How people interact with each other in everyday life has always been of interest to me.  I always felt like a nerd as a kid, because I didn’t seem to fit in any particular niche.  I didn’t care to fit into any niche.  I was a nice kid, kind of a tom boy, but non-competitive.  I mean, take the game of Life for example.  When we played that as kids, it really didn’t matter to me if I won or lost.  Playing the game, goofing off and joking around was the fun part.  You know what I mean? … like when you get too many kid pegs to fit in your car… that was always funny. 

I also have never understood people who make fun of others. I think it comes back to that competition thing.  People who make fun of others are hoping to gain something.  I just didn’t get it and I didn’t do it.  But I was the butt of it a few times.  I was horribly skinny when I was a kid.  Back then we never heard of anorexia, not that I was.  But,  I got called “scarecrow”.  I also got made fun of because my mother didn’t believe in the latest fashions.  She sewed my clothing, or provided hand-me-downs.  It never occurred to me to make fun of others.  I didn’t get the point, or maybe I understood what it meant to be the butt of people’s jokes.  In any case, even when I got my act together in high school, and the jokes subsided, even when I started to become popular, I didn’t get the making fun of others.

I also have never understood people that use deceptive methods to get ahead. 

I once had this friend that I worked with.  I considered her a close friend.  She was the kind of friend that you sit out in front of the house and talk til 1:00 AM.  When the company hired a new CFO, everything about her changed.  She was on that man like white on rice.  She was married, he was married, they ended up having an affair, they both divorced… I don’t know where they are today… whether they stayed together or not.  But throughout the entire affair, I was completely out in the left field.  I defended her, because I could not believe she would stoop so low.  In the end, I blew the whistle on the both of them… I was the H.R. manager!  Ha… ha ha ha!  Talk about naïve!  And what a mess it caused at the office.

So I have a tendency to be naïve… or I used to.

I got burned at the stake by someone from church.  I was, you know, doing something I truly believe in, to the point where I was oblivious to the machinations of others around me. 

This was a person I stuck up for when others were against him. For five years I helped him to be a winner at his position in the church, and in the end, he brought me down.  The funny thing … not funny ha ha… funny strange… is that others saw it happening, but because of their position on staff could not tell me.  I was flummoxed by the whole situation.  I didn’t understand what was going on. 

In the end, when the truth finally came out, it turned out to be petty jealousy and conceit that caused me to lose a part of my life and a ministry to my church that meant so much to me. 

I never understood before this why people turn away from the church.  I didn’t understand how they could be so hurt by a person as to turn away from God.  And then it happened to me. 

I can’t exactly say I “left” church.  The macabre thing is that I WORK in another church 40 hours a week!  But I don’t attend my church, or any others for that matter. 

The person who hurt me so much is now gone… pasturing a church in the vicinity now that he has finished seminary… off to hurt someone else, which I discovered after talking to people, he was oh so good at. 

I want to think at this time of the year that I am past this, since it happened almost three years ago.  You know, it is advent and all that rot.  In fact, I went back to my church last Sunday for the worship service.  Figures the message was on forgiveness, right?  I don’t know how to forgive that man for doing to me what he did.  I don’t know if I ever will.  I’m not sure if that is entirely wrong.

In the end, I suppose I have to realize that if I expect others to forgive me, I have to forgive as well.  It’s just kind of hard to do when you can still smell the smoke coming off your hind end.