The GirlAlive Blog

I've been thinking about cowards lately.  As a Christian I'm supposed to forgive, but that's the thing I struggle the most with forgiving.  I really don't like cowards.

It's a specific kind of cowards that I hate.  There's a kind of grudge that I carry which is a grudge that always says, "I gave you every chance to tell me the truth and you were too cowardly to just say what you think."  Let me give you some examples.

My first boyfriend was named Jason.  (In my life, a lot of assholes have been named Jason, but that's another story.)  We knew each other on the internet before we met in person.  I had plans to take a trip to The South to visit him, but in the month or so before my trip, he was acting distant and weird.  I asked him over the phone several times, "Should I still bother to visit you?"  He insisted nothing was wrong, and then dumped me the minute I got home from visiting him.  What an asshole move!  Make me spend time and money on you because you didn't have the balls to just say, "I'm not interested" earlier.  

I was in film school studying documentary film for a short time.  I needed to shoot footage of a friend of mine for a student film.  I emailed and asked this friend if I could go to a meeting he'd be leading to shoot some filler footage.  He never responded.  I was on a deadline.  My partner and I went to the meeting and shot our footage.  We were there half an hour before the meeting setting up cameras.  We shot for about fifteen minutes and then left.  The next day I got an email from this "friend" saying that he hadn't wanted me to shoot footage there.  In my mind, I scream.  Didn't I ask you if it was okay?  Why didn't you say "no" then?  Didn't you see me setting up cameras?  Why didn't you tell me not to shoot footage then?  I gave him every opportunity to refuse permission, but he was too spineless to just say, "I don't think that would be a good idea," and consequently wasted my time and my film partner's time and left us with a pile of footage we couldn't use.

At one of m previous jobs, I said something stupid that hurt someone's feelings at work.  Rather than coming to me like an adult to tell me that she was hurt, she had one of the other people in the office file a grievance against me.  So rather than being able to simply apologize and tell her that what I said was stupid and I was sorry, I had to go through a disciplinary hearing with a bunch of managers, which ended with me quitting my job because I couldn't stand the thought of working with any of them ever again.  This co-worker didn't have the figurative balls to say what she thought to my face, and ran to tell her mommy instead.  I am still sorry for what I originally said, but after reading the "witness" statements from my other co-workers, I have no respect for any of them anymore.  Given a choice between an uncomfortable conversation with me or using buerocracy to stab me in the back, they chose the latter option.  It was a coward's choice.

I'm working on learning to forgive cowards.  But I think it's easier to forgive when it's a sin you understand.  I just don't understand the unwillingness to have an honest conversation.  I've had friendships broken over yelling matches, but I don't have nearly as much venom for those I've argued with as I do for those who were unwilling to argue.

Alana