Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
- Romans 12:19-20
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
- Matthew 5:38-42
“THE DAMAGE
“We tend to think of a Nice Person as a rather benign character. But the ‘nice’ appearance of Nice People masks the hurt that permeates both their emotional life and their relationships with others. Nice People suffer from frequent anxiety and depression, due in part to the constant neglect of their own needs. Their passive-aggressive behaviors and their difficulty asking for what they want serve to undermine relationships with friends and family members. Not surprisingly, over time these patterns lead to a deadening of intimacy. Nice People are also prone to choosing partners who are not ready for intimacy. Most of the time, these partners are either Nice People themselves, or are on the other end of the scale: demanding, self-involved, manipulative, and domineering. Sometimes the destruction emanating from the life of the Nice Person can reach severe levels. These outcomes can include eating disorders, substance abuse, self-mutilation, affairs, divorce, and even suicide.”
- James Rapson and Craig English, Anxious to Please
In the process of cleaning up the house after my wife’s passing, I have found books that she had hidden in her personal stuff. One of them was the quoted book above. Mr. Rapson is a psychotherapist and teacher. Mr. English is an author. The book is not a Christian therapy or counseling book. I do not remember seeing a single Scripture reference, but something on the fifth page of the book made me have to sit down and I wept, the quote above.
I wrote in my wife’s biography that is still on-going, that she refused to answer my many proposals until I took a four-day weekend at Thanksgiving and when I returned, she practically was ready to ask me instead. Then when I got angry because she thought a star was supposed to be on the side of all football helmets (me hating the Dallas Cowboys, and their helmet is the one with the star on it), she thought I was just like all the other men she had dated. I apologized and she admitted that sending out a “just kidding” note to all those who were invited to the wedding might not go too well.
But as she described all the others she had ever dated, there were elements of ”demanding, self-involved, manipulative, and domineering” in each one of them. The head of nursing, a female lieutenant colonel, doctored my wife’s medical records to cover up her abuse of my future wife. She made it look like her PTSD was preexisting, but all that was preexisting was that the woman I married was nice, and the LTC was a steamroller, finding it entertaining to crush nice people.
Maybe next to my wife, I was far from nice. My parents were tough, hard products of the Great Depression. Their every breath they took, when they considered me, was to make me tough, hard, unemotional. They failed to an extent, but I did not cry at either of their funerals, but I almost slipped up at my Dad’s funeral. He had soft moments with me when my mother was not watching, and I think a lot of his toughness lessons were required by her, since my Dad and I were of the same gender.
So, from an upbringing environment point of view, I was not nearly as nice as my wife, but she did not accept Jesus until we had nearly reached our 25th wedding anniversary. Christians should be nice, but being nice does not mean you are a Christian.
As my Logic professor said, possibly the first day of class, “There are a lot of angus cows. Angus cows are black. You can state that all angus cows are four-legged animals that are black, but you cannot state that all four-legged animals that are black are angus cows. Just try petting that four-legged animal that is black except for the white stripe down his back. You’ll find out how wrong you are.”
So, I had been a Christian for years by the time my wife and I met, but she had been nice since birth, and people took advantage of that.
And I took some of her niceness for granted. And she is gone, and I cannot even the playing field.
Our sons did the same thing. After all, she was “Mommy” and she was what she was, as someone named her “Super Mom.”
Our primary care physician told her she had reactive depression. Her depression was a natural reaction to what she was facing. It was depressing having kidney failure which is only curable by a transplant that never came. It was depressing having the side effects of kidney failure and a heart condition, always tired, advancing dementia, wild swings in bowel conditions, etc. It was depressing having every kind of auto-immune disease in the book. Okay, too many to count, but not all of them.
But to see that her natural state was that of being depressed because she was nice in a world that was far from nice, I sat and wept for her. I have said this before… If I had only known…
My wife was as the book title states, she was anxious to please. And when she became a Christian, she was even more so.
So, if you know any chronically nice people, give them the love and respect that is due them, and never take advantage of their niceness, which is so easy to do when you have a project at church and you need volunteers.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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