2 years ago I was bullied by another girl in my school for about a year and a half. She called me names, hit me and spread rumours about me on a daily basis.
People always say that you should tell somebody when you’re being bullied, but that’s a lot harder when you’re in that position because I didn’t know who I could talk to that would understand. At the time I even believed that God just wouldn’t get it. I didn’t tell my parents, my family or even my friends.
It was emotionally hard for me because I lacked a lot of self-confidence so this knocked me down to the stage where I was constantly thinking about what others would think about me.
I’m generally a very bubbly, talkative person but during this time that all changed. I refused to tell my parents when they asked if I was okay and I pushed them away when they tried to help.
When Nadya came round for my Mum’s drumming lesson she also noticed that I wasn’t myself and when she asked if I was okay I still didn’t say anything about the bullying. But she knew that I wasn’t telling her the real reason and she also knew that the reason I wasn’t telling her was because my Mum was also in the room… I get very nervous talking about personal things. After politely asking my Mum to leave the room while we talked, I finally told Nadya what had been happening from the hurtful comments, to the punching and pushing. I think at first she was quite shocked but she understood what had been happening to me and what I was going through. After talking for a while and giving her smaller details, she told me some stories about her life when she was younger and how she dealt with hard situations.
Nadya then told me that in order to help stop the bullying I had to forgive the girl who was doing that to me. As well as asking God to forgive her, I also had to bless her. Of course it was hard to forgive the girl who had made my life so miserable but I knew that if I didn’t, the bullying would carry on. We prayed, blessed and forgave for about 30 minutes.
I continued to do so over about 2 weeks, also dropping little smiles at her around school and I slowly began to feel better about myself. After those 2 weeks of forgiving her and asking God to help me, the hitting and nasty comments stopped. The rumours stopped after about a month and things were very quiet. I still got the odd dirty look from her but that didn’t bother me.
I can now say, a few months on, we are very good friends and we talk daily. We hang out together and we text. I honestly wouldn’t be in this position without Nadya and especially God. If you can’t bring yourself to talk to someone about a problem at school, work or anywhere, I promise you, God will always be there for you, he understands and he will always listen. God loves you unconditionally!
1 Timothy 4:12
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.
