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Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Believe and Trust That Lent Will End

I have, over the years, met people who literally and figuratively inhale the fun, the life, the celebration out of any event or person they meet. Looking for ideas about how to deal with people like that, I enlisted the help of my daughter, the therapist.

“I try to avoid those kinds of people,” was her first response. So much for free therapy.

We all know these kinds of people. When they walk into a room, the joy evaporates. The light conversation dies on the spot. While the skies don’t darken, the atmosphere certainly changes. A discomfort if not foreboding hangs in the air, and we wait to see what will happen.

That sounds more like a plot for a bad movie than real life, but for some folks, a bad movie would be a welcome relief compared to what they encounter at work. Their options are constricted, given today’s economy and the dearth of jobs available if we took another piece of advice from the young therapist: “Go someplace else if it becomes unbearable.” Since she likes her job and isn’t in the market for another, she doesn’t see the way this would play out in the mind of someone suffering from this kind of malaise at work. Eating and paying bills are hardly optional, so we have to find another way to deal with this.

If we can’t avoid and we can’t quit, we can always pray about our dilemma. Sound too simple? It’s easy to pray when we find ourselves confronting a disagreeable situation or person. We can rely on our comfort prayers, those we learned as a child — St. Jude always comes to mind — or hit the spontaneous prayer mode and just talk to God (probably plead is a better word). Never discount the power of prayer.

Then, when circumstances permit, stepping back from the situation and calling upon God through quiet meditation may put us on the right track. Looking at something from a distance can give us a better idea of the “bigger picture.” Whatever that is, we can’t see it if we’re caught in the middle. We can find inspiration in a number of places: poetry, a book on spirituality or reading the Scripture. Taking ourselves and our book if we need/want one to a quiet place can make a tremendous difference in our attitude about our situation and ourselves.

We know we can only change ourselves, and that may be the key to dealing with those who, maybe without realizing it, destroy our joy. We also know that negative forces often seem to win out over positive ones, but we don’t have to accept that view. Actually, we must not accept that view if we believe in Easter, in resurrection, in the real life-giving presence of Christ.

So, our real option, free therapy notwithstanding, is to believe and to trust that no matter how long Lent seems to persist in our lives, Easter will follow. Our God does hear us if we just open our hearts and pray.