The Dreaded Phone Call

The phone rang. I prayed it wouldn’t be her. Recently every conversation with her had been so difficult. I just wasn’t ready for her again. Whew, it wasn’t her. I relaxed.

For many years I had struggled with the phrase “love your enemies.” Well, I had one now, and it was very difficult to love her. Everything I did wasn’t good enough. She was suspicious of all of my work. She told others nasty things about me. On top of that, I sat in terror imagining all the other things that she might be doing against me.

As often happens in my life, a thought struck me. Through my fear of her, she was controlling me. I was spending countless hours worrying about something I couldn’t control. I was wasting a lot of energy on her thinking negative thoughts, instead of using that same energy doing something positive in my life. I could not be responsible for her actions, but I could be responsible for mine.

Did I want her to have this control over me? Absolutely not! Then what could I do? Hating her would do nothing. As I said, it would only be using energy in a negative way. Then what could I do, ignore her? That wasn’t possible. In my day-to-day work, I had to deal with her. Anyway, by ignoring her, the fear would still be there lurking in the background. The only option was to love her.

I’m not saying this was easy. How do you love a snarling pit-bull? How do you love when somebody is attacking you? Well, here is what I did.

I remembered that there was a time when she had given me a cup of tea during a raging snowstorm. The heater of my car wasn’t working and when I dropped off a package, she saw how cold I was and invited me in to get warm.

From that moment on, when the phone rang, I remembered that night and how great it felt to get warm again. That fond memory gradually softened my attitude towards her. She was not the person who was attacking me; she was the bringer of tea and warmth.

This doesn’t mean that I sat there and let her abuse me. Every time she got mean, I put this positive thought in my head and my voice got soft and calm and I asked her why she was so upset. I directed all of her negative energy gently back at her without adding any anger of my own.

Over a period of a few weeks, the spell was gradually broken. I had no worries about what I would say when she called. My voice was very pleasant whenever it was her. My fear was gone and it felt wonderful.

About six months later, I got a phone call. It was her. She said, “John, I don’t understand you.”

I responded, “Why?”

“For the past six months I have been going through some hardships in life and I realize that I was very cruel to you, but you responded every time by being nice.”

I assured her that I knew the real person was the person who had given me hot tea on a cold night.

First, I discovered that the reason that you love your enemy may not have much to do with your enemy, but more to do with yourself. It just makes much more sense to love people than to hate them. Hating just seems to poison your own life. Doing nothing just lets what is there fester and still controls you. The best option seems to give love, as hard as that may be.

What I also discovered was just how powerful love is. It can, indeed, move mountains. Most of the time we imagine these mountains as being in the distance. Usually, the mountains we need to move are the ones on our shoulders.