Dagnammit!!! I fell for it, again! This is just another case of those Canadian/Alaskan/can't remember "teenage girls" who were so on fire for Christ and wise for their ages. Why do I trust anyone?
For anyone beating themselves up over "getting duped", and maybe several times... I can totally relate and thought this might help.
People often tell me I'm too trusting and naive. I had a co-worker who grew up in the Bronx, and would say things like, "Kim, you just live in your own little Care Bear world," and she didn't mean it in a nice way. I certainly don't want to be ignorant, but every time I try to "keep my guard up" or "question everything", it all just falls to pieces. For better or worse, that's not who God made me to be. I'm colder than I used to be
but I still fall prey to this more often than I'd like.
Several years ago, I knew someone who had something happen in their life but told everyone (including me) Story X when actually, Situation Y had occurred. I believed Story X because that's all they told me, and I thought we were close enough that if something else had happened, they would tell me. I was wrong.
When it eventually DID come to light, I was very distraught and told God, "Why am I ALWAYS the last to know? Or should I have just known better?"
I believe God explained to me that sometimes HE PURPOSELY KEEPS US IN THE DARK because I was taught (I don't have the passage, if anyone else does or wants to correct me, please feel free) that God holds us accountable for WHAT WE KNOW. In other words, if I would have known the TRUTH (Situation Y vs. false Story X), God may have had to hold ME responsible as the person to confront the person and it would have been a very ugly situation. But because I DID NOT KNOW, God could not hold me responsible for something I was not aware of. At the time, I was crushed. After the fact, I was grateful.
Don't always feel so badly if you fall for someone's story. It means you have an extraordinarily compassionate heart and God will sure see and honor that. And, He may be sparing you from the burden of having to confront and clean up a circumstance you'd look back on and WISH you would have never known about.