Chapter 16: Personal Epiphany Number Two

This is how I learned that mean people are like cockroaches

 

Mean people are like cockroaches.

 

Think about it: cockroaches are some of the oldest insects on this planet, with fossils dating back over 350 million years. Anywhere people can live, they can too ("Cockroach" 167). They are practically indestructible. In the event of nuclear fallout, after we humans have all been killed by the radiation, the roaches will probably still be around, high-fiving each other, ready to dominate the planet for another 350 million years (Robinson).

 

Mean people, like cockroaches, are never in short supply. As I discovered, some religious institutions are full of them-, but there was a time when I didn’t know that.

 

Once upon a time, I thought most Christians were nice people. Then I went to CU and found out how wrong I was, especially about Christian leadership. While I was trying to resolve issues I had with various departments, I found out that there is a strong relationship between someone’s level of influence and their capacity to be a real jerk. It makes no difference whether a person believes in Jesus or not. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, with no respect to religion.

 

All I accomplished by filling out forms, meeting with department heads and swimming through red tape was finally understanding that I was more likely to get chocolate milk from a cow than any type of help from the university’s bureaucratic system. Of course, that’s the way it is in most institutions, both sacred and secular. Challenging the status quo is an uphill battle anywhere, but in my youthful idealism, I thought Christians would be more understanding and willing to help than their secular counterparts. Now, I just shake my head when I remember. I was young in so many ways!

 

 The students were great people, though. I still have fond memories of my classmates and I met two of my best friends in the whole world there. The friendships I enjoyed there made it worth the hassle, but as I’ve said, my experience with the faculty, staff, and administration was another story altogether. When I knew I couldn’t take it anymore, I called home and cried while I told my parents I wanted to leave. They were happy to help me transfer. My family barely survived the idiocy we fell victim to there and I’m just happy to have broken free with all my limbs intact.

 

Chances are, if you’ve had any face time with the religious powers that be, you have seen this ugliness first hand. It’s disheartening, at the very least, to realize that you could get treated just as crappy at a fast-food joint and at least have a hamburger to show for it. At church, you not only don’t get a combo meal-you give up ten percent of your income for that kind of treatment!

Before I get to the good news, I want to tell you a story.

 

A few years back, I met a wonderful lady named Shirley, whom I mentioned in an earlier chapter. We both sat on the same row at church, and quickly became good friends. Shirley was a counselor at a half-way house nearby, and she dedicated her life to helping those people get their lives back on track. It was no secret that for most of her forty-something years, she lived the kind of lifestyle that she now helped people out of.

 

She didn’t like to talk about her past escapades, but she did like to talk about God. Even when she was going through hell in her personal life, she remained upbeat. When she was having a really rough time and I asked her “How are you?” she would smile and respond “How are YOU?” It was a signal to me that she was going through a hard time but she didn’t want to talk about it. To know Shirley was to love her, and almost everyone who met her, did.

 

Then around the time I moved away to college, she moved across the country. No one seemed to know why she had left so quickly-I couldn’t get much information. A year went by and I got word that she had leukemia and was not given long to live. I tried to contact her by phone and email, but to no avail. She was thousands of miles away, so visiting was out of the question. A few months later, she passed away before I had the chance to say goodbye.

 

Six months passed and I finally got the courage to contact her family. This morning, Kleenex in hand, I dialed her mother’s number, ready with questions I needed answered. Her mother answered the phone, and graciously spoke with me for half an hour about Shirley. She filled in the gaps for me about why Shirley left so suddenly and how she spent her days on earth.

 

What she said floored me.

 

Shirley, who shared my disease of trusting people too much, had been very, very hurt at our church by the leadership and some of the church people. I had no idea that it happened, but it was not hard to believe. The leadership at our church hurt and manipulated many people. I have experienced it, and it’s not pretty.

 

After that, her mother told me, she returned to alcoholism, along with some other practices that surprised me, since the Shirley I knew had possessed high moral standards for herself. That explained why she left so suddenly and went under the radar for a while. She then checked herself into a treatment center and gradually got better. After that, she was hit with cancer and died shortly afterward.

 

When I found out that our church leadership had hurt her so badly that she returned to alcoholism, I was furious! Here was a sweet, good-hearted, precious human being whose whole mission in life was to help people, and some cold-hearted preacher screwed her over in the name of Jesus just because he could! That is despicable!

 

This morning, as I sobbed my bloody eyes out, I learned something very important: some people are just mean. They are chronically mean people who not only do bad things, but they also do them with bad intentions. I could spend my whole life trying to destroy mean people, but it would never work, because mean people are like cockroaches. They have always existed, they always will, and they are virtually indestructible. Shirley wouldn’t want me to spend my life trying to destroy. She would want me to spend my life helping people. That is what she did. After her death, her family received a lot of letters from people who said she made a difference in their lives.

 

By writing this book, I’m not aiming to destroy anyone, I’m aiming to help people who are hurting. Being hurt by an institution that you have given your life to can be devastating. Like Shirley, the hurt may knock you down for a while, but you don’t have to stay down. The desire for revenge may be huge when you get back up, but remember that the best revenge you can have on someone who mistreated you is to live you life happy and free, while ignoring them completely. I know, it’s tempting to march up their front steps, ring their doorbell and cuss them out for every wretched, despicable act they committed, but should they really get that satisfaction? No way! Seeing you angry is exactly what mean people want, so don’t give it to them!

 

Mean people may be like cockroaches, but freely living you own life is like flipping on a light switch. They will scatter when they realize they can no longer control you. It may take a long time to recover to the point of moving on, but you can do it. Eventually, I hope you are able to gather your courage, get back up and dust yourself off, because this is your life and you don’t have to let others dictate how you live it.