Poem - Sword

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

When you have relationships with other people, you learn things about them, and more surprising is that you learn things about yourself that you never knew existed or even noticed. I recently came to a realisation that I have absolutely no idea how to comfort someone. It has always been there, but out of my notice. The revelation of it (which I will share as you go on) saddened me and I wrote a poem expressing my feelings about it, which you can read below.

I have a best friend and he was sad and upset about something that happened to him. I tried to offer some comfort and it started out well, but my further attempt at comforting went off tangent and I believe I ended up hurting him more than actually comforting him.

I have always been commended and praised for being good at English, writing, and speaking: gifts that were given to me by God. Yet, as you have read in the poem, I have all that skill and prowess, but for what?

People who know me very well know that I can sometimes be so straightforward that it can come off as rude or mean, even though I don't intend for it to sound that way. I can also tend to share advice (which I learned is a no when someone is sad) and even worse, unsympathetically lecture the other person. Being guilty of all these things, it really saddened me that my best friend had to be subject to my unintentional meanness. 

But in a way, having this experience was meant for good, even though it was very painful for both of us. I don't know what he learnt from it, but I definitely learnt that I need to work on my tongue, or rather God has to do the work on it. 

I used the word "Sword" to title the poem because words have a great power to bring someone up or bring them down, just like how a sword can be used simultaneously to protect something and to destroy another thing. You can also consider the title a pun!

Either way, this experience has taught me much because, as I said, I didn't really notice this in me. I'm glad that God has showed me to be friends with my best friend. If not, I would have never known, neither would I have gotten an opportunity to be polished and refined.

Have you ever had an experience like this or similar to this? Please share it in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!