meet my ugly.
my youngest brother has been dating this girl named tabitha since last summer. last summer, ben was doing some thinking. he was realizing that he needed to stop drinking as much as he had been and he made the observation that most of his drinking was done with our cousin tony when he visited him in brainerd. ben told me about a conversation he had with tony in which ben said, 'i'm going to get a girlfriend. i just wanted you to know that so you knew why i wasn't coming up as much.' now ben didn't have someone in particular that he was going to start dating, he just figured it would be a way to keep him from going up north so often. there was a girl who attended his church named annie and ben had a little thing for her. he hemmed and hawed about asking her out, since she goes to school out of state and would be leaving at the end of the summer. also, ben was feeling a little like she was out of his league. we had a few conversations about annie (this was back when my brother was also one of my closest friends) and then one day, he mentioned tabitha. she is the stepdaughter of one of his coworkers and had met her one saturday. she lives at home and worked at a gas station. she wasn't really going anywhere. she was very, very convenient. we talked a bit about her and i asked him if she was a christian. he thought probably not, but he wasn't sure. we talked through some pros and cons of both girls and when the conversation ended, it really sounded like he was going to ask annie out.he didn't. and, as already mentioned, he asked tabitha out. who my brother became after that, i don't like. his world got really small, with his comfort being top priority. and he doesn't laugh. it's so rare these days. and, i lost my friend. i never see him anymore.
because i don't like who he became when he started dating tabitha, it's natural that i don't like him dating her. i sat him down a while back and let him know how i felt. i did it because i care about him. i knew he would get mad at me. i knew i risked losing his friendship for good. but i love him so much, and i don't like to see him convinced that he's not settling.
last sunday, he says to me, in the middle of joe & kristi's livingroom before dinner, 'oh, by the way, i got engaged last night.'
in my head, i asked, 'are you an idiot?' my mouth said something different, something fake.
sunday night, i was so angry about the situation, for various reasons, that i couldn't sleep. i thought, i need to give this over to God. and then i thought, but i don't want to ever be okay with this. and then i started to pray. but i stopped because i realized i was about to pray that i would come to like her and the situation. and i don't want to like her. so i didn't pray.
meet my ugly.
posted by julie @ 10:38 AM
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