Allison

• I work for a non profit medical and dental clinic. We had a patient recently that I thought had a familiar name and it turned out I knew his sister.
• Five years before I was on staff with her at another ministry. We had been best friends. We had been invited to join a well known minister on a trip to South Africa and were raising support. I came up with all of my funds and she had hers pledged. We had to buy our tickets by a certain deadline and I had the money in hand so we agreed that I would loan her the money for the ticket and when her support came in she would just pay me back. We got the tickets and all of a sudden everything changed. She just stopped talking to me overnight. Deleted me from facebook. Would not speak to me at work. We did not go on the trip and the money for the tickets was lost. Because the dynamic had shifted so much and I was already in a season of transition I left that ministry and the old friend behind with more questions than answers but I tried to harbor no bitterness in my heart. 

  That was the second week of school.

  So I got married on November 9. On Thursday Oct 31 I found out that I was short $2200 for my wedding photographer. I thought I would have help from some family and ended up having to pay for it myself. I had four days to come up with the balance and asked a few people to partner with me for a breakthru. Friday November 1 I got a text from my old friend asking for my email address. I responded with the email address thinking she was going to send me a letter or something. Within 5 minutes I had an email from paypal telling me that she had sent me money. The money from the plane tickets to Africa from over 5 years before. I was able to pay my photographer and then on the day of the wedding my wedding coordinator who did everything including my flowers would not allow me to pay her. She said she was supposed to sow into my husband and I. It would have been another $1000. Also, my wedding was the most low budget diy thing and it seriously was so perfect and Holy Spirit. People thought we spent a fortune.
• From time to time I would have to actively choose to forgive her. Fast forward to her brother coming into the clinic. Something shifted in my heart and I wanted to reconcile the relationship. I wanted to invite her to my wedding. I asked the brother to get me her address so I could do just that. Within a few minutes she text me and basically said that she had been sharing my testimony that very week and the Lord had me on her heart. She did not want to reconnect our relationship but appreciated me reaching out to her. That night in third year I lead an activity on forgiveness and felt a huge shift and knew something had tangibly happened.