[Ferd]

Some of my friends and I exchange e-mails that can sometimes be barbed. We discuss just about everything including politics. Our group includes some very conservative people as well as very liberal and moderate/independent people also. Well last week the discussion escalated over the course of a couple of days and I sat there and watched two good friends really cutting each other up via e-mail. It got nasty on both sides. The escalation was eerily familiar.

I spent the entire weekend thinking about how people can get so caught up in what somebody else is saying. Crazy thing is, it brought back some really bad memories. Memories I had placed under the blood almost eight years ago. Almost ten years ago, around the time I got married, I got into a bit of a spot with a UPC preacher. Now I am sure to all you seasoned ministers out there, this isn't that unusual for a couple of preachers to end up on opposite ends of an issue. But this was the first time I had run into something like this.

Over the course of a few months, I was very wrongly done. It hurt. I mean it cut me to the core. I was sick, ashamed, devastated. In three months I lost 25 pounds and I only weighed 150 to begin with. I looked like death warmed over and on my best days that is exactly what I felt like. I even moved 300 miles away! I wont go into any details but let me say very clearly that I was done horribly wrong, lied on, and terribly mistreated. I couldn’t even face friends that I KNEW didn’t even know about the situation.

I fought bitterness for two years before I came to a place of forgiveness. I warred with this. It was a constant struggle every day. How do you get a thought out of your head? How do you struggle with life knowing the struggles you are going thru are because of someone hurting you?

It was…..I'm sorry. I cant even put it in words. It was bitterness bordering on hatred. And it was a preacher. Somebody that is supposed to take care of people. Somehow after warring for two years, I found myself looking at me instead of this thing that had been done to me.

I started asking myself why after all that time I was letting this dude win? Letting him have this control over me. He was gone from my life, but for two years what I was, was still being controlled by him. I made a decision to make that stop. I would no longer be controlled by others. That I would face everything in my life head on. No more allowing someone else's ideas or words or even actions determine my life. I gave the whole thing to God in one package and let go.

Occasionally the whole sordid affair pops into my head but not with bitterness nor with malice. This last week I've been thinking about how I survived it. How I overcame it. The very fact that I am still in church when so many others have fallen because of similar stuff. God has truly blessed me.

Now I said all that to say something to all of you.

You cannot stop people from being bone heads. You cannot stop people from being hateful or having attitudes or doing or saying things that cut you. You do have control over how you react to them.

Every day I wake up and make a conscious decision not to allow anyone to hurt me. That does not mean I don’t get close to people or that I insulate myself from connecting to people. No way. I have good friends. I love my wife with every fiber of my being. I believe we need to be close to people. But I control the switch that allows someone's words or deeds to affect my life. Things get said and then things escalate, then someone gets mad and the whole thing can spin out of control and it happens because someone makes a decision to take real offence to what has been said.

People struggle for years over hurts they have suffered. Some loose out with God over what they have seen other people do. It all happens because they didn’t control that switch. Life has taught me some tuff lessons, most of which I would have preferred not having to learn. None the less, learn them I did. This is one of them: I control how I feel about what others say and do. I control it. Nobody else. No matter how devastating it is. I control the switch.