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Shouldn't that be your
job? I wondered.
Apparently not, I
added a few seconds later when the woman watched as I picked up the card and scratched at the grey coating on the back.
"It's not coming off," I
said irritably after making very little progress.
"Try using a penny," the
cashier suggested as she leaned on her register to examine her well-manicured
nails.
This is ridiculous,
I thought to myself as I retrieved a coin from my wallet and tried again to
uncover the code.
It's
also impossible, I decided a few seconds later when my second attempt proved unsuccessful.
Unsure of what to do, I
looked up to find all eyes on me as the clerk and the people in line waited
quietly to see what would happen next.
I wish I could say that
what happened was a reflection of
Psalm 34:14. That I
turned from evil and did good in an effort to seek peace and pursue it.
Instead, the only thing I turned up was
the volume as I looked at the cashier ... and snapped.
"I shouldn't have to do
this," I exclaimed, pushing the gift card and the penny in her direction. "You
do it!"
Surprised by my outburst,
the woman looked up to find that all eyes were now on her. After hesitating for
a few seconds, she took the card and rubbed it with the coin I provided until
the code became visible. She then typed the numbers into the register before
handing it back to me a second time to say, "The system doesn't recognize your
card. You'll have to go to customer service."
"I've been to
Customer Service once tonight and I'm not going back," I assured her. "If you
need help getting the card to work, someone from Customer Service can come to
you."
The woman studied me
for a few seconds and then called for a manager who, to my relief, entered the
code with no problems before stepping out of the way so the cashier could
complete my transaction.
As I suspected, there was
no "have a nice day" when the woman handed me the receipt. There was also no
feeling of triumph as I walked out of the store at an all-time, post-move low.
"Why did you relocate
us
if you knew it would bring out the worst in me?” I yelled after I was safely
inside my vehicle. “What good can I be if I can’t even behave in a store?"
In their book God Will
Make A Way: What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do, authors Dr. Henry
Cloud and Dr. John Townsend offer this potential reply: “Problems give us
an opportunity to look beyond our small world, our familiar answers and trusted
habits, and peer out into the unknown, where God is waiting. When we're at the
end of ourselves, that's the place where God truly is."
I was definitely at the end of myself
as I started the engine and the song
Mountain Of God
by Third Day spilled out from the radio to fill my van with hope.
“Even though the journey’s
long and I know the road is hard," the radio played, “well, the One who’s gone
before me, he will help me carry on.”
As I listened to the
lyrics, I realized that God didn’t move me here just to make a difference in the
lives of others. The person He planned most to change … was me.
My belief that the
customer comes first had blinded me to the fact that people, even store
personnel, are human—many with past or present circumstances that make it
more
difficult for them to provide a good customer service experience, than it is for
me to endure a bad one.
Had Cloud or Townsend been
sitting in the passenger seat beside me, they would have had this to add:
"When we don't follow God's blueprint for dealing with difficult people, we
complicate the situation. ... God's way for you always resides in your being a
person of light instead of darkness. Do the tough work of trying to resolve
problems." (p. 60)
Thirty minutes earlier, I
thought the woman at the Customer Service counter needed a lesson in James 4:17.
Now, as I exited the parking lot, it was clear that the person who knew the good she ought to
have done and didn’t do it … was me.
We can be part of the
problem or pursue a solution. Regardless of which side of the issue we choose to
be on, the only behavior we can control is our own as we work to correct,
while we lovingly reflect, the One who did the ultimate exchange of trading his
life for ours.
A Quote to Grow On
"Once
the problem drives us to him, God then takes us through a
journey into ourselves to demonstrate what he wants us to
learn."
Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr.
John Townsend, God Will Make A Way, p. 76
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