"Love Thy Enemy" (Mt 5:44) (Ann)

Middle school girls can have lots of “enemies” among classmates as cliques form and the “in crowd” starts to materialize, especially during 7th grade. My middle school experience was no different. There was one girl in particular who led a very large clique and was often very mean to me. I could not stand this girl and absolutely seethed over the way that she treated me. I thought that she was the most heartless person that I had ever met. I couldn’t have been happier when the school year ended and I didn’t have to see her every day in school.

A week after the school year ended, a family friend/former neighbor passed away and I found myself starting my summer vacation piled in a hot car with my siblings and parents on the way to the funeral. I was not thrilled at all about this start to my vacation. As I sat in the church thinking about all of the better things that I could be doing with the start of my vacation, I watched the very girl that had made my school year so miserable walk in with her family. I had no idea that our family friend happened to be her aunt. I watched her and her family cry during the Mass and realized that the person who I thought was so heartless was in fact vulnerable and just as human as I am. I felt that in that moment that I saw a glimpse of what God sees in so many people that we can often view as heartless. If we believe that everyone is made in His image and likeness, then no matter how heartless they may seem, that light is always inside of them.

After the funeral was over, there was a small reception at a nearby restaurant banquet room. I approached the girl and her family and told them how sorry I was for their loss. The girl then apologized for how she had treated me during the school year. She told me that her family had been grappling with her aunt’s illness and slow decline in health over the past year which had been very emotionally taxing for the family and had caused a lot of tension. It was a beautiful holy moment of forgiveness and one that made the following school years’ experience much different.