Friend or Foe?

Spring break is a time for me to recharge so that I can make it the rest of the school year, which after spring break, is only 3 weeks away. Spring is also a time for inner reflection. A time where we want to truly look deep within ourselves and throw out the old stuff and bring in the new stuff. I have really had to do some "soul searching" these last few days with regards to a friendship. A fairly new friendship. It is a man whom I was one of my gambling buddies for almost a year. In November, we started seeing each other outside of the casino. Our very limited friendship had moved into a sort of friends with benefits relationship. He was funny, intersting, from the middle east, had a different religion than mine, and incredibly nice. I don't know why, but I felt drawn to him for some reason. I usually do not question God when people come and go in my life. I know ultimately, God is in control. But I did have to say that I had been approached by many men in the casino, and I can say none of them even remotely interested me. With the expansion of this friendship, I found out some personal things about this friend. Without getting into details, I can definately say he came with a lot of "baggage." However, I figured God had brought him into my life for a reason. Maybe I could use this counseling degree I paid mega bucks for....Ha. Over the past 5 months, I have found myself quite confused with this friendship, but again, I do not question God. "Hot and Cold" best describes this friendship to say the least. Although I know this man has a lot going on in his life, I thought maybe.....way further down the road......after he had "gotten it together".....just maybe there could have been more to our relationship. However, due to all of his "baggage", at this point, I was not willing to even consider this option. I've kept my heart out of this relationship and have only used my head. When our friendship would go through those "cold" moments, I just figured he was dealing with his "baggage", plus he also had a lot of religous convictions with regards to some parts of our friendship. On several different occasions, I did get upset with him, but I had figured that is was a miscommunication issue (he is not completly fluent in English). Now to the point of this post....Ha......we had gone to the Treasure Chest Casino the other Saturday night. When he picked me up, I brought my car charger so that we could charge out phones. His was almost dead, so I let him charge his up on the way to NOLA. Mine was half charged. Well, mine finally died early Sunday morning. My youngest daughter was going through some tough stuff, so I asked him to use his phone. I texted my daughter and told her that if she needed me, to text me on his phone because mine was dead. I went to give him his phone back, and he told me to hold on to it. A few minutes later, my daughter texted me, and I asked him to punch in his code. He gave me the code to enter into his phone. Well, time went on. He continued playing. I went to the bathroom, and being a woman, picked up his phone and started texting my daughter. Once we finished talking, I decided to see what was all on his phone. Yes, I know....shame on me, but hell, I didn't think I would find anything, since he so freely gave it to me, told me to hang on to it, and gave me his code. Well, I was wrong. Maybe he wanted me to find out what he really thought of me, without him actually having to say it. In either case, I was shocked to say the least. I am assuming the woman he was talking to was his sister, but I don't really know that. However, now I know why there were "cold" areas in our friendship. The way he described me, made me question our relationship right from the beginning. I didn't tell him anything, but he knew something was wrong. I told him I was worried about my daughter, which I was, but it really was what I had found on his phone that showed all over my face. I kept it together, and didn't say anything. I even drove us home, brought him in my house, and tucked him safely in bed. There was no way I could let him drive home. He would have wrecked and killed himself, and although I was furious with him over what I found on his phone, I knew I would never be able to live with myself if anything happened to him and I could have prevented it. Even though he wasn't being my friend, I needed to treat him the way I had hoped he was treating me. I also needed time to sort though my feelings about what I had found. I didn't want to cause a scene at the casino, and I needed time to grieve the end of this friendship before I told him our friendship was over. I still haven't told him, although it has been 4 days since my discovery. I know pretty much what I will say, but I want to be able to say what I want to say and walk away. I do want to give him any opportunity to hurt me with his words anymore. What I read was enough. I'm just glad that I found this out before I had invested anymore into this friendship. Now I'm questioning God. Why would God bring this type of person into my life? What is it that God wants me to take from this experience? I don't know at this point. Time will only tell. Another time to say "que, sera, sera."