Coping

As I said in a previous post, I was bullied in high school. I wrote that bullying was good for me. The reason why I wrote that was because I work with someone who was homeschooled to protect her from bullying.

While this woman is a very intelligent and thoughtful woman, I feel that she can't cope very well with a lot of things. She has had two meltdowns on the floor where she cried so loudly that other people couldn't work. One of the incidences was her supervisor told her to get along with other people. The other one was that she told a woman to shut up and then started crying saying that she was tired. I work in customer service and she complains every single time a customer asks her to do something or is cross with her. She expected our manager to solve every problem that she had, and he finally told her to solve it on her own. (She was going to his office several times a week, complaining about petty stuff).

This woman was homeschooled for eight years of her life and never entered a public high school. Even though I wished I could've been sheltered from bullying, I am glad that I wasn't. Because when someone is cross with me, I get mad, but I don't let it ruin my day. I don't ever tell people to shut up when I am tired. And I understand that my job means that I have to do what the customer wants and I only complain if their request is unreasonable.

Sometimes I wish that God would have sheltered me from troubles. But if God did, maybe I would react like the woman who was homeschooled to everyday problems. I woudn't know how to cope.

Faith in an unlikely place

Sometimes simple gestures makes a bigger impact on non-believers than preaching to them.

My manager at work met with all fifty of his subordinates and asked them what they needed to make their jobs easier. He wrote down all of their suggestions, even the ones where people suggested chocolate covered doughnuts and pizza on Fridays. And this is the second time this year that he has done that.

I was really touched by that and I can't explain why. He would sacrifice something for all of us, and I think that it is more than his job. I think that he really does care.

It's weird that I have been studying really hard trying to understand God. Regularly attending church thinking that I was going to find Him, when he was right under my nose in my manager. Because if God were my manager, He would act like my manager. I can't believe I found God in a place where I wasn't even looking for Him.

Bullying was good for me

We've all seen school shootings on the news. The story is always the same. This boy who was picked on throughout his school years takes a gun and shoots a bunch of other students. I was bullied in school and I could really idenify with the shooter.

Before I started seeking God, I thought that being bullied was the worst experience of my life. I thought that I would never overcome it. Somehow my future employers would find out that I was bullied in high school and discriminate against me. I thought that I would never have any friends as an adult because I hardly had any friends as a kid. Because I was the kid nobody danced with in middle school, I would never have a boyfriend or husband now that I am an adult. All of this was wrong, but I didn't think so as a kid.

I remembered thinking as a kid that I wasn't going to have a great life, but I wanted to be as happy as I possibly could be. I got a degree and got a job that I'm proud of where I can pay my bills. I work out as much as I can, and some men think that I am cute. I also have some friends. Being a victim of bullying didn't scar me for life. In fact, it has made me who I am.

The Bible says that suffering can make people stronger and help them grow. By reading the Bible and praying, I realized that bullying has made me stronger. When I was bullied, I learned that it wasn't the end of the world if someone doesn't like me. In school, I would worry all weekend about the people who were mean to me. I would wonder what I did to make them mad that week, and get mad at myself for making them mad. If someone is mean to me at work, I am usually upset for a few hours and I get over it. They are not worth ruining my weekend over.

I also learned at what point to stop appeasing an angry person. In school, I would do whatever the bully said to do, so he wouldn't beat me up or make fun of me. I finally realized that the only thing that I got from doing all these things was that he wasn't mean to me for that week. I realized that I had to find another way to solve the problem, so I just told my teacher this and she took care of it. When I run across people like this at my job, I just tell my manager and she takes care of it. Also sometimes people will be mean to me to try to get me to do what they want and because I have been bullied I recognize this. When they try to do that, it makes me dig my heels in the ground and tell them no. Because I will NEVER give in to them again.

Yes, bullying helped make me a stronger person, but I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't read the Bible. In fact if I hadn't looked for God, I would probably be curled up in my closet feeling sorry for myself-or worse in prison because I shot those losers.