objective thinking, part3?

Romans 12:20 says, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Verse 19 is about not taking revenge when it is perfectly justified. This verse says to take it one step farther and do good back. I'm not sure if the 'burning coals' indicates the guilt the 'enemy' would feel or something more eternally damning.

The reason I quote this verse is this. In today's mail I got a small card from Renee who has more right to be furious with me than anyone in this mess. Inside were two free-ride passes for the city bus and this handwritten note:

"Somehow these free passes appeared on my desk, and I immediately thought of you. Hope you can use them to take the bus, then you could use that money for something more fun. I was blessed by your attitude the other night. God bless you, Renee. P.S. I've been praying for you."

First off, even if she did think of me first, she didn't have to send them to me. I figured she'd never want any contact with me for at least the duration of the 'making space' period and then some. But then, I don't have a "do good to your enemies" attitude. As for my attitude the other night (the meeting on Sunday) she probably means she's glad that I didn't sulk and whine about being nudged out of Messengers 'for the good of the group', or get angry and start yelling and trying to assign blame. Yeah I'm upset. It was the only social contact I have/had outside of church proper. But it did save me from the awkward situation of trying to explain that noway was I going to the Philippines.

My point is that Renee did send me the free passes even after everything I did. I still haven't apologized to her. I don't deserve to know these people, to have them call themselves my friends. That's part of the reason I stayed so distant in the first place, figuring that if they really got to know me they wouldn't want to be around me.

Lotis asked something like that, why I would think they wouldn't want to hang around me. I told her, "You don't know me." She said she didn't have to know me to see me as a valuable human being. However, she also told me that for the first few years she knew me she thought I was retarded because I barely spoke when she tried to talk to me. Then later after she'd had a real conversation with me and realized I am intelligent, it changed her opinion of me. So isn't it then a justifiable fear on my part that they would think less of me because of who I really am underneath my public face? I guess I should have let them make that decision for themselves instead of assuming. But that's me, not even 'Hope for the best', just 'Assume the worst'.