Grudges, Part I: The story

Bob was a handsome religion major who played the guitar. Nellie was an outgoing nursing student who sang beautifully and gave decent haircuts to her friends. They'd both been hired to work at the same summer camp, when she took a shine to him. Nellie prayed about it, watched for indications that her feelings were returned, and thought she spotted signs of Bob's interest in her. She'd already signed up to spend a the next school year working at a Christian school in the Pacific Islands, but that didn't deter her with Bob. Nellie had read books about true love discovered through letter-writing, and it seemed terribly romantic to correspond across the miles. She'd it all worked out, day-dreamed about how it might go, and wasn't concerned about the dampening effect of an ocean between them in the next year.

Nellie's girlfriends, of course, knew about her crush on Bob. Several of them were praying for Nellie, hoping to watch her dreams come true, and were checking in with her regularly. "How's it going?" they'd ask, and Nellie would relate the latest interaction with Bob, down to the nuances of his indications of interest. He had a way of looking at Nellie with a twinkle in his eye and a million-dollar smile. Hooh boy! It was like she could think of nothing else in that moment.

Summer camp dynamics being what they are, the college students became a close-knit group as they worked, prayed and played together throughout that summer. Nellie got to cross paths with Bob many times a day. He got Nellie to do his haircuts during the summer, and they made music together. Nellie invited Bob to go berry picking with her and several of her friends on her day off, and that was fun, too. They sang together for programs in the evenings.

And as the summer ended, Bob asked for one more haircut before camp was over and they went their separate ways. 

"Now's the time," Nellie thought. "He's going to say something about liking me, and about keeping in touch while I'm in the islands." But as she set up the chair on the sidewalk of the camp administration building and pulled out her hair-cutting scissors, other camp workers started gathering around to watch the haircut. There was no opportunity for a heart-to-heart. Then, suddenly, the summer was over and Nellie found herself at home packing for year overseas.

Nellie's first two weeks on the island, she cried daily from homesickness. And she cried several times more over the rest of the first month. There was only one other American working in the island school, a girl who had come from another college across the country. Nellie was culture shocked and lonely. It felt like she had fallen into a hole. Whenever the mail plane flew in she hung around the mailboxes to pick up her letters from home. But there was never anything from Bob, not even a note on the aerogrammes that the missions office sent, full of notes from her college friends. Not a word.

One day, about two months in, Nellie's sister called her long distance. "I think maybe you should hear this from me rather than some other way," she said. "Bob is dating Amy." 

It was like a punch in Nellie's gut. Amy had dropped in to chat with Nellie during the spring term at college, and then all through the summer, asking how it was going with Bob and saying she was praying for them. Just a few years younger than Nellie, Amy was a sweet, earnest-faced friend. Except not so sweet, apparently. Nellie realized Amy's interest had been for herself. As Nellie's sister told the story, Nellie concluded that Amy had moved right in on Bob the minute she was out of the picture. She felt deeply betrayed. She felt angry. Bitterness quickly set in. By the time Nellie returned to the United States the next summer, Bob and Amy were engaged to be married at Christmas.

Nellie returned to college the following fall term nursing a bucketload of anger and some dread. Bob and Amy couldn't miss observing the fact that Nellie had built up a simmering grudge of epic proportions. She avoided them on the sidewalks and in the halls at college. Her roommate--whose fiancé was a classmate of Bob's--got an earful of bitterness in Nellie's tale about how Amy had solicited her trust and invited her to open up about her hopes, and then turned around and used that to her advantage. This was the issue, Nellie told her new roommate: not that Amy had won his heart, but that she had taken advantage of Nellie's confidence as she built her hopes for her own love story with Bob.

After graduation Nellie moved to another city for graduate school, and--oh, horrors--it just so happened that Bob and Amy lived in that area and attended her church. Nellie would cross paths with them at church. The grudge still sat cold and hard in her stomach, and her greeting to them was chilly, barely civil. There was not enough room in the church for all three of them, Nellie concluded.

***

The Oxford Dictionary defines a grudge as "a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury." The Oxford gurus should have added, "which divides people unnecessarily for long periods of time, hurts the one who cherishes it, and helps accomplish nothing."

(to be continued)