They Did Not Become this Way Overnight

They Did Not Become this Way Overnight

This is a little different, but today I felt I should tell a story and what I learned in the moment. I still need to remind myself of it, even today, but it was a valuable lesson for me.

I have worked many jobs in the past. It took me many years to realise that God had set in my heart a job such as what I am doing now. One of my previous jobs was a postal worker.

I would start at 6.30 in the morning, sort out the letters and small parcels for my run of around 1,000 delivery points, and jump on the motorbike to deliver. In Australia, small motorbikes (postie bikes) were the normal way that postal workers would deliver mail, until only recently.

As I was sorting my run out, one morning, I could hear a robust conversation among my colleagues about one of our fellow posties, I will call her Jennifer. (Not her real name.)

Jennifer was a hard woman. Not hateful, just very negative and very hard to please. If you were within earshot of her you would hear the day’s diatribe on who had wronged her on that particular day, what had happened to her car the night before, and even stories about how terrible her cat was. She focused heavily on the negative things in her life and it strongly affected how she saw herself, and how others saw her too. She was often abrasive and the office seemed to be affected dramatically by an atmosphere of negativity around her.

What was interesting… Jennifer didn’t seem mean, just very honest. Her negative focus clearly filtered what she saw in life and she was very open about sharing it with whoever was around her.

When I was hearing the conversation about Jennifer, something came to me and I jumped into the conversation with one line that shifted the tone dramatically.

‘You know, Jennifer didn’t become Jennifer overnight.’

Everyone stopped, and nodded, and carried on the conversation in a much different way.

Even those who disliked her acknowledged that she had a pretty hard life. She was in her 50s, on her third marriage – her first two ended up in heartbreak. A bad relationship with her kids, and she had a hard childhood too. She had a long time of hard luck and she saw herself as something that attracted it. Hardship had layered upon hardship so much that she embodied the negativity, and many people found it hard to like her. I instantly saw the moment when people stopped looking at the negativity and saw her as a person – the atmosphere changed… at least for a while.

I can’t say that I left that job as close friends with Jennifer… She was quite guarded and hard to befriend. We were always quite amicable – and on more than one occasion we had some good chats about perspective and negativity.

While I couldn’t bring much change in her life in the short time that I worked with her, I did see a change in my own life. It’s easy to dismiss a negative person as hard to be with, and not count them worthy of our time or effort. When I valued her and empathised with her journey, I found myself acting on the value I saw in her life.

I’m not saying that we should all try to be good friends with every hard person we meet – there are plenty of verses that actually warn against befriending angry people. I am also not saying that we are to be subject to abuse ourselves, or need to agree with everything they say about us, themselves, or even their worldview. But, everyone has value: we are all sons and daughters of God. If we take a moment to see their value, and not just their abrasive exterior, we can find ourselves giving them the respect due to them.

Perhaps we can help people find their value again. Christ is the greatest healer – not just of physical or spiritual trauma, but He can also bring healing to emotional trauma too.

I encourage you to think of the abrasive people around you and consider the ways their life has been impacted by pain and grief. I’m sure we have all met a ‘Jennifer’, although I am not sure I’ve always been as diligent as I could have been in humanising them through their pain.

Also, do you find yourself being abrasive more than you would like to admit? Are there things in your own life that you carry with you – that make you angry? Find someone who loves God that can speak with you. Even consider seeing someone professionally… Some scars don’t heal on their own.

I hope that encourages you today.