Ugh! Not HER.

There is a woman that I have never met. My first thought was to say that there is a woman that I do not know. However, though I have not met this woman, I feel like I know her pretty well. I do not particularly like this woman. This woman is a friend of a friend of ours. We have been hearing about this woman for years, and this woman seems like a miserable, complaining, selfish, inconsiderate, negative, emotionally draining person (who wants to know why God hates her so much). I am not saying these things to be cruel. I am stating my impression. I am being honest. I am being real.

It seems strange that in the twelve-ish years that we have been friends with our friend, we have not met, or even seen a picture of the woman. However, her antics have caused us stress, inconvenience, heartache and hurt time and again.

Saturday morning, this woman happened to rear her head again. She did not do anything that affected us (this time), but she did pop up. As she was on my mind, I put a little bit of thought into her situation. Something made me suggest to our friend that she invite her friend to join us for church on Sunday. Ugh. I had gone this long without meeting the woman and really did not have the desire to meet her now. Why would I suggest that? Our friend said that she would not come and did not bother to ask.

I thought about it for a few minutes, spoke briefly with Richard, and decided that as much as I think that our friend's friend is a complete drain and a miserable person, if I am going to call myself a Christian, then I should act like one and reach out to this woman. Maybe she needs more examples of Christ in her life. I phoned our friend and chatted with her briefly. She gave me her friend's telephone number. Sigh. Deep breath. Exhale. Dial. Ringing. Ringing. Voicemail.

After I listened to the woman's voice and heard her saying, "God bless," at the end of her message (Huh?), I spoke. I told her that our friend had mentioned that she was not feel well and that my husband and I were talking about her and that we wanted to invite her and her husband to join us for church on Sunday. This Sunday would be a day when a group of us was going to church together, including our mutual friend. I kept talking and said that it would be great for her to attend and hear God's word, and maybe she would even hear something that would make her feel better. She could phone me back or phone our mutual friend. If we did not hear from her, then I hoped that she had a good weekend and felt better. End call.

Do I want to hear back from her? Eh. Do I want her to attend church with us? I can only anticipate the drama that that would bring. Do I want to reach out to her because she is hurting and because that is what Christ would do? (Twisting toe in the dirt.) Oookaay, yes.

Sometimes being a Christian is difficult because it is so much easier to be a human. However, at some point in our lives, we all need someone to reach out to us. None of us is any more important to Him than another. We need to remember that He loves each of us as His children, and we should be treating one another as Children of God. Can we do that? Though difficult at times, we certainly can do our best to love and respect one another...one person at a time, one situation at a time.