Love Your Troll

And Jesus said ‘Love your friends as much as they love you, but feel free to ignore people who it’s hard to love’.  NotMatthew 22:39

I still I can’t get over my judgement of her. I try to like her and find nothing likeable. I take an interest in her work and find it both tiresomely dull and unreciprocated. Then I feel guilty for judging her lack of social skills. Why should she reciprocate and be feign interest in my life in order for me to like her? I see her plodding slowly down the corridor and remember how much I think she looks like a troll. I feel guilty again for my nasty comparison. I realise the pace she’s walking and the direction she’s heading, and the way she’s blocking the corridor means I’ll have to walk with her and talk, and my heart sinks. And I feel guilty again for basing my actions towards her on my boredom with her. So I small talk and get bored, and wish Jesus had told me to love 98% of my neighbours but with permission to occasionally scorn and avoid the boring, ugly people.

Then there’s that nagging hanging feeling when I remember that I still haven’t forgiven the unintentional pain she caused me. The fact it should be easy to forgive her is actually making it harder to forgive her. Come on! Some part of me shouts at myself. South Africans find it in themselves to forgive their apartheid oppressors. Holocaust concentration camp survivors forgive their guards. Didn’t you read once about a missionary whose husband was eaten by cannibals, and she forgave the cannibals and took the gospel to them, even ended up working alongside them?  If they can forgive, what on earth is your problem? She didn’t mean to cause offense and doesn’t know she did. Her words hurt you because you were fragile, not because there was something wrong with them. Why can’t I move past?

I keep trying to act as if I’ve forgiven (she’ll never have a clue I was hurt) and keep small-talking and being kind, as if I’m a nice person and a loving neighbour. But I know it’s an act and a struggle, a boring chore. I hope one day my heart will catch up with my actions.