tune with each other as friends.
I formed an amazing friendship with someone 2 years ago who had previously been in the Friendship of Mutual Interest category. We went to a small christian college together 11 years ago and were interested in the same nerdy pursuits (calculus 3 anyone?) 🙂 We lost touch for several years, but reconnected on a blog site primarily populated by people we had known from college. We both joined a private group for wives in the workplace (another mutual interest I suppose) and got to know each other a little better than we had in college.
Then, in 2010, I was faced with a great personal tragedy. That is one time in life when you find out who your true friends are! She stepped up to the plate and was there for me, showed incredible generosity that I can never repay, and has been a close friend ever since. Sadly she lives many states away from me, but that hasn’t hindered us. I had been craving more close friendships over the years; little did I know I had already met my newest close friend 🙂
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+4%3A9-12&version=NLT
Says it all for me…not so much because of the “usefulness” implied in staying together, but because of the heart that is revealed in this passage: Someone who stays close enough to be there when you need help up * Someone whom you are safe and comfortable enough with to share a bed if necessary * Someone who would go to battle with you * Indeed, someone who is wound tightly into your life in a way that helps you both to be strong and sturdy. * Someone who welcomes another friend of equal closeness into the relationship
I met one of my best friends in college. We were in choir together, and she led the choir Bible study I joined. We began to meet together with other friends to pray for our school. Then we discovered a shared affinity for tea and began to meet together to drink tea, talk about our lives, and pray for each other. She graduated a year before I did, and we kept in touch by phone occasionally until I joined her across the country in seminary. We resumed our tea and prayer sessions throughout seminary and after until she moved back across the country last June. She has all the qualities of a close friend that you described and more. Now, we still keep in touch occasionally by phone, but no matter how many months or years go by before we see each other again, I know one day we will sit together and share our stories over a steaming pot of tea and pray together. Thanks for reminding me what a treasure true friendship can be!
What makes a true friend is very simple in my eyes, someone who treats you with the same respect as you treat them. Someone that is there not just for the good times but when it really matters. A person able to look beyond their own selfish needs when the time comes to be there for a friend. A person that when your with the rest of the world fades away and you get lost in a bubble of entertainment. A friend is a person you can call family when there is no family to be had. I am a friend, wanna be mine? lol 😉
There’s one more to add to the list. A true friend (who has wronged you) will make an effort to reconcile with you through and by their repentance. Contrariwise, they will not demand your mercy, grace nor your forgiveness. In the very least, they won’t judge you for not “demonstrating grace”, even if they think they’ve done no wrong. They’ll sit at the table and talk it out.
Wow, this article really affected me. When I was younger (in my 20’s and early 30’s) I had loads of friends (many more like acquaintances)
but once people started getting married and moving away and having children or dying, those friendships ended. I’ve never had a problem making friend. I’m an extrovert, people say I’m funny but since I left the IC, making friends has been close to impossible. People are too busy, it seems. That’s why we’ve been on a mad search for organic church..friendships would happen by default. So we’re selling our house (that could be why too…we’ve moved 3 times in 7 years) and trying elsewhere. I have to add though Frank, I have made some of my closest friends at one of your conferences. At your conference in Germany, we are STILL friends with the people we met at your conference. They’ve come to our house, we’ve been to theres. We’ve shared family births, marriages and deaths. Yet we live 1,000 miles away. We just wish they could be a little closer. So I’d like to thank you for being an unwitting matchmaker.
Thank you for this great post, Frank. I know this will be long but can’t help it!
I met my two best friends in 2008 on the Internet (yes, the Internet), true close friendships borne through shared adversity. Let me explain. When my son was a combat Marine deployed to Iraq in 2007, one of his buddies was killed, and I saw a testimony given by his mother on the news about how God was with her son the day he was killed in the most special way: He and His angels escorted him to heaven. Her strength in Christ so touched me, that I contacted her. We formed a friendship via e-mail and hand-written letters. This mother was the avenue by which I would meet my 2 best friends. When my son was deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, this woman introduced me through e-mail to Kim, a friend of hers from Minnesota. Kim’s son was also in my son’s unit in Afghanistan on his first deployment. Kim introduced me to Rachel from Southern Cali through e-mail whose son was also deployed in the same unit, and we began to pray together daily through e-mail, post together on forums, and just share Christ’s love with one another. We leaned heavily on each other with each announcement of killed and wounded from our sons’ company, praying together and holding our breaths until receiving word that it wasn’t one of our sons (and then feeling guilty and anguished for the mothers who would not be seeing their sons come home alive). In July, 2008, Kim’s son was severely wounded in an ambush and lost his leg. We grieved, cried, and prayed with her through his recovery via Internet and phone correspondence, always wondering if I or Rachel would be next to get that dreaded phone call, or worse, a knock on the door. Eventually, Kim’s son was awarded The Navy Cross and was featured in Time magazine as one of 2008’s most important people. I love and brag on their sons as if they were mine and vice-versa. Rachel’s and my son finished out the deployment, but their battalion was the hardest hit in the Marine Corps in 2008, with the loss of twenty boys. We all met for the first time during our sons’ homecoming in California, Rachel’s home state, December, 2008. Kim’s son was there to welcome his brothers, already walking on his new prosthetic leg. When we mothers met face to face, all we could do was fall into one another’s arms and weep in thankfulness to God for bringing our boys back to us and in knowing He put us three together as true friends. That was almost four years ago, and we still talk through text and e-mail every day. We three and our husbands all just met for a week in San Antonio, Texas (my home state) for only the second time face-to-face. We spent days just visiting and loving one another, forging an even deeper friendship. Our next reunion will be in Minnesota, Kim’s home state, where we haven’t met yet. GOD BROUGHT US TOGETHER from three very different parts of America as forever friends. The horrors and the effects of combat on us and our sons are what help bind us, but it is really Christ that binds our hearts together. I love them more than I can express. Praise Him!
I have 3 to 4 people, besides my parents, brother and husband, who I trust implicitly. However, those relationships were not formed within the past 5 years. I’m not heavily dependent on a large circle of friendships outside my family, so my “close” friendships tend to take more than 5 years for me to develop, just because the opportunity to prove that kind of trust doesn’t occur often enough. However, I truly agree that my “close” friends are happy for me, sad for me, agree to disagree with me, and protective of me…as I am try to be for them; and what a secure comfort it is to have friend/family who provide those safe and genuine places 🙂
I’m not so sure about No. 3.
It’s the old “quantity vs. quality” debate. There are some friends of mine whom I’ve shared many life-transforming events with and whom I would trust implicitly with any detail of my life; but they’re not in my geographic area and are busy with their own life affairs to communicate with me on a regular basis (and vice-versa). They may not be close in the sense of proximity, but are close in terms of the “knitting together of the heart.”
Same goes for my family. I call my folks (maybe) once per month. But the times we get together it’s like no time has passed. And when something major happens, we’re on each others’ speed-dial.
So I don’t know if quantity of communication = quality of friendship.
I read your blog & I agree with what you shared. Jesus is my best friend, as well. I am so grateful for the friendships He has brought into my life. I know each one is a gift from Him. In a close friend, I too look for one who knows Jesus.
My true friend is, Jesus and He has proved Himself by sticking closer to me than any brother or sister. The best friends I have also, know Jesus and are growing in Him, as I am, to be like Him. Jesus is faitful, patient, long-suffering, genuine, and devoted to God. I look for these qualities in the people to whom I trust as friends. However, I am called to love all others as, Jesus loves me and sometimes, I have to take a risk and befriend someone who isn’t like, Jesus. At those times, I put my trust in, Jesus and allow Him to love them through me with the hope that Jesus will become their true friend and someone,whom that I can put my trust in as they too, begin to grow and become like, Jesus.
Amen.
AMEN!
I can think of a couple of close friendships that I’ve formed over the past few years. They began with a common interest, which happened to be pursuing Christ together. As our pursuit of him deepened, so did our friendship. There are several things I could note, but one BIG one is that we reached a point where we can be completely honest with each other, even when we disagree. Not only can we be honest, but we allow each other’s points of view and experiences to expand our understanding of any particular topic. In the beginning, we needed the common element. Today, I believe the friendships would continue even if the common element wasn’t there. In fact, one of these friends just moved a long distance away, but I believe we will still stay close friends because of the connection we’ve built.
“Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
My tennis coach is one of the very few true friends. I met him 4 years ago, a few years after I moved to the US. He was 74 then and I was 26 – a rather unlikely ages for a true freindship. But nevertheless, the glue was probably our common understanding of longing for God and true fellowship. Well and tennis, of course. He is this amazing Gandalf-like wisard whom I love deepely. There is this movie from 1973 called “17 moments of Spring” and the main character has this line: ” Out of all people who live in this world I love the children and the elderly the best”. I am starting to see why. 🙂 But anyway, it was really God’s doing that I met this man because all my true friends stayed behind in my home country and I had really started doubting that this sort of friendship was at all possible after moving to a different place. But I really do believe that the Gospel is all about that – true friendship and those unbreakable connections between people.
One of my prayers this year is that I find a “close” friend or even a friend of “virtue”. Being on the mission field and being around different cultures is a bit of a challenge. One of my “problems” is I enjoy reading, a lot so I need to make the time to be around others. My wife is great at making friends, she will work at it even when the other person doesn’t. She is persistent.
Thanks Frank
Successful Friendship(s) have the universal characteristics as follows:
1. Thousands of hours of listening.
2. Responses/Actions to listening that are caring and accurate.
I have made many of these deeper “true” friendships. Usually they start out as one of Plato’s described categories and then we grow deeper.
My “true” friend just moved away (as many do in the military) but we could always discuss topics in depth and with much passion. People that saw us argue would assume we were upset with one another- but the opposite was true. We both respected each other’s opinion and the ability to disagree without hard feelings only helped to strengthen our friendship. When we had that trust (because really a true friend is one that you can trust), we knew we could call on one another for just about anything.
Great comment. Thanks. Would love to hear from your friends too. 😉
Frank,
Can you speak a bit to friendships within the dynamics of organic church and small groups of people? It is interesting that some groups seem to be flourishing with meaningful and authentic friendships, other groups TRY to create an environment for people to become intimate or connected with one another, and yet the relationships never really go very deep despite the fact that people WANT relationships with one another.
Hi Heather: Good question. This blog isn’t focused on any particular expression of church, and most of my readers are part of denominational or traditional kinds of churches. Also, as I’ve shared elsewhere – https://www.frankviola.org/2012/03/05/seasonsofministry/ – the focus of my ministry isn’t on a organic missional church right now. I’ll simply say that having been part of and having worked with both non-traditional and traditional churches, the principles regarding friendship outlined here apply to friendships in any church form as well as outside of a church context.
For those interested what I’ve said about the issue of relationships in face-to-face communities (on to your question), I’ve addressed this in detail in “Reimagining Church,” “Finding Organic Church,” and the messages at http://www.ptmin.org/audio-cds
Thanks for your comment. To All, I am primarily interested in hearing answers to my question from those who have forged new friendships over the last five years. Thx.
It’s funny how one’s definitions are very important. The friends of utility and pleasure, i lump into the category of acquaintances. I had to look up the definitions!
I used to think of a friend as one who didn’t call me on my faults if i didn’t call them on theirs. That was in the secular world of Los Angeles! haha..
Now i think a friend is one who makes deposits in my life expecting nothing in return – AND will be there when i need them. I also make selfless deposits into their life as well and will be there when they need me. That, to me is friendship
Great Post Frank! I met my friend in Church. To make a long story short, I lost my job in October 2010. My friend offered to let me stay in her home as long as I needed. This was a great sacrifice for her as she already had 2 grown children and their children living in the home with her. She has been a true friend to me and during this time,we have become more like family. She truely has a servant’s heart and I thank God for bringing her into my life!
I have one. Started as a ‘usefulness’, and that fell apart but it went on to a ‘virtue’, and then changed to ‘close’. I think it got there simply by openness, and the absence of objectives. We both needed unconditional love and were both willing to give it freely to anyone.
My friend that I have met in the last 5 years, is an old friend who I knew in High School. Actually she was my younger sister’s friend. She and I MAKE A POINT to meet and go out and talk/visit as often as we can. I think in this world today, the point is that we have to make a point of calling our friends, and not wait for them to call us. Again I think the business of this world, and the “media” have taken away our face to face contact of with our friends. I can be myself and she lifts me up. We don’t think the same always, but it is ok because we respect each other and our views. When it comes down to it I know that she would support me if I needed her help. I trust her. She dosen’t always agree with me and I her, and we are free to say it without the frustrations of “getting mad” at each other.
Thanks for the post. Would make a great discussion for small groups as well as the whole church in this era of social media. Will be sharing this with some friends.
Matthew, I really appreciate that.
I find it very hard, this thought that it takes years to form friendships. Not everyone has “years” to do it. People move around, change churches, change communities. It’s difficult when it takes a very long time to form enough close friendships to feel that you have people you can call on in an emergency or a time of great need. You end up without any close friends…
This may sound unusual, but here goes. Over the last year my father has been in a nursing home due to a stroke he suffered 10 years ago. He passed on on Christmas eve. My mom and I visited him 2 or 3 times a week. It was tough on both of us, seeing him lose a quality of life. Each time we visited him it was out of respect and duty. Many times I didn’t want to go. When he died, I continued to watch and care for mom, but still mostly out of duty. One day my wife said to me, you mom is lonely we need to take care of that. Well, that is the day love began to take over, now it is a daily renewing of that love. Mom, remarked, “I sure am glad you changed I was praying for that”. For this I thank the Lord Jesus because now I have discovered what a great friend Mom is. Thanks for the blog Frank.
Friendship started for us when I needed to confess face to face my struggles to somebody in our congregation. I had already talked to my leaders, but I needed a pier, somebody who would seat by my side the next Sunday. So I decided to open my heart to one of the other musicians of the church. We have been playing together for a couple of years in the band, but we were just acquaintances at the moment.
The whole thing is he opened his heart as well to me. That automatically created a strong, but not necessarily, deep bond between us. But we kept having time together, and I personally started to be intentionally his friend. As the Bible recommends: “the one who wants a friend has to show himself as a friend”. I started to help him about his walk with God (by then he wasn´t the most devoted guy to God). Everything I knew back then, I tried to gave to him. I was really interested to building this guy up. He had very small dreams (my family taught me to dream big, trusting in our big God).
Maybe 2 years latter, we became super close, our bond was deep now. And I won´t hide to you that sometimes I felt I was giving more than I was receiving. But that was a huge spiritual lesson: Even with friends, you give, but you expect on God to receive, not on them. So I decided to keep giving, but trusting God to provide my needs. And suddenly our friendship became different.
It’s been maybe 5 years since those first days. I just moved to work in Asia, he’s with his family in Latinamerica. He calls me every month from his mobile, I also call him back. We keep contact via emails. And pretty much we are like brothers. Of course, he knows all of my junk, and still he has stayed around. He is the one among many that has remained believing in me, giving me support, trusting in me, not even questioning some times.
One of the most lovely things he’s done for me is to sorrow on my failures. If I tell him about some stupidity I did, he gets kinda sad, he gets empathetic with my situation, even to the point of tears. “Bro, you know you are not that, you are a whole new creature in Christ”, is what he would say.
This friend of mine has stuck up for me, even in the congregation when some people has misunderstood something I said. And I have stuck for him as well.
I know our friendship will last for a couple more of decades, even more. I know that ‘cuz before this friend, I had another, but he left to another country, and it was kinda the same story, and since then, 12 years latter, we still keep the contact, and care for each other, even though we haven’t seen face to face for the last 4 years, maybe. But we are still there for each other.
Why did I decided to start this other friendship? Cuz I needed somebody face to face, to confess my stuff, to walk the Christian walk with company. Of course during all of that time of building this latter friendship I kept contact with my other friend, via email, phone calls, etc. But, I don’t know, there’s something about being physically in the same place.
SUMMARY: Friendships take years to sow, water, and flourish. I mean, true, durable friendships. And of course, they imply giving all of yourself, giving without expecting to receive. I always think of that moment when David said Jonathan’s love was sweeter than the love of women. I think about John resting of Jesus’ bosom. I think also of Lewis and Tolkin visiting each other every morning before attending their classrooms. Even though we haven’t rest on each others bosoms! Or said our love is sweeter than the love of women!
Last but not least, I must confess sometimes it was awkward to have such affection between 2 men, specially in our macho-latin culture. We were aware of that, we even talked about that a couple of times. But somehow the fact we both were part of a congregation and that the rest of the members of that congregation knew about our friendship, that helped us to keep enjoying our lives.
As you can see, friendships are a huge part of my life, and all of this started when I got curious about what actually take to become a friend of God. I started learning about what God says in the Bible about friendships, and that knowledge definitively started that fire in my heart for having deep, strong, real friendships.
When I read this post, two people quickly come to mind in terms of ‘true’ friends, one of my girlfriends from grade school and my husband. Not sure if marriage is a given or not but my close friendship began with him about 6 years ago (We’ve been married 4 of the 6).
We met in college my sophomore year, his senior year. Our friendship started when he very boldly and ‘out of the blue’ pursued me and asked me out on a date 🙂 According to his story, some of my classmates and some of his peers, that I knew, had been talking to him, since my freshmen year, about ‘this girl’ who would be perfect for him. I had no idea this was going on and I barely knew him and at some point in the middle of my sophomore year he called me and gave me his story about how he knew me and asked to get to know me for himself by going on a date.
From the start it was easy to be open with each other, real with each other and safely share our hearts. Over a short time, as we regularly spent time together, our friendship grew closer and closer pretty fast and we soon fell in love.
Over the years and even more so today, we have regularly communicated, learned to agree to disagree, agreed to and still learning to put the other first, practice unconditional love through the Spirit, always had each others back, been by each others side through success and disappointments, and always had a sense of trust that comes from our hearts being devoted to the Lord.
Our friendship is by no means perfect but even in the imperfections are sweet as we are actively learning to bear the Cross of Christ for one another as we are learning to live by the indwelling life of Christ as friends-brother and sister in Christ-husband and wife.
Thanks for this post! It encouraged me to reflect on relationships in my life and to share with my two closest friends my gratefulness for our friendship and how much they mean to me.
There is a 4th “type” of friendship…that is one made due to mutual hardship or tragady and perhaps it only last as long as the circumstance it is forged under but it is never forgotten…think natural disaster, war,prison or jail time, illness, 9/11…etc.
There are 4 kinds of friendship listed in the post (“close” friends are the 4th). You’re speaking about the *means* of how friends come to be made. Which is a great topic in itself and gets closer to my question at the end of the post.
If you think about it…in a tragic life threatening situation the most basic of human relation kicks in and a deep friendship is formed soley on the basis of mutual mortality….all pretences are gone..perhaps it is the beginning of a future friendship at another level,perhaps not…what it is though is a complete profound friendship…kinship…formed in the twinkling of the eye based on humaness alone….could this be an attribute that God has built into each one of us that He will ultimately use to unite us as one body?? Great topic.
Frank, I think you’re right to say there’s a fourth category of friendship beyond the frienship of virtue. I do have a few people I’d probably class as ‘close / true friends’ but the main thought your post has prompted in me is about people who used to be in this group. I’ve had two or three close / true friends whom I’ve gradually grown apart from, mainly because they’ve moved away and now live the other side of the Atlantic from me!
I’m still in touch with these people and our occasional time together is still very precious, but the relationship is clearly not the same. I feel very sad at this; it’s a kind of mourning I think. But they’ve made new friends (including some very strong relationships) where they live now, and I’ve also drawn closer to some other people – which is great, but doesn’t rub out the sense of loss.
Just wanted to say, I used to live in England and now live in New Zealand and I have a friend in England who I would still consider a true friend. Our main communication is through emails but on a regular basis. Just because you live away does’t mean the friendship has to diminish. Also if a friendship has gone from a close friendship to not so close. you can always get it back, it just takes effort. That is part of the reason most people don’t have too many close friend, because these friendships take a lot of effort!
I like this article, I wish more people had close friends. I have some, and I’ve tried to have others.
I wonder if the 3 types of friendships listed above.. useful, mutual interest, and virtue get in the way of close friendships?
Great post. I have to say that only my wife fits the criteria you describe for a close or true friend. It’s not through lack of trying to form close relationships though.
It is interesting how social media has had such an impact on friendships. My pastor “unfriended” me and my whole family on Facebook over a disagreement with me over window trim on a new building. That pretty well put a screeching halt to our church involvement.
“That pretty well put a screeching halt to our church involvement.” I would question this person as being a person who spiritually pours into you. I am not a believer in Church hopping, but I’d try mending this fence and if he can’t get beyond it, then maybe finding a church with a church pastor that believes in the TRUE meaning of LOVE. One of my criteria is that friends give grace… they allow me to not be perfect and still love me. They don’t keep track of my faults and keep bringing back mistakes that supposedly they forgave me for.