I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. I was being sued. A co-worker and the bank I worked for as a financial advisor were also under fire. Apparently, one of our clients was blaming us for losses he'd sustained in the stock market. We were told that the arbitration hearing could last up to a week.
Frankly, I was scared to read the client's complaint. Perhaps we had done something wrong accidentally, and now it was going to cost our company a lot of money. Maybe even cost us personally. But when I finally sat down to read the allegations, my fears were eased. The client maintained that my co-worker and I had maliciously committed fraud against him and that we should be personally punished and fined. Although I couldn't be certain that I hadn't made an honest mistake in the three years he was our client, I knew I had never acted maliciously.
At that point, I saw I had a choice to make. I could be angry, or I could choose to do something else. And the something else I chose to do was to be grateful. Although that may seem like a strange response, this choice didn't exactly come out of nowhere. Not long before this, I had been involved in a personal relationship where I'd felt hurt and angry—and justifiably so, according to those who knew of the situation. But I'd realized that those thoughts could only end up harming me—miring me in blame and anger—rather than fixing the problem. And I'd learned—perhaps the hard way—that it's much better to let gratitude define even my darkest moments. Consistently silencing self-justification and hurt with gratitude to God was what pulled me through that experience.
