When A Friend Can't Find Forgiveness

By Farrah LaRaé Lollis

Forgiveness brings freedom, but you have to find it first!

Forgiveness is a difficult thing to offer someone who hurt you, but it can often be more difficult to forgive yourself. Knowing that you had the opportunity to build someone up, but instead unintentionally tore them down is a bitter pill to swallow. In my case, I thought I was making things better. The choices I made that impacted someone I love wound up tearing us apart forever and I can’t take that back. What I can do; however is be courageous enough to learn from my mistakes, forgive myself and move on. In this story I take you on a life-changing journey through a remarkable friendship, love, loss and grief. I’m taking courage and giving you the raw and unadulterated truth in hopes that you too can find freedom from the guilt within.

In this book you'll learn:
• The beauty of grace.
• How to forgive yourself and others.
• The importance of forgiveness.
• Ways to stay free from guilt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Farrah LaRaé Lollis
• Release date: Sep 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463873717

Farrah LaRaé Lollis

Farrah LaRaé was born on June 13, 1995 in Sacramento, California to Bishop William John Wynn Sr. and Lady Edith Wynn. She was raised in the church along with seven siblings, four brothers and three sisters. Each of them have a heart for the Lord and a passion for helping others. At the age of 5, she and her family relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada to start a ministry. The goal was to develop lives, empower communities and expand ministries. Farrah served with purpose alongside her parents and the many things they did to help others and build a legacy for their family. She served as a church secretary at the age of 12, helped out at her parent’s clothing store at the age of 13, recorder voice overs for her father’s global television show on The Word Network, received her first worker’s permit at the age of 15 and began working for her parent’s childcare center and so much more. Farrah was devoted to the Lord and her family. She worked in ministry alongside her family in the music department as well as the administrative department to see growth and leave an impact come to the church.In 2015, Farrah began blogging to share hope with other young women who were struggling with being a Christian and enjoying their life. Her desire was to break the stigma that Christians can’t have fun by sharing creative and exciting ways to enjoy the journey of serving God. In 2017 she started her first podcast as a spinoff to her blog called “Enjoy Your Life” where she interviewed inspired individuals to live a good life and embrace the principles of the word of God. As her faith podcast began to grow, she started seeing more interest in people wanting to be interviewed about their stories. The only problem was that the stories weren’t focused on faith. With this in mind, Farrah prayed and asked for guidance and in 2018 God gave her to start another podcast called “Boss Babe Life Hacks” where she’d interview women from all around the world in various industries who wanted to share their stories of triumph and defeat on their road to success.In 2017, Bishop and Lady Wynn started a global streaming network reaching 380 million homes worldwide called “The Wynn Network” with the mandate of sharing faith, family and fun entertainment. Farrah began working as the Administrative Assistant and worked her way up to the President of Acquisitions and Marketing. The network streams on Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV and the App Store on iOS and Android devices. Through The Wynn Network, Farrah has had the opportunity to work as the Production Manager on various films, Produce TV Shows, coordinate wardrobe and costume design, write music for film and act in her first on-screen roll in “John Wynn’s Mirror Mirror”. She has traveled and interviewed celebrities such as Kirk Franklin, Tasha Cobbs, Bobby Brown, Dallas Austin, Adrienne Bailon-Houghton, Israel Houghton, Kierra Sheard, Devon Franklin and many others.Farrah released her first musical single titled “Stranger” in June 2019 and plans to share more original music with the world as she continues to grow. She is a passionate speaker, writer, influencer and serial entrepreneur who has founded businesses including a Consulting Agency called “Elite Performance”, and online boutique called “Enjoy Your Life” and an inspirational women’s group called “Girls Who Trade” for women who are or want to be in the investment world. Her primary focus is seeing women succeed in all areas of their life and that is what she’s inspired to do daily through her businesses, collaborations, friendships and every area of her life. As a woman who is strong in her faith, Farrah thrives on helping others build and maintain their relationship with God and find freedom for their life through the practical teachings of His word.

Book preview

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Novella, Pharaoh, all of the people who are struggling in their friendships and my dear friend Oniqua Zaleesha Splendid Phillip a.k.a. Nikki.

Novella, I want to thank you for raising such a wonderful, loving, funny, strong woman who I came to know in a way that I never expected. Although the timing of things aren’t always perfect in our eyes, God does all things well. Thank you for allowing Nikki to be herself and spread the love and happiness that you taught her. I love and appreciate you so much.

To Pharaoh, you are my baby, my nephew, my little prince. I want you to know that your mom loves you beyond the expression of words. She cherished every moment with you even when she said your crying was annoying (haha). I love you and I will always be here for you.

To those who are learning and growing in forgiveness, communication and friendship, I pray that you will learn to differentiate between real, genuine, life-long friendships and fake, unnecessary, draining ones. Be happy with who you are and love your friends to life.

To Nikki, I’ve missed you every day since that fateful day in December of 2015. You came into my life and made your mark. You’re the reason for many of the wonderful decisions I’ve made in my life. I know that you are proud of me and the woman I’m becoming. I love you and I miss you Nik. This one’s for you

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

My name is Farrah LaRaé Lollis and at the time this book is being released, I’m a 25 year old woman from Las Vegas, Nevada. Two months ago in June, my husband Torian and I had our first child, Miss Serenity Rose Lollis and she has inspired me more than ever to share this story with you. I’m both excited and nervous to do so, but I figure if I can mother a child then I can do anything! 

The story you are about to read is about the best friend I ever had. She was a breath of fresh air, a bundle of joy and also a major pain in the butt. In order to tell you this story, I’m going to have to take you all the way back to the very beginning. I’m going to start with some minor details, but trust me it gets good so stick around.

You may be wondering what this book is about, or maybe you think you know exactly what it’s about by reading the title. In all honesty, you haven’t the slightest clue. We’re about to go on a bit of a journey so I urge you to buckle up and do your best to enjoy the ride. It may get uncomfortable at times, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

It has taken me a really long time to put all of this into words, but I’m glad I finally found the courage to do so. I’d like to personally thank you for taking out time to pick up this book and see what it’s all about. 

I’m not telling you how to live your life or anything, but you should probably try to learn from my mistakes. I’d hate for you to have to learn the hard way like I did. You’ll see what I mean. Grab a cup of coffee or your favorite tea and try to enjoy this wild ride.

1 THE WAY WE MET

When I was in grade school, I was a total social butterfly. I knew everyone and everyone knew me. I loved school, but not for the reasons you may think. My teachers and I got along really well, the class activities and holiday parties were my top priority, I made friends with almost everyone regardless of what gender, race or grade they were in, I was nominated the head of the party planning committee and a lot of people looked to me as the go-to girl! I was incredibly happy, but there were some things that I didn’t really like about being in school. I just tried to make the best of my experience. I was one of the accelerating students in my classes, but still I never felt good enough because I struggled so hard in math. I hated the long hours I had to spend away from my family because my siblings and I were very close and my parents were my world. My most favorite place to be was at church, I was born and raised learning about God and enjoying the fellowship of His people. My dad was a Pastor of 3 churches, one in Las Vegas, one in Sacramento and one in Reno, and when various church conferences took place either locally or out of town, I missed them because I had to be at school. Like anything in life, there are pros and cons to everything so I resented having to go to school, but I deeply appreciated my experience at school for the social interaction with both the students and the teachers. I guess you can say I was a socialite!

Going to middle school was intimidating for me. I knew things would change in a big way, but I somehow convinced myself that I’d be just fine. If I could become a superstar in elementary, how bad could I do the rest of my academic career? When I first started middle school, everything was going great. I was making friends at the speed of light and things seemed to be on the right track. The only downfall of my middle school career was the fact that I was still struggling in math and absolutely despised attending it for every reason except the fact that I had friends from my elementary school in that class. About two months into middle school, my popularity came to an abrupt end. Pretty short lived right?! I was just 12 years old when my parents decided to homeschool my siblings and I. This was such a drastic change for me. No longer was I little miss popular and that was a tough pill to swallow. At first, I was against the idea of being homeschooled because I missed all of my friends. Eventually it grew on me and I started to see the good in it after all. I was now given the opportunity to spend more time with my family, travel, attend any and every church conference, try new things and go on epic adventures. I never would have experienced these things being in a traditional school. It truly was a blessing in disguise.

Since I couldn’t be around my school friends everyday, I decided to keep up with them online. I started using websites like MySpace and Facebook, to stay in the loop. With social media being so new at that time and my group of friends being so young, not everyone was online just yet, but that was okay. I managed to stay in touch with the majority of people I went to school with and even connected with other students I didn’t have the chance to meet while I was actually attending. I was in the loop with people in school and  they would give me the latest scoops. I’d find out which teachers were retiring or transferring schools, who the new kids at school were and updates on everyone’s personal lives. They’d even send me birthday or holiday party invites to make sure I could celebrate with them. Most of the time I was allowed to go and that kept me going for a while. Things changed as time went on and people's lives became more interesting so they spent less time online. I eventually lost touch with most of my friends as social media became less interesting to them.

At the age of 14, my parents told me that we were moving almost 500 miles away from Las Vegas to a little town called Reno which also happened to be my dad’s hometown. We had just got word that our head Elder from the church in Reno was killed by someone texting and driving and we were moving to help carry the burden at the church. As someone who grew up in church as a Praise and Worship Leader, Personal Assistant and whatever else the church needed me to be, I was up for the challenge. I was devastated at the loss of our Elder because I loved how nice he was to me and my family, but I was looking forward to this new journey.

Not long after living in Reno, my parents told me that I had an opportunity to take a high-school equivalency exam that would allow me to bypass the high school program and go straight to college. The exam would last a total of 8 hours and consisted of 4 subjects, math, science, social studies and language arts. I would have 2 additional chances to retake each subject should I fail the first try and this would determine my level of intellect by generating what’s called a GPA. With excitement in my heart coupled with slight anxiety, I studied for the test diligently over the course of a year. I wasn’t sure whether or not I would pass and I realized that this was a pretty big deal, so I put the test off for awhile. About a month after I turned 15, I decided to put my knowledge to the test and go for it. I wound up passing every subject except for math (here we go again with this boring subject). I went through tutoring to study the math portion so that I could test again and get it right. I only needed a 73 or higher to pass the math portion and I had only gotten a 60 on my first exam. I wasn’t sure that I could make it through this portion and it made me so nervous that I almost quit. After about 3 months of studying and going to tutoring, my dad encouraged me to take the test again. I went out on a limb and in December of that year, I took the test again. This time I scored an 86. WOW! I was so proud of myself, shocked of course, but ultimately proud. I scored above and beyond my expectations and proved to myself that I could do anything I put my mind to.

A few months later I walked the stage and graduated. My mom threw a graduation party for me and two of my brothers because we were all graduating from something that year. We gathered some friends, family and fellow church members together for an intimate evening where we ate, laughed and made memories. I felt blessed and totally thrilled to have achieved this goal in my life. Now it was time to prepare for school. Since I didn’t officially walk the stage until May, I was scheduled to start college in August. Having a Summer birthday, I’d be starting college at the age of 16.

Overcoming my fear and facing math head on was empowering, but now came another difficult part, choosing how I actually wanted to attend college. I had two options; study online or go on campus. I had some decisions to make and boy did it take some time. I weighed all of the pros and cons of each choice and thought, maybe it was time to branch out and see what a traditional academic setting was like from a collegiate perspective. As a result, I decided to go on campus. I started attending a community college and quickly learned the flow of things. I was doing well in classes, building engagement with my Professors, learning my way around campus and enjoying everything the college had to offer like job fairs, club rally’s, carnivals and more. While everything seemed to be going well, I was having a hard time learning how to make friends at school. I would meet new people every single day, but the essential tool I was lacking was learning how to build meaningful relationships. My plan to make friends was off to a horrible start and I couldn’t quite figure out what to do.

One day I was sitting in the library on campus, browsing through my deserted Facebook page when it hit me! I’d heard about some different websites that allow you to connect with people you don’t know and become friends. At that time, Facebooks primary goal was to connect you to people you already know or people that you may have known that are also connected to the people you knew. It was sort of like a revolving door, so things could only be so interesting. I decided that my idea to branch out and explore these new sites was genius. After all, they were made for meeting new people online. I figured I could at least practice my conversational skills without the intimidation of someone calling me weird (to my face at least). Maybe this would give me the confidence I needed to build meaningful relationships with the people around me.

In my pursuit to learn how to make friends with the help of the internet, I searched around for a site that best fit my goal. There were some designed exclusively for dating, others that charged a monthly fee, some that simply had an unappealing web design and then others that just didn’t peak my