Prayer for the One Facing a Surprise and Painful End to a Friendship

It’s true that many friendships are for “a reason or a season” and don’t last a lifetime. I know this, and I bet you know this, too. It’s also true that no matter how long you’ve known someone, something definitive might happen to break up a friendship, such as betrayal or a broken trust. Or, the people within the friendship slowly but surely change, so the friendship changes, too.

There are so many circumstances that can cause a friendship to end, and if it happens without your say-so, it’s painful no matter how you slice it.

But it’s also true that a different kind of friendship breakup is happening more frequently these days. At least, I’m coming across stories of it more frequently. And that is the kind where one friend ends the friendship with another suddenly and seemingly overnight. By and large, I’m not talking about friendships that have just gotten off the ground. I’m talking about those that have been running strong for years, if not decades. One moment, these friends sit firmly in the “ride or die,” sister category. In the next, one friend cuts off all communication to the other, often without explanation.

Why is this happening? Is it due to some kind of pervasive “the grass is always greener” belief about friendships that makes folks cut and run? Is it due to immaturity or an avoidance to settling conflict? Are more people, out of their own fear of rejection, rejecting others so they won’t be rejected themselves? I don’t rightly know, and perhaps there are no answers. But gosh, the way it happens, especially when done without a reason as to why, can frustrate me to no end.

And when I get frustrated and angry, I have to pray. Well, run like the dickens on the treadmill and pray.

If you’re facing a surprise and painful end to a friendship, especially if that end collided into you from out of nowhere, I’m so sorry. In the words of Anjuli Paschall, I understand how this kind of loss can “slice off part of your soul.” Indeed.

Perhaps the following prayer will help give you a measure of stillness in the storm-tossed, maddening emotions that come with this difficult life change.

A Prayer for the One Facing a Surprise and Painful End to a Friendship

Dear Heavenly Father,

I’m tumbling around in the choppy waters of dejection and despair, and You know why: I have no idea why my friend changed her mind about me and about our friendship. I’m frustrated that seemingly overnight, what was dependable, trustworthy and sure has evaporated, leaving me with nothing but questions rising like smoke from charred destruction. Were there signs of this right in front of me, and I missed them? Am I really that blind? What did I do? What didn’t I do that I should’ve done?

I’m so sad because what was a blessing in my life is now blighted–infecting my thoughts with all kinds of worries about what I might’ve done wrong. I admit what You already know–that all my “not knowing” is keeping me up at night.

Lord, I’d love for you to let me in on the secret as to why this happened. At the very least, I want to know why You allowed this to happen. Why didn’t You stop her from making this choice?

Lord, I do pray that You turn this friendship around–that I receive some kind of explanation and apology. With Easter, we celebrate Your resurrection from the dead. I ask that if it is Your will, please raise this relationship from the dead. But if that isn’t Your will, I believe You’ll restore in me something good and needed.

Thank you, Lord, that while You’re sovereign, You’re also sad alongside me, and You don’t take lightly what happened to me. While I sit empty of answers, I’ll hold onto Your great love for me because I know this loss won’t always hurt this much. You’ll bring me to a better place full of “bright hope for tomorrow.”

Thank you for being the ready ear and the open heart who meets me in my struggles. Fill my emptiness with the truth of Your love through Your presence and through the presence of other friends. Even if I never know a single answer to a single question regarding this, I trust this is serving some purpose that I don’t know. And since your Word says you are always for me (Romans 8:31, Psalm 56:9), then I know this will someway, somehow end up being for me, too–as much as that seems unimaginable right now.

I choose to trust you with my reputation and this situation.

And I thank you for the vibrant friendships I do have. Even if it’s just one friend, and that friend moved five states away. Or even if that friend is the one preoccupied with a new baby or busy with a new job. I thank You for who is present at my table and in my life.

In the words of Holley Gerth, “God, give me the wisdom to know what work is mine to do today. I release everything and everyone else to You.”

In Jesus’s name, Amen

If this prayer for the one facing a surprise and painful end to a friendship helped you, perhaps this will help as well.