Sandpaper People

Margaret Gartlgruber ponders how we respond to the difficult people in our lives — and how their presence can in fact be a good thing.

True grit.

That was the clue for the New York Times Strands puzzle I was working on. The goal of the puzzle is to guess the main “Strand,” or the word, as described by several other words. My first thought was sandpaper. To my delight, I was correct! How did I guess this so quickly? Well … after praying that morning, I was reflecting on my early days of motherhood and remembered one of the first mommy speakers I heard.

At that time, I had a very active toddler and a newborn. Stay-at-home motherhood was not going well. I needed something. I wasn’t sure what that something was. Help? Support? Company? In any case, a Christian Mom group called MOPs, or mothers of preschoolers, offered free babysitting, so this was a good place to start.

Little did I know this meeting at a non-denominational mommy group would begin a journey with Jesus and ultimately my Catholic reversion.

Along with food and fellowship, a woman they called a “Mentor Mom” gave a talk titled Sandpaper People. She described the many types of people we would encounter in our lives who would rub us like sandpaper. And how this is a good thing.

Abrasive. Harsh. Coarse. Prickly. Scratchy. Rough. These were the words in my puzzle describing sandpaper. We are often surrounded by abrasive people. Prickly personalities help us grow in virtue. These people rub us to smooth our rough edges. Coarse individuals offend us, helping us learn patience. We can use these examples to look at our own actions. Am I harsh with others?

A “Delete” Culture

The advent of the computer brought with it the delete button. I can’t help but see how this delete mentality seems to have extended into our society. Social media constantly tells us to “eliminate toxic people” but they don’t define what a toxic person is. Toxic now seems to embody everyone we don’t get along with. Now we see many people hitting the delete button in their lives every time someone disagrees or is disagreeable. However, the Sandpaper People theory says that disagreeable people are not necessarily toxic. Furthermore, people will continue to exist in our lives that we cannot run away from: family, co-workers, fellow students, teachers, and others.

What Does Jesus Say?

Jesus’ teachings about loving your enemies can be difficult to swallow. When He says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31), He is NOT saying copy what others have done to us already. In other words, we need to be the ones to change the cycle.

“But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28)

Simply put, the rule of embracing the sandpaper people in our lives can give us a new perspective. Breathing new life and new purpose into those relationships helps not only us, but the other person as well.

"For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same." (Luke 6:32-33)

When I went to that first MOPs meeting, I was far from lovable. I praise God for those Christians that loved me anyway. Catholic and non-Catholic alike — they were all powerful demonstrations to me of how we can love people to Jesus. I realize now that I probably was a sandpaper person to all those women!

Pip’s Basement

On further reflection, my grandfather’s basement comes to mind. We called him Pipère — Pip for short. Pip was a carpenter, and his basement was a dedicated workshop for the many things he created with his hands. When I was 11, Pip surprised me with a dollhouse that was taller than my mom! I still have it in a crate in the basement. He converted an old television console into a dresser. This dresser lives next to the quilt rack he also made, which holds Mimère’s handmade afghans. The hope chest he made for my 16th birthday still sits in my entryway.

These treasures all seemed to magically appear. I never saw any of them being made. Though I knew they came from that dark scary basement.

I was never allowed down there, but one time I snuck down with my cousin for just a peek. The lighting was dim, but not as dark as I thought it might be. It was filled with wood, tools, and half-done projects. And sawdust. The wood dust filled my nostrils the second the door opened, inviting a sneeze that never came.

I realize now that this is the same dust that came from the sanding required. Being the “sander,” not the “sandee,” Pipère was a different kind of sandpaper person. By sanding things, he turned rough pieces of wood into the beautiful items we continue to treasure. They were not magically completed. The sawdust represented hours of painstaking work and attention to the tedious details required to complete each of the hundreds of things he created.

This reminds me of how God is also the “sander.” He creates us and is constantly using others to refine and makes us even more beautiful. To see examples of the treasures he creates throughout our lives, we need to look no further than the lives of the saints. Saints were generally not born saints. Saints had their own sandpaper in the people and circumstances that refined each of them in virtues that read about and strive to imitate.

After recently reading Story of a Soul, a story Saint Thérèse relates in her autobiography stood out. She, too, had sandpaper people in her life. Even in the convent there were people she wanted to run from, and sometimes she even did! She shares, “A holy nun of our community annoyed me in all that she did.”

How did Thérèse respond? She tells us,

I remembered that charity ought to betray itself in deeds, and not exist merely in the feelings, so I set myself to do for this sister all I should do for the one I loved most. Every time I met her I prayed for her, and offered to God her virtues and merits.

One might say, “Of course she prayed, she was a great saint, after all.” Well, Thérèse also followed up with some concrete actions.

I did not rest satisfied with praying for this Sister … I tried to render her as many services as I could, and when tempted to answer her sharply, I made haste to smile and change the subject.

What was the result? I love the end of this story:

One day she said to me with a beaming face: ​“My dear Soeur Thérèse, tell me what attraction you find in me, for whenever we meet, you greet me with such a sweet smile.”

Is there someone like this in your life — someone you struggle to be around? What virtue might God be inviting you to practice through this relationship? Patience? Gentleness? Humility? Meekness?

Like Pip doing his work unseen in the basement, often we don’t see God sanding us while it is happening. Maybe we do not even sneeze as we sniff in the sawdust. While it is tempting to run away from the difficult people, maybe we can embrace them as Thérèse did, allowing God to work through them to shape us.

Saint Thérèse writes,

Ah! What attracted me was Jesus hidden in the depths of her soul — Jesus makes sweet even that which is most bitter!

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Copyright 2026 Margaret Gartlgruber
Images: Canva