Yesterday I received a call from an acquaintance I hadn’t spoken to for a couple of years. She was distressed. Her situation is dire because she’s about to be evicted from her home. The purpose of her call was to ask me to loan her some money.

Due to a series of events that were partly her fault and some that couldn’t have been anticipated, she was in a bad spot. As I listened to her tell me what happened, there wasn’t any “poor little me” or victimhood tone in her voice, just fear.

Now I have a personal policy to not loan money. If I decided to send her some resources, I would just give it to her. I have found that this prevents me from having a false expectation of being repaid because I’m not expecting anything. I told her I would consider it.

This was when she started beating herself up. She was calling herself stupid etc. I immediately asked her to stop being so hard on herself with her comments. The world is going to knock us around and then pile on, I said. That’s just how it is. Hold yourself accountable, but stop the harshness of her self-criticism. It doesn’t help a thing.

My friend texted me last night that she had gotten things worked out, that she still had a ways to go, but she was grateful for my encouragement.

My encouragement to you is to keep going when things look the darkest. Daylight is coming…