Forgiveness May Be Part of God's Grace...

... but I wonder how God-like her friends, family and fiancee will be. After a five day nationwide manhunt, Jennifer Wilbanks has turned up alive and well in New Mexico. That's the good news. She apparently ran away because she didn't want to go through with her wedding, scheduled for today.

How incredibly selfish and narcissistic. The act of running away would be understandable. The act of staying hidden while your face is plastered all over the national news and your family and friends are worried sick about you, fearing for your life is dispicable.

Is this simply a case of a person who was simply overwhelmed by stress and made a snap decision that ran out of control? Let's see: she left her keys, wallet, and ID at home, but somehow had a ticket and obtained boarding to a plane. I would think that one of the first thing the police did was to check the passenger lists at nearby airports for her name, and her name obviously didn't pop up. So, did she use a fake ID and buy a ticket under an assumed name? She cut her hair short sometime between the time she left "for a jog" and the time that she came out of hiding in New Mexico. When she finally gave up the jig and called home, she fabricated a story about being kidnapped.

A quote from a news conference given by her uncle sums the situation up pretty well: "Apparently Jennifer had some issues that her family was not aware of."

I feel so very, very bad for the fiancee in this case. The poor man was made a murder suspect and now has his personal heartbreak splashed all over the cable news networks. Imagine how he must feel. On Friday night, he gets a call from his missing fiancee-- who he was so worried about that he had not been able to sleep in days-- telling him that she's alive! She's okay! He must have been ecstatic, delirious with joy at her safe return, especially when the common wisdom would have led him to believe that she was most likely dead. By Saturday morning, he learns that it's all a lie, that she ran away, plunging her family and friends into the hell of thinking that something horrible had happened to her and making him the subject of speculation that he was the new Scott Peterson, just because she didn't think she could marry him.

As of right now, the police are saying that they do not intend to press criminal charges. I think this is wrong. At the very least, she should be charged with filing a false police report (in connection with the kidnapping story). Not only did the police in the area she lived waste manpower and money searching for her, but she has done irreparable damage to the public willingness to take missing adult cases seriously. It's not much of a stretch of the imagination to think that the next time the police are pleading for the public to look for a missing woman, people will simply shrug their collective shoulders and say "Well, she probably ran away."

I wonder if she really thought that she could just pop up with a story about being kidnapped and go through with the wedding as though nothing happened. I mean, why else did she choose to call her fiancee first? Why did she choose to resurface the morning of her wedding? The thing is, if she had simply said to him, "I need some time to think, I'm nervous about getting married", then there's every possibility that they might have been able to work out whatever was the underlying cause of her fear. Can you imagine how hard it would be to rebuild the trust necessary to repair their relationship after this debacle?

I can hear the voices now: "You should be more understanding. She was under immense pressure. How could she have called off a wedding with 600 guests? And I say, how much worse is this? What about the people among those 600 guests who flew in from out of town, paying for plane tickets and hotel rooms? I would be very angry at her for doing this. Better to have given them the chance to cancel reservations and vacation days from work and get as much money back as possible. Those non-refundable deposits for hall, caterers, flowers, etc? Still cheaper than a divorce and the lost trust of your friends and family. Worried about being embarrassed in front of your friends and family? Ummmm... well, I think you've increased that factor by a magnitude, and I can guarantee you that people will be talking about this far longer than they would have talked about you changing your mind before the wedding.

I must say that I love the pastor from their church. His news conference was gentle and exuded love, even for Jennifer, while still maintaining a great deal of respect for the jilted fiancee. He kept the focus on the positive aspects of the situation, yet acknowledged the pain that the people involved are going through. A far better man than I. I know it's not really funny, but I was a little tickled that he started his briefing out by saying "The wedding tonight is cancelled, if y'all could help get the word out", to the national media.