3 amazing stories

1.       The story of the angry letter

One day a minister was very angry with his personal assistant She had sent a letter to the wrong person, causing him not only a lot of embarrassment but if the other person acts badly, it could cost him a lot of money too. He was very upset.

It was the beginning of a weekend, and she was planning to take leave after the weekend. That was in the time before emails or text messages were available. So, he wrote her a letter. His letter contained the most hateful words and was written in a very harsh way. Then he asked his wife to post the letter

At night he could not sleep and kept turning around in his bed. His wife asked him what was bothering him. He felt very uneasy about the harshness he had used in the letter and was now worried that it would hurt his PA so badly that she may decide to quit, which would be extremely inconvenient to him. He really regretted to be so angry in the letter.

His wise wife reassured him that she knew he would regret and that she had not yet posted the letter.

Lesson: if we are angry, we lose temporary our capability to think clearly. We tend to say or write words that we clearly will regret later on, but once out there it is almost impossible to take them back. Better to cool down first, regain our common sense and only then we address the issue in a calm and cool way.

2.     2. The story of the boiling water

One a day a teenage girl came back from school stating very adamantly to her mother that she will quit school. She had failed test, had been bullied and was very frustrated. The mom said nothing but took three pots, filled them with water and put them on the fire until the water boiled. In one pot, she put a carrot, in the other an egg, and in the last one coffee beans.

After half an hour, she called the girl. See, these three things were exposed to the same stress but each responded in a different way: the carrot was hard but became weak, the egg was soft and liquid but became hard and the coffee beans, they just changed the surrounding into a lovely brew of coffee giving an amazing aroma.

Lesson: if we face difficulties or stress, we can either become weak and easily give up, we can become hardened and lose our normal emotional response to things, or we can try to change the situation and turn it around into something beautiful.

3.       3. The story of the nurse who was not let in

About ten years ago, we started a home-based nursing service for terminally ill patients. During one of the debriefing sessions, a nurse told about the frustration she had experienced when she visited a family with a person who was in dire need of palliative care but she was not welcomed to deliver this care. The family was very strongly believing in traditional healing methods and thought she was just sent by the hospital to deliver more painful treatments to the patient. She talked nicely to the family expressed her sincere intentions and gradually she was allowed to take care of the bed sores of the patient and in the end her work was very much appreciated by the family. 

 

When asked how she had achieved this remarkable success, she mentioned that she got the motivation from the knowledge that this work she was doing was blessed by our Creator. She was confident that our Creator would show the way to her and the family if it was meant to be that she should alleviate the suffering of the patient. 

 

Lesson: I think this is an amazing story of courage and faith. She could have gotten discouraged and may have considered quitting the job if the patients refuse her care. That would have been like the carrot, getting weak. She might have hardened up and become angry with the family, creating a situation more problematic still for the suffering family, perhaps creating feelings of guilt. But she took the coffee-bean approach. Through her faith in our Creator, she persisted gently and managed to turn the stressful situation into a beautiful one.