Before I was born, my dad lost everything on “Black Friday” in 1929, when the stock market crashed and the United States spiraled into the Great Depression. Dad was a class-taught Christian Scientist. I have a packet of his letters to my mother from those years that give a lot of insight into his prayerfulness. He was sure he would come out of the Depression a stronger person and a better Christian Scientist—and he did. In the mid-1930s he emerged as a successful drilling contractor in the Texas oil fields.

Years later, I had what felt to me like my own Black Friday. I received a call from an executive of the large construction company I was joint venturing with informing me they had decided to invoke the “kick-out” clause of our contract. He told me the papers would be ready to sign the following Friday. That afternoon and weekend I was overcome with anger and disappointment. I’d never experienced such injustice. The idea that my old friend, the owner of the construction company, would step aside and allow this to happen was devastating. He knew how much I had invested over a tough two-year period to get our project designed and approved. Now he didn’t return my calls.

On Monday I met with my attorney, who explained that even though the owner had promised me the kick-out clause would never be used except for gross negligence on my part, the contract itself contained no such language.

On the drive home, I was full of self-condemnation for being so naive. When I got home, I called a Christian Science practitioner and told him I was facing the biggest disappointment of my life and needed help. After I’d given him a thumbnail sketch of the situation, he was quiet for a moment, then asked if I was familiar with an article by Mary Baker Eddy titled “Love Your Enemies” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 8). He told me he thought it held the answer to my dilemma.

I knew Mrs. Eddy had had more than her share of unjust attacks—some from close friends—so I was sure the article I was to study came from hard experience. By the end of Monday, I got the point. Those attacking may seem to be enemies doing us harm, but Mrs. Eddy explains that they are actually friends forcing us to go up higher in our understanding of reality. It was a tough concept to swallow at first.

From Tuesday morning to the end of Thursday, I set everything aside and prayed with my whole heart to gain complete freedom from my feelings of loss and disappointment. The work was inspiring, and the hours flew by. Mrs. Eddy’s article on loving our enemies gave me a thorough understanding of the blessings Joseph experienced after being sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers (see Genesis, chaps. 37–50). He had lived everything I learned from Mrs. Eddy’s explanation of how apparent enemies can actually be our best friends. I felt inside me the intense drama of the scene when Joseph revealed his identity to his older brothers and then utterly forgave them.

After reading about Joseph, I studied everything Jesus taught about enemies in his Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew, chaps. 5–7), and how he proved what he taught when attacked by jealous religious leaders. By the end of Thursday, I knew I was safe. Whatever the future held would be a blessing.

On Friday morning, I felt assured I had no enemies. When I arrived at the meeting, I was genuinely relaxed and friendly, even jovial—which I could tell was surprising to the six or eight people gathered for my termination. We talked good-naturedly, and I assured them I harbored no ill-feelings and wished them success with the project. After I read the document and turned to the signature page, the ranking executive across from me smiled and offered me his pen.

I took it and started to sign when a clear voice inside me said, “Have them guarantee payment of all your design fees and indemnify you from any form of liability having to do with this project.” The message seemed irrelevant, but I repeated it to the man across from me. He said, “No problem,” and had his secretary type an addendum. Then, we both signed.

The next afternoon I received a call from my friend, the owner, telling me how much he admired the way I had handled what he knew had to be a terribly upsetting experience that was not my fault. He explained that my partnership position in the midst of his salaried executives had proven to be an unworkable strain on his company because of their jealousy. I told him I understood.

Then my friend told me he had just recommended to his bank that they work with me on a project that was not big enough for his company but was a good fit for me. Within weeks the bank had financed my purchase of this new project, which happened to be just down the road from my previous project.

As the months went by, I occasionally visited my friend’s project on my way home and watched as a painful construction debacle unfolded. Eight months after my Black Friday meeting, I got a call summoning me and my attorney to another meeting. The faces around the conference table were new, and I learned that all the original people were gone. The new senior vice president across from me said their project was a complete loss, and they were discontinuing my monthly design fee payments and filing suit for my share of their losses. They were suing several dozen companies and consultants involved with their project.

My attorney reached into his briefcase and slid a copy of the addendum we had signed earlier across the table to the vice president. As he read, his complexion changed noticeably. Finally he sputtered that he had never seen this document. There was a long silence before he asked, “How did you know? I’ve checked the chronology, and when you were terminated, we were almost a hundred sales ahead of construction, poised for a major success.”

“Intuition,” I replied. 

In the weeks that followed, I helped him work through the big mess he had inherited. That Black Friday experience changed me. I’ve never again yielded to anger and disappointment as I did over that perceived injustice. I can still hear that voice inside my thought giving me a message that completely protected me from problems no one in that room could have foretold. The whole healing experience blessed me and matured me as a metaphysician. As my dad wrote to my mother, they both came out of the Great Depression wiser and stronger Christian Scientists. Following in his footsteps years later, I could gratefully acknowledge the point of Mrs. Eddy’s article about enemies—that a person or an experience that seems to be a devastating attack can actually be a great blessing in disguise.