What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
I grew a lot the day I realised I had been scammed. I was older when I bought an apartment as an investment, and I trusted advice that seemed sensible at the time. A friend had recommended a financial adviser, and he showed me a number of off-the-plan properties, some in Sydney and some overseas. He advised against Sydney, saying the market was overpriced, and I accepted that reasoning. It seemed prudent then. In hindsight, it was a foolish decision, though not because I was reckless. The whole arrangement was built on deception. The adviser had been misled as well.
What unfolded was devastating, not only for me but for many others. People lost farms, livelihoods, and years of hard-earned security. At least one person took their own life. Others died of stress-related illnesses brought on by the situation. The shame was immense, and so was the helplessness.
What made it worse was that every avenue that seemed likely to bring justice slowly closed. Banks protected themselves. Lawyers were more oppressive than helpful. Governments appeared to side with the powerful rather than the harmed. The fraud squad showed interest and then went quiet. Newspapers had no interest because it was irrelevant to their readership. For a while, a class action offered some hope, but in the end there was no funding and no real path forward. I had no choice but to cut my losses, sell the apartment, lose two-thirds of its value, and begin again.
But the deepest growth in me came in what followed. I was faced with a choice about the kind of person I would become. I could let bitterness take root. I could live in anger. I could give myself over to revenge, and there were moments when that temptation was stronger than I would have liked to admit. I had some of the darkest thoughts of my life in that season. Yet somewhere in the middle of it, I went back to my roots. I remembered that Jesus speaks of another way — loving enemies, turning the other cheek, refusing to let evil have the final word. That did not make the loss smaller or the injustice less real, but it stopped those things from defining me. I chose generosity rather than bitterness. I chose trust rather than anxiety. That choice has shaped me ever since. It changed not only how I carried that loss, but how I move through the world, how I hold pain, and how I treat other people.
The Afterword 
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