How I Killed the Lunch Lady [With Kindness]

I was driving down the Florida Turnpike at 70 mph. Palm trees lined the side of the road, a lavender sunset displayed behind them, and Will Reagan on the radio. I should have been enjoying such a lovely ride home, but instead, I was stewing over an incident at work. Like many times when a personal interaction doesn’t go as planned, I found myself replaying the conversation mentally, but in my head, I always said something clever, when in reality I had remained dumbly silent. So as I contemplated a conversation in my mind that never actually occurred, I baked in my frustration over having been treated rudely.

For the third day in a row, a woman at work had acted condescending to me, and as I sat in my truck going over the scenario again I felt the Lord pulling at my heart. As if grabbing the string of a balloon, He pulled me back down to earth, working to calm my spirit, and He whispered to me a motto I actually lived by.

“Kill them with kindness,” He said.

And I knew that was the thing to do.

I don’t know about you, but I frequently encounter people who just seem to hate life. They’re the ones with the sour look on their face, the sighs that say “why are you bothering me,” and the rolling eyes that proclaim they’d rather be anywhere but where they currently are. I’m not sure why, but when I see these kinds of obviously unhappy individuals it’s like I get excited. A part of me says “game on!” When I meet someone with a grumpy disposition it’s like I yearn to make them smile. I want them to be compelled to be happy when I’m around, and so begins a journey to squeeze a smirk of a smile from a sourpuss. Challenge accepted.