I tried to listen patiently while the woman on the other line unleashed her fury.

I couldn’t blame her. Our bank lost track of $30,000 from her business account, effectively disabling her business operations. When she found out it could take weeks to unravel the mystery, she blew up. And as the first point of contact for the bank, I had no choice but to listen to her intense verbal diatribe.

In 1996, the major Northern California bank I worked for bought out another large bank with numerous branches in several western states. This merging of accounts from one bank into a new one is called a conversion, and theoretically it’s supposed to be a seamless operation. The managers expected the computerized process to work smoothly. But it quickly became evident the bank’s outdated software couldn’t handle the overload of demands. So horror stories like the woman with the missing money abounded.

As a business banking agent, I’d been hired along with about 50 others to handle the countless problems with the business checking accounts. I spent eight-hour days listening to frustrated and enraged customers trying to sort out their account issues.

I often felt like ripping off my headphones and running far away from the relentless blast of justified complaints. After a few weeks, I wondered why I’d even taken the job.

One evening I went home feeling totally stressed, feet dragging, heart heavy. I could see no end in sight to the misery everyone was experiencing. On top of all of this, I’d been suffering all day from symptoms of a cold—the last thing I needed.

I so wanted to think clearly about the mess I found myself in. But I knew I’d have to stop rehashing the complaints I’d heard all day. So while preparing dinner, I decided to pray. I wanted to replace my heavy, dark, dragging thoughts with light, effortless, thoughts of goodness and wholeness.

My prayers are often inspired by my study of Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, because of the book's uplifting ideas about God and about His love for me. I thought about some of these ideas—about God and His governing Love—and turned to Him like a child falls into the open arms of a parent.

Since childhood, I’d been taught: “God is Love.” But it’s never until I’m humble enough to accept God’s love that I notice tangible results. So very gradually I yielded up all the anger, frustration and hatred, and became humbly aware of divine Love’s peaceful ever-presence.

Even as peace set in, I was still concerned about the customers I wanted to help. So I thought about how God’s governing love embraced every one of them, just as it did me. And I began to feel a quiet certainty this love was more powerful than all the chaos, mistakes and hopelessness everyone felt about the bank.

My worries edged off as I curled up in blankets and fell into a restful sleep. When I woke the next morning I felt clearheaded and ready to go to work. I never did come down with a cold. And instead of dreading the day, I looked forward to seeing how God’s love really does embrace everyone.

On my 40-minute drive to work, a simple idea occurred to me. We’d been given a “script” of how to greet customers, which now sounded too stiff to me: “Thank you for calling such and such bank, this is so and so.” I knew the customers needed to feel someone genuinely cared, at least as much as they needed to know the name of the bank. So after identifying the bank and stating my name, I added, “How may I help you?”

It was such a simple gesture, five little words spoken with great love and sincerity. As I said them, I realized how easy it was to treat my customers with love, because now I better understood how much God loved me. And judging from their grateful response, this had apparently made all the difference. Often I noticed a momentary silence, a sigh of relief on the other end, then an expression of joy that someone cared. My initial offering of peace met tensions and stresses head-on, before they had a chance to explode. It reaffirmed for me a phrase I’d always loved from the Bible, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”

After that, going to work was more enjoyable. Though problems in the bank didn’t disappear overnight, I don’t recall any customers directing their intense anger toward me again. In fact some acknowledged my difficult predicament by saying, “I know this is not your fault, but…” I believe the calm tone I set at the beginning of every conversation enabled me to address each issue more thoughtfully and intelligently, helping me to better direct customers to those who could best help them, while easing fears.

The certainty of God’s governing love I’d felt the night before stayed with me for the remainder of the time I was at that job. I eventually moved across the country, but by then the problems with the bank had lessened. My coworkers even had time to throw me a going-away party.