I couldn’t hear your compassionate concern for my well-being over the sound of your judging.
Perhaps I would spend time with my church “friends” if they ever invited me anywhere. And maybe you should actually ask around before you go making judgement calls like that, so you can find I that I do spend time with church people, they just don’t happen to be you. Or the other people I apparently “should” be hanging out with, since I can tell this is something that’s been discussed.
Perhaps you should think about the fact that maybe I hang out with “others” because they accept and love me for who I am, eccentricities and all. Maybe I get sick of being labelled as the weird one. Maybe I get tired of having my clothing criticized. Or maybe I’m just sick of you and your quiet, understated, but nonetheless very, very obvious need to be a diva.
As for the assumption that the people I’m hanging out with outside of church are something bad or less, all I can is that our young people, you included, could seriously use a lesson in love and understanding from my Tuesday Night group. And that my knitting and bad movies groups show greater acceptance for me as a person that you ever have.
Fortunately, you are not representative of everyone in our church. I’m very glad to say that I have several wonderful, loving friends in our local congregation, and even more in the other branches. It’s sad that I feel like I have to look outside of home, whether that be to people in other groups here in town, or people in our church in other cities, and maybe you should think about that before saying anything about how bad it is that I have so many friends outside of church.
If your the kind of “friend” I have to look forward to by sticking only to this circle, is it any wonder I’m looking elsewhere?
