The Biblio File April 2018 Essay: “Surprise!”

SURPRISE!

When I was a therapist and teacher, I taught courses on how to be assertive. I can cite the particulars: Aggressiveness is a show of power. Assertiveness is a show of strength and control. Aggressiveness is hostile. Assertiveness can be relational. Aggression is the flip side of passivity.

I was a person, though, long before I was a therapist, and my knowledge has often failed me in situations where somebody acts mean or gets all up in my face. Ed’s told me I’d make a terrible politician, since my every emotion shows, and surviving a daddy who misused his power in abusive ways has led me to either fight back hard and nasty or withdraw and say nothing. The former racks me with guilt and makes me feel like I’m no better than the attacker. The latter makes me fume inside, rehearsing how to set the attacker straight. Both are exhausting and neither satisfies.

But recently, I surprised myself. Twice.

At the March for Our Lives protest, a car stopped at the corner where I was standing, and a teenaged boy repeatedly gave us protestors the finger while hurling curses from the back seat of a car. The young woman next to me gave the boy the finger, and cussed back at him. “Let’s not,” I said to her, and I gave the boy the peace sign. She frowned a bit, then quieted and kept her finger to herself.

The following week, after volunteering for a project for a community organization, I was approached and railed at by a man who was furious that a “liberal” (that would be moi) was in charge of disseminating information, and fearful that I would push “left wing propaganda”. I was stunned but I quickly calmed, listened to the man’s rant, answered him in a straightforward, respectful way, and, when he would not relent, told him I would not fight, and wished him well.

It’s not that either behavior was particularly notable or exceptional—it’s that, both times, it was like I was observing myself, watching the assertive, “better” me show up and step up and shine. It’s as if Jesus’s commandment to “Love one another” and my morning devotionals and Pastor Lee’s sermons and Michele’s directive to go high when they go low and my children’s beautiful, compassionate responses to contemptuous Facebook trolls, had all joined forces and stood behind me and made me do the thing I’d choose if I were in my right mind.

I just love it when that happens. I’m more and more convinced that spewing anger and fear out into the world will do nothing to heal it, but that straightforward but gentle, “assertive” action will. I’ll never be a politician. But I can be a healing force—and come a little closer to “getting” Martin Luther King when he said, “I have decided to live with love. Hate is too big a burden to bear.”

Amen. And Amen to surprising ourselves.

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