by Angela Moreno

About two or three times a week, I have to be around someone who is rather unpleasant. To keep the story easier to read, I’ll call this woman Lisa. Lisa has made a few of my days miserable not to mention a few of friends’ day miserable. Usually I just try to avoid her, but avoidance is not easy and isn’t always possible.

To give you an example of Lisa’s nastiness, one of my friends told her that we needed to save some labels to use later. Lisa stood right in front of my friend, looked at her, ripped up the labels, and threw them in the trash. Pretty much any encounter you have with Lisa will be an unpleasant experience.

Today, she and I were in a situation where a third person, a woman, had unreasonable expectations and was pretty rude about her expectations. We did our best to make this person happy without success. After the woman left, I tried to smooth over the situation with Lisa. I told Lisa that maybe the woman was just having a bad day. Lisa said she didn’t take it personally and one of her devotionals had taught her not to react to others in an emotional state.

We started a discussion about how our reactions can affect others. I remembered an episode of “Touched by an Angel” I had watched a really long time ago that had affected my perspective on reactions. In the episode, Monica who was an angel of God had a bad encounter with another person. Because of this encounter, she was rude to a man who got in her way. She went about her day when another angel Tess confronted her. Tess told Monica that God wanted her to know what her reaction had caused.

Monica’s rudeness to the man who got in her way caused the man to be rude to the hostess at the restaurant he was eating at. The hostess was then rude to a server who asked her a question. Then the server was rude to her customer. What the server didn’t know was that her customer’s husband had passed away and the woman was very distraught. She was celebrating her anniversary alone in remembrance of her husband. The customer was already on the edge and this encounter caused the customer to decide jumping off a bridge was the answer to her loneliness.

This is where my day took an amazing turn and I saw the hand of God at work. Why would I magically remember this story 10 to 15 years after I watched this television show?

Lisa’s reaction was why I remembered the story. Lisa looked right at me and said, “I understand being suicidal. I’ve been having a very tough time lately. I understand all too well feeling like that.”

Everything was so clear to me. I thanked God for this revelation and I told Lisa that I understood feeling like things are too hard, but she has to remember to keep looking up to God and leaning on Him even when things look really bad. I shared Philippians 4:13 with her:  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

When we are weak, God’s strength is there to pick us up. I let her know that there were many mornings where I told God that I would need to rely on His strength to get through the day. God has never failed me and I made it through every day that I’ve ever asked for His help, usually the day went pretty smooth.

Something changed in Lisa. She actually smiled at me and her demeanor changed completely. For the remainder of the day, she was pleasant and helpful. We actually spoke to each other throughout the day.

Something changed in me too. I saw how much she was hurting and lashing out at others was a defense mechanism for her. I learned not to judge her as harshly as I had and that avoiding her was not the answer. She just needed someone to understand what she was going through. Lisa needed me to react in love not in hurt and anger at her behavior.

I learned a valuable lesson. It’s human for us to avoid uncomfortable situations. We are acting in the flesh. As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the spirit not in the flesh. So next time you have to deal with someone who may be unpleasant, live in the spirit. You may not find out exactly what the problem is, but you need to be open to helping that person instead of just avoiding the situation.

We may perceive that we are supposed to fix the problem, but God is not asking us to fix what He already has under control. God just asks for us to be an open door that He can use to walk into that person’s situation so He can intervene.

Let God use you to help someone who is in need. Remember that you were born to be a channel for God to use to intervene on this earth. You are special to Him as is every person on this earth.