Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Confrontation

I have to confront a friend. I generally not afraid of confrontation, but I don't seek it out either. I prefer peace. I prefer drama free. But, unfortunately, my friend does not. Here is the situation, and let me be clear, I take my share of the blame here. Most of the time my mouth gets me into trouble. I tend to be fairly quick witted, and when it comes to a verbal sparring match, I have trouble backing down, a lot of trouble. So here is the story.
I carpool to work with 4 girls and 1 guy. We have all been friends for years, and usually it is so much fun. One of our carpool mates, the male, is very passive aggressive, and makes snotty little comments to us, and basically feels somewhat superior. We have all talked before about saying something to our friend about his attitude, and the others tend to talk about the problems when he is not around. I however, tend to be very black and white, and often say what I feel. Last Friday, he made a really snotty remark to me, and I was sitting in the back seat, and smarted off to him. (Not the best way to respond to him, not a good idea to embarrass him in front of other, so I totally own up to what I did wrong.) We got in little verbal scuffle, someone changed the subject and we moved on. He had not moved on. He is the coach of our kickball team and was snotty to me that night, I took it, did not say anything and let it go. Finally, on Sunday we all went to support a friend in her triathlon, and I was talking and telling a story, that someone overheard, and took offense to. (It was about running skirts. One of my good teacher friends is getting into shape and running and she is super girly, loves bows, sparkles, etc, and was telling me all about her running skirt she bought. I laughed told her she was a dork and it was a big joke. Well a girl in a running skirt heard the conversation and thought I was bashing her and she stared me down and then when she ran by me during the race, she shouted "Running in a skirt is awesome. So yea she was mad.) Anyways, I felt terrible for making someone mad, but she only heard a part of the convo and took offense. One of my most embarrassing moments.
My friend, laughed and said "O thats you in a nutshell, we can't take you anywhere." Then he went on and on about how much of an embarrassment I am. I have been mulling this over in my head and I just keep getting angry. We work at a Christian school, and I cannot hold on to this anger. I need to ask for his forgiveness for all of the times I have caused him to stumble. But, I also need to confront his attitude. I want to do it before the situation gets worse and erupts into something bigger than it should be. He is my brother in Christ, and this not the way the body is supposed to work. My goal is to speak with him tomorrow morning. I will let you know how it goes.
(As I read this I think to myself, stupid drama. UHHH)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

okay, but running skirts are a little over the top : )

Oh yes, the taming of the tongue is tough. I typically say things to my husband that I regret. We also abuse the " I was just kidding" line which in reality we were not.

I do HIGHLY commend you though for wanting to clear it up. Way big of you.

p.s. - thanks for you super duper nice words on my blog yesterday!

leanne said...

I pray that this went well for you today. Let us know.

And I agree, running skirts are silly! :)