Slightly dramatic title, yes, I’m aware. I guess that’s just the mood I’m in.
Several years ago, 4 or 5 now, we started a Book Club at work. It started as a time to read the same book then discuss – and quickly morphed into group-therapy time. We read, eat, laugh, cry, and love one another, as best we can.
We each take a month and pick the book that the group must read. Some I’ve hated. Some I’ve loved. Some have changed my outlook on life, like this one…
Jan picked Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson some time ago. (In a notebook somewhere I have the month and year, I just don’t feel like looking for it right this second.) A passage from that book has stayed with me, since my very first read:
This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his) but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.
And here is where I feel like I fail, daily.
Just the same as everyone else on planet Earth, I’m in the middle of a couple of situations which are testing my ability to remain calm and Christ-like.
I can freely admit – before these past 2 years, I was a horrible listener. I heard what I wanted to hear, whenever I decided to actually listen. I was usually forming rebuttals in my head, or defending my pride which was usually falling down around me. And, since “hurt people hurt people” – the hurt I was receiving usually went in one ear and came out of my mouth in the form of a sword that cut my opponent to the core. I can cut you with my words and I know it.
The old me used to scream and cry and fight to be heard. Usually, when imploring those methods the very thing I was fighting for I chased away.
Neither of those are communication. They are a hot mess of a girl who was so hurt she couldn’t articulate it, and failed miserably when she tried.
This passage though was a seed that was sown. I began (even then) to see the argument and the opponent differently.
And now, when disagreements come (daily in my world) I do my best to not respond until a few things have been accomplished: 1. I hear their side, clear to the end 2. I put myself in their shoes and try to see what is causing their hurt which is causing their anger 3. I pray before I open my mouth. Now. That typically looks like me just sitting silently – which let me tell you is an act of God to begin with. In my silence I’m not shutting down or checking out – I’m praying. Praying that I hear the criticisms that I need to, that I can start to change whatever needs to be changed, and praying that I won’t use my tongue to cut you from the tip of your head to the bottoms of your toes.
There is one person in particular who is challenging every bit of Jesus in me for the moment. I don’t want to hurt them – and now I look at them and see their selfishness and anger as symptoms of a larger issue. And that doesn’t make me angry – it instead makes me ache for them. But in their pain and selfishness I still have trouble talking to them. So, when it gets to that point where I can’t be trusted to keep my mouth shut, I just don’t talk to them anymore. End the conversation. It’s not safe for either of us if I don’t. In time though, I’m hoping to get to that place where I can live out that paragraph – where when they think back on this discussion they will see Jesus – not me – no matter how riled they get me.
For now, I’m failing. Miserably. I leave tiny little failure footprints all over the various discussions we have.
But, I’m trying my absolute hardest; and hopefully all that trying will one day add up to an ability.
PS: I have the sweetest kitten (Shem) sitting on my lap, who is now laying across the keyboard. Berkley and I say ‘thank you and good night’. sssssdddfffg (that was from him!)
