Think of one person in your life who drives you absolutely crazy. That person who makes your life so difficult, but for some reason they have to be present in your life. It is likely that you immediately thought of that person and maybe felt a twinge of irritation and anxiety just at the thought of them.
I’m right there with you. I have one person who is constantly wreaking havoc on my life. It is relentless at times. I could easily sit down and commiserate with anyone about my challenges in dealing with this particular individual. Recently, I have been challenging myself to think about this person differently. Sure, the facts are the facts. This person does something almost daily that is shocking and could only be classified as some sort of a nightmare to deal with. Trust me, when sharing the details with family and friends, most are appalled at what I am dealing with on a regular basis. However, I don’t think that commiserating and complaining does anything to help the situation. If anything it only leaves me feeling frustrated and hopeless.
I have recently started thinking of this person or really this type of person as an opportunity in my life. Bear with me here, because I know this sounds very Pollyanna of me. I heard someone refer to difficult people in our lives as “grace growers”. They are the people that challenge us in every possible way, especially our grace. These people are so awful at times that we could justify any judgement or righteous indignation toward them. I mean, come on! The things they do are horrible according to pretty much anyone’s standard! I could easily go out and find a large group of people to join me in disgust and hatred toward my particular grace grower. But when you think about it, whether justified or not, does disgust, hatred or judgment ever really lead to anything positive? Meeting a negative with a negative only creates more negativity. Trust me when I say that from my experience, more negativity is NOT a good thing for anyone. Negativity is the easy reaction. It’s natural and feels justified. It isn’t really a challenge to complain about something (or someone) difficult. The challenge lies in being able to show grace when confronted with a difficult person or circumstance, especially when you are dealing with a person who is present in your daily life.
Grace isn’t always an easy concept to grasp, but I think about it this way – meeting a negative with a positive. It could be a positive action, word, thought or attitude. This is not at all easy. When we think about it, we are only then ever challenged by goodness in life. Your grace grower then becomes an opportunity for you to practice goodness. If you begin to challenge yourself to meet the difficulty with more goodness, then all of the sudden the focus is no longer on the negativity. You are able to grow in grace and your grace grower loses power in your life. It is a brilliant way to deal with these people.
How do you start? I know some of the grace growers people face are extremely difficult. Negativity is rampant in our world. People are damaged and broken. I find that shifting the way that I think about the person and describe the person is the first step. I started by identifying the difficult person in my life as a grace grower. Just using the term “grace grower” helped to shift my thinking to a new level, especially when they were being particularly delightful to deal with. Then I started to pay more attention to how I described my circumstances with this person to others. Sure, venting can be nice. It can feel validating to have someone agree with you about just how horrible that person is. But have you ever noticed how venting often fuels those feelings of anger, frustration, judgement and disgust? It really won’t push you into a positive place of thinking. So I tried to catch myself venting and change the way that I talk about the person. This is still a work in progress for me. I have to practice on a regular basis, since I am a particularly emotional person and venting comes very naturally to me. I have also started blessing my grace grower by praying blessings for them each time I pass their home. Again, this is not easy as I often don’t feel like wishing this person well, especially after they have done something to make my life difficult.
I am a work in progress. I just know that I want more positive and less negative in my life. I don’t want to give anyone permission to bring negativity into my life. While I can’t control what other people do, think or say, I can control my thoughts and actions. And that choice will determine whether I am increasing the good in my life. I want to choose goodness!