About two years ago, I started a food business in a rented space. The owner of the property was eager to help me get started and assured me that the site had excellent potential. A couple of months later, to my surprise, he opened a similar business on the same property, in direct competition with mine. My initial reaction was to be hurt by someone whom I'd trusted. I turned to God in prayer to find an answer.
I'd known this man was kind of rough and gruff. He ran a gym and I'd heard him curse people out unmercifully, even his customers. He was also charging me what I felt was unfairly high rent. After he started the competitive business, I felt like a real victim, and we didn't speak to each other for days. It was like a cold war.
I knew this kind of thinking on my part had to go. Instead of thinking of him as greedy and dishonest, I decided to think of him the way God made us all — honest, aboveboard, unselfish. I prayed to know that characteristics that hadn't come from the creator of both of us couldn't threaten me or be a part of him.
I decided to go about my daily business, doing my best, trusting God to show me the next steps. With the help of a Christian Science practitioner, I stopped holding on to self-righteous thoughts: I'm the injured party; he's in the wrong. It came to me that I should go to him and, very humbly, ask for a rent reduction. He agreed, amicably. His character seemed to have changed. There was an instant meltdown of the hard feel ings on both sides. It was such a tender moment we hugged each other, and after that he became perfectly reasonable to deal with.
I decided to trust God to show me the next steps.
After a few months of trying to make a go at the business, I decided to close it. It just didn't feel like the right place for me to be. And I saw there was no need to continue forever with what had turned out to be an unproductive move — there was only a small parking lot, it was a one-person operation, and winter was coming. Not the ideal situation for an outdoor grill. God doesn't let us continue in a wrong direction, and I knew I was free to listen for His new, wise direction. The owner of the property didn't take the news calmly, at first, that I wanted to break my one-year lease. But he did accept my written 30-day notice without getting angry, and I moved out peacefully. A few months later, at the post office, we had a nice friendly chat, as though our sad business dealings had never happened. This is what I take from the whole experience as the real healing.
As I prayed about what to do next, I felt I'd made the right decision. And I didn't miss even a day's income. The day after the closing, I found a temporary job that filled the gap until I returned to my former employer, where I have enjoyed new opportunities and have taken on interesting responsibilities over the past several years.
Tigard, Oregon
