When someone mistreats me, I have a choice. I can choose to nurture resentment by replaying the mistreatment over and over again, focusing on poor-me and what I deserve. When I do that, I get mired in resentment, and the wound festers. If I want to get well, there is a better path.
“[P]ray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:28
I don’t have to drum up warm, fuzzy feelings toward her. I don’t have to like her. I don’t even have to feel like praying. I only have to be willing to loosen my grip on resentment just long enough to say one small prayer for her. I might ask God to prosper her business or protect her children or heal any aches and pains she may have. The next day, I pray for her again. Gradually, over weeks and sometimes months, a miracle happens. My resentment melts away like an early-morning fog, and, wonder of wonders, I realize that the person I resented has become the person I love.
“If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person . . . , you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.” The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous